The recent BLM-associated protests spawned a lot of commentary, and a lot of internet memes. One of the more interesting was the one you see here: “A example of white privilege. You keep saying ‘it’s horrible that an innocent black man was killed, but destroying property has to stop.’ Try saying ‘It’s horrible that property is being destroyed, but killing innocent black men has to stop.’ Priorities. Make sense?” (Curmie cleaned up the punctuation a little.)
Let’s start with a couple of general principles.
What’s really happening here is an exercise in rhetorical strategy: if X and Y are both true but seem at some level to be in opposition, then the speaker or writer inevitably prioritizes the one mentioned last. “X but Y” means we should pay particular attention to Y, although X is also true. (“X although Y” works in the other direction.) Curmie was thinking about this in the light of the recent spate of statue-topplings across the country and indeed around the world.
Let’s start with a couple of general principles.
- Statues are commemorative, and carry the implication that the person being portrayed is worthy of honor for a particular action or (very occasionally) for the entirety of a life well lived.
- Statues are also public art, and ought to be afforded some limited status (and stature) on that basis.
- We can know history without statues. (There are lots of memes about that one, too... see below.) Still, they can serve as useful reminders of our past.
- Some but not all of the violence and destruction of the last few weeks was perpetrated by BLM protestors. Some was attributable to opportunists who just got a thrill out of destruction, some to white supremacists seeking to discredit the BLM movement.
- Anyone who rejoiced at the toppling of statues to Lenin or Saddam Hussein cannot now argue that the destruction of monuments to the past is inherently wrong.
- No mortal who has ever lived is or was perfect. If you, Gentle Reader, choose to believe that, say, Jesus never sinned, you are within your rights to do so. But surely you must acknowledge the manifold sins committed in his name, even against believers who, for example, chose to worship Him in a different way than the perpetrator.
This last point is what brings us back to a consideration of rhetoric. Which is more important: that Thomas Jefferson fathered children by one of his slaves or that he wrote the Declaration of Independence and served two successful terms as President of the United States? that Martin Luther King, Jr., was a serial adulterer or that he was the standard-bearer for the non-violent civil rights movement? that Winston Churchill was an entitled racist asshole, or that he led his country through the perils of World War II against someone far worse? Can you imagine the horrors that would have ensued had Britain been led during WWII by a different entitled racist asshole, someone with no more competence than Boris Johnson, or [shudder] Donald Trump?
Importantly, we commemorate the achievements of these men (and the women similarly honored, too, of course), not their failures. If we think of the great baseball player Hank Aaron, who hit more home runs than any other non-steroid-enhanced player in major league baseball history and still holds the record—even against the juicers—for total bases and RBIs, we don’t feel compelled to talk about the fact that he struck out over 600 times more than he homered. Similarly, we don’t forget that George Washington owned slaves, or that Ben Franklin had syphilis… but that’s not what the statue is about.
And now we’re at the important part. Curmie reverts to his high school and undergrad debate team days: the presumption rests with the negative, or with the status quo. In other words, if the rationale for tearing a statue down and the rationale for keeping it are equally persuasive, it stays (but a new one wouldn’t be erected in similar circumstances). The argument to remove (by force or otherwise) a statue must then clearly outweigh the argument to let it stand. For this to happen, the subject’s transgressions must be foregrounded to the extent that even significant accomplishments pale by comparison, or that the accomplishments were used as a means of doing ill (or thinking one can get away with anything): think Bill Cosby or Kevin Spacey.
Of course, one could argue that some achievements are of such paramount importance that virtually no iniquity could be sufficient to remove a commemoration: perhaps the William Shakespeares and Marie Curies of the world would qualify (although putting even George Washington in that category would be controversial, as evidenced by recent events). But such instances are very rare, indeed. Similarly, there are a handful of easy calls in the other direction: the deposed dictator, for example… or, a memorial to the Confederacy, with two statues of soldiers. Because treason isn’t really that cool anymore. Or, across the pond, the Belgian King Leopold II, whose genocide in the Congo may be the worst in human history.
