I'm sure people will accuse Princeton of "erasing history". That's backwards. Keeping Wilson's name meant ignoring the facts that disqualified him from the honor. Acknowledging history is the opposite of erasing it.
What they call erasing history is always really just people removing the whitewash. And it's striking how many public monuments and history books this applies to. Wilson, Columbus, Confederate generals, Jefferson, Washington...
The "erasing history" argument has a lot of problems, not least of which is that it's stupid. It's not like this erases Wilson from history textbooks. If monuments were simply how we learn about history, we'd need a hell of a lot more statues. With placards. Long placards.
Names on buildings and generals on horseback are- obviously- about more than history. They're forms of honor. Statues of Robert E. Lee literally put him on a pedestal. We all know this. It shouldn't even have to be said. "Erasing history" is transparently specious bullshit.
John Wayne Gacy is a historical figure, yet no one feels the need to put a statue of him in a public park. It would be completely inappropriate to honor a mass murdering sociopath like that. Right? So why is a statue of Christopher Columbus okay?
Most of the statues we're talking about are colonizers and slave owners. Many led armies against indigenous people, or fought to defend chattel slavery. In other words, they used violence to advance two of the most brutal and sweeping forms of white supremacy. Sociopaths.
With so many statues of men like that, it's easy to see it as a feature not a bug. In the case of Confederate statues, it's undeniably that. They were put up as displays of dominance, meant to intimidate. This history matters too.
And the men who weren't honored for being white supremacist sociopaths were honored in spite of it. The message is either "defending white supremacy through violence is good" or "defending white supremacy through violence is irrelevant". Both boil down to "we're in charge".
The monuments are public celebrations of white supremacist violence. Their defenders want to gaslight us into thinking otherwise. Anyone that doesn't join them in the gaslighting is "erasing history". The whitewashing is the truth.
This is abuse culture.
This is abuse culture.
This post by Briana L. Urena-Ravelo on abuse culture is really worth reading, and it's so relevant here.
medium.com/@AfroResistenc…
medium.com/@AfroResistenc…
Living in a white supremacist country means living in abuse culture. It means being surrounded by white supremacist violence, and being told we're not. Abuse culture calls police brutality "law and order" and says the Second Amendment is about "life and liberty".
And because the modern GOP stands for white supremacy (and patriarchy, oligarchy, ableism, and Christian supremacy), its goals and messaging are completely dominated by abuse culture.
rantt.com/brett-kavanaug…
rantt.com/brett-kavanaug…
"They want to abuse their power, and their base wants to see the abuse. They want to gaslight us, and they want us to see the gaslighting. It’s all just different ways of expressing domination."
rantt.com/brett-kavanaug…
rantt.com/brett-kavanaug…
Urena-Ravelo and @C_Stroop both make the point that the dynamics of abuse at a personal level are repeated at larger scales. Abusive governments are authoritarian governments.
Institutions that name colleges after outspoken KKK supporters are abusive. Governments that put slavers on pedestals are authoritarian. The debate over these monuments is about whether America should stay in an abusive relationship or leave it for the democracy we were promised.
