The New York City Council voted to remove the statute of Thomas Jefferson from its chambers where it has been since 1915 when it was moved after having been in City Hall since 1834.
Annette Gordon-Reed, a black historian and progressive, wrote that while she understood why some people wanted it removed, the action;
"represents a lumping together of the Confederates and a member of the founding generation in a way which I think minimizes the crimes and the problems with the Confederacy"
I am an admirer of Professor Gordon-Reed and her book on Jefferson and Sally Hemings, about which I've written, but she is missing the point of the action. Removing Jefferson's statute is part of the ongoing insurrection designed to eliminate America's history and memory and replace it with a new story. Delegitimizing the American founding and its principles is the top priority for the insurrectionists. It's why the goal of the 1619 Project is to replace 1776 as America's founding. Lumping Jefferson in with the Confederacy is a positive in the worldview of the New Racists.
People of good faith like Gordon-Reed need to "wake up" and understand not just what is happening, but why.
There is an additional twist to the story of the Jefferson statute. It was commissioned and donated to the city by Uriah Levy, the first Jewish commodore in the U.S. Navy. Levy faced significant anti-semitism during his career and was an admirer of Jefferson's because of the Virginian's advocacy for religious liberty. It is Levy who was responsible for the initial preservation and restoration of Monticello, which had fallen into disrepair after Jefferson's bankruptcy and death in 1826. Even if they were aware of Levy's story, the New Racists would not change their view since Jews are seen as white and part of the conspiracy to manipulate the language and societal structures to oppress everyone else to their benefit. New Racist Randi Weingarten, president of the largest teachers' union, said it clearly when she denounced the "privileged Jewish ownership class" for allegedly pulling up the ladder of success after achieving power.
Insurrections are violent. Voting in representatives that will carry out your wishes to remove a statue is not violent.
ReplyDeleteStatues and monuments are not history. History is found in records, letters, etc., and taught in classrooms and books. Statues and monuments are tributes to the people being memorialized.
I agree that Jefferson should not be lumped into the Confederates, but that doesn't mean he needs to be memorialized, either. Of course, I prefer the "no heroes" take on these matters, so my judgement there is skewed.
Every time I leave a comment here I get an email saying that the notification to you is rejected because I am using yahoo.com account. I don't have a problem with this, it is just an FYI.
That's strange about your comment. I usually receive an email notice of comments but did not in your case. I can't remember if that happened with your other comments. Blogspot is quirky and seems to be getting quirkier.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment.
As to statues and history I partially agree. Since a lot of the controversy about them has arisen I've seen some object that the removal of any statue or memorial is "erasing history". I don't agree with that. There are certainly statues, memorials, school and street names that have been and could be changed that I've no problem with. I'll include the names of our military bases in that.
I do think that statues and memorials, or things that perform the same function in other cultures, serve a purpose. A country, a society needs to have some common memories, and some things of common importance. In the case of Jefferson his authorship of the preamble, the core aspirational statement of America, his advocacy for religious liberty and his authorship of the first national act to ban slavery (the Northwest Ordinance) qualify him in my opinion for someone suitable for memorials. That's despite the his flaws and not just slavery. TJ was behind the first dirty tricks campaign in American politics, authorizing anonymous attacks on Adams, Hamilton and even Washington, all the while pretending publicly he was above politics. The same false front led to his blowup with Abigail Adams which I wrote about several years ago (you can find the link in the right column of the blog).
As to insurrection I am not using the term as legally defined in the U.S. Code. But what I do term the insurrection started with the riots in May 2020, leading to the largest amount of property damage of any riots in American history, the deaths of at least 30 people and longer term a breakdown in personal security leading to more than a thousand more deaths (mostly black). Building upon this opportunity we saw a movement to purge all dissenters from our institutions that is still ongoing along with a growing intolerance of differing viewpoints. I don't see these activities or what happened in the New York City Council as separate, isolated incidents. They are all part of an overall campaign so that's how I approach it. While I saw some of this building up over the years, I underestimated what was going on and its potential impact since some of it was so crazy I could not believe a lot of people would take it seriously. No longer. If successful, America will be unrecognizable and Jefferson's aspirational preamble gone and replaced with something less desirable and more authoritarian.
