Partially in response to Black Lives
Matter, there is a move afoot to remove monuments, rename
institutions, change flags, and so forth.
I would start with the perhaps
controversial view that all these things are fundamentally optional.
There is no absolute imperative to remove or rename anything. We are
bequeathed a history that is full of various kinds of oppression, and
our forebears (yes, the ones in power) made monuments and named
things according to what seemed right to them at the time. We can
change society for the better now without digging deeply into those
old decisions. Righteous indignation to change this situation comes
from the same source as today's <"cancel culture">,
where people with unpopular views are not just denied speaking
opportunities, but subject to boycotts and professional ruin. The
Enlightenment view that competing ideas can duke it out in reasoned
debate is under serious attack. Monument removal is happening anyway,
so it's worth thinking about how to do it right.
Some such status removal and renamings
might be an excellent idea as a way forward. The US Civil War seems
like a special case. One side was fighting for slavery, and the
struggle for rights and status of modern US blacks can be traced back
in a continuous line to that war. If in fact this
<fivethirtyeight.com article> is correct, that most statues to Confederate leaders were erected 50
years after the fact and as part of an ongoing front in the battle
for white supremacy, then let's take them down, especially those on
courthouses grounds or public squares. Ones that honor common
soldiers that were made shortly after the end of the war could be
preserved, as well as those that are out of the way, on battlefields
and cemeteries. The decision to remove monuments rests with local and
state governments, I believe, and it will be an interesting test of
the strength of commitment to black liberation to see which ones do
and which do not. Another possibility is adding additional plaques
which describe the circumstances under which the monument was erected
and condemning the racist attitudes behind them.
Next case: Suppose today that someone
said that it is was not possible or suitable for blacks and whites in
America to live side by side as equals. Some sort of segregation is
necessary. This is a reactionary view, perhaps not even one that
could be voiced by mainstream Republican figures. Could we possibly
honor a historical figure who took that position? If not, let's pull
down all the statues of Abraham Lincoln, because that is what he
believed for most of his life. We honor him because given how things
stood at the time, he was pulling in the right direction.
If Black Lives Matter is the engine
that drives removal of anything honoring the Confederacy, it's worth
posing practical questions of political strategy. Is this a good
thing to focus on? I don't know the answer, but I think it's worth
asking the question. How much better will the lives of
African-Americans be once the statues are gone? On the other hand,
obviously some white southerners are going to be upset by the removal
of those statues, and in their minds much of it is separate from
wanting to reinforce racism. Perhaps they could be educated about the
specifically racist motivations for status erected decades after the
war and their views might soften. One advantage of statue removal is
that you can take action and see results. If the statue is removed,
then it is gone. Reforming police departments to eliminate the racism
seems much more important -- but also much more difficult, and it is
difficult to measure success (or even progress).
Economic policies that benefit the poor
at the expense of the rich can be implemented and their effects
measured. Franklin Roosevelt did it, and we can do it again, this
time making sure that blacks are included. It would probably improve
the material conditions of American blacks more than anything Black
Lives Matter might accomplish, even if it leaves them at a relative
disadvantage with regard to whites. Yes, let's work to reduce racism,
but let's not neglect other avenues for progress.
But let's go beyond the Civil War. It
was a well-defined event, with fairly clear boundaries. What other
boundaries can we draw?
One distinction I have heard is that
when it comes to removing an offending statue, the solution is not to
destroy it, but rather to put it in a museum. In a public place it
does give the idea that society approves of it, while in a museum it
is more clearly a piece of history, quite likely not something that
society approves of any more. I think that is an excellent idea.
Looking at what a particular statue
signifies seems important. For instance, we might remove a statue of
Teddy Roosevelt <shown in a particular relationship to blacks and Native Americans> without deciding we need to remove all Teddy
Roosevelt statues.
When it comes to historical figures,
they need to be judged against people in a similar class in their own
time and the range of opinions they held. By this criterion, Thomas
Jefferson is still worthy of honor. (Tidbit: Sally Hemings was his
late wife's half-sister and at least 3/4 white in ancestry.) His
contributions to the country were not around the issue of slavery.
Similarly with George Washington. Renaming our capital city and the
state that is home to Seattle is just going too far.
The United States itself is based on
the expropriation of land from Native Americans. No one can offer a
remotely persuasive argument with regard to today's values as to why
this was justified. Columbus is under attack, and that makes sense as
we associate him with the entire idea of Europeans interacting with
and conquering the Americas.
A lot happened in the nearly 300 years
that went by after Columbus's voyages and the founding of the United
States. European domination of much of the Americas became a fact,
and the white cities and states on the US east coast acquired
legitimacy simply because enough time went by with enough European
immigrants that the issue was settled. But further encroachment was
still very much a live issue. A major issue in the War of 1812 was
the British desire for American settlers to not push west of the
Appalachians. Their motivation might not have been the well-being and
independence of Native Americans, but still, by modern standards,
they were right and we were wrong.
Whites continued to take Native
American lands to the point that today, there are just a few
reservations. Another 250 years has gone by since the founding of the
United States, and the land is occupied by a huge and very
interesting country composed mostly of whites. History has
overwritten the moral sin of white colonization. Most of our
ancestors within the past 150 years had no personal relationship to
abuses of Native Americans -- it was already a done deed. We cannot
and do not have to give back the land. It would in fact be immoral to
do so.
Lest we all feel comfortable in the
idea that we are moral people in contrast to those who came before,
I'll take the view of a likely posterity looking back at us. You
don't have to be any sort of radical animal rights person to
understand that factory farming is cruel. The evidence is right in
front of us. Anyone who claims they don't know about it is willfully
ignorant. If we were to accept regulations that might increase the
price of meat and dairy by, say, 20%, we could fix a lot of it. Yet
we don't. We just put it out of our minds, or don't make it a
priority, or go along because everyone else goes along. Will
posterity condemn us all and pull down our statues unless we were
vegans? Or do we deserve a break because we had the same views as
most of our fellow citizens?
I wonder about the European perspective
on how to redress the wrongs of history. The Normans conquered and
oppressed the Angles and Saxons, yet they had previously conquered
and oppressed the Celts, who had in turn conquered and oppressed
earlier peoples. I suspect it's even more complicated on the
mainland. The best they could do was to stay "Stop!" around
1945 or so, and leave things pretty much the way they were at that
time. People continue to migrate, but it is peaceful.
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