Confederate statue defenders deny history
As more Confederate statuary comes tumbling down across the South, the most fevered objection I hear to these removals is how the angry activists “just want to erase our history.”
Where to begin with this.
First, the opposite is true: The aim of removal is not erasure, nor is it destruction alone, which we are right to abhor, but a more balanced understanding of America’s history, a less distorted view without the glorification of a failed insurrection.
The prominence of Civil War statues and busts lays a fog over our memory that clouds much of our actual U.S. history. These monuments hold aloft only one side of a story, and shed no light on its underside.
Unlike our monuments to heroes and patriots — like Washington, Jefferson and Jackson, who had flaws but are chiefly remembered for better deeds — these Confederate objects elevate a story that isn’t noble and never was. The enslavement of other peoples — being America’s original sin — was awful on its own but also has cast a long shadow that has oppressed even more people.
Maintaining these skewed, one-sided symbols in our public squares, courthouses and capitols offends not only the Black Lives Matter activists. It offends me.
The Civil War was about setting people free from slavery
There is a myth about the permanence of public art: that once a physical tribute erected to Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis or Nathan Bedford Forrest goes up, it must never come down. As if removing them, or even thinking it, constitutes a civil sacrilege. This is nonsense.
“Yes,” the bitter enders will say, “while Jeff Davis and Gen. Lee did command an insurrection to topple the U.S. government, can’t you see they were otherwise fine men?”
No. Take N.B. Forrest. His likeness still sits this morning in that prominent niche on our state Capitol’s vaulted second floor. Its defenders insist he was a brilliant military man, that he was actually benevolent to the human chattel he owned — and so, they add, never mind all that Ku Klux Klan business and what really happened at Fort Pillow.
Wrong. The Civil War was a war to set people free. The losing side was about defending an economic system of forced farm labor that depended on human trafficking, brutality and bondage that blew apart families and sundered lives.
Are these the role models in history you want us to emulate?
If erasing history is your goal, there are far more efficient ways to do it than taking down statues. For practical guidance, look to some current governments. To make history disappear, do this:
1 Cut school budgets, withholding teachers’ raises to the point they don’t have proper salaries and enough supplies. Make it all but impossible for educators to teach U.S. history in full, and more possible they will leave the classroom altogether.
2 Discard any commitment to the humanities. These are what preserve our history (whereas selective memory will not). So, to erase history, treat humanities education as your costsavings opportunity of the first order, not the last.
3 Elect a governor and legislature who will move first and fast to enact dubious priorities of a screwball national administration. Try your darnedest, first, to divert as much funding as possible from public to private schools.
4 Allow no time for full discussion of harebrained bills. Don’t answer inconvenient questions. Do not let people without power deter you. Expect everyone to forget.
That is how you erase history, not by shoving over a statue (or a few hundred) that salute partial memory of a misbegotten cause.
There has been a lot of commotion outside our state Capitol for several weeks. But more alarming than street demonstrations is how the work of anti-history has moved to an official level inside.
Legislators seem proud of their handiwork, enjoying it all with good humor as they defend the honor of Gen. Forrest. They only frown when somebody causes commotion for the comfortable.
Today the real extremism lives inside the building on the hill.
Keel Hunt is a columnist for USA TODAY Network - Tennessee and the author of two books on Tennessee politics. Read more at www.keelhunt.com.