In Charlottesville, Virginia over the weekend several
white supremacist organizations held a rally to protest the removal of a statue
of Confederate general Robert E. Lee. Many others gathered as
counter-protesters. Among the results was the murder of a young woman by a
white supremacist and the accidental deaths of two Virginia state troopers.
The nature of such events makes it easy to overlook that
you do not have to be a white supremacist to oppose the removal of such statues.
You merely have to believe that removing such statues is akin to “erasing
history.”
This is a common response when there are proposals to rename
public places, to remove public statues, to update the visage that greets us on
our money. “It’s part of our history,” it is often said.
It’s an understandable response. Superficially, such
disputes are about history. But below the surface, such disputes are about
something else.
Among the reasons “It’s part of our history” does not
suffice is that there are a functionally infinite number of people whom we
could immortalize in statuary. The question then must be, Why are we
immortalizing this person, this history? And why are we doing so in
this location?
Among the reasons removing statues and replacing the
faces on money cannot erase history is that public memorials are not artifacts
of the history they memorialize, except in a figurative sense. Removing a
statue of Robert E. Lee can’t erase the history of the Civil War because it’s
not an artifact of the Civil War. Such statues were erected after the Civil War. Peoples’ visages
are imprinted on money after they’ve
died.
One might argue that these memorials are part of the
history. That’s true. But we are not eternally obliged to memorialize something
by virtue of the fact that a previous generation did. Have we “erased history”
as a consequence of no longer printing “wheat pennies?”
Robert E. Lee belongs in history books. The fact that
many a Southern state saw fit to memorialize Confederate generals such as Lee in
public statuary well into the twenty-first century is also a historical fact
worth preserving. No one proposes erasing these facts from history.
If debates about public memorials are not really about
history, what are they about?
They are about who we aspire to be. Among the
functionally infinite number of individuals who are historically relevant, we
select those whose accomplishments, whose genius, and whose bravery inspire us;
who remind us of our virtues, not our vices; our potential, not our sins. We
memorialize those whom we admire.
For some dwindling proportion of the American population
treason in defense of slavery is apparently an act that merits such admiration.
For most us, it doesn’t.
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