We collectively make our history. Human history has its ups and downs. Our legacy is not particularly good overall, there are many ugly events to relate. We should not be proud of our history, it is too often shameful. We need our history, for its pains and glories, and it's ambiguities too, as lessons. From history we can learn about what not to do, sometimes about what to do, to locate a better future. From the past we select what history we value when we name our airports, towns, and highways, and who we honor with memorial statues in our public places.
Having lived my youth in the northeast, I found little difference overall following my move south to the mid-Atlantic past the Mason-Dixon Line. The Swatztikas on the local train tressle and etched into the public school desks and library cubicles, the German language "Juden" graffiti in black paint on my high school, my immediate neighbor with a pick-up truck whose rear window was covered by a Confederate battle flag, over there. New co-workers who made a point of telling me that they supported David Duke, the Swatzikas drawn inside a cave, on a motorcyclist's helmet, drawn on the downtown street signs, and building walls, over here.
However, there is a difference. Here, but not there, the names of Confederate generals were part of the public infrastructure. Those Confederate generals endorsed, and fought to preserve, commercial kidnapping and enslaving of Africans, many of whom were killed as a result, and whose ancestors live among us today. The Civil War history was not a part of my life. My European Jewish ancestors came here during and after WW I, fleeing the anti-semitism that later morphed into the mass murder of Jews who remained in Europe. Yet this history, both on the Nazi and Confederate sides, kept announcing itself uninvited in odd places and contexts where it did not belong, strangely introduced and repeated by people with crayons, ink, knives, paint, flags, and words. But with the highway and place names for Confederate war heroes here only.
The people of Charlottesville, like all towns, decide for themselves what history they want to associate themselves with. They acted reasonably and responsibly when they decided to remove a statue of a Confederate general from their town park. Among the decisions our local governments face, whether or not that statue resides in a park is not a particularly pressing national concern. This is primarily a concern for the people living in those towns.
The people with torches and battle flags who thought the public display of this particular statue was so important that they traveled from all over the country to demonstrate for keeping the statue in that park have misdirected priorities. Adding or removing a statue does not establish, change, or erase the history. The overreaction against the removal of the statue is evidence that such statues and place names are not innocent and academic placeholders for history. They are deemed by caucasian, and some Christian, supremacists, such as David Duke and his followers, as representing a positive history that we should emulate, as endorsing traditional attitudes and policies that we should identify ourselves with today. Instead, more towns and states should follow the positive trend of removing the Confederate war hero statues and place names. Their essential place is in our history books. They need not be, and should not be, the statues in our parks or our place names.
However, there is a difference. Here, but not there, the names of Confederate generals were part of the public infrastructure. Those Confederate generals endorsed, and fought to preserve, commercial kidnapping and enslaving of Africans, many of whom were killed as a result, and whose ancestors live among us today. The Civil War history was not a part of my life. My European Jewish ancestors came here during and after WW I, fleeing the anti-semitism that later morphed into the mass murder of Jews who remained in Europe. Yet this history, both on the Nazi and Confederate sides, kept announcing itself uninvited in odd places and contexts where it did not belong, strangely introduced and repeated by people with crayons, ink, knives, paint, flags, and words. But with the highway and place names for Confederate war heroes here only.
The people of Charlottesville, like all towns, decide for themselves what history they want to associate themselves with. They acted reasonably and responsibly when they decided to remove a statue of a Confederate general from their town park. Among the decisions our local governments face, whether or not that statue resides in a park is not a particularly pressing national concern. This is primarily a concern for the people living in those towns.
The people with torches and battle flags who thought the public display of this particular statue was so important that they traveled from all over the country to demonstrate for keeping the statue in that park have misdirected priorities. Adding or removing a statue does not establish, change, or erase the history. The overreaction against the removal of the statue is evidence that such statues and place names are not innocent and academic placeholders for history. They are deemed by caucasian, and some Christian, supremacists, such as David Duke and his followers, as representing a positive history that we should emulate, as endorsing traditional attitudes and policies that we should identify ourselves with today. Instead, more towns and states should follow the positive trend of removing the Confederate war hero statues and place names. Their essential place is in our history books. They need not be, and should not be, the statues in our parks or our place names.
