Statues and buildings are on a lot of people's minds this Independence Day -- sports team names and flags also. Many monuments paying tribute to the Confederacy have been toppled the past few weeks; colleges are renaming schools so as not to honor known white supremacists; Mississippi is (finally) changing its state flag; and it sounds as if the Washington Professional Football Team and the Cleveland Professional Baseball Team are going to adopt nicknames that aren't pejorative terms for Native Americans. This all sounds good to me. I mean, changing symbols is not nearly enough -- I think black people would much rather see things like police brutality and housing discrimination curtailed than see statues toppled and names changed -- but it's something. It's something we can and should do immediately. So, I'm all for it.
Here in DC, there is the football team, and also the high school, for which my children are zoned, Woodrow Wilson, is being discussed for a possible name change. I hope it happens for two reasons: a) Woodrow Wilson was extremely racist -- even by the standards of his time (as laid out in this article, whose headline I copied verbatim); b) nobody is really attached to names. We might think we care a lot about a particular name -- and some people truly are adamant about "tradition" -- but for the most part once something changes its name, we shrug our shoulders and move on. Think about how many institutions have changed their names -- every sports arena in the country has changed its name so many times, I literally don't know what most of them are called anymore; my grad school alma mater was previously called Maryland Agricultural College and Maryland State College before adopting the University of Maryland; WWE was WWF when I was a kid. Go down the line. Things change. Names change. We get over it and adapt quickly, and a new generation is raised that never knew things were any different. Tradition alone is not a reason to honor a super racist dead president.
As for the football team, a name change is a long time coming. The team's owner, an absolutely loathsome man by the name of Daniel Snyder, has vowed before that he would never change it, but now it seems as if he will. Why the change of heart? Certainly he's feeling pressure from sponsors and fans, but also it's because he wants to build a new stadium in DC, and the city council and mayor have said that that's off the table unless he changes the name. In theory, this is only a necessary condition for a stadium and not a sufficient condition, but it has me worried. I don't want a new football stadium built in DC, regardless of the team name. I'm fine with it if it's privately funded, but that's not how these things ever work. The NFL does not build new stadiums unless they can somehow rope the public into subsidizing (or paying outright for) it in some way -- a land give-away, a massive tax break, forgivable loans, city-paid stadium "maintenance" fees, etc. In the worst case, it's a straight-up gift to a greedy billionaire owner; in the best case, it's public risk for private gain. I'm not down with that -- at all -- and this goes tenfold if Daniel Snyder is involved.
I suspect public opinion has shifted to the point that a plurality favor name changes to things like sports teams names and school buildings (especially in a majority minority city like DC), and probably a majority support tearing down Confederate statues. Where things get much dicier is when you start talking about slave-owning founding fathers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. With the Confederates the case is very straightforward: They believed in white supremacy and the institution of slavery, and also they were traitors who took up arms against the United States. They were not proud Americans; they were literally enemies of the state. There is no compelling reason to continue to honor these people. If you want to play the "rewrite history" card, then let's knock down all the statues and leave their toppled likenesses in place, like the defeated chess pieces they were.* That would be more historically accurate than portraying them as heroes of a noble cause.
*Not my idea, by the way; I read it on Twitter a few times, first by Jelani Cobb.
Another argument Confederate-iconography apologists make is the "slippery slope" argument: It starts with Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, and then it spreads to other slave-owners like Washington and Jefferson. And to this I say, Yeah, so? It's a case where what I believe does not align with what I think is the politically advantageous position. As a guy writing a blog with a readership in the twenties (on a good day), I say we should stop the deification of our founding fathers and reckon with their evil sides, and this might include removing or changing monuments in their honor. I don't think most people are there yet, though. So, as somebody who wants to see Democrats succeed in upcoming elections, I would make the case that we can honor people like Washington and Jefferson, because they united the colonies in freedom and built our country; they were not traitors who instigated a literal civil war. That's the obvious distinction between them and the Confederates.
But, in truth, it's a flimsy argument, because owning slaves -- forcing other human beings into lifelong servitude for your monetary benefit -- is such an egregiously horrific, immoral act that it's impossible for me to look past it when I consider the totality of the lives and deeds of many of our founding fathers. It's absolutely indefensible. It is wrong now and it was wrong then. Don't let anybody tell you that "everybody was a white supremacist back then" or "people thought slavery was okay back then" because it's not true. The slaves didn't think it was okay. The fact that people use this argument shows how we still think of the voices of black people as less than. "Everybody" tacitly excludes the very people whose oppression we are trying to acknowledge. It's makes my point for me. (Not to mention, there were antislavery white people from the beginning.)
