Statues are strange things. They can be anything from a kid’s shaping of a handful of clay, to a cement turtle in the garden, to a massive marble equestrian representation of an emperor.
They don’t mean anything more than a pencil sketch, but for some reason they sometimes seem to.
My wife and I travel a lot, and have seen a great many statues.
Some notable examples are; Nelson atop his column in Trafalgar Square in London, the 56 figures of military notables in the lobby of the war museum in Vienna, and the Merlion in Singapore.
These are all public monuments, paid for and maintained with tax dollars. That fact matters a great deal.
If I wanted to put a statue of some wretched creep up in my front hall, it wouldn’t be anybody’s business but my own, although my wife might have something to say about it.
In the case of public monuments, there is a purpose behind the expenditure, and it need not be limited to carved stone and bronze. It can also be in the form of street names, or murals, or what rivers get called.
As they are public displays, they should be under the control of the public who pays for and supports them.
In my province, there was an area known as the Queen Charlotte Islands. This is a name that Captain Cook slapped onto the map. He named it after his ship, that in turn was named after the wife of King George III. It stuck for a long time, even though it was about the most arbitrary name you could imagine.
Eventually, this was changed to Haida Gwaii, which was the preferred term given by the indigenous people of the area. The Haida people make up about half of the 5,000 or so modern residents. They wanted the new name, as did a majority of the non-indigenous residents. With no reason at all to keep the old name, the government switched it to Haida Gwaii.
Strangely, there was a backlash from people who live nowhere near Haida Gwaii, had never visited Haida Gwaii, and hadn’t the slightest idea who Queen Charlotte was. I guess people just don’t like anything to change.
I live in a province called British Columbia. Let’s drop the British part of the name for now. That leaves Columbia.
I guess I live in Columbia. For a while, this area was known vaguely and unofficially as Columbia, after the Columbia river. The Columbia river was another of those places that got named after an explorer’s ship; this time the name’s source was the vessel Columbia Rediviva.
This ship was built in Massachusetts, and one would have to assume named after the explorer Columbus. Of course, Columbus never sailed anywhere close to Massachusetts than the island of Cuba.
So, my home is named after an area, that was named after a river, that was named after a ship, that was strangely named after a Spanish explorer who never visited the area, or the river, or the place where the ship was built.
Stick on the word British, and you have a pretty stupid name.
Would I be averse if a more meaningful, lyrical, or clever name were proposed? I suppose I might not be willing to march in support of such a change, but nor would I be willing to march against it.
But getting back to statues.
Am I marching to remove marble representations of horrible people? Am I marching to keep them? Not at all.
It is a big problem in the United States right now, and it’s all because of a movement that grew towards the end of the 19th century.
An entire mythology was created to make the failed, slavery-based Confederacy into a glorious and noble legend. This was mostly within states that had made up that Confederacy, but was not limited to them.
Statues went up to glorify Confederate Generals, and US military bases got named after them, as were public schools, and city streets.
A very uniquely American phenomenon, considering that these men were not only fighting to retain the morally bankrupt practice of slavery, but were also traitors to the United States itself.
Black Americans were expected to happily walk down streets named after men who wanted them to have remained slaves, past statues of others of the same ilk, and, once schools were desegregated, send their children to schools named after yet more. All of the while paying taxes to maintain all of it.
Now, there is a serious movement to rectify all of this. People want the statues down, and the other things renamed.
A glaring example is the flag of Mississippi. Their original flag was the one that they actually used during the Civil War. It was white, with a star and a tree on it.
In 1894, almost three decades after the War was over, it was changed to three coloured bands, with a Confederate Battle flag covering the upper left quarter. It remained that way until June of 2020; just a few days ago.
Keep in mind that 37.3% of Mississippians are African American. And this was the flag that flew over all of their civic buildings, and over their schools. They have never been OK with that, but for some reason the supporters of the pro-Confederacy mythology managed to fend off all attempts to remove this symbol of slavery, and of treason.
Finally, the state got a governor who said he would sign a bill that would change the flag, and the legislature promptly passed and sent one on to him. Suddenly, the Confederate flag no longer flies in any official capacity within Mississippi for the first time in 126 years. Instead, they only fly the American flag.
The sticking point currently for these changes is mostly revolving around statues of Civil War Generals. People want them gone, and others want them to stay.
A lot of people in power are deciding to be on the right side of history, and getting rid of them with great speed and no fanfare. The alternative would be to try and defend the stupid things, causing more conflict between law enforcement and the general population than is already occurring.
A few states continue to resist the trend, and in those areas statues and memorials are being vandalized and some destroyed. It seems to be only a matter of time before the trend towards removal overtakes these areas as well.
Then, of course, there is the president. Desperate to hold onto any kind of constituency, he has decided to take up the task of preserving the memorials and statues honouring treasonous, slavery-supporting individuals.
As it doesn’t look like Republicans in either the House or the Senate are willing to follow him down into this cesspool, the president will only be able to respond with bluster.
Where does it all end?
Hopefully with no more military bases named Fort Bragg, or Fort Hood (or any others named after Civil War generals who helped kill American service men), or statues erected to promote the myth of the noble confederacy, or kids forced to attend in schools named after people who fought and killed to keep them in slavery.
And if somebody wants to pull down statues around here of individuals with shady pasts, I won’t mind at all.
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