Indeed, the only unquestionably outrageous vandalism Curmie has seen is that of a statue to Hans Christian Heg in Madison, Wisconsin. Heg was an abolitionist and a Civil War hero on the Union side. A less appropriate choice of target for protesters concerned with racial justice would be difficult to imagine. Curmie finds it hard to argue with Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’s claim that “There is a lot of ignorance out there of what people are really fighting for.” It would certainly do the protestors’ cause a lot of good to disassociate from the imbeciles.
One step, but only a step, closer to sanity was the toppling of a statue of Ulysses S. Grant in San Francisco. Grant’s legacy is complex, even self-contradictory. He was a slave-owner himself (briefly, of a man he freed three years before the Emancipation Proclamation), but he is known to history primarily as the commander of the Union army that successfully defeated the slave-owning Confederacy. As President, he sought to crush the Ku Klux Klan, but also orchestrated an illegal war against the Lakota. He believed in the intrinsic superiority of the all things white and Christian, but his post-Presidential visit to Meiji era Japan is thought by many theatre historians (including Curmie) to have been instrumental in the preservation of Nō theatre, which he was the first American ever to witness: this despite the fact that Grant was anything but a patron of the arts. He was, in short, worthy of both praise and scorn—more of both, perhaps, than most of us, but in perhaps about the same ratio. We must recognize the positives even as we remain cognizant of the negatives.
Gregory Downs, a historian specializing in the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, nicely summarizes Grant’s legacy in an editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle. His first paragraph is probably his most important: “The toppling of Ulysses Grant’s statue in Golden Gate Park on Friday night reminds us that we need an engaged, passionate debate about Grant’s legacy, but we cannot depend upon the whims of a dictatorial mob to deepen our understanding of our nation’s troubling history.”
And so it goes through many of the statue defacings, topplings, and other vandalisms. Christopher Columbus? Sure, I guess. Francis Scott Key? OK, maybe. Miguel de Cervantes? Huh? As Steve Rubenstein and Rachel Swan write, understatedly, in the San Francisco Chronicle, “Politics seemed incidental to much of the damage.” True, that.
Importantly, we commemorate the achievements of these men (and the women similarly honored, too, of course), not their failures. If we think of the great baseball player Hank Aaron, who hit more home runs than any other non-steroid-enhanced player in major league baseball history and still holds the record—even against the juicers—for total bases and RBIs, we don’t feel compelled to talk about the fact that he struck out over 600 times more than he homered. Similarly, we don’t forget that George Washington owned slaves, or that Ben Franklin had syphilis… but that’s not what the statue is about.
And now we’re at the important part. Curmie reverts to his high school and undergrad debate team days: the presumption rests with the negative, or with the status quo. In other words, if the rationale for tearing a statue down and the rationale for keeping it are equally persuasive, it stays (but a new one wouldn’t be erected in similar circumstances). The argument to remove (by force or otherwise) a statue must then clearly outweigh the argument to let it stand. For this to happen, the subject’s transgressions must be foregrounded to the extent that even significant accomplishments pale by comparison, or that the accomplishments were used as a means of doing ill (or thinking one can get away with anything): think Bill Cosby or Kevin Spacey.
Of course, one could argue that some achievements are of such paramount importance that virtually no iniquity could be sufficient to remove a commemoration: perhaps the William Shakespeares and Marie Curies of the world would qualify (although putting even George Washington in that category would be controversial, as evidenced by recent events). But such instances are very rare, indeed. Similarly, there are a handful of easy calls in the other direction: the deposed dictator, for example… or, a memorial to the Confederacy, with two statues of soldiers. Because treason isn’t really that cool anymore. Or, across the pond, the Belgian King Leopold II, whose genocide in the Congo may be the worst in human history.
Indeed, the only unquestionably outrageous vandalism Curmie has seen is that of a statue to Hans Christian Heg in Madison, Wisconsin. Heg was an abolitionist and a Civil War hero on the Union side. A less appropriate choice of target for protesters concerned with racial justice would be difficult to imagine. Curmie finds it hard to argue with Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’s claim that “There is a lot of ignorance out there of what people are really fighting for.” It would certainly do the protestors’ cause a lot of good to disassociate from the imbeciles.
