Thoughts on Statue-Toppling

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.)

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.

1. 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.
2. Statues are also public art, and ought to be afforded some limited status (and stature) on that basis.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.

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.

The Citizens Who Aren’t... But Actually Are.

The news headlines of late are almost universally depressing. There’s the pretentious and largely hypocritical brouhaha over Nike’s featuring Colin Kaepernick in an ad. There were the totally disingenuous SCOTUS confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, marked by petulant grand-standing from the left and outright mendacity from the right. And seriously, is there a single Senator whose chances of voting other than party line are better than 10%? There are the sadly predictable lies (yes, lies, not merely cherry-picking or decontextualizing) from Lying Ted Cruz (remember, that’s the moniker applied by one Donald J. Trump) about challenger Beto O’Rourke in the most intriguing race in Curmie’s adopted state of Texas.

All of these stories are, to borrow a phrase from Stevie Nicks, hauntingly familiar. This is largely because politicians lie and people are stupid. But there is something more than a little insidious about the media’s fascination with these tired variations on a banal theme: real stories, ones that actually tell us something about the direction we’re heading as a nation, are buried below the proverbial fold… at best. One the the most significant of these is a recent article from the Washington Post’s Kevin Sieff. Here’s the key paragraph:

In some cases, passport applicants with official U.S. birth certificates are being jailed in immigration detention centers and entered into deportation proceedings. In others, they are stuck in Mexico, their passports suddenly revoked when they tried to reenter the United States. As the Trump administration attempts to reduce both legal and illegal immigration, the government’s treatment of passport applicants in South Texas shows how U.S. citizens are increasingly being swept up by immigration enforcement agencies.

This is outrageous. We can start with the State Department’s assertion that it “has not changed policy or practice regarding the adjudication of passport applications.” Does anyone else notice the peculiar odor of bovine feces wafting from this statement, or is it just Curmie? Of course the process has changed since the xenophobic Trump administration came to power. To say otherwise would be laughable were it not for the serious repercussions at stake here.

Yes, it is almost certainly true that “the U.S.-Mexico border region happens to be an area of the country where there has been a significant incidence of citizenship fraud.” But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t tens of thousands of bona fide Latinx American citizens born and raised near—but north of—the US/Mexico border. When we add in the fact that some of the victims are military veterans or even active military and border patrol agents (!) the issue moves from problematic to scandalous. If we’re talking about men a couple of years older than Curmie, the US government not only allowed these folks to serve in the military, they insisted on it in the 1960s and early ‘70s.

It is important that we exercise a little discretion here. Not everyone with a US passport was born on this side of the border. There are, in effect, three groups of affected people: those who are intentionally and fraudulently claiming American citizenship, those who honestly believe themselves to be US citizens when the true facts of their birth suggest otherwise, and legitimate US citizens who got caught up in the wash. We can reasonably assume that the first group exists—people named Hernandez or Garcia are not more likely to lie to the government than those named Smith or Wu or Benedetti or Kleinschmidt, but they’re not significantly less likely to do so, either. As long as it’s “better” to be a US citizen than a Mexican, someone will be trying to scam the system.

But the second and third groups exist, as well. Ask Curmie when and where he was born, and he can answer… but really, it’s only hearsay. I was there, but it’s not like I remember the details.  My parents told me I was born in such-and-such a hospital at such-and-such a time on such-and-such a day. There’s a birth certificate that seems to confirm what I was told. But I have literally nothing these people don’t have… except an Anglo surname.  Oh, and by the way, by law, a passport is prima facie evidence of citizenship.

Many years ago, the town my father lived in decided that they could lay claim to a right of way through his property. There was a town hall meeting, and the town officials came up with some document from the 19th century that sort of suggested without actually saying that in certain circumstances the town could indeed lay claim to property in that way… a sort of eminent domain with literally no remuneration for landowners. Naturally the acquisitive assholes whose property wasn’t affected were in righteous dudgeon about how these greedy people could possibly want to restrict access to their private property. Dad pointed out that he (and his father before him) had been paying tax on the entire property listed on the deed, which had no amendments, since 1918 (this all happened in the 1980s). In other words, there wasn’t a single person at the town hall who had any better documentation than he did. (The town supervisors won the town hall vote, but backed off in the face of a hefty lawsuit.) 

The same phenomenon is at work here. There is not a single one of us who has more documentation than those being detained. Note that the previous sentence is expressed in quantitative rather than qualitative terms: it may well be that we have better documentation, even if no more of it. But even if that is the case, the time to question the legitimacy of a passport applicant’s credentials would be at the time of first application: not a renewal, and certainly not during the duration of a passport’s currency. To make such a decision requires substantive evidence—not just suspicion, evidence of fraud. Yet some passports issued this year are already being revoked. That the State Department is inept is not news, but they do keep coming up with new ways of demonstrating their incompetence: after all, either that initial issuance by Trump’s State Department was insufficiently vetted, or the current crackdown is a fishing expedition at best.

To me, the central issue is the presumption of the status quo. That is, someone who doesn’t already have a passport can reasonably be expected to prove that s/he deserves one. Once that document has been issued, however, that person’s citizenship has already received the imprimatur of the federal government. There’s nothing wrong with questioning the authenticity of a birth certificate, but once it’s been deemed legitimate, the burden of proof shifts. A passport-holder should never be expected to prove citizenship: the passport is proof. To overturn the government’s own ruling, it should be necessary to prove the holder is not a citizen. “But that’s hard,” say you. “Precisely,” say I.

But not only is the burden of proof misplaced, the evidence required to prove citizenship is ridiculous. Could you, Gentle Reader, provide “evidence of [your] mother’s prenatal care, [your] baptismal certificate, rental agreements from when [you were] a baby”? Curmie couldn’t. Ah, but Curmie’s parents (or their insurance) could afford a hospital instead of a midwife, and he’s white. This would appear to make all the difference. (Note: Muslim citizens are similarly being denaturalized: imagine Curmie’s surprise.)

Finally, let’s dispense with the notion that it’s business as usual. The State Department’s claims that domestic passport denials are at the lowest rate in six years for midwife cases. It may even be that this statement is literally true (and a statement from Mike Pompeo’s State Department has roughly the credibility of that Nigerian prince who writes to Curmie from time to time), but we should point out two things. First, this statistic, even if true, does not address the more sinister practice of rescinding passports already issued.

Secondly, and at least as importantly, the percentage of per se denials doesn’t really tell us much, as it appears that many applications simply end up in limbo. They’re not exactly denied, but the applicant doesn’t get a passport, either. The strategy, and please forgive Curmie for calling it as he sees it, is to delay, to pile on ridiculous new requirements, and delay some more. It is, to coin a phrase, Clintonesque. The result is the same as a denial, but there are two political advantages from the State Department’s perspective. First, State can make the kind of assertion noted above without exactly lying (merely actively misleading). But a denial is also far more likely to lead to a lawsuit—a lawsuit of the kind that plaintiffs win more often than not—than merely stalling until the applicant gives up… and there still isn’t a denial.

This stuff matters. Yes, there are leftie commentators who are comparing this issue to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II or even the worst excesses of Nazi Germany. Is that really where we are? Of course not. But have we taken far too many steps down a road towards a very nasty, xenophobic, and unjust nation? Oh, yes.