USA TODAY International Edition
Take a deliberate approach to Confederate monuments
Two summers ago, it took the massacre of nine African-American churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., for politicians to finally banish the Confederate battle flag from that state’s Capitol grounds, where it had waved defiantly for more than five decades.
Now, another tragedy — the violent death of a counterprotester Saturday in Charlottesville, Va. — has reawakened the raw emotion of the summer of 2015 and reopened the question of what should happen to more than 700 Civil War monuments.
Adding to the furor, President Trump tweeted Thursday that it is “sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments.” The president fails to grasp that what is “beautiful” to him is a grotesque reminder to African Americans of ancestors who lived as slaves and often died in the fields, at the point of a gun or the end of a rope.
The question of what will happen to these monuments, most of them in the South, has suddenly taken on more urgency, as mayors and governors fear that their city or state will become the next protest battleground. But this rush to judgment should be slowed. Decisions ought to be made deliberately — state by state, community by community, and monument by monument. People on both sides will need to search their souls, to balance how much the symbol means to them vs. how hurtful it is to others.
Guidance for these deliberations should not come from those who seek to bend this debate to evil purposes, or to score cheap political points. Guidance should come from people of goodwill who take into consideration why the monument was erected and who was being honored.
When monuments are removed, the nation has witnessed a right way and a wrong way.
The wrong way? On Monday, protesters pulled down the Confederate Soldiers Monument in Durham, N.C., then kicked and spat on the fallen figure in a scene reminiscent of the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue after the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003.
And the right way? Look to New Orleans. Starting in 2015, city leaders did what leaders should do: They led. A commission recommended the removal of four prominent Civil War-era monuments, the city council voted to take them down, and the city defended its decision in court. Once the democratic process played out, New Orleans removed the last of the monuments and carted it off to a warehouse.
To those who complained about erasing history, Mayor Mitch Landrieu drew a vital distinction between “remembrance of history and reverence of it.” History should be remembered, if only so mistakes of the past are never repeated. The monuments could find appropriate homes in museums, where the Civil War story can be told but without reverence for leaders who fought to preserve slavery. Or, in some cases, the best answer might be to add context to an existing display.
Clashes over these monuments seem inevitable and could tear communities apart. But if Americans try hard to invoke the spirit of Abraham Lincoln, who sought to end the Civil War with “malice toward none, with charity for all” and “to bind up the nation’s wounds,” the country could learn from this fraught moment.