It must be Tuesday Wednesday, because I'm answering your question.
Q: Dear Ty,
I see lots of news articles describing how Civil War monuments are being taken down as they are viewed as symbols of racism.
Where do you think this should end?
Since George Washington owned slaves is it time to change the name of Washington D.C., tear down the Washington Monument and pave over Mount Vernon?
Sincerely,
White Guy
Ty: Good question and an even better observation, White Guy.
Uh boy. Are we not done with this stuff yet? Civil War monuments. You mean the dudes who lost? We can put the Civil War monuments right next to the WWII monuments of Hitler and Mussolini in the Dudes Who Lost Monument Garden.
Sure, we might as well tear down the Washington Monument. The elevator rarely works. The Washington Monument is, appropriately, a monument to the inaugural president of the United Sates. Appropriately, we should have a monument to George Washington. And, yeah, he owned slaves. So did Thomas Jefferson. So did all of the founding fathers who made this renegade country for rich white men who didn't want to pay taxes and where women and non-white men didn't matter in important things.
Why do we need monuments? So we don't forget. So we don't forget the history the monument makers want to document. So we don't forget the version of history that the people funding the monument makers want to be remembered.* Civil War monuments are a way to remember a time when white men had a renegade country for rich white men who didn't want to pay taxes and women and non-white men didn't matter in important things. Civil War monument are indeed "symbols or racism." They are symbols of racism, homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, and other forms of white male supremacy. But so are many of the founding father monuments.
But...we needn't tear down the monuments. Let's keep the monuments intact so we never forget. So we never forget the historical blemishes that need never repeating. The Holocaust, American slavery and the Civil War, Hiroshima, Fox News. If we hide the monuments of our worst moments we may forget them. Let's not forget. That's how we ended up with the present president of the United States–who we will someday memorialize in the Dudes Who Lost Monument Garden–who tried to return us to a time when white men had a renegade country for rich white men who didn't want to pay taxes and women and non-white men didn't matter in important things. "Great again."
Verdict: Keep the monuments but teach the children the truth about what monuments memorialize. Hashtag Nvr4gt.
Just a guess.
-ty
*When I visited Monticello years ago, I became a little miffed with how the docent jocularly referred to the slave cabins, "...and here is where the participants in slavery lived!" Participants in slavery.
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