If Statues Teach History, What Lessons Will We Learn?

“If someone kidnapped your child and sold them, where would you want us to put the statue of that person?”

The words of this meme circling the internet should hit hard, should be obvious. It should be the mic drop to end all mic drops in the conversation about whether we should remove statues celebrating those who gladly engaged in and fought to maintain the oppression of Native and black Americans.

Yet, even here, the cries of dissent ring.

“That erases history!”

We absolutely must learn and remember history, but statues aren’t built to objectively tell history. Statues are built to commemorate, to celebrate. We don’t erect statues of Adolf Hitler, Osama bin Laden, or Charles Manson to ensure we don’t forget history. There will be no statue to COVID-19. You memorialize the victims, not the victimizers. Taking down a statue celebrating a racist who violently fought to maintain racism does not erase the history behind it. It is the bare minimum starting point in ending the celebration of those who don’t deserve to be celebrated. We can still have museums. We can still read books. 

Speaking of reading, you really should look into when and why most of the Confederate statues were built. Check out the History.com article “How the US Got So Many Confederate Monuments”:

“Most of these monuments did not go up immediately after the war’s end in 1865. During that time, commemorative markers of the Civil War tended to be memorials that mourned soldiers who had died," says Mark Elliott, a history professor at University of North Carolina, Greensboro. 

“Eventually they started to build [Confederate] monuments," he says. "The vast majority of them were built between the 1890s and 1950s, which matches up exactly with the era of Jim Crow segregation.” 

The history we learn, the history we teach -- with or without statues -- is far too often warped and whitewashed. White Americans have mastered erasing history and culture, hiding our atrocities, minimizing the recognition of contributions from those who aren’t white males, distorting the perspective. 

If you want to talk about concerns with erasing history, let’s make sure we put real discussion into the curriculum of our schools, and in society in general, about the thirty-five city blocks and three hundred lives that went up in flames in Tulsa’s Black Wall Street and the four years of internment camps we forced Japanese Americans to endure. Let’s look at the violent oppression of union organization. Let’s examine the forced, and then broken, treaties. Let’s look honestly at the massacres and the Trail of Tears, and who still sits on the twenty-dollar bill. 

Let’s discuss the forced Christian conversion of Native Americans, the imprisonment and withholding of food that punished Native Americans for following their own religious practices, and the massive removal of Native American children from their families and often from the tribe itself and into white homes. 

Or maybe Americans simply know less about these atrocities because they aren’t marbleized into a white man seated on a horse.

Let’s realize that the American Indian Religious Freedom Act and The Indian Child Welfare Act weren’t passed until my lifetime. 

Let’s, on this Juneteenth, stop pretending slavery ended immediately with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and that Civil Rights were fully gained when Rosa Parks could finally sit at the front of the bus.

Let’s recognize there was a loophole in the 13^thamendment.

Let’s admit systemic racism still flagrantly flourishes. 

Let’s work to change it. Even if it means some statues of Columbus fall into a lake.

Let’s stop proclaiming the importance of statues of people from one hundred and fifty years ago at the same damn time we tell non-white Americans they shouldn’t be concerned about what happened a hundred and fifty years ago.

Dissent to the meme continues:

“No one alive had their children sold into (mainstream American) slavery!”

No one living today was a Confederate either.

You are literally demanding respect for your heritage while insisting others ignore theirs. 

Read that again.

Your heritage violently oppressed theirs. We try to be less violent and obvious in our oppression today, but we sure strive to maintain it, to celebrate it. 

When awarding Colin Kaepernick the Sports Illustrated Muhammad Ali Legacy Award, Beyoncé expressed, “It’s been said that racism is so American, that when we protest racism, some assume we are protesting America.”

“If we take the statues down, when will it stop?! Do we change street names too?”

Dismantling centuries of systemic racism (that continues to thrive and that many of us continue to profit from, whether intentionally or not) is messy and hard and damn uncomfortable. But not nearly as uncomfortable as having that racism directed at you. Not as miserable as suffering beneath the heavy weight of racism’s knee.

Do we change street names? Sure, that's easy. We’ve changed street names many times in the past.

City names? We need to at least be willing to have that discussion. To think the names Custer, South Dakota, or Jackson, Mississippi, feel welcoming to all is to blindly bask in white privilege.

Change racist names of sports teams? Definitely.

We ask children to walk into schools literally named after people who would have considered them less than human. We tell students we care about them while celebrating those who very clearly didn’t, so I’m sorry if you feel our “history” would suffer if we changed school names. Our history sucked. It is time to build on compassion and justice, not blind allegiance to things that make us comfortable.

Pause your defensiveness and truly stop to think, to feel, to attempt to understand.

If your child was kidnapped, sold, raped, and murdered, and a statue was built honoring the killer, would you want your descendants to just accept the statue? 

To have to attend schools named after this oppressor?

Would you want our society celebrating holidays in their honor? 

Or would you want those statues, and the mindset that still celebrates and defends them, toppled to the ground?

There is a vast difference between remembering our racist past (and present) and celebrating it with popcorn and confetti.

19 Jun 2020

History.com: How the US Got So Many Confederate Monuments

Variety.com: Beyonce presenting award to Kaepernick

Smithsonianmag.com on the American Indian Religious Freedom Act

Daily: The Devastation of Black Wall Street

Chronicle of Social Change on the Indian Child Welfare Act

"All Lives Matter" is Just Racism in a Fancy Tie

Your options are:

Black Lives Matter

- or -

Black Lives Don’t Matter

You can dress it up in whatever phrasing helps you to sleep at night and pray on Sunday, but that’s still what you’re saying when you dismiss the first option. And the world is listening.

