Removing statues does not erase history

Argument made ‘in spectacularly bad faith,’

I was in the seating area at a coffee shop a couple of days ago and couldn’t help but overhear two older gentlemen talking at the next table over. They had been discussing current events and their conversation turned to the ongoing controversy around the removal of statues with a racist history in the United States and Canada.

“I’m sick and tired of it,” one of them said. He was telling the other about a conversation he had had online with some Indigenous activists. “I’ll tell you what I told ’em,” he went on, “I told ’em, ‘You’re trying to erase history! This happened and you’re trying to erase it!’”

The tired argument that removing references to controversial historical figures and events from the public space amounts to erasing the past is trotted out every time a monument sparks a new controversy. We heard it in the 1990s when Berkeley renamed Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day. We heard it in the 2000s when Québec debated removing the crucifix in its National Assembly. And now we’re hearing it again about the removal of statues of Confederate generals in the United States and of figures responsible for the oppression of Indigenous Peoples here in Canada. It’s high time to retire it.

Leaving aside the question of whether the idea of erasing the past is even coherent when the after-effects of slavery and of the residential school system continue to affect the daily lives of Black and Indigenous Americans and Canadians, this argument is made in spectacularly bad faith. I have yet to meet a single person who advocates the removal of statues of controversial figures who thinks that we should stop teaching children about these figures in school. Just the opposite.

They usually deplore how little we are taught about these figures and especially about their relation to things like slavery or the residential school system.

It has been said many times before, and it bears saying again, that the purpose of statues is not to teach us history. That is the purpose of books, schools and museums. The purpose of statues is to commemorate and to celebrate. They therefore raise the obvious question of who we believe is worth celebrating and why.

Now, far be it from me to provide a clear-cut answer to this complex question. I would suggest that there is a spectrum of controversial figures, going from generals and politicians, who fought explicitly to uphold the institution of slavery or to eradicate the Indigenous population on the one hand, to intellectuals who made important advances but held racist beliefs reflective of their time on the other.

And it seems to me that somewhere along that spectrum, there must be a line dividing those who are worth celebrating and those who are not. Where that line is, I couldn’t tell you. What I can tell you is that it’s time to stop hiding behind disingenuous arguments and have that conversation.

A favourite argument of those who oppose the removal of statues is that we must not erase history but instead learn from it. I wholeheartedly concur. The sad irony of this argument, though, is that it is often those who make it who are the most oblivious to history.

They are oblivious about the motives underlying the American Civil War, about the actions and intentions of past Canadian politicians, and especially about their continuing effects on Black and Indigenous people in the United States and Canada. And because they are oblivious about these injustices, they are doomed to repeat them each time a statue ignites a new controversy. Philippe-antoine Hoyeck is a sessional lecturer at the Department of Philosophy at Carleton University.