[Mark McDonnell]

Tim, your earlier comment about the protests pushed all my buttons about judging a whole mass of people by a stereotype. But I have no problem raising a 'hear hear' for this.

[Julie Steiner]

Originally Posted by Aaron Novick

Slaver takes a bath

Lots of updates on this - click "Show this thread" under "Protesters Say Statue Tripped, Fell Into Water". Amazing series of comments!

I'm actually very uneasy about the destruction of political art like statuary, even though I know full well that the only motive for putting someone on a pedestal in the first place is that it is useful for less heroic people to stand in the shadow of that statue, in order to manipulate the hero-worshippers into accepting their agenda.

[Edited to say: Okay, after reflecting on this for some time, I've decided that I really need to walk that generalization waayyyyyy back, because I like some representational tribute statues very much--for example, erstwhile Eratospherean Meredith Bergman's Boston Women's Memorial, her Rosa Parks, and her Memorial to Countee Cullen. All three of these works consciously subvert traditional conventions, though. Just as their subjects did.]

The instant gratification of vengeance is so much more satisfying than the long, slow, boring slog of building justice.

But that's probably a topic for a different thread.

[Mark McDonnell]

It is an interesting topic, Julie.

I had no problem watching the statue being torn down. It was marvellous. One guy took great pleasure in jumping on it like a demented Rumplestiltskin. It felt like an entirely appropriate symbolic moment of righteous public anger, joyfully enacted. Nobody was hurt. Nobody's livelihood threatened. I’m less keen on the idea that this should represent the beginning of a move by well-meaning bureaucrats to excise all symbols that remind us of the unsavoury past. The world is a messy palimpsest and it seems tokenistic to try to sanitise it entirely...

... I'm glad Colston is in the drink, though.

(Removed the rest, because I realise I expanded that last idea into a load of hypothetical, speculative bollocks about whether Churchill and Charles Dickens statues and the pyramids would have to be removed. On reflection it seemed like self-indulgence in the sound of my own voice, unworthy of the serious discussion here)

[Aaron Novick]

To give someone a public statue is to honor them. If we decide that we no longer believe someone is worthy of honor, then by all means we should remove the statue from public display. It would, of course, be perfectly reasonable to place those statues in a museum, where they can be appropriately contextualized and made to serve the ends of history. One benefit of taking swift legal action to do so is precisely that it allows for this transfer to a better home. Otherwise, the statues just might end up going for a swim.

I know little about the history of British statues, so I will say less there. But the confederate monuments in the United States were part of a post-civil war campaign by groups like the Daughters of the Confederacy. Putting the newly freed blacks in their place was part of the aim of the statues (many of which are not even in Confederate states). Every black person in this country is, in my view, completely justified in doing whatever they damn well please to get rid of such glorifications of their oppression.

The difference between the case of statues and the case of the pyramids is (at least) two-fold. First, nobody can trace their lineage back to the slaves who built the pyramids, to my knowledge. By contrast, many people can trace their lineage back to the slaves that Colston and others bought and sold. That the pyramids stand does not plausibly harm anyone; that the statues of slavers and confederates stand does. Second, it is, in my view, important that the pyramids were built by slaves—to leave them standing, and to appropriately contextualize the conditions under which they were built, is one small way to honor the memory of those who built them.

[Mark McDonnell]

Aaron, I agree it would be absurd to remove the pyramids.

Julie, I forgot to say, Meredith's statues are incredible. Thanks for those links.

I posted

I’m less keen on the idea that this should represent the beginning of a move by well-meaning bureaucrats to excise all symbols that remind us of the unsavoury past.

Also, there probably are no such moves afoot, so I'm just building big old straw men.

Ha. There, I'm arguing against myself now. It's quicker!

[Julie Steiner]

Aaron, a small correction (which actually supports your point):

Originally Posted by Aaron Novick

[T]he confederate monuments in the United States were part of a post-civil war campaign by groups like the Daughters of the Confederacy. Putting the newly freed blacks in their place was part of the aim of the statues (many of which are not even in Confederate states). Every black person in this country is, in my view, completely justified in doing whatever they damn well please to get rid of such glorifications of their oppression.

The United Daughters of the Confederacy wasn't even founded until 1894, and I think it's pretty telling that most of these memorials to Confederate leaders were placed in city-owned public squares and in front of state buildings (rather than in cemeteries, which is where fallen soldiers were honored in the generation after the Civil War), thus conspicuously connecting the statues to current governmental institutions, between the 1890s and the 1950s, with most being erected between 1900 and 1920.

The whens and wheres of these statues honoring Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis indicate that their purpose wasn't to intimidate the newly freed Blacks. It was to intimidate later generations of Blacks, and to legitimize the disenfranchisement, segregationist policies, militaristic policing, and even lynchings that were being promoted by the White-dominated local and state governments of the Jim Crow period. And when these memorials later served to rally Whites against the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, they continued to do exactly what they were designed to do, which had always had more to do with current events than with 19th Century history. Always.

(It seems relevant to note that the Confederate battle flag was not incorporated into the state flag of Georgia until 1956, and South Carolina did not place the Confederate battle flag atop its state house until 1962.)

Clearly, these memorials are not about honoring Civil War soldiers. They are about honoring the soldiers in an ongoing war against racial equality, which is still costing Black people their lives today. So the vehemence and even violence against such statues is understandable.

I just question whether the best way to overthrow what a work of art stands for is to overthrow that work of art. I support removing Confederate statues from public view, certainly. And yes, it is powerfully symbolic when a Confederate statue is vandalized. But there might be more creative and less destructive ways to challenge them.

(I realize that the statue in Bristol had been erected for a much different purpose, so the above argument isn't entirely applicable.)

[Matt Q]

I was impressed by the mayor of Bristol's response, including the way in which he handled the interview, refusing to get caught up in simplistic binary oppositions from the get go.

Also, this Bristol policeman's response.

Both very refreshing.

[Mark McDonnell]

Yes, they're both great Matt. I wish more people would call out out the media for their insistence on reductive soundbites as explicitly as the Bristol mayor does here. He does it really confidently without dithering. Politicians are always criticised (often rightly) for not giving straight answers, but equally the media needs to recognise that some issues are complex and don't require a 'side' to be on.

[Julie Steiner]

Thanks for those, Matt.

(I share your admiration of the mayor's handling of the interview, Matt and Mark. Although I must say that it really ticks me off that even though the mayor successfully refused to let the journalist force him into picking a side in a simplistic binary, the journalist then cherry-picked an out-of-context quotation of the mayor as the headline for this interview, which makes it seem as though the mayor actually picked a side in a simplistic binary. What a disgustingly sleazy move.)

[Matt Q]

Yep, that annoyed me too ...