I strongly support removing Confederate monuments but I have some sympathy to the “you’re removing history” argument. I have no wish to forget the Civil War or the legacy of slavery. I’m a Texan and a descendant of slavers, my own skin is in this.

The disingenous thing about the “but our history!” argument is that the monuments being torn down aren’t informative representations. They’re mostly Lost Cause statues made to create a narrative of heroism, the brave Stonewall Jackson and the noble Jefferson Davis. They don’t inform, just glorify. Most of them were erected 50-100 years after the war for sinister purposes, reinforcing Jim Crow laws and resisting school integration. (Seriously, who names an elementary school after Robert E. Lee just after the courts rule Black kids get to go to that school too?)

Germany has a much better model for honoring World War II. I’ve written before about the impact the concentration camps and monuments in Germany have had on me. The forthright documentation of history without glorifying it. There are no monuments to Hitler or Himmler that need tearing down, such a thing is unimagineable there. But there is a huge amount of history on display; the Topography of Terror center is particularly good.

Japan has a more awkward relationship with its World War II history. The official line most citizens follow is the war was a terrible mistake and Japan is forevermore committed to pacifism. But there’a strong nationalist movement in Japan who pushes back on that. The Yasukuni Shrine is the central lightning rod for the nationalists. I’ve visited the museum there, it’s fascinating. When the Japanese Prime Minister visited it was a major international scandal. Japan also has a huge debate about its textbooks that leave out some of the uglier bits of war history. It reminds me a bit of how American kids are still taught the revisionist lie that the Civil War wasn’t really about slavery or that the Southerners were innocent victims of the War of Northern Aggression.

History is never simple. But a mass produced generic statue erected 60 years after the war isn’t even trying to be historical. Its purpose is symbolic. And to many Southerners it’s a symbol of enslavement and racist discrimination. There are better ways to honor and explain our history.

  2017-08-17 21:27 Z