Posted August 27, 2017 12:02 am
Are we trivializing our past, or simply lying?
St. Augustine Record editorial
One need only glance at this and the page to its right today to understand how overreaching the controversy over Confederate monuments and memorials has become locally.
Two things before we go on. You’ll see that none of the guest columns and letters to the editor published today take up the cause of removing these memorials.
This was not intentional. The fact is we received no submissions from the other side. In addition, there remain several pro-monument submissions that we had no room to publish today.
City Hall has been abuzz this week, trying to get out in front of the issue. There are demands from a prominent black minister in town to remove the memorials.
To be more correct, the municipal concern is over one monument, because only one is on city property, the obelisk on the east side of the Plaza. The Loring statue is on state property on the west side of the Plaza. One solution won’t fit both.
Friday, the city amended its regular Monday night agenda (tomorrow night) to include discussion of the issue. We can’t imagine that it will result in anything but “feel good” inclusion. More likely it will serve to sharpen feelings on either side. And it will not result in a decision.
There has been some talk of a referendum for city voters. Hastings has a special election scheduled in November. We looked into piggybacking a straw ballot (non-binding) on the memorial issue onto it.
Supervisor of Elections told us Saturday that is no longer an option, as a deadline passed Aug. 1.
So the hot potato seems to have landed in the laps of the five City Commissioners.
You’ll see plenty of opinions on these pages today. We hope some a strike a chord with readers — whether they agree with one or more or disagree with them all.
Here’s where we fit into the discussion.
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu issued a statement after the stealth removal of memorials there. In it he said, the removal “sends a clear and unequivocal message” about his city’s celebrating “our diversity, inclusion and tolerance.”
Maybe we’re a little dull, but does it occur to anyone else that pulling the statues down in the middle of the night opposed diversity, denigrated inclusion and showed a great lack of tolerance on the city’s behalf?
In ancient Rome, there was a name for that practice — damnatio memoriae — or “condemnation of memory.”
It was much more a political practice than one of social justice then, and that may well be the case today.
Some middle-of-the-roaders here have forwarded the notion that we move the structures to a museum. We do not see how that makes them less offensive under the parameters outlined by those protesting them.
In truth the statues are already in St. Augustine’s most palpable vessel of its past, the Plaza de Constitucion. It is the tangible center of everything we are, from the beginnings in 1565 until today.
Being on the wrong side of history is a judgment call. It trivializes our past, putting its cultural substance on capricious footing. Putting lipstick on the pig of history won’t make it pretty. It only drives it underground. And, God knows, that’s not a good place to be in this country these days.
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