Changing the Conversation: A progressive argument for not tearing down Confederate statues

The current debate about Confederate statues and monuments is too polarized and leaves little room for creativity. The Charlottesville rally is one violent flare-up in an infuriating debate that often seems to leave room for only two options: leave the monuments standing, or tear them down. But there's a third option: update them, make them part of a new conversation about today and tomorrow.

The challenges presented by monuments are hardly new or unique to the United States. Through my work with memorials and monuments in contexts as diverse as Bosnia, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, Germany, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and Spain, and many others, I have come to see every monument as a conversation. In our normal lives, conversations take many different forms, from shouting matches to dinner table discussion. Unfortunately, many of the Confederate statues in the South can be seen as the worst kind of hostile and unconstructive conversations: where an aggressive interlocutor is yelling and not listening. This resonates with the origins of these monuments, of course. They were built to intimidate and to establish a narrative of white supremacy.

We need to change these conversations. Instead of yes/no debates, these statues can be used to generate conversations that will move us forward. We need to push the conversation away from the original and ongoing hatefulness. This won't be easy, but, in some cases, at least, it could be a constructive move in terms of values of inclusion, democracy, and human rights.

Many monuments and memorials should be updated, made relevant for our time by taking a “layering” approach: leaving some of these statues, even ones that many consider offensive, in place, but adding new layers of interpretation to them. We should add new information or include stories that have been made invisible or silent. This can be accomplished by placing alternative interpretations alongside each statue or monument; by adding new plaques and explanatory materials; by creating interesting audio tours and podcasts; by telling fuller stories (such as those told by slaves and former slaves about their experiences); by asking artists, poets, comedians, historians, and storytellers to use the statues in their work. This can be clustered around a single question: what does this monument mean to us, today, as Americans?

There are no immutable and fixed interpretations of the past: our interpretations change with our times, and our memoryscapes are more like a palimpsest than an engraved tablet. By purposefully layering and actively engaging with monuments, we are also engaging with history and collective memory.

One good example of ordered layering is the small Herbert Baum memorial in Berlin. This wonderful little gem of a monument was commissioned by the city council of East Berlin in 1981 to commemorate an anti-fascist resistance group, the Herbert Baum Group. In 1942, some 25 members of the group were arrested, tortured and either killed or sent to concentration camps. The original text on the memorial described this historical incident, and then, almost as an afterthought, proclaimed the "eternal friendship between the German Democratic Republic and the Soviet Union." In 1990, with German reunification, designers added a thick transparent piece of plastic on which they inscribed a new narrative, while the previous one can still be seen through the clear plastic. The new narrative says the memorial "documents the brave act of resistance in 1942, the conception of history in 1981, and our continuous remembrance of resistance to the Nazi." Passersby can see both narratives.

Another significant example, on a larger scale, is the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, a complex space that includes varying descriptions of what happened on August 6th, 1945, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. Memorials and monuments built in the early aftermath of the war have different interpretations than memorials built later. Most dramatically, some of the later ones acknowledge that Japan was an aggressor in the war. The layers of memorywork show a progressive relationship and dialogue with history. The space is crowded with different and diverse memorials telling various stories. Wandering through the park and through the nearby museum gives a visitor—including tens of thousands of school children every year—a complex and nuanced understanding of that moment in World War II. 

Where does this leave us? First, we should look at every controversial monument and ask “what is the conversation here and is it possible to shift that conversation?” It might not be. Perhaps the conversation is too infused with toxicity and vitriol. However, we should not dismiss the possibility of a new conversation too easily. Second, in some cases, we should use public and private resources to open up adjacent areas to the statues for new memoryworks: reinterpretations and counter-monuments. Third, the creation of these should be subjected to public bids for proposals. The scholar James E Young has written that some of the most exciting and interesting work about history and memory is done during the process of receiving and reviewing proposals, when committee members (and often the public) engage in dialogue and debate about how best to remember the past. Committees should be put together that include creative cross sections of our societies, including by bringing experts and people from various disciplines, regions, and even other countries. These committees should be as sequestered from rancor as possible, make a pledge to seek what is in the best interests of the country, and asked to review and engage in real dialogue to come to a consensus or majority vote about new memoryworks to sit alongside the old statues.

This proposal has risks. Indeed, the process might be loud, complicated, chaotic, and sometimes messy. Edward T. Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt’s 1996 edited volume about the rethinking of the Enola Gay exhibit in Washington (History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past), when a committee of experts and historians became the center of highly politicized accusations, can provide a cautionary tale. But the current process, such as it is, already is many of those things. Our current cultural, social, and political moment demands new and constructive conversations: in some cases, at least, the statues might offer a place to start.

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Louis Bickford is the CEO of Memria.org. He has been working on questions of collective memory and remembrance for 20 years, including as the former Director of the Memory and Memorials program at the International Center for Transitional Justice. He is also an adjunct professor at Columbia University and New York University. ([email protected])