My first reaction to all the horrible insanity that came out of the madness in the context of statues after the terrorist attack in Charlottesville, Virginia had absolutely nothing to do with statues. If we are talking about statues, from the viewpoint of art history and sculpture only, my immediate reaction would be don’t take them down. Sculptures are usually outside are for everyone and once they are up, they are usually up for good unless they are moved to another location or torn down for various reasons. When you attach meaning to it or it signifies an important historical period or event, it becomes more than an hunk of metal and stone. If it is at a burial area, it really shouldn’t be moved because it has a function beyond being a sacred space where a human body is laying.
Truthfully, none of the statues in question should have been allowed to be erected, but they were. The majority of them were placed in locations that didn’t directly relate to a particular battle or specific event in the location and the timing of the statues being set up are very suspect as well. Most were set up during the Jim Crow era and civil rights era.
What appears to be happening is that we as a culture are finally ready to have a serious conversation about race and all the statues are the being targeted because people are tired of white supremacists having a voice in the race conversation. They really need to die out of our culture; all hate groups need to be eradicated.
People can remove the symbols of treason and oppression because they can’t remove the people that caused, and continue to cause, systemic racism. The events in the past weeks have made people try to right a moral wrong in our society that should have never happened: slavery, and all the horrors that it caused. The images of slavey are still allowed in our society. The majority of people, in our current climate, appear to not tolerate any images of racism. People will continue to take down the statues and probably not do anything about racism. In the short term, the toppling and hiding of the relics will make people feel like they have accomplished something important, but they will not do much to address how and why they were set up in the first place.
To say it is complicated is an understatement. There is no good solution. One end of the spectrum we could say take the rebel flag out of the Mississippi state flag, ban the rebel flag and all images of the C.S.A., or on the other side of the spectrum, just do nothing, like usual.
The logical thing to do would be to take the ones down that people do not one in a case by case basis and refrain from vandalizing them. Logic and rational thought is in short supply and there are a lot of rightfully angry people out there who want action for injustices.
Maybe, just maybe, this is the time we all wake up and realize that we have allowed racism to be a part of America for too long. Maybe it’s time we address who is benefiting from it. Maybe we can talk about why it still is allowed to be a part of our daily lives.