![\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3ARobert_E._Lee_statue_in_Charlottesville%2C_VA_IMG_4219.JPG;](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/533\/2017\/08\/800px-Robert_E._Lee_statue_in_Charlottesville_VA_IMG_4219.jpg\")
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It occurs to me that the pro- and the anti-monument removal sides are having two separate discussions.<\/p>\n
The pro-removal side is really making some very good claims that the monuments never should have been erected in the first place, placing them in the context of Jim Crow and segregation and reinforcing white power in the early 20th century. \u00a0(They are then, in some cases, destroying their case by suggesting that any honor on anyone connected with slavery, even Jefferson or Washington, and every item commemorating Confederate war dead, even a memorial to POWs who died due to inhumane conditions, should be destroyed.)<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s not the question we\u2019re being asked in 2017. \u00a0We can\u2019t go back in time. \u00a0We\u2019re now being asked whether these monuments should be removed, and it seems to me that this\u00a0carries with it a different set of messages, at least to the ears of (some of) those (whites) living in the South:<\/p>\n
\u201cYour ancestors were evil and, however they may have lived their lives, it\u2019s all corrupted by racism and slavery, and has no redeeming value.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will overrule you because we have more power than you do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yes, objectively, that\u2019s not what anyone is saying. \u00a0(Well, except for Democrats who gleefully announced that all future elections were guaranteed to be in their hands because white voters would die out and be replaced by Latinos.)<\/p>\n
And, yes, that\u2019s not what objectors are providing as their reasons for objecting, and, no, I don\u2019t know such individual personally; I\u2019m just guessing that their objections are more deeply-felt than an abstract commitment to \u201chistorical preservation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Plus: \u00a0the latest talking point is, \u201cbut the Germans didn\u2019t erect statues to Rommel after World War II.\u201d \u00a0But they did, for many years, comfort themselves with the belief that it was only \u201cother people\u201d who participated in the regime\u2019s criminality; they themselves, or their own parents were just innocent soldiers, in the same way as many of these generic \u201cConfederate soldier\u201d monuments are about soldiers just falling in battle no differently than if they\u2019d been on the other side. \u00a0And for years upon years Germany has struggled with this question of how far you go with asking your people to collectively atone for their ancestors; during our stay there, when Germany hosted the World Cup in 2006, it was considered to be the first time in generations that Germans were happy to wave their flag in a way that we Americans consider as normal. \u00a0What\u2019s more, there\u2019s a lot of wrestling with to what degree Germans are \u201callowed\u201d to discuss the ways in with Germans suffered after the war, especially those expelled from the East, and not long ago I read an article discussing the growing desire among young adults for Germany to be a \u201cnormal\u201d country.<\/p>\n
Which means that you can\u2019t point to the Germans and say, \u201cthe good, and right, and healthy-for-the-country thing to do is for anyone connected up with white Southerners is to follow the example of the Germans\u201d \u2014 not because I think I have the answer for whether the Germans\u2019 response was right or wrong so much as it illustrates the fact that there is no \u201cright\u201d, simple, easy answer when you can\u2019t go back in time and undo what\u2019s been done.<\/p>\n