07.10.20

Why We Need Some Disturbing Statues

That is the argument of one of the more thoughtful articles on the current craze to tear down statues and monuments of imperfect heroes. The opening is priceless:

There once was a general who fought a war to protect slavery. That’s not how he would have described it. He would have said he was fighting to protect his way of life from a foreign invader. Whatever construction he put on it, his so-called way of life rested on the sweat wrung from forced labor on plantations and gold earned from buying and selling black flesh.

That general was Samori Touré. The West African chieftain is honored today by black nationalists for resisting French imperialism in the Mandingo Wars of the late nineteenth century, but thousands of Africans were enslaved by Samori’s raiders in the course of building up his empire. After his final defeat in 1898, for more than a decade, columns of refugees tramped into French Guinea to return to their home villages as they escaped or were liberated from Banamba or Bamako or wherever Samori’s men had sold them. 

Ta-Nehisi Coates named his son Samori, after the great resister. That means that Between the World and Me, the best-selling anti-racist tract of the current century, which takes the form of letters from Coates to his son, is addressed to someone named after a prolific enslaver of black Africans.

History is complicated, isn’t it?

Author Helen Andrew, senior editor at the American Conservative, has been mostly sympathetic to the calls for tearing down many statues, but

For me, a line was crossed this week when the faculty at Washington & Lee University voted to demand the school drop the second half of its name to erase its affiliation with Robert E. Lee.

Her article does not so much argue for Lee’s memory in statue and university name—though she makes a compelling case why we should continue to honor Lee--but moves to the larger argument: In a truly pluralistic society, there will invariably be statues and monuments and institution names that make some part of that society uncomfortable.

An Eclectic Philosopher

In the vein of thinkers you should be aware of, let me introduce Eric Schwitzgebel, a University of California (Riverside) philosopher, who I hadn’t heard of until this week. The title of the interview in The Scientific American should be enough to entice you to read more: “On Crazyism, Jerkitude, Garden Snails and Other Philosophical Puzzles: Eric Schwitzgebel investigates an eclectic assortment of mysteries with (unintentional?) irony and humor.”

What We Have Here Is Fundamentalism

Many pundits have noted the religious nature of many extremist movements today on the political left and right.  I think it more accurate to describe this tendency as secular fundamentalism.  That’s why I think David French’s “America Is in the Grips of a Fundamentalist Revival” is a helpful analysis of our times.

A Bracing Word for Silence

Another glimpse into the challenge of our times comes from an Orthodox writer, Stephen Freeman.  He notes the temptation of our age—and the antidote:

… silence, the reverence for words and the truth which they reveal, is almost lost in our age. Orthodox believers (to focus on ourselves) often multiply our “words without knowledge” as part of the same cultural drive to shape and control. Our proper task is not to shape and control, but to reveal. That requires that we must first and foremost be silent until the word given to us in that silence is truly heard, perceived and incarnate within us. In truth, if you do not live what you say then you do not know what you say.

Finding a Fellow Sufferer

Even if what our mothers tell us is literally true, it’s not the end of the world.  At least according to this poignant video, “A Cautionary Tale.”  Like me, you may not understand a lot of the characters until the credits at the end.

Grace and peace,

Mark Galli

Markgalli.com