One of the main problems is that we have a difficult time as a society of acknowledging that people can be both good and evil simultaneously. We suffer from "great man" syndrome, but there has never been and will never be a great man. We want to classify people as "good guys" or "bad guys," but this never works, because it's contrary to human nature. Take Thomas Jefferson as an example. He was the primary author of one of the greatest documents in human history. He also was a slave owner and a rapist. Those are facts. He literally owned a sex slave, with whom he fathered several children, and then he enslaved these children -- his children -- after their births. This is unspeakably evil, but it's true. Both sides of Thomas Jefferson -- the good and the bad -- are true. That's how human beings are. We need to accept that, and if this means we want to tear down, or at least contextualize, a giant monument in Jefferson's honor, it's completely understandable.
My feeling on this is that we shouldn't build these types of monuments for any specific person. No real human being is worthy of that type of deification. (Even fake human beings are problematic; Rocky has a statue in Philly, but he worked for a mobster and basically forced himself on Adrian in the first movie.) If we want to build these grand tributes to our founding fathers, we should build them based on ideas or moments. Instead of the Jefferson Memorial, it could be the Monument to the Declaration of Independence, which would obviously feature Jefferson prominently. The Washington Monument could be the Revolutionary War Monument. The Lincoln Memorial could be the Emancipation Monument, and along with Lincoln, it could feature the black people who were the true spearhead of the movement.
And, by the way, this doesn't just go for white people; it goes for everybody. I wouldn't have a Martin Luther King Jr. statue; I would have a Civil Rights Monument, in which MLK would be featured. That MLK was a hero of the civil rights movement is undeniable and will never change, but it's not out out of the question that our overall perception of him will someday. We might learn that even somebody as universally revered as Martin Luther King did terrible things in his personal life (rumors to this effect, to which I won't link, because they're unsubstantiated, are already in the ether), because he's a human being, and human beings are sometimes terrible. (Even Gandhi made his young grandnieces sleep naked with him.) There is a way we can honor the great deeds of people without shrouding these people in hagiographic mythology.
When I die, don't build a statue of me. Instead, build a monument to the time my crossword puzzle was accepted in ACPT or the time I solved the Monty Hall Problem in my head in five minutes. I'm not worthy of deification, but these moments are worth remembering forever.
With all that said... have a safe and happy Fourth of July. R-O-C-K in the U-S-A!
Until next time...
Here in DC, there is the football team, and also the high school, for which my children are zoned, Woodrow Wilson, is being discussed for a possible name change. I hope it happens for two reasons: a) Woodrow Wilson was extremely racist -- even by the standards of his time (as laid out in this article, whose headline I copied verbatim); b) nobody is really attached to names. We might think we care a lot about a particular name -- and some people truly are adamant about "tradition" -- but for the most part once something changes its name, we shrug our shoulders and move on. Think about how many institutions have changed their names -- every sports arena in the country has changed its name so many times, I literally don't know what most of them are called anymore; my grad school alma mater was previously called Maryland Agricultural College and Maryland State College before adopting the University of Maryland; WWE was WWF when I was a kid. Go down the line. Things change. Names change. We get over it and adapt quickly, and a new generation is raised that never knew things were any different. Tradition alone is not a reason to honor a super racist dead president.
As for the football team, a name change is a long time coming. The team's owner, an absolutely loathsome man by the name of Daniel Snyder, has vowed before that he would never change it, but now it seems as if he will. Why the change of heart? Certainly he's feeling pressure from sponsors and fans, but also it's because he wants to build a new stadium in DC, and the city council and mayor have said that that's off the table unless he changes the name. In theory, this is only a necessary condition for a stadium and not a sufficient condition, but it has me worried. I don't want a new football stadium built in DC, regardless of the team name. I'm fine with it if it's privately funded, but that's not how these things ever work. The NFL does not build new stadiums unless they can somehow rope the public into subsidizing (or paying outright for) it in some way -- a land give-away, a massive tax break, forgivable loans, city-paid stadium "maintenance" fees, etc. In the worst case, it's a straight-up gift to a greedy billionaire owner; in the best case, it's public risk for private gain. I'm not down with that -- at all -- and this goes tenfold if Daniel Snyder is involved.
