Support NeoGAF

[HStallion]

Except (as far as I know) no one is suggesting erecting monuments to Confederate soldiers now. We're talking about established history.

People are putting up monuments to slavery now. Richmond, VA has Monument Ave, filled with Confederate monuments that are never going to fit in a museum (it also has a really bad statue of Arthur Ashe looking like he's gonna' beat some children, but still, it's a black guy memorialized at the end of a line of Confederates.) It also has erected a monument that recognizes that under a bustling interstate a lot of folks were sold off, died and buried in nameless graves. You can recontextualize history without having to move anything.

The fundamental disconnect we're having here is that people are essentially arguing the monuments as they stand now are the cause of continued racial animosity. An old statue thousands of black people in cities everywhere across the country pass by on their way to work or home isn't traveling through time to oppress them. It's people living now doing that. The past can't hurt us unless we forget it and pretend we're evolved past it, and the iconoclasm proposed by people in this thread feels like that's what they want. There's not any inherent tension between wanting these statues to remain and recognizing that racism hasn't gone away and that, forget the dead, we have people alive today who are suffering in ways large and small.

(As for your final comments on "glorifying the oppressed", that sounds like historical revisionism as well, just of a different stripe than lost cause conspiracies. But then we get into a deeper philosophical question of memorials and their innate distortion of history.)

Landrieu's argument is eloquent, and I see its merit. LA and cities ultimately can decide their own course. I just disagree with his argument.

This feels like you acknowledge the issue but don't give it much weight. The confederacy is forever tainted by its ties to slavery and everything that goes with it. The KKK wasn't choosing to have gigantic Klan rallies at Stone Mountain Georgia because of the beautiful natural scenery. Much the same the confederate flag wasn't being waved around during all those cross burnings and constantly used by white power movements because they're all so well aware of the horrors of slavery and racial oppression in America.

You can't just untangle these statues from the last hundred and fifty years of ugly racial oppression in this country. They're one in the same for the lowest of the low in American culture and when they look up to those statues they're not seeing the millions of black men and women who were beaten, had families broken up and were treated like a piece of property. No they're seeing the idealized versions of racial injustice quite literally on a pedestal.

These men no longer just stand for the confederacy, which is horrible in of itself, but for all the ugly racial sentiment in America to this day. To say otherwise ignores all those lynchings made in their name and the other horrible acts performed in the name of a bunch of traitorous losers.

 

[Host Samurai]

I'am surprised that these racist monuments are even still standing in 2017. They should have been put in museums decades ago.

 

[Fuchsdh]

If you want to see an example of the complete opposite of a Reconstruction type effort look at post-WWI Germany rather than post-WW2 Germany. While it's not exactly the same as recovering from a civil war, you can see what can flourish in a post-war environment if a significant and long-term effort isn't put forth towards rebuilding a former foe. It's a pretty modern phenomenon probably due to the advent of total war and the massive casualties incurred by the participants.

I think you could argue the Civil War was one of the first modern conflicts where total war started becoming part of the arsenal, with Sherman's campaigns for instance.

But it's hard to say even knowing what we know now how effective you could have been trying to stop the Lost Cause. No one likes feeling like they were on the losing side of a war, and soldiers have always had a love-hate relationship with their political leaders and the homefront. Lincoln and Johnson's conciliatory measures were probably vital to stopping a Confederate insurgency, but it was at the cost of the more ambitious Republicans' attempt to totally remake southern society, and in a long-term view reconciliation might have been the worse choice.

This feels like you acknowledge the issue but don't give it much weight. The confederacy is forever tainted by its ties to slavery and everything that goes with it. The KKK wasn't choosing to have gigantic Klan rallies at Stone Mountain Georgia because of the beautiful natural scenery. Much the same the confederate flag wasn't being waved around during all those cross burnings and constantly used by white power movements because they're all so well aware of the horrors of slavery and racial oppression in America.

You can't just untangle these statues from the last hundred and fifty years of ugly racial oppression in this country. They're one in the same for the lowest of the low in American culture and when they look up to those statues they're not seeing the millions of black men and women who were beaten, had families broken up and were treated like a piece of property. No they're seeing the idealized versions of racial injustice quite literally on a pedestal.

These men no longer just stand for the confederacy, which is horrible in of itself, but for all the ugly racial sentiment in America to this day. To say otherwise ignores all those lynchings made in their name and the other horrible acts performed in the name of a bunch of traitorous losers.

