Last Sunday we published in these pages a wonderfully written and deeply thought-provoking , headlined: “I’m black. Robert E. Lee is my ancestor. His statues can’t come down soon enough.”
It felt good to run the piece. Finney’s amazing story made for a nice bookend after a week The Denver Post editorial board spent thinking about and with to President Donald Trump’s outrageous decision to honor white supremacists in placing equal blame on counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Va.
But I’m certainly aware of arguments to the contrary, and I wasn’t sure I shared Finney’s conclusion. In responding to Trump with editorials, we didn’t directly address the Confederate statues question.
Thatap not a flaw in our editorial response. The question about the statues is separate from the question about whether to condemn the neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members and white nationalists whose torch-carrying demonstrations led to bloodshed and death. What Trump did was wrong, no matter what you think of the statues.
But still, I heard that irritating voice, saying: “Come on, Plunkett. Make up your mind. Where do you stand?”
As hard as it is to believe, this son of the South had not done the hard work and soul-searching necessary to really, truly settle on an answer.
Call it a serious character flaw, and you’d be right. Call it white privilege. Call it my Southern heritage, which comes with a big dose of guilt when it comes to that awful war.
Finney’s argument is a sound one. The Confederate statues weren’t erected at the conclusion of the war, but decades later, during the murderous Jim Crow era.
The statues were put up to keep black people down. To remind African Americans they once were slaves. To keep them in their place.
The Confederate statutes are unique. They honor traitors to our country who fought to keep the institution of slavery alive.
In siding with Finney, I would argue the statues are more like a racial Berlin Wall brutally dividing the populace. Comparisons to those of our nation’s founders who owned slaves miss that point.
I read another column last weekend, from The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan, that I also admired. Noonan argues for keeping the statues. They serve as important historical markers that challenge us to consider the full reality of our national history. They are avenues of communication between the generations. Abhorrent they may be, but they represent us nonetheless.
I entertained siding with Noonan. As a journalist and editor, I know how creepy it is to think about endorsing censorship, which, even if you’re removing the statues as an act of reconciliation, is what you’re doing when you remove something from the public square for ideological reasons. Unlike an actual Berlin Wall, the statues don’t literally divide a people.
In siding with that argument, my added takeaway would have been that keeping the statues is important if only for the fact they are clear reminders that Americans should always be on guard. The statues usefully remind us how wrong our governments can be, and what evil we have overcome.
In Colorado, we have a statue of a Union solider at the Capitol. The local troops it honored also took part in the Sand Creek Massacre, where more than 200 Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians, mostly women and children, were slaughtered. As The Denver Post’s Danika Worthington recently reported, nearly 20 years ago, to the piece explaining that horrendous episode. Tribal representatives argued at the time that keeping the statue and affixing the plaque was a better solution than trying to erase the past. The statue still stands, and we’re richer for the memory.
My take on what to do about the Confederate statues is not to remove them, but remember there is a third option.
Add a plaque, and take it a step further.
Stick a white flag on those heinous statues.
Americans brought the great evil they represent to its knees and forced it to surrender — twice: in 1865, when the Union beat the Confederates, and 1964, when passage of the Civil Rights Act ended Jim Crow.
Commemorate those victories, and some of the insult falls away.
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