Confederate flags are no longer welcome and removed from NASCAR events. Statues that had survived to date are now toppled. Christoper Columbus has finally been removed from public history. Objects of racist oppression, no matter from what century or circumstance, are no longer are part of American, and indeed Western memory.
This movement towards redefining the past and the taking away of "sensitive" material culture has not taken place overnight. But over the last few days our American memory centering on the Civil War, other historical figures who were slave holders, and 1492 has been challenged with a form of Electroconvulsive Shock Therapy. In graduate school I seem to remember that a good historian makes moral judgments by the standard of the time under consideration -- but that modicum has is now "gone with the wind."
As a former resident of New Orleans, I was always struck by the Statue of Robert E. Lee at Lee Circle, Beauregard in front of the Art Gallery, the Confederate Museum on Camp Street, and more. The memorials placed me in a particular complex context during the 1970s. I had no relatives who fought in the civil war, who were slaveholders, or who were a part of the "Peculiar Institution." But the statues did situate me in a matrix of time and space.
Yes, it is a new world that is being ushered in during 2020. As a 71 year old man I realize that perhaps my time has passed. Will I move forward into a new present and future, or be stuck in the past?Was the past all that great anyway? Certainly not from my personal perspective. I have no love for the police, FBI, or the judicial system. So maybe it is time to be "revolutionary," and restructure an America with some very debilitating flaws.
Let's embrace the new NASCAR, new race relations and diversity, a new American society. We can either move forward, enjoy the drive and benefit from it, or be relegated to an America that never was as free as it was intended to be. The automobile gave us an illusion of freedom; now it is time to explore ways for freedom and greater equality to ring.
A couple of points. One, erasing the objects does not erase what they stood for from memory. The Colossus of Rhodes no longer stands, but it's still in the history books. Statues glorify people and moments of history; they do not embody that history.
ReplyDeleteTwo, many of those statues went up decades, if not centuries, after the moments in history they were meant to commemorate. Racist Southerners in the Twenties, trying to relive the days of the Confederacy, put up many of the statues giving glory to those losers. Columbus's Christopher Columbus statues were almost an afterthought: https://www.columbusunderground.com/christopher-columbus-statues-columbus-ohio-we1
From those, we can view your headline in a different light. These statues, these flags, they were the original attempt to shape the future by controlling historical narratives. Fortunately, we have earnest and honest scholars constantly working to correct those intentional misconstruals of the historical record.
Glad to hear you're ready to embrace the new American society.