Hate and Heritage

I read an N&O article this morning (I read a LOT of newspapers at work) about students protesting and/or calling attention to the Silent Sam monument at UNC created to honor the UNC alumni and students who fought and died in the Confederate Army.

I know the common response from some southerners is "Heritage, not hate." That we should honor the lives sacrificed and lost in the Confederacy too and not only focus on slavery. But the two are intimately linked and it can't be ignored. As Southerners, as white people, as Americans--we don't have the right to pick and choose our history. We can celebrate our culture, our families, our hard work, but it cannot be taken out of the context of the hate and cruelty that permeated every aspect of life (and continues to influence us today).

This means that Silent Sam shouldn't be removed from campus either. It would be similar to the whitewashing of history by removing nigger from Mark Twain's Huck Finn.

But saying that the monument only honors the lives of men who died is also a false interpretation of history, because I believe it is more true that the statue was originally created to remember the movement, rather than the individual lives lost. "Heritage not hate" is bullshit--Julian Carr, Civil War vet who was at the unveiling of the statue in 1913, is quoted in the N&O article to have said the monument was erected to honor the soldiers for preserving the white race.

Lives lost are lives lost, and no one wants to discount their physical sacrifices and suffering. But only focusing on those sacrifices ignores the larger implications of the Civil War and American history in general.

There cannot be a discussion about the Civil War and not have slavery be a significant part of that conversation.

I am not advocating removing the statue. But like students quoted in the article, I hope the statue "spark(s) dialogue and provoke(s) critical thought."

If this is simply about remembering lives lost, then we have a problem in representation. If we think about the number of lives lost on slave ships, plantations, police brutality and lynch mobs--its a massive number. I have no idea what it is, but if we think about that number compared to the number of lives lost on the Confederate side of the CW, you would think there would be at least an equal number of statues commemorating black movement leaders, or monuments to honor the unnamed, unremembered, and undocumented deaths of slaves and later black American citizens who were treated like animals.

I love my country and the people who make up this country. Being critical of our history isn't a reflection of a desire to "move to Canada" or an attempt to erase an intense white guilt. But truth is always better than fiction, even if it's tough to hear.