I suspect public opinion has shifted to the point that a plurality favor name changes to things like sports teams names and school buildings (especially in a majority minority city like DC), and probably a majority support tearing down Confederate statues. Where things get much dicier is when you start talking about slave-owning founding fathers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. With the Confederates the case is very straightforward: They believed in white supremacy and the institution of slavery, and also they were traitors who took up arms against the United States. They were not proud Americans; they were literally enemies of the state. There is no compelling reason to continue to honor these people. If you want to play the "rewrite history" card, then let's knock down all the statues and leave their toppled likenesses in place, like the defeated chess pieces they were.* That would be more historically accurate than portraying them as heroes of a noble cause.
*Not my idea, by the way; I read it on Twitter a few times, first by Jelani Cobb.
Another argument Confederate-iconography apologists make is the "slippery slope" argument: It starts with Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, and then it spreads to other slave-owners like Washington and Jefferson. And to this I say, Yeah, so? It's a case where what I believe does not align with what I think is the politically advantageous position. As a guy writing a blog with a readership in the twenties (on a good day), I say we should stop the deification of our founding fathers and reckon with their evil sides, and this might include removing or changing monuments in their honor. I don't think most people are there yet, though. So, as somebody who wants to see Democrats succeed in upcoming elections, I would make the case that we can honor people like Washington and Jefferson, because they united the colonies in freedom and built our country; they were not traitors who instigated a literal civil war. That's the obvious distinction between them and the Confederates.
But, in truth, it's a flimsy argument, because owning slaves -- forcing other human beings into lifelong servitude for your monetary benefit -- is such an egregiously horrific, immoral act that it's impossible for me to look past it when I consider the totality of the lives and deeds of many of our founding fathers. It's absolutely indefensible. It is wrong now and it was wrong then. Don't let anybody tell you that "everybody was a white supremacist back then" or "people thought slavery was okay back then" because it's not true. The slaves didn't think it was okay. The fact that people use this argument shows how we still think of the voices of black people as less than. "Everybody" tacitly excludes the very people whose oppression we are trying to acknowledge. It's makes my point for me. (Not to mention, there were antislavery white people from the beginning.)
One of the main problems is that we have a difficult time as a society of acknowledging that people can be both good and evil simultaneously. We suffer from "great man" syndrome, but there has never been and will never be a great man. We want to classify people as "good guys" or "bad guys," but this never works, because it's contrary to human nature. Take Thomas Jefferson as an example. He was the primary author of one of the greatest documents in human history. He also was a slave owner and a rapist. Those are facts. He literally owned a sex slave, with whom he fathered several children, and then he enslaved these children -- his children -- after their births. This is unspeakably evil, but it's true. Both sides of Thomas Jefferson -- the good and the bad -- are true. That's how human beings are. We need to accept that, and if this means we want to tear down, or at least contextualize, a giant monument in Jefferson's honor, it's completely understandable.
My feeling on this is that we shouldn't build these types of monuments for any specific person. No real human being is worthy of that type of deification. (Even fake human beings are problematic; Rocky has a statue in Philly, but he worked for a mobster and basically forced himself on Adrian in the first movie.) If we want to build these grand tributes to our founding fathers, we should build them based on ideas or moments. Instead of the Jefferson Memorial, it could be the Monument to the Declaration of Independence, which would obviously feature Jefferson prominently. The Washington Monument could be the Revolutionary War Monument. The Lincoln Memorial could be the Emancipation Monument, and along with Lincoln, it could feature the black people who were the true spearhead of the movement.
And, by the way, this doesn't just go for white people; it goes for everybody. I wouldn't have a Martin Luther King Jr. statue; I would have a Civil Rights Monument, in which MLK would be featured. That MLK was a hero of the civil rights movement is undeniable and will never change, but it's not out out of the question that our overall perception of him will someday. We might learn that even somebody as universally revered as Martin Luther King did terrible things in his personal life (rumors to this effect, to which I won't link, because they're unsubstantiated, are already in the ether), because he's a human being, and human beings are sometimes terrible. (Even Gandhi made his young grandnieces sleep naked with him.) There is a way we can honor the great deeds of people without shrouding these people in hagiographic mythology.
When I die, don't build a statue of me. Instead, build a monument to the time my crossword puzzle was accepted in ACPT or the time I solved the Monty Hall Problem in my head in five minutes. I'm not worthy of deification, but these moments are worth remembering forever.
With all that said... have a safe and happy Fourth of July. R-O-C-K in the U-S-A!
Until next time...
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