Symbols and Soldiers

As you traverse the highways and bi-ways of the US, going down on the map in the direction known as “South” you will notice some changes. First, it gets hotter and more humid, and this is not just the weather I’m talking about: I’m alluding to the intensity in the air, the tension that is palpable and almost tangible. Second, you will notice that people speak as if they have all the time in world to say what they need to say, you’ll notice how people speak at each other but don’t really speak to each other. People of all races will be polite, respectful and cordial, layering on loads of that social lubricant known as Southern Hospitality. Now, what you don’t know is what they say when you leave, but never mind that for the time being. The food gets better, and this might be my own bias, but you have cuisine that some claim to be their “heritage” but was actually mastered by melanin-sufficient matrons who had to slave away in kitchens to create a sort of cuisine known for its liberal application of seasoning and soul, but I digress, this isn’t about that.

As you continue your journey, and if you have keen eyes and are astute, you will notice the large but ironically subtle social divide that exists that everyone seems to abide by and no one seems to complain about. In fact, if you bring it up, people will politely and smoothly saunter away from the conversation. But don’t look there, look up, not to the heavens, as if your eyes are watching god, but lower. Look at that statue. Statues are everywhere, and they’re symbols for what and whom we value as a people, as a society and as a nation. Symbols mean something, they are supposed to convey that meaning to the people who come hundreds of years later to stare at them and take selfies. Come to my hometown of Richmond, Virginia, and you will witness many symbols: symbols that symbolize what people now and 200 years ago value. These statues are of men who lived lives that are thought to embody those values. Men who breathed and imbued traits that others wanted marked into the malleable minds of youth. So statues were raised idolizing these men as embodying traits that we should believe in and wish to perpetuate.

One of the most popular streets is called Monument Avenue, and it hosts a statue of Robert E. Lee, the foremost military strategist and top General of the Army of Northern Virginia. He fought to defend the Confederate States of America, and its capital was none other than Richmond, VA. His statue is in plain sight, with him sitting astride his horse looking benign and dignified as ever, as if he were even a hometown hero. Now, to many he is just that. Who was he really? He fought to secede in the Civil War and lost. In normal historical terms, when you break away from your country, raise arms to fight against it, and then lose, you are branded a traitor and all signs, insignia, symbols and anything else that holds your memory is wiped away with your cause into the trash bin of history. Following this logic, this four-year war would be deemed at least rebellion and at most treason, and its participants as traitors. But not him; Lee was treated as a hero and statues of him were raised all over Dixie.

Now, look at General Lee on his horse, gaze fixed on the distant forever, almost as if it were avoiding something, perhaps another figure, one that represented something he didn’t want to look at, someone he didn’t want to acknowledge, a statue of a man that he would have sneered at and would have thought of as his family’s slave. This other statue is of Arthur Ashe. Arthur Ashe was a not-so-famous African-American tennis player from Richmond, who was the first black man to win at Wimbledon. These two erected edifices are on the same street, directly opposing each other with only a few blocks' distance between them. This juxtaposition is emblematic of the nation’s internal struggle, its own angst and war with it self. One statue is its lighter side, its self-formulated image. The other represents its darker side, the ugly history it would prefer not to wrestle with. Yet, Lee’s statue is destined to stand guard, posted in the midst of this internal civil war forever, unless we relieve him of his command and take him down.

Both of these statues symbolize different things. General Lee’s statue was raised far after the Civil War, during Segregation, and symbolized what the people in power during that time valued and wanted to perpetuate. Ashe’s statue was raised in the 1990s and was the manifestation of a movement spearheaded by the state’s first black governor. His statue symbolizes what the people in power at that time valued and wanted to perpetuate. When the winds had changed and the tension eased—a little—those in power in the 90s deemed it wise to strike a more inclusive cord, that erecting statues of historically oppressed minorities would be a nod, not a walk, towards reconciliation. The two meanings are diametrically opposed and separated by drastic shifts in generational values. Lee’s statue, like many of the statues of his confederate compatriots (e.g. Stonewall Jackson), is targeted as a symbol of values and beliefs that a large portion of the country no longer wants to adhere to. And with these changes in the wind, so to speak, people are wishing to, and intend on, blowing Lee’s statue down. Some would have it remain untouched, and insist that dragging it off to an ugly grave is a futile gesture and an attempt at historical erasure. To some, these statues are an eyesore and an embarrassment, yet astonishingly, others even see these as a reminder of what the country thinks about them. And when I say a reminder, I mean a stark, powerful, potent, and a largely visible reminder, of heroes and men, values and visions, of hatred, of a world order that confines one to a place where men like Lee are too big to give space for others to live and be men, women and humans. In continuation, these symbols aren’t just symbols, they are monumental missives seen by citizens of color every day while commuting to and from work, running errands, and of course, while going to church.

Heritage is what these statues symbolize to some. A history enshrined in a glorious past with a life of luxury, full of the fruits of other men’s labor who shared the same hue as Ashe. Those who hold this perception fail to consider what this advantage meant to the rest. More importantly, this dynamic, this contrast, between two worlds and two perceptions represents a powerful distance. More aptly put, it’s a dissonance between two different collective cultural mindsets. This dissonance represents a wide gap between how these two different minds view American history and those players in it, as well as, how that history has affected humans of a particular hue to this day.

As a boy, I remember sitting on a bench in a park on the bank of the James River, looking out at the water, trying not to look to my left where a marble statue towers in commemoration for fallen Confederate soldiers. For most of my life I never really thought too deeply about it. What little I did think about it, was “Well, of course.” There was absolutely no reason to doubt or question what was the accepted status quo. To analyze and critique all that is around you is a trait and skill that comes with experience and education, not automatically, via childhood. While I was cognizant of the social and historical context that surrounded that monument, I had no reason to involve myself in an intellectual exercise to ascertain what the world would be like had this, or that never existed. Also, that monument served as a weight that anchored me to the reality that I was ensconced in; there was no use in doing myself the disservice of finding myself in the “la-la-land” of racial idealism.

Racial hatred mixed with Southern pride is wrapped in an esteemed sense of honor. It’s all too familiar, too normative and too pervasive to be questioned and analyzed by the outside. It’s a staple of southern life, a bond as sacred as earth and air. Somehow these statues and all that they symbolize have been stripped of the violence wielded against human souls ripe with toil. No matter how benign or beneficent one wants to deem Mr. Lee to be, he still fought for, and participated in a world where sentient beings were stripped of their self-determination, were stripped of their human agency, and were stripped of their fullest human expression. One’s determination to see it any other way is a direct and determined effort at closed-mindedness, at denial, and at a willful ignorance of the effect that that peculiar institution had on one’s fellow human beings.

How do you wish to create a nation where we harp about racial harmony and unity, when you deny and ignore other’s pain, and strip them of their struggle?

“We can’t erase history,” they claim. If we take down statues, then will we forget the Civil War and all its sorrow? Will it just slip from our minds in a fit of liberal leftist amnesia? Sure, Lee was something of a prime military strategist, as was Hitler. Did Germany leave any statues of him? Does Russia still commemorate Lenin? Countless heroes’ and heroines‘ stories are told in textbooks, and they don’t need statues. The erasure of history is not the real concern—one must not be deceived. For those who say these things, it isn’t history they are afraid of losing—it’s themselves. From South Africa’s toppling of the Rhodes statue, to the leveling of General Lee, I fear a vast portion of the American republic, and many other countries, feel these connected, but disparate, movements are an attack on them. I fear, and fear I may be correct in my assertion, that some people believe that the left is coming to strip them of the remaining pride they have. Men and women have avidly watched the black Obamas in the White House showing that America is getting browner, and have witnessed the increase of alternative narratives. Even interracial marriages have graced Cheerio commercials. Being that all this is happening, it’s important to understand the perceived attack that this is; an erasure of them, a rejection of them, their way of life and culture.

But let’s not get too carried away. Let’s not let these winds of change blow us too far. In fact, if memory serves us far enough, for our American way of life to have prevailed and evolved to today, many different narratives, histories, and cultures had to be erased. Other cultures’ perception of the world had to be usurped and discredited before the American interpretation could be flaunted as the only, best and truest. Remember the Native Americans.

So, let me ask: Why are there so many people afraid? And isn’t it ironic that so many mainstream Americans are so afraid that this is going to happen to them? If this did indeed happen, as they fear it could, they would not be the first to suffer this fate. Are they afraid that black and brown people will come to do to them what their ancestors did to others? Isn’t this projection? Why can’t they just relax? If I were face to face with them I would ask them a few questions. I would ask if one black president could erase the American identity? Can a few hundred interracial marriages annihilate them genetically? Can a few actors of color truly negate their historical narrative? Don’t you know that this fear, this anger, that is causing some to act in ways not befitting of a human of any hue, is only leading them to the dark side? To some of them I would say: You are afraid and because you are afraid you are angry. Your anger will lead you to hate, your hate will lead you to violence, your violence will do harm to your soul, even while you wish to inflict it on others’ bodies. In this ignorance you will destroy the very thing you wish to build, you will renege on the very ideals you wish to perpetuate simply because they aren’t manifesting in the way you would prefer: embodied by people who look like you.

If by chance I ever end up in a room with one who holds such fear, and they were open and willing to listen, I would console them and tell them for now, it’s still you on TV, it’s still you in Congress, you in the boardrooms and in the hallways of power and that’s true. You, and you alone, have a seat at the table where decisions are made. Decisions that hold sway over lives, lives that are influenced by your power and how ever you decide to wield it. All of the imagery that you see, the institutions, the cultural imagery, stories, tales, our heroes, and of course most of our presidents, are all a reflection of you. It’s still you...everywhere.