Conversation #12: America's Confederate Monuments (August 20, 2017)
Grace and I discuss America’s Confederate Monuments. What is the context in which these monuments were put up? What is the conservative take on coping with the recent anti-monument insurgency? What was the state saying when it backed the erection of these monuments, and to whom? What would a contemporary Civil War monument look like? What should be done with these statues? And when it took years to get Confederate flags taken down from state houses, why does it seem like this is now happening all at once?
At one point, I mentioned the descendants of Sherman. I was actually thinking of the descendants of Stonewall Jackson.
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This is the article in The National Review that suggests conservatives may best serve their long-term goals by doing nothing about the Confederate monuments:
There is no need to join in with the vandals and the iconoclasts, even if we sympathize with some of their good-faith reservations about Confederate memorials. But to the extent that the iconoclasm here mainly consists of local authorities making democratic decisions about the disposition of public property, there is a case for political quietism in this matter.
Here is an article on the “lost cause” myth.
Here is an article on the history of the Confederate monuments.
Here is another one.
And yet another one, about the statues in Baltimore.
Robert E. Lee opposed building Confederate monuments.
Stonewall Jackson’s Great-Great-Grandsons called for the removal of Confederate monuments.
This is a link to Corey Brettschneider’s book When the State Speaks, What Should It Say? How Democracies Can Protect Expression and Promote Equality.
Just a note about Baltimore: it wasn’t exactly a sudden impulse that led to overnight removal of the monuments, and it wasn’t exactly a decision made by white leadership on behalf of white interests. Baltimore both is and is not a city with strong pro-South history, and the cultural trend for a long time is away from pre-WWII romanticized Confederacy identity, not toward. The current mayor, Catherine Pugh, came in, earlier this year, already primed to address the disposition of the handful of Lost Cause monuments. Baltimore has strong black representation in elected leadership generally, today, moreover — not, of course, that the elected leaders necessarily serve in the interests of those who elected them, and not that there isn’t a powerful corporate, unelected leadership in the city that is largely not black. (Bears noting that a popular meme following that momentous night-time action seems to misconstrue things in a different way, in that it suggests that Baltimore could act now because there’s an African American and a woman in the mayor’s office, when in fact this is Baltimore’s third black woman to hold the seat.)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment. I don't claim to know much about politics in Baltimore, but it's good to hear that it wasn't done precipitously.
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