A country, a society needs to have some common memories, and some things of common importance.
ReplyDeleteThis is an important idea that I endorse heartily. In particular, regarding Jefferson, I agree there is a strong argument for memorialization.
However, I see the protests of May 2020 and onwards, and many protests that had preceded them, as a call to engage with common memories and address things to be of common importance. What was the 1619 project, if not a call to take memories from one group of Americans and make them more commonly known? Is not an item of common importance mean that almost every American sees value in participating in, and if prevented from realizing that value, should we not address the barriers to realization?
If "common" just mean "What this group of men thought" (or less charitably, values that people I like tend to hold), then they are not truly common.
Without more specifics about what the common memories and things to be of common importance mean from your perspective I don't know what you are talking about. I do find it odd you refer to the large scale and destructive riots of last year, with the purges that followed, as "a call to engage", so I don't think we are using words in the same way.
ReplyDeleteI referred to "protests", and you immediately went to "riots". Many of the protests ended peacefully (such as the 3 that occurred a few blocks from my house), and many of the riots happened hours after a protest had been staged and ended. As with any large-scale phenomenon, there were multiple parts and multiple intents. I'm sure you would object to the increasing aggressiveness of some of the right-wing groups being applied to the conservative movement as a whole.
ReplyDeleteAs for some memories that are or are not common, perhaps you gave your children a 15-minute talk on how to deal with the police, but I certainly never needed to. I remember how teachers, the occasional police officer, and other treated my friends and classmates differently based on skin color. If memories come from experiences, it's hard to have common memories arise from vastly different experiences with society.
You are deflecting as though the large widespread riots and associated deaths had nothing to do with this. And the determined way those involved in the peaceful protests and their media allies pretended as though the violence had not occurred was a disgrace and the consequences for minority communities of their own policy responses since then.
DeleteAs to "the talk" my dad gave it to me when I was a teenager, so since that is the only specific you give it seems some of us do have common memories across the lines that we are told must separate us. But that is simply not relevant to what we are talking about.
This isn't about whether to teach about racism and slavery (yes to that) but whether to teach racism (no to that). You mentioned there is a strong argument for memorializing Jefferson. Well, you can't support the 1619 project then because its very point is that Jefferson's words were really a false start for this country. Its for the same reason the 1619 project materials downplay Frederick Douglass MLK and the Civil Rights Movement because they are seen as fundamentally in error by stressing our common humanity. This isn't about adding perspectives, it is about destroying the ones we have and resurrecting racial essentialism. It is taking us backwards, not forwards.
It was not my intent to deflect. Certainly the protests and the riots that occasionally followed were connected, if nothing else by the common anger that fueled them. However, it is just as much a mistake to falsely conflate the occurrences as to falsely separate them. For example, if you know the correct answer to this, you'll be the first conservative I've interacted with who did. From June 2020 through May 2021, how many BLM events had outbreaks of violence while BLM was running the protest?
DeleteJefferson's words, or more precisely the inapt way those words were followed up with actual policy, were a false start for many people. MLK's protests were always designed to be as non-threatening to white people as possible. You see it as concerning a common humanity, others see it as sacrificing full human expression for more limited gains.
I read several progressives as well as conservatives. I don't see race essentialism in their writing. I do see them discuss the way some vocabulary is abused to support de facto racist realist, and reject such vocabulary on those grounds. I don't agree with this approach, but I understand the impetus.
I didn't mention BLM in my post or comments so not sure what you are referring to. If it is the commonly reported figure that 93% or so of the protests were peaceful it doesn't cut it with me. It is like when I see people arguing that because more than 98% of those with Covid survive, it's no big deal. 800,000+ deaths is a big deal. The cumulative impact of more than a billion in property damages, primarily of minority owned businesses, sanctioned by progressive politicians who unleashed their paramilitaries and restrained their police, 30+ deaths in the midst of that along with more than 1,000 violent deaths, again primarily of minorities, over the ensuing months due to the absence of law enforcement and the refusal of progressive prosecutors to charge is also a big deal.
ReplyDelete