One step, but only a step, closer to sanity was the toppling of a statue of Ulysses S. Grant in San Francisco. Grant’s legacy is complex, even self-contradictory. He was a slave-owner himself (briefly, of a man he freed three years before the Emancipation Proclamation), but he is known to history primarily as the commander of the Union army that successfully defeated the slave-owning Confederacy. As President, he sought to crush the Ku Klux Klan, but also orchestrated an illegal war against the Lakota. He believed in the intrinsic superiority of the all things white and Christian, but his post-Presidential visit to Meiji era Japan is thought by many theatre historians (including Curmie) to have been instrumental in the preservation of Nō theatre, which he was the first American ever to witness: this despite the fact that Grant was anything but a patron of the arts. He was, in short, worthy of both praise and scorn—more of both, perhaps, than most of us, but in perhaps about the same ratio. We must recognize the positives even as we remain cognizant of the negatives.
Gregory Downs, a historian specializing in the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, nicely summarizes Grant’s legacy in an editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle. His first paragraph is probably his most important: “The toppling of Ulysses Grant’s statue in Golden Gate Park on Friday night reminds us that we need an engaged, passionate debate about Grant’s legacy, but we cannot depend upon the whims of a dictatorial mob to deepen our understanding of our nation’s troubling history.”
And so it goes through many of the statue defacings, topplings, and other vandalisms. Christopher Columbus? Sure, I guess. Francis Scott Key? OK, maybe. Miguel de Cervantes? Huh? As Steve Rubenstein and Rachel Swan write, understatedly, in the San Francisco Chronicle, “Politics seemed incidental to much of the damage.” True, that.
 |
| Edward Colston needed a bath. |
Abroad, there was the widely-publicized tearing down of a statue of Edward Colston. True, he was a major philanthropist. But exactly how did he get the money for that largesse? The trans-Atlantic slave trade. Yep. Throw the S.O.B. into the river. The statue was subsequently recovered, but Historic England, the non-governmental agency charged with the responsibility for the statue's upkeep, seems in no rush to have the statue restored to its former location:
Whilst we do not condone the unauthorised removal of a listed structure, we recognise and understand the emotion and the hurt that public historical commemoration can generate and we encourage Bristol City Council to engage in a city wide conversation about the future of the statue. We are here to offer guidance and support but believe the decision is best made at a local level – we do not believe it must be reinstated.
A couple years back, Curmie was writing about the “Confederate” flag, and mentioned in passing the statue of Oliver Cromwell near the Houses of Parliament in London:
Let’s face it: Cromwell doesn’t have a lot to recommend him as a British hero, unless of course you’re so violently anti-Catholic that you’ll forgive him for his attacks on the Anglican Church, the Irish, the theatre, the celebration of Christmas, and the very concept of a constitutional monarchy. But there is no denying Cromwell was the most important single figure in England in the 1640s and ‘50s. Should there be a statue to him? Yeah, I think so… if only so I can hiss at it.
Curmie is re-thinking that position. To be important is not the same as being admirable. And Cromwell (hissssssss) did a lot more bad than good. Curmie can still hiss at his memory; he doesn't need to see the guy. British historian David Olusoga notes that “Statues are about adoration. They’re about saying ‘this man was a great man who did great things.’” He argues that the forcible removal of the Colston statue “should never have happened because this statue should have been taken down and it should have been a great collective day for Britain and Bristol when the statue was peacefully taken down and put in a museum which is where, after all, we remember history properly.” There really is a difference between putting such a statue in a place where everyone, including the descendants of the people he brutalized, must see it, and putting it in a museum, where it can be preserved and contextualized… and, if necessary, avoided. In an editorial piece in The Guardian a couple of days later, Olusoga was referring specifically to the toppling of the Colston statue, but was ultimately writing about the entire phenomenon in saying that “this was not an attack on history. This is history. It is one of those rare historic moments whose arrival means things can never go back to how they were.” He’s right… or, at least, Curmie hopes so.
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