I guess I have a different response to the symbolism. What's dangerous is the people, not their symbols. As Landrieu points out, even as he's in favor of removing the memorials, removing the memorials alone does absolutely nothing about redressing racial inequalities in the United States. Some people in this thread have the view that you destroy the symbols to destroy the people, I posit the opposite. It's certainly not cut-and-dried; you can argue history supports either attitude.

 

[Eidan]

For anyone interested in learning more about the attempt to re-brand the Confederacy by way of historic sites, check out James Loewen's Lies Across America. Great book.

 

[GoldenEye 007]

Except (as far as I know) no one is suggesting erecting monuments to Confederate soldiers now. We're talking about established history.

People are putting up monuments to slavery now. Richmond, VA has Monument Ave, filled with Confederate monuments that are never going to fit in a museum (it also has a really bad statue of Arthur Ashe looking like he's gonna' beat some children, but still, it's a black guy memorialized at the end of a line of Confederates.) It also has erected a monument that recognizes that under a bustling interstate a lot of folks were sold off, died and buried in nameless graves. You can recontextualize history without having to move anything.

The fundamental disconnect we're having here is that people are essentially arguing the monuments as they stand now are the cause of continued racial animosity. An old statue thousands of black people in cities everywhere across the country pass by on their way to work or home isn't traveling through time to oppress them. It's people living now doing that. The past can't hurt us unless we forget it and pretend we're evolved past it, and the iconoclasm proposed by people in this thread feels like that's what they want. There's not any inherent tension between wanting these statues to remain and recognizing that racism hasn't gone away and that, forget the dead, we have people alive today who are suffering in ways large and small.

(As for your final comments on "glorifying the oppressed", that sounds like historical revisionism as well, just of a different stripe than lost cause conspiracies. But then we get into a deeper philosophical question of memorials and their innate distortion of history.)

Landrieu's argument is eloquent, and I see its merit. LA and cities ultimately can decide their own course. I just disagree with his argument.

But the history is that they were established in defiance and hate. That's why they exist. They were created in the middle of reconstruction and a thriving Jim Crow as a celebration.

This is simply a long overdue correction to that. Also, nobody is saying these should be destroyed - simply put into a proper venue. That is not out in the open as a celebration they were and are, but as a symbol of acknowledgement with full context in a venue such as a museum.

Not to bring Godwin into this, but just as a Nazi monument built in post-war Germany has no place, this is quite similar. And if one was built, it would make sense to later bring it down and put it where it belongs. Germany does not shy away from Nazism - they fully recognize it. But they do it in a way that provides context of why it was so horrible - not just a naked celebration of symbols and figures.

And of course, taking these away won't make people not racist. No statue is needed for that in the US. Those issues are much deeper and are likely unsolvable at this point given the deeply racist origins of the US and how much it is ingrained in every level of the history, governance, operations, and institutions that make up the US.

 

[Mr. X]

These statutes were erected to remind whites and blacks their place in the South. Fuck off with that they're there to remind us of our mistakes. Saying otherwise means you're a fool or you think the people reading are fools.

Good riddance.

 

[tbm24]

Fantastic speech, I have to hear it a few more times.

 

[HStallion]

I guess I have a different response to the symbolism. What's dangerous is the people, not their symbols. As Landrieu points out, even as he's in favor of removing the memorials, removing the memorials alone does absolutely nothing about redressing racial inequalities in the United States. Some people in this thread have the view that you destroy the symbols to destroy the people, I posit the opposite. It's certainly not cut-and-dried; you can argue history supports either attitude.

Why should we have those symbols up in the middle of major cities? Again why are we putting these ugly, terrible, disgusting symbols up on a literal pedestal for all to see? It just empowers the shitty people by giving them a beacon for their racist bull shit. Without the statue its one less thing they can cling to and cite as a sign that America is still as backwards as they hope it to be.

 

[Nepenthe]

- Statues are historic and historic things should always be left where they are.
- We will forget our past if we remove the statues.
- It won't solve racism to remove them.

These are the excuses being used to justify proudly displaying symbols that glorified the subjugation of my people.

Never change, America.

 

[ShadowSwordmaster]

Landrieu was right about how to remember the past.

 

[Khalifa Jayy]

Fantastic speech, I have to hear it a few more times.

I listened to the full one once and the condensed one about 5 times. Every line is a powerful and quotable statement. So damn good.

 

[ThatCrazyGuy]

Glad they were taken down. Stick them in a museum.

 

[Mr. X]

- Statues are historic and historic things should always be left where they are.
- We will forget our past if we remove the statues.
- It won't solve racism to remove them.

These are the excuses being used to justify proudly displaying symbols that glorified the subjugation of my people.

Never change, America.

Black lives don't matter to those types of people, only white feelings.

 

[Toxi]

For those arguing the statues should be kept standing because of value to historians: I volunteer at my local museum cataloguing animal ascessions, and there are tens of thousands of specimens in my particular section alone. None of them are publicly displayed or intended to go on public display. They are purely for aiding research. Most of those specimens aren't even preserved in a particularly extensive fashion; only a few are kept in conditions that preserve DNA, because money and space are limited resources. We just hope the anatomy and environmental context of the other specimens are enough information. Historians should be fine having artifacts like the New Orleans Confederate statues gathering dust in an archive until needed. And I don't really see these being of that much research value in the first place; we don't have a dearth of 20th century American statues.

The only real argument for publicly displaying these statues would be their educational value to the public, which is limited. The statues are racist propaganda, which makes them inherently misleading and destructive. They would have to be presented in a context that makes it clear that they are misleading, and no, a small plaque about how these were bad people is not sufficient. And at that point that you're dedicating serious time, money, space, and effort to displaying a bigass statue in a proper educational context, the question becomes, "Would this time, money, space, and effort be better spent on something else?" Just photographs of the statues already convey all the necessary information for a museum placard.

 

[TetraGenesis]

Exceptional speech. It truly moved me. Could not have been better put.

 

[water_wendi]

Just mass executions?

How about trials?


"The greatest efforts made by the defeated insurgents since the close of the war have been to promulgate the idea that the cause of liberty, justice, humanity, equality, and all the calendar of the virtues of freedom, suffered violence and wrong when the effort for southern independence failed. This is, of course, intended as a species of political cant, whereby the crime of treason might be covered with a counterfeit varnish of patriotism, so that the precipitators of the rebellion might go down in history hand in hand with the defenders of the government, thus wiping out with their own hands their own stains; a species of self-forgiveness amazing in its effrontery, when it is considered that life and property—justly forfeited by the laws of the country, of war, and of nations, through the magnanimity of the government and people—was not exacted from them. "

- Union General Thomas

America won the war but lost the peace.

 

[Lebron]

Cheers, I'll wiki him at lunch.

No Child Left Behind

 

[apocalidiot]

Those excited about this speech should watch this.. there is plenty of work to be done.... Four statues is a start but its not nearly enough if Mitch Landrieu believes in what he is saying - https://www.democracynow.org/2017/5/23/as_last_confederate_statue_is_removed

 

[Cocaloch]

Richmond, VA has Monument Ave, filled with Confederate monuments that are never going to fit in a museum (it also has a really bad statue of Arthur Ashe looking like he's gonna' beat some children, but still, it's a black guy memorialized at the end of a line of Confederates.) It also has erected a monument that recognizes that under a bustling interstate a lot of folks were sold off, died and buried in nameless graves. You can recontextualize history without having to move anything.

Sure, you can do that. But the fact that you could in no way is an argument against taking down the statues.

The fundamental disconnect we're having here is that people are essentially arguing the monuments as they stand now are the cause of continued racial animosity.

The only people I've seen make this claim are pro-statue people making strawmen against everyone else. People don't think the statues cause any thing. They think the statues are symbols glorifying a horrible and racist past.

An old statue thousands of black people in cities everywhere across the country pass by on their way to work or home isn't traveling through time to oppress them. It's people living now doing that. The past can't hurt us unless we forget it and pretend we're evolved past it

First of all, so this isn't an argument against taking the statues down. Second of all the past is not dead, it is not even past.

There's not any inherent tension between wanting these statues to remain and recognizing that racism hasn't gone away and that, forget the dead, we have people alive today who are suffering in ways large and small.

Maybe if you don't see racism as bad. Otherwise the tensions inherent in people that are oppressed by racist systems rightfully seeing these states as glorification of those systems are fairly obvious. Arguing that they should stay essentially prioritizes some stone placed somewhere for a pretty horrendous reason over oppressed people living and breathing today.

historical revisionism

If you're using historical revisionism as a byword for bad history without qualification, then you're almost certainly making a poor argument. What is it that you think historians do exactly?

But then we get into a deeper philosophical question of memorials and their innate distortion of history.

What do you mean by distortion of history here? A perspective isn't a distortion, and if it is a distortion undistorted history doesn't exist.

No Child Left Behind

In that poster's defense they aren't American.

That being said one probably shouldn't get involved in an argument like this when you clearly know nothing about the topic, and Americans absolutely should not be taking advice about how to deal with race from Bristol of all places......

Those excited about this speech should watch this.. there is plenty of work to be done.... Four statues is a start but its not nearly enough if Mitch Landrieu believes in what he is saying - https://www.democracynow.org/2017/5/23/as_last_confederate_statue_is_removed

Does the city of New Orleans actually have the ability to deal with the schools? I'm not totally up on how the charter system actually works there.

 

[PeskyToaster]

How about trials?


"The greatest efforts made by the defeated insurgents since the close of the war have been to promulgate the idea that the cause of liberty, justice, humanity, equality, and all the calendar of the virtues of freedom, suffered violence and wrong when the effort for southern independence failed. This is, of course, intended as a species of political cant, whereby the crime of treason might be covered with a counterfeit varnish of patriotism, so that the precipitators of the rebellion might go down in history hand in hand with the defenders of the government, thus wiping out with their own hands their own stains; a species of self-forgiveness amazing in its effrontery, when it is considered that life and property—justly forfeited by the laws of the country, of war, and of nations, through the magnanimity of the government and people—was not exacted from them. "

- Union General Thomas

America won the war but lost the peace.

You didn't really mention trials before but yeah, there should have been some Nuremberg Trials for the leadership and significant members at least. I think we both agree that more was required out of Reconstruction for it to be successful. They had to dismantle and root out the old to ensure the new would survive. I don't mean as far as executions for treason but stuff like barring Confederate office holders from holding office in the reformed Union at the very least. You don't need to kill them but you don't need to support them and build statues of them. Lincoln was really concerned with holding the Union together so even he might not have been as stern as necessary but he would have been a hell of a lot better than Johnson. I think it might have been better to completely alter the structure of the Confederate states as well. Moving capitals, reshaping borders, or changing state names might have helped against the restoration of the old power bloc. You don't let the groups that rebel against you keep all their stuff and just waltz back into power. That's pretty much what happened though.

If you're using historical revisionism as a byword for bad history without qualification, then you're almost certainly making a poor argument. What is it that you think historians do exactly?

Don't you know, whatever we first decide is the truth will always and forever be the most correct.

 

[OG Shaka Zulu]

Cheers, I'll wiki him at lunch. Here in Bristol half the streets are named after folk who got rich off the back of slavery.

LMAO bruh. Go ahead and wiki "him".

See Royal, inform yourself before you speak on issues. Especially when it comes to race in America.

 

[psyfi]

It's seriously awesome that a politician is saying this, but all credit due, let's not forget that black people have been saying this for forever.

 

[Doomsayer]

That was amazing. Hopefully in the future we have more leaders like this and less like the stain in our White House right now.

 

[Hashmal_Bringer_of_Order]

Yeah, it's a weird argument to make that we should hang on to statues of people who did terrible things because they're historic. I mean, I wouldn't put up a statue of Lee Harvey Oswald standing proud just because he's a historic figure. That doesn't mean I don't think people should learn about Lee Harvey Oswald, just not presented framed as a hero with zero context. You can't have a statue that looks like this:

and expect people to naturally assume "that's one of history's villains." The context of literally putting an idol on a pedestal has never been used to signify someone we should view as bad; adding a plaque saying "some people were against the Civil War" doesn't change that.

I mean, i was thinking more along the lines of "General X-Person betrayed the United States to fight for and preserve the horrific institution of chattel slavery and the racist world view upon which it was built. After loosing the Civil War, his supporters erected this monument in defiance the progress of justice and equality in America" No need to be coy.

 

[Nepenthe]

LMAO bruh. Go ahead and wiki "him".

See Royal, inform yourself before you speak on issues. Especially when it comes to race in America.

He's not going to come back after looking up this "gentleman" is he?

 

[forrest]

Simply incredible. Words can be so powerful.

 

[Enzom21]

Cheers, I'll wiki him at lunch. Here in Bristol half the streets are named after folk who got rich off the back of slavery.

So have you "wiki'd" him yet? Any update to your initial post?