When
discussions of remaining statues of Confederate General Robert E. Lee came up
in the wake of the Charlottesville riots, my first reaction was these statues
should come down. They have come to be symbols of racial segregation and
rallying cries for Neo Nazis. Why honor
someone who lost a war, a war that nearly destroyed our country and could’ve
left it with slavery?
On
the other hand, is a statue a form of speech, for if it is, then the
statues, once erected, shouldn’t be taken down.
I would never advocate for the ban or destruction of books that depict
the statue.
Or
is the statue public art? If so, again,
I believe it should stand.
But,
if the statue is just a statue, created for political reasons, then it should
die a political death. Our history books
should accurately portray the Civil War and who General Lee was, but I don’t
see a good reason to memorialize a figure that nearly toppled the United States
of America.
Streets
get renamed. So do schools and hospital
wings. Statues get erected; they can
come down, too. Of course, once we look
to scrub the public view of the morals or symbols that we no longer value,
where does one draw the line?
Will
we, as President Trump suggested, look harder at Washington and Jefferson, and
start to remove them from public statues, maybe even our currency? The slave owners lose many points for owning
human beings and hypocritically assigning them a three-fifths value, but Washington
won freedom for the nation and eventually freed his slaves. Washington had children with his mistress
slave and was a great president.
All
of this discussion of statues shows that humans are flawed, that a few can
stand the test of time for what they accomplished. Maybe statues make little sense in the first
place. When they are erected they usually reflect popular sentiment of the day
and as a few generations pass, people forget or fail to discover who is
depicted in these statues. Many become irrelevant.
Statues
would be better off memorializing moments rather than individuals. Honor 9/11 responders, WWII veterans, or
American ideals like free speech; you can’t go wrong there. But honoring people by name just means that
over time, people will either put you in obscurity or come to despise you.
Columbus, General Lee, and others, over time, have become less-liked figures.
What
we really need is to mount statues across the nation – in every community –
that highlights books and supports reading and literacy. We don’t need to champion a specific author
or even a book or publisher. Let’s
simply praise and honor the love, value, and beauty of books.
Now
that’s a statute, if erected that should never come down. But General Lee’s statue? Start the demolition!
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