The police killing of George Floyd sparked widespread protests and reignited efforts across the U.S. to remove Confederate and other statues viewed as symbols of slavery and racism. J.D.M. August 30, 2017 . Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get stories like this delivered directly to … That “from elsewhere” is the key: that is where the actual history is found.). Barricading archaeological sites, because they are the places where the physical world of the past is literally unearthed and given its initial context. The events of the pastB. Removing the statutes reflects a sea change in who we, as a society, honor. So what then would be an erasure of history? He said addressing these monuments isn't erasing history. A statue of Christopher Columbus is seen with its head removed at Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park on June 10, 2020 in Boston, Massachusetts. Email her at fcoleman1953@gmail.com and “like” her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/prfrances. That does not even speak to the thousands of black people who were murdered in those public spectacles called lynchings. Our statues are monuments of the state of our democracy as much as they honor our beloved. Until I was in my late teens, we made their offspring an underclass in this country. … No, Removing Monuments Isn’t ‘Erasing History’ by Crystal Marie. And we look at the places and landscapes where, and artifacts with which, events happened. Erasing history, though, is a dangerous path because it means that the truth becomes something malleable that has been created instead of recorded. It does something more important than that. These will be questions I will tackle in my next post. The statues themselves don’t tell us much at all. The notions about that war which my father’s generation had were certainly colored by the memories of their grandparents. They bear little information content for you. “Always” last about two generations. But that is not the same thing as itself acting as a vehicle for historical information. To wit: Would the removal of [this thing] notably limit our ability to understand the history of [this event]? This isn’t a matter of not erecting new statues, this is … (Tim Bradbury / Getty Images) Who if anybody does deserve such an honor, especially when everybody is flawed (because they’re people)? Community Rules apply to all content you upload or otherwise submit to this site. Is the removal of Confederate monuments and the names of Confederates from streets and military installations “erasing history” as so many who oppose those moves contend it is? A group of neo-Nazis who stormed the University of Virginia’s campus aimed to defend the statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, who led the traitorous army during the Civil War. © 2021 Advance Local Media LLC. To say this “erases history” is to miss the point. Is removing a statue erasing history? (A point reinforced here, I hope, because I entirely made her up; but anybody walking up to a statue or seeing a school name for the first time travels in that very same ignorance as did you — unless they have gotten historical information from elsewhere. There has been a call for their removal for many of those years. ( “Well,” one meme seems to shout, “that’s like blaming a little Japanese child for Pearl Harbor.”). What does that have to do with history? There are and have been many routes to damnatio memoriae, including the destruction of depictions, the removal of names from inscriptions and documents, and even large-scale rewritings of history. Burning books, because there are no richer or more efficient sources for sharing historical material and the understanding of the past that their analysis permits. I wholeheartedly concur. Shuttering historic houses, because they provide insight on the daily environment in which historical actors moved. They bear the raw material from which understanding of history is built. Removing racist monuments is about making history, not erasing it We need to memorialize more statues of trailblazers such as physician Vivian Pinn by Andre Perry November 7, 2017 March 30, 2020.

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