The nation is living through a debate on
whether or not to remove statues and names from schools honoring Confederate
generals. Did I say debate? I meant to say, free-for-all.
Blacks, and many whites, say they are
offensive. Other whites say they are a part of our heritage, and that to remove
them is to deny that heritage.
On August 17, 2017, the president said "You can't change history, but you can learn from it."
This past Wednesday, June 24, he scolded
states for allowing "roving gangs of wise guys, anarchists &
looters" to remove statues, saying "all represent our History &
Heritage, both the good and the bad," proving he was wrong in 2017. He
hasn’t learned a damn thing about history or our heritage.
History is both good and bad. There is
no denying that. In general, though, we build monuments to highlight the good
aspects of history. The bad aspects should not be forgotten, but they shouldn’t
be exalted.
In a 1964 decision, Supreme Court Justice
Potter Stewart famously refrained from defining pornography, but suggested,
“He’d know it if he saw it.”
Offensive seems to have fallen into the
same category in that it means all things to all different people. Some can’t
define pornography, but most people agree that it is bad.
Defining offensive
doesn’t appear to carry the same stigma or sense of urgency, although it
should.
Not everything that’s offensive to
someone is necessarily offensive to someone else. That said, no one is
suggesting we put it up to a vote. What’s needed are guidelines, universal
guidelines that don’t change as political norms change.
Erecting a statues or naming a school or
public building after people should bring recognition and honor to them for
their accomplishments—things they did to advance mankind on its constant journey
to be better today than we were yesterday.
It should not be surprising that these
accomplishments can be made by flawed individuals. No rule exists declaring
imperfect people can’t do great things. I think we can agree that the perfect
man or woman does not exist. Anything that has been accomplished, good or bad,
great or abominable, has been done by imperfect people doing the best they can,
or the worst they can.
Likewise, being born at a certain time
and living in a certain era should not be held against a person. Neither should
anyone become too comfortable in thinking they live in enlightened times.
History, observed in retrospect, which is the only way we can look at it, has a
way of always bringing mankind back to reality.
With these guidelines, let’s look at the
current problem.
Being a slave owner in a nation and at a
time when slavery was condoned shouldn’t garner one condemnation. Neither
should those individuals be honored with a statue. For the most part, what
history does with those people is what we should all do with them—forget them.
As individuals, they are easily forgettable people. That doesn’t mean we should
cast a blind eye to slavery.
On a side note, Christopher Columbus,
who discovered a new continent, actually a new hemisphere shouldn’t be held in
disgrace simply because those who came after him were racists or bigots or
imperialists. He was a sailor doing what sailors do.
To repeat, no one should be punished for
the sins of their father, but neither should our fathers be punished by their
children who happen to be living in a more enlightened world. Mankind is
supposed to be moving forward, and for the most part, we do, but it has never
been a straight line.
Now that we know what we should not do,
what we should do is rather simple. We should honor people for their
accomplishments—no more, no less.
We honor our forefathers, many of them
slave owners, some of them hypocrites, some of them philanderers, some of them
cheaters not for who they were, but for what they did that set them apart from
everyone else, creating a democratic government based on ideals, which existed
nowhere else in the world at that time. They changed the course of history for the
better. They weren’t perfect and what they accomplished, in their own words
wasn’t perfect. However, their goal to be more perfect advanced mankind and for
that, they deserve our respect.
That still leaves us with the problem of
those Confederate generals and those damn statues that those "roving gangs
of wise guys, anarchists & looters" want removed. There is no question
that they are a part of history. They are our heritage, whether we like it or
not—and it does seem like some people like it more than others.
However, the history they are a part of was
of no small consequence. In the direst days of our democracy, when the question
of whether or not our nation would survive, they choose insurrection. They
didn’t do so because they had something better to offer, as our revolutionist
forefathers did. They did so to protect slavery, even as much of the rest of
the civilized world was finally turning away from it. Owning other human beings
to do their work so that plantation owners might live privileged lives was so
important to the Confederacy that they were willing to destroy the greatest
democracy in the world at that time.
Some of the generals were slave owners,
themselves. Some of them simply believed in the cause. Some of them, like the
sailor Columbus, were just doing what men in their profession did—fight in a
war; but they lost not a great war, but a tragic war. They did not accomplish
great things. In fact, they accomplished nothing.
Americans died because Confederate
leaders and generals made bad choices. They were traitors. Traitors shouldn’t
be honored for losing—and they weren’t.
Most of those statues were erected at
the height of the Jim Crow era, not to honor losing generals for fighting in a
good cause, but to deny history—to keep alive the hopes of not only a bad, but
a lost cause. Their purpose was not to honor accomplishments, but rather to
instill fear and maintain dominance over people, who decades after receiving
their freedom were still living in a repressive environment.
It should be obvious to everyone, even
those who are not military enthusiasts or history buffs that military bases
should not be named for losing generals. That’s like bragging about the “F” you
got in algebra or the job you were fired from for being incompetent. Those
things are best kept on the down-low, not put on a pedestal.
Generals should be honored for the good
wars they fought in—the war for independence, the war to save not destroy the
union, the war to save democracy. Generals can even be honored for the wars
they lost if the cause they were fighting for was just. Fighting for secession
in order to keep slavery was not a just cause.
Some of these generals may have been
good men, but fighting on the losing side of the Civil War were not small character
flaws, but rather major mistakes for which they shouldn’t be honor. That we
have chosen to honor them only compounds their mistake and must be corrected.
The sin of slavery committed in America
from 1619 to 1865 was a sin being committed by all humanity, not only southern
slave owners. The sin of Jim Crow oppression committed by racists from 1865 to
the present day is a sin that stains all Americans because we haven’t done
enough to eradicate it.
We might not all be racist, but all of
us have work to do to erase the stain of racism. The first step is realizing
this is not a white/black problem. Bigotry towards all minorities is an American
problem that must be addressed, or it will do what Confederate generals were
not able to do—destroy the American dream.
Taking down the statues and removing the
names of losing generals is a start.
Making light of serious problems by using
stupid references and assumptions like Kung Flu, Wuhan Flu, Pocahontas, empty
barrels, all Mexicans are rapist is a start. Yes, I am speaking to the
president, first and foremost, but also those who take their directions from
him.
Condemning white supremacy in all its
forms is a start.
Calling out police who single out
individuals—in matters large and small—is a start.
Making capitalism work not just for the
investor but also for the workers, the lowest paid of which are often
minorities. Many working for nothing so a few can have everything is simply bad
business. Stopping this travesty will be a start.
If we are to believe that life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable rights, and not just a catchy
phrase, then we must accept that universal health care is also a right. Making
it available will be a good start.
Finally, acknowledging that “America is
a melting pot” is also more than a meaningless phrase—that it is a reality, and
we should stop making life unbearable, not only for immigrants but everyone
that happens to be different from us. That would be a start.
Tom Joad famously said in The Grapes of Wrath that wherever there was
a group fighting for justice, he would be there. Maybe it is time for our
nation, as a whole, to align itself with each individual being repressed and
declare that that person is us, the United States of America, and deserves
everything that we expect for ourselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment