This issue deals with how protesters are taking down statues of
historical figures considered as racists. I am not terribly fond of
the practice of removing statues. First, let me clarify that I do not
take much issue with statues to confederate leaders being removed.
Those statues were erected for propagandistic purposes. The figures
glorified by those statues do not have much a historical legacy other
than attempting to advance a racist and morally repugnant cause.
Likewise, I take little issue with statues of Christopher Columbus
being taking down. George Washington, Winston Churchill, and Ulysses
S. Grant I have much more of a problem with, however. I know that
each of those leaders held views which were problematic. I have long
despised the way we are taught about the founding fathers and other
historical figures in America. They are portrayed as unambiguously
good and infallible superheroes. I take issue with portraying history
in that manner. I think that we should be more willing to acknowledge
the flaws of historical figures that we idolize. On the other hand, I
do not think they should be written off entirely. We should take a
realistic view of historic events and not go to the other extreme by
portraying historical figures as simplistic, self interested
villains. Human beings are complicated and contradictory creatures,
neither wholly good or wholly evil. Our history and our greatest
leaders reflect this basic truth. Washington was not perfect, nor
should he be presented as a perfect human being, still, he advanced
liberal values that are precious to me. He might not have been
progressive by our modern standards, but he paved the way for further
progress to be made. We must acknowledge that progress does not come
easy, and it takes often takes painful centuries of work to complete.
Naturally, our Republic had to begin somewhere, it had to go through
stages of progress, and it is easy to look back from our modern era
and find that what came before is inadequate. That is the essence of
progress. We should celebrate that our country is more fair than
today than it was at its founding. Still, we must not forget that the
intermediate phase, wherein only one class of people could vote, was
a necessary phase of our Democratic experiment. Without it, we would
not have gotten to the place we are today as a society. It is
impossible to go from a monarchy to a modern constitutional republic
with universal suffrage in one single step. I think that we ought to
consider the time period these figures were from when we judge them.
We should consider whether or not their overall contribution to
history is good or bad, taking into consideration all of the
positives and all of the negatives. In some ways I am not sure
whether any human being is good enough to have a statue erected of
them at all. Nonetheless, we do have statues of these people, and we
ought to be more careful before we vilify figures who, while they
might have been flawed, stand on the right side of history overall. I
did not touch upon this in the issue in the comic, but I likewise
take issue with the idea of censoring problematic works from the
past, like Gone With the Wind. I have no issues with leaving it up
while including additional context(As HBO is doing), but it troubles
me that there are some people who would remove problematic works
entirely. Again, I think the overall intent of the work should be
considered. If a work is intended strictly as propaganda, then
perhaps it ought to be removed from circulation. I do however, think
we should be free to study works like Gone With the Wind and look at
their cultural impacts while separating the racism of the work from
other aspects of it. We ought to have the intellectual capacity to
study problematic works of art in this manner. The censorship issue
also bothers me because works like Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a
Mockingbird sometimes get thrown up as texts which should be banned
for racism. Perhaps there are parts of those works that are
troublesome, still, the overall message of those texts are anti
racist. Once you begin censoring artistic works, it is easy to get
carried away with it. I question where the censorship ends once it
begins. I can scarcely think of a single piece of classical
literature that does not have some viewpoint which is problematic by
modern standards. In spite of that, works of classical literature are
still important and should be studied. Part of me thinks that people
should be taught even maliciously racist works. They should be
exposed in their education to these views and be given the proper
context behind them, much like what HBO is doing with Gone with the
Wind. As people go out into the world, they will invariably be
exposed to racist views anyway. In my view, it is better for people
to be exposed to these views in some old, long, and some would say
boring, movie than from trolls on the Internet. If decent people are
banned from seeing or talking about these views, then people will
first be exposed to these ideas by racists. These ideas will not be
refuted, instead they will be glorified by those who present them and
some people will get sucked into the vile ideology of racism. That is
why I believe controversial things must be allowed to stand and to be
placed into the proper context. People have to learn about racism
from decent human beings who reject it so that they can recognize it
and defeat it when it rears its ugly head in the real world.
Friday, June 26, 2020
Friday, June 19, 2020
Friday, June 5, 2020
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