Removal of confederate statues

[David]

There's a big movement afoot in the US to take down statues of American Civil War figures. It was the reason for the recent far-right protest in Charlottesville that led to the death of one of the counter-protesters, so it's a pretty charged issue over there to say the least.

On the one hand, the Civil War is a hugely important part of American history, and the vanquished South also had its heroes. For those states, this remains part of their history and identity, and the statues are a reminder of that. For some southerners, the destruction of their statues would be akin to ISIS's bulldozing of Palmyra: an act of cultural vandalism and erasure aimed at eliminating history that doesn't suit the ideological cause of the moment.

On the other hand, the uncomfortable fact remains that these statues are of men who primarily (though not solely) fought for the continuation of slavery. For many African-Americans, these statues are not only a glorification of those men who sought to keep them enslaved, but testaments to the society that built them: that part of the US that lynched them, kept them segregated and barred them from public life for a century after the end of the Civil War. I expect most of us would, as a comparison, find it a bit off if Germany still had statues commemorating Nazi generals (though on the flipside, we, of course, still happily commemorate figures involved in the dispossession and slaughter of Aboriginal Australians).

Public statues of historical figures are a complex thing: they're not quite art, in the sense we ordinarily think of it, but rather they tell a story of a society's history and how it wants to present itself. There can surely be no country on Earth whose national statues are solely of morally unimpeachable figures who fought for morally unimpeachable causes; when we're talking about military figures in particular, surely no war they participated in can be spoken of as 100% good and just. Time also matters: perhaps there are figures we would not commemorate now, but the fact they have been commemorated for so long makes their statues historically important. What do you think?

[Culprit]

It's dumb and the ultra right picks up more members because of the ultra left. It's an ugly part of the US History but removing them will not change History. The US is tearing itself apart.

The latest to be removed.

[thesoretoothsayer]

David, good topic and, as you say, a complex issue.
My concern is that if we apply our moral standards to the past when does the erasure of history end?
There is no guarantee that it will end just with confederate statues.

Washington and Jefferson were slave owners. Do their statues come down?
Lincoln, who ended slavery, said things that we, now, might consider racist. Destroy the Lincoln memorial? Blow up Mount Rushmore?

Mohammed happily owned slaves. So did, I think, Moses.
Tear down all the mosques and synagogues?

[David]

It's certainly hard to know where to draw the line. But do you agree that a line should be drawn somewhere? That it might be unacceptable for at least some historical figures to be immortalised as public statues?

[thesoretoothsayer]

Great question to which I don't have an answer.
No one wants to see Hitler statues.
But, as per my previous post, once you start down this road it's hard to stop.

Your thoughts?

[David]

I think it's a good example of how meaning is often not inherent in a thing itself but rather derives from the context it's placed in. Put a statue of Hitler in a contemporary art gallery and I think that's a legitimate artistic statement. Put a waxwork of him at Madame Tussaud's and, again, that's more about his historicity than any kind of endorsement of him or his views. But statues in public places seem to be people who we're supposed to hold in esteem (Ned Kelly at Glenrowan being an interesting and arguably rule-proving exception) – the sole function of such statues is to honour those personages, so a statue of Hitler in the city square signifies "this is a figure we should admire". Unless that broader paradigm shifts, a society's choice of who gets a statue and who doesn't becomes an act of careful curation, and one that may have to be reconsidered from time to time.

[HAL]

OK I will put it there.

[stui magpie]

My thought is that it should be up to the people of the town or city to decide.

They shouldn't be made to keep them or tear them down by external opinion.

[ronrat]

[thesoretoothsayer]

[David]

Not at all! I think that's an entirely relevant analogy. (Interestingly, Grant's conclusion is that the statue should stay but that the plaque should be updated – perhaps the kind of middle-ground option that the American debate could use.)

[swoop42]

From what I've heard in various media reporting and so far something that hasn't been raised in this thread is that many of these statues weren't solely erected with the purpose to commemorate civil war "heroes" they were often built and put in place decades after the fact and during periods of history when the KKK felt embolden by the political climate of the time.

Basically they were erected as a means to remind the black community of there rightful place of servitude and once again instill a sense of fear.

[stui magpie]

It's always perilous to look at the past through the eyes of the present day.

However, I agree the plaque on the statue of Cook could be updated, good luck getting consensus on the wording though.

[David]

[Mugwump]

We are so shallow, that we even assume our right to define the permissible beliefs of those who passed before us. In doing so, of course, we admit and cede the right to later generations to redefine what we thought in the light of their beliefs. It is a totalitarian mindset, that cannot contemplate the possibility that history saw reality through a different set of ideas, without needing to efface it. How morbidly, pathetically insecure we are, that we need to erase history rather than contextualise and understand it, before we critique it and then decide to think differently as free men and women should.

On confederate statues, if something genuinely functions today as an instrument of terrible repression, or it represents an utterly unambiguous evil likely to be agreed across time, then yes, remove them. But in reality, in an age of black presidents, EEO/affirmative action legislation requiring companies to actively promote representation, an age where "diversity" is virtually a religion in organisational life, this is really a victory parade by a power-seeking grievance machine, rather than a fight against Jim Crow laws. Honesty, as always, must be subordinate to power, and the elites in global corporations have long ago decided that this type of black empowerment does not threaten their vast remuneration or mansions on Long Island, but is instead paid for by the workless OxyContin addicts and by ordinary consumers as an "industry cost".