Black lives? Blue lives? All lives? So many slogans, so little effort to understand and address issues. When the shouting starts, the thinking usually stops. Such is the level of discourse in modern day America, or at least in the social media-driven, twitterized version of America.
“All lives matter” is a truism not worth repeating: water remains wet; sorry, but no film at eleven. “Blue lives matter” is a riposte: if you didn’t say it before you heard the original, you’re just being provocative now. But “Black Lives Matter” is all about, um, well . . . now, visit their website and tell me. Ending “state sanctioned violence”? “Disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family”? “Dismantling cisgender privilege”? If you wish to chant it, there’s quite a chorus of beliefs associated with it!
Words used to matter, but not so much anymore. Like Humpty-Dumpty, people have taken to insisting “words mean exactly what I say they mean!” So we now have the slogan “Defund the Police” which is instantly followed by the comment that is doesn’t really mean “defund the police.” If only words were the problem; actions speak louder.
There is a reasonable case to be made that symbols of white racial dominance (e.g., Confederate statues) help create an environment propagating racial discrimination. This is a nuanced argument that doesn’t suggest eliminating these symbols fixes everything, but it helps. Such an argument requires–nay demands–a deep understanding of the history involved and a willingness to confront that history as it was, alongside the humble realization that the past happened under different standards.
For example, many Confederate monuments were erected in support of the “Lost Cause” mythology as a reminder of continued white dominance of Southern blacks. Yet the naming of US Army bases after Confederate military leaders happened as a result of a Congressional compromise to encourage southern states to support the US Army. The military reintegration of the former Confederate States into the Union is an amazing case study in success. It began with Lincoln’s commitment, to wit
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan
Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address
The healing continued with General US Grant’s order for his soldiers to refrain from cheering as General Robert E. Lee left Appomattox Court House in defeat: “The Confederates were now our countrymen, and we did not want to exult over their downfall.” When Confederate General John Brown Gordon led his men to surrender their arms in a formal ceremony days later, Union General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain called the Grand Army of the Potomac to attention and rendered a salute, to which Gordon responded: honor facing honor. Slightly more than thirty years after the nation’s bloodiest war, a healed United States Army was ready for combat once again.
And yet, and yet, all this honor and healing came at the cost of the Jim Crow South. History is messy that way.
That is a nuanced, historically-informed conversation. We are not having that discussion. We have mobs tearing things down, burning things, and attacking those who disagree with them. How many Americans of any color knew who Braxton Bragg was? I did, but I’m a civil war geek; but seriously, when so little history is taught, how can such a name retain power?
Argument swirls around the symbolic meaning of the Emancipation Statue in Washington, DC, funded by freed slaves, especially the symbolism of a slave kneeling before Abraham Lincoln.
Most of those debating the statue don’t even know that when Lincoln secretly visited the just-captured Confederate Capital of Richmond, Virgina, (days before his assassination), word spread of the Great Emancipator’s arrival, and real slaves really knelt before him, calling him “Father Abraham” and “the messiah” and trying to touch his shoes! Today we have poorly-schooled protestors arguing about the symbolism of a statue of something . . . that . . . really . . . happened. Apparently, wokesters today know better than the freed slaves who paid for the monument.
Surely the nation could do without Confederate “Lost Cause” memorabilia; if that is important to you, make the case (I’ll probably agree with you). But make sure you know the history first. And if we are going to decide Washington or Lincoln isn’t sufficiently “woke,” we better be prepared to go where the history leads. Off the top of my head? Elihu Yale was a slave-trader; Leland Stanford exploited Chinese laborers for his railroad while calling them an “inferior race.” Only yesterday (in historical terms) FDR herded Japanese-Americans into camps. I await the universities renaming, and of course the removal of the FDR memorial. Bye-Bye Rhodes Scholars!
Better for all concerned if our youth learn some history before deciding to judge it. Reminds me of a great Indiana Jones’ movie quote:
Names change and statues go up and come down. Real problems remain. In Part II, I invite you to consider what America needs to do when it stops shouting and starts thinking again.
Excellent!