From Pine View Farm

“Heritage,” Reprise 1

Wayne Curtis ruminates on the statue of General Robert E. Lee that graces downtown New Orleans and the discussion over whether it should be removed to a different location. A snippet:

Not surprisingly, there has been considerable resistance. As of this week, nearly 20,000 people had signed a petition at change.org calling on the mayor to “cease and desist any and all talks that involve the demolition and re-naming of the Robert E. Lee historical monument.”

Others have invoked the slippery slope argument—if you rename this monument, where do you stop? New Orleans may not be a celebration of the confederacy, but it’s marbled with it, like gristle. There’s the Beauregard monument at the entrance to City Park, not far from the Jefferson Davis Parkway. There’s Palmer Park, named after minister Benjamin Morgan Palmer, who gained some fame for declaring it the duty of the south “to conserve and to perpetuate the institution of domestic slavery as now existing.” And there’s Calhoun St., named after John C. Calhoun, who once said that “we have never dreamed of incorporating into our union any but the Caucasian race. … Ours, sir, is the government of the white race.” How far down are the shadows cast? Should the highly regarded Isidore Newman School be renamed because its namesake once donated to a fund for the Beauregard statue, implicitly hailing the man who defended slavery?

Those who revere symbols must know that, in their reverance, they also revere what the symbols symbolize (for Pete’s sake, that’s why they are called symbols. They symbolize).

Indeed, the very energy with which they attempt to deny that (“The war, suh, was about economics, not slavery”) attests that, on some level, they do in fact recognize it and the hypocrisy that attends their reverence.

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1 comment

  1. George Smith

    July 24, 2015 at 5:18 pm

    Historical year, the summer in which the mainstream media, thanks to Dylan Roof and many others, found it could no longer ignore the corrupt bedrock of Whitemanistan that anchors the country.

    Now they’re finding how hard it’s going to be do to something significant about it that brings about a staggering change. Some will come to the awful conclusion that it’s quite possible, maybe likely, that this won’t be solved in their lifetime, that there’s worse on the way. Human history is as likely to tip toward the very bad as it is toward something more gentle and civilized. There are no guarantees for any country, this one not excluded. If America is destined to be an even bigger nightmare, it will become so in way unique in its own nature.

    Read a few pieces this week. One featured in the Post, “You can’t blame it just on Dixie,” or something to that effect. And other pieces, why, yes, it does all go back to the south. Yes and no. Both really.