18 Jun 2020

Artificial Oppression Obsession

A black stormtrooper 

has got me all stressed

Somebody help me,

I’m being oppressed!

On the card in the mail,

“Happy Holidays” was expressed

I can’t believe it,

I’m being oppressed!

I heard someone speak Spanish

and now I’m depressed

When will it stop?!

I’m being oppressed!

Wearing a mask

makes me distressed

Fucking Costco

has me oppressed!

I fix women’s words

when they’re a little messed

Mansplaining, they called it

I’m being oppressed!

I ask for naked pics

when I friend request

They dare to block me,

I’m being oppressed! 

They shout “me too”

when I molest

Like that’s even fair?!

I’m being oppressed!

Twenty-six rifles

strapped across my chest

A background check?!

I’m being oppressed!

Forced to bake a cake for a couple 

I didn’t want to be blessed

Oh, how I suffer!

I’m being oppressed!

For Straight Pride Parade,

I got all dressed

Nobody came,

I’m being oppressed! 

The confederate flag,

my heritage professed,

banned at NASCAR?!

I’m being oppressed!

I only watch Fox News,

they’re just the best,

and they all agree

I’m being oppressed!

For White History Month

I continue to press

but they refuse,

I’m being oppressed!

I said hi to a black man

at our church as a guest

so I can’t be racist,

I’m being oppressed!

I shout “all lives matter” 

at your dumb protest,

I’m the one 

who’s being oppressed!

15 Jun 2020

Watch video performance

I Guess All Amendments Didn’t Matter

After every mass shooting

since the tragedy at Columbine,

I hear the same damn 

automatic recording

escaping your lips

“Don’t punish  

responsible gun owners!”

You insist any meager

attempts at gun regulation

infringe upon your rights,

no matter how many

children lie beneath the rubble

The price of freedom,

the smoking gun

Yet now, as the president

calls for those guns 

to be turned on protestors,

enraged at the actions of a few,

I hear not your vocal defense

of the constitutional rights 

of the responsible majority

only your nods of agreement 

or your chilling silence

Could it be that you value

windows and buildings

above the lives of the children

forced into lockdown drills 

inside our schools? 

Or is your devotion 

to constitutional rights

limited to the amendment 

that came immediately after the first?

4 Jun 2020

It Was Long Past Time to Prune the Tree

A few bad apples, 

they said

Apples laced with poison,

apples that kill

Apples left 

in the barrel,

long after we 

noticed their rot

Protected by the other apples,

who rally around them,

declaring poison is

standard apple procedure

Protected by 

qualified apple immunity 

to the laws of the land

Protected by a society

that too often looked away,

or found a flaw with

how the victim chewed

once upon the past,

or simply disliked

the color of their teeth

The poison 

lingering, festering,

dripping onto the 

apples below,

waiting for the next 

unsuspecting bite

The other apples claim

the bad ones wouldn’t

have killed if you had

been in better health

You should have been able 

to withstand the poison

6 Jun 2020

watch this poem being performed

Your Signs Hurt My Senses

To my neighbor 

with the nine Trump signs

lining your driveway,

I see you’ve been on board

with the re-election campaign

since he first lost the popular vote,

eagerly anticipating

how many more pussies

there were yet to grab

I see your signs as a wall,

a feeble attempt to keep away

those you’ve never met,

yet still somehow despise

I see these signs 

forming the cage

surrounding and trapping

those naïve or hopeful enough 

to think they could seek

refuge in a country

that treated them 

slightly less shitty

than the one they

were running from

I see them as a wall

around a uterus

you have tried 

to seize from its owner

I see your signs as a cry

to open the beaches,

letting us swim with sharks,

our torn flesh feeding

the unquenchable economy

My closed car windows 

don’t prevent my ears

from hearing your

regurgitated epithets of

“I’m not racist, but…”

 and “all lives matter” 

and I imagine the 

mental gymnastics 

you must practice 

each morning with 

unfaltering dedication 

to allow yourself 

to believe your sincerity 

in either claim

Your signs scream with

the piercing pops of gunshots

and the rumble of tanks,

a war you have declared

to silence the protests 

against an injustice

you pretend does 

not even exist

I hear your 

boastful proclamations 

that facts are irrelevant 

and science is a liberal plot

you’re too smart

to fall for

I smell the sexism,

the racism, 

the entitlement,

and the stench

is more than 

I can handle

Not wanting to get

close enough to touch, 

I quickly make the turn 

towards the respite 

of my own home,

with the poor taste

still lingering in my mouth

25 May 2020
stanza added 3 Jun 2020

Kickball and Brimstone

We line the recess fence,

metaphorical lambs 

being led to what I hope 

is only metaphorical slaughter

The whispers begin,

even before the captains

commence the long-winded

explanation of rules

If you kick the ball

with the wrong foot,

Jerry claims,

God boots you off

his team immediately

(I didn’t even know

there was a wrong foot)

They say there was a time, 

adds Pearl, 

God drowned his whole team

for not listening, 

except for just one family 

and a couple giraffes

(The stakes were higher

than I thought)

Satan starts with his rules

“Eh. Whatever.”

(Oh, or maybe not)

But God pulls out a book

that brings groans 

from its sheer size

(I got lost in the begats

and admittedly tuned out

for a time)

I love you, 

but if you don’t do it right,

God’s deep voice demanded,

your body will be kept alive 

and scorched for eternity

(Somehow I wasn’t feeling

all warm and fuzzy)

Satan’s eyes gleamed

at the burning part

(A bunch of pyromaniacs)

I decided I didn’t want 

to play after all

30 Jun 2020

Watch the performance with Brett Voina