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So how about the call to cancel “Hamilton”?
I like Lin-Manuel Miranda’s response.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/07/entertainment/lin-manuel-miranda-hamilton-slavery/index.html
If some people choose to “cancel” it, so be it. However, I don’t see many people adopting this stance. I’m seeing thoughtful discussions that give me hope that we are evolving when it comes to matters such as race, systemic injustice and both the history and future of our country.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/confederate-statues/ is an article discussing when Confederate statues were put up in the context of major historical events and periods in the US.
Union monuments were put up in that same era so I don’t think the history fits. According to the National Battlefield trust, most Union monuments on Civil War battlefields were erected between 1880 and 1916. Most Confederate monuments were built between 1900 and 1918. Huge Union monuments like the Illinois memorial at Vicksburg (1906) and the Pennsylvania monument at Gettysburg (1914) were placed during that same time.
The Victory column at Yorktown (Revolutionary War) was dedicated in 1884. The Statue of Liberty (1875 to 1886), the Lincoln Memorial (1914-1922), the Grant memorial (1902-1924).
It was the era of that type of monument and statue building. I wouldn’t read too much into the historical timeline other than that.
Let he/she without sin be the first cast in stone (or bronze).
I am pretty sure that none of the people who tore down the statues has ever kept slaves nor have any of them ever fought and killed people in order to protect slavery. So they’re pretty safe in that.
However the sentiment is kinda useless. What that says is that, since nobody is without sin, no crime can be punished, no law enforced, and no innocent person can be protected. After all, how can you send a child molester to prison, if you even have a parking ticket? How can you sit on a jury for a mass murderer, if you have had a beer in public where it is prohibited? If you once drove 7 miles over the speed limit, you cannot stop a person who is about to set a school on fire.
All of those things are “casting stones” which you claim should be prohibited from anybody unless they are 100% innocent of every crime or misdemeanor.
What do they do at Washington and Lee college? Take down all the statues? Change the name of the college?
They are talking about doing just that.
^ they are reviewing whether to change the name. The faculty just voted to change it. Now, the board of trustees has formed a committee to review the matter.
I’m still not sure what Stevie Ray Vaughan did to get his statue defaced in Austin.
I know a lot of things Chuck Berry did, but his statue stands in St. Louis.
W&L had a commission study the matter (among other things) in 2018.
https://my.wlu.edu/presidents-office/issues-and-initiatives/institutional-history/response-to-the-report-of-the-commission-on-institutional-history-and-community/report-of-the-commission-on-institutional-history–x22410-ml
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/05/29/washington-and-lee-faces-unusual-challenges-confronting-its-history
Although the commission recommended not changing the name, it did recognize that “W&L’s affiliation with its namesakes — particularly R.E. Lee — greatly limits the school’s ability to attract diverse students, faculty and staff. This is a concern, as the school remains one of the least diverse liberal arts institutions in the nation.”
^ That commission was in response to the Charlottesville demonstrations. Several changes around the school were made at that time. The committee I mentioned above was formed today. I’ve heard of several options mentioned for a new name. Washington in Lexington or Washington & Lexington are probably my favorites.
@mwolf Please re-read what I posted. It was a play on the biblical quote you reference in your response. Those without sin can be the first ones cast in stone/bronze. So we only make statues out of non-sinners which mean we don’t make statues of anyone. I think they are silly and arrogant.
And if we are to judge people memorialized in stone/bronze by the then standards of the day going forward to the horizon, we will always find reason for fault. Racial issues, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, etc. What things are being supported today/norms of today’s culture that will be rejected by future generations? What to do at that point with statues built to honor those who supported those things back in the day?
Statues also seem very outdated to me. Way of preserving your image for all time (or at least a long time). We have many different wants to accomplish that today. We can preserve moving pictures and words of people (both great and bad) forever without ever erecting a motionless and silent statue.
John Chavis University?
^ yes and I don’t like it myself. I prefer ones that keep it as close to W&L as possible. And nothing with Liberty in it to be confused to Liberty an hour away
It provided a visible vertical surface, that’s all. It has happened before, in January 2018, and in Feb 2018, and was as related to Vaughn as those were.
Graffiti on a statue is not always a politically motivated attack on the person who the statues commemorates, you know.
BTW, statues to civil rights figures have been defaced and damaged, to the point that some have had to be protected with bullet-proof glass.
^^^As was Michaelangelo’s “Pieta”.
I don’t get your point in this comparison. Are you telling me that the people who kept on shooting at the monument to Emmet Till are similar to the people who randomly try to vandalize a place because it’s famous? That IS a bit of a stretch, you know.
The argument that statues of people who revolted against the US government in 1860 should be taken down because they memorialize traitors is frequently made by people who don’t have very great respect for the current government of the US and have called for its overthrow. History is funny. Iconoclasm is usually a Puritan instinct. The drive for purity and cleansing fire generally comes from anti-art ideologues. Maybe realistic memorial statues no longer accord with contemporary artistic values, but that is another question.