Ericka's 'Verse

We’ve heard quite a bit recently from various outlets about “False Equivalence.”  If you are unsure what that means, it is a logical fallacy wherein there appears to be an equivalence between two opposing arguments, when in fact one side has significantly higher quality and quantity of evidence.  Essentially, it is comparing apples with oranges.

I recently read an “article” that compared maintaining the Auschwitz concentration camp as an educational museum with the argument for maintaining the statue of Robert E. Lee that was the center of all the recent trouble in Charlottesville, VA.  Allow me to begin to unpack this particular false equivalence.

The argument the author made was that if we destroy our historical statues, we destroy our history, and we risk forgetting the atrocities of the past and man’s capacity for committing horrific crimes against man.  Whereas Germany, he argued, maintained Auschwitz as a museum as a kind of, “Never Again” warning, we should also maintain statues of American confederate figures like Robert E. Lee so as not to forget our history.

False equivalence #1: A statue of Robert E. Lee is part of our history and should be maintained just as the still standing Auschwitz concentration camp is a part of Germany’s history.  My eyes nearly bulged out of my head with that one.

The Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville is not a museum but a statue that is a monument to white power and offers no context or education.  Auschwitz is an actual museum that does indeed educate.  I’ve been there.  You can arrange for a guided tour.  And yes, it does positively remind people of the horrific atrocities committed by the Nazis that rose to power in Germany under a nationalistic movement led by Hitler.  It is a somber place of remembrance, honor, bravery, and of torture, slaughter and inhumanity.  It is not and cannot be treated lightly.  To step up to and into that place is to have your skin crawl, to have goose flesh, to have tears flow unabashedly down your face, to listen in awe of the stories of brave men and women who found a way to survive and help others survive.  It is to hear about how one woman who was a “privileged” detainee smuggled a piece of chocolate into the camp on her way and tell her daughter she was saving it for a special occasion, and later ask her daughter if it was all right if she gave that piece of chocolate to another woman in the camp who was emaciated and about to give birth, in the hopes that the woman might live through it.  A request to which her young daughter in a prison camp gladly acquiesced.  That is Auschwitz.

False equivalence #2: Taking down a statue of a prominent confederate figure would be like taking down Auschwitz.  This is patently wrong and quite frankly a really disgusting implication.  A statue of Robert E. Lee, as was just proven, is a rallying point for the alt-right, a lovely new term we’ve coined to cover the fact that it is a racist, violent, white nationalist movement.  That statue and others like it literally serve the opposite purpose of Auschwitz.

Let us take a brief walk through history.  In the 1890’s “Jim Crow” laws took effect.  It was a codified system of racial apartheid and method of disenfranchisement and subjugation of African Americans who fought for their freedom and who Lincoln fought to free.  Generally speaking, these laws were a southern-born attempt at maintaining segregation of blacks and whites. Virginia is considered a “southern” state.  The end of the Civil War was officially declared by President Johnson in 1866.  And while erecting a statue of someone on the losing side at that point in time may have been considered treasonous or at the very least seditious, it did not in reality take southerners long to figure out ways around the consequences of their defeat.

Jim Crow espoused the persistence of prejudice in our country.  Whites who came from old plantation families were rather bitter about having an end put to their cash cows after the Civil War.  They wanted to maintain a rather enormous stranglehold on human beings that didn’t resemble them, and they were possessed of an enormous lust for power they didn’t earn or deserve.  They wanted to find new ways of subjugating African Americans.  When African Americans protested in various ways, whites began erecting monuments to remind African Americans of what whites considered their “place” to be in our society, to remind them they could and would still commit atrocities against African Americans.

The particular monument about which there was more than a bit of fuss in Charlottesville was actually erected in 1924.  It was one of many in our nation that was meant to serve as a warning.  It was not meant as a warning of how we should be vigilant to guard against man’s inhumanity to man.  It was a warning to people of color to stay in their “place.”  It was a warning that chicken shit, ignorant, displaced white boys under cover of white sheets would be coming for them if they did not.

Statues like this are not historical landmarks.  They are not museums.  They are meant to educate in only one sense: We are still here and we are still coming for you.

As to the argument that we are destroying our history by taking these monuments down, I say two things:

1. Some faithful chronicles of actual events still exist and can be accessed by the intrepid (like people who can read), so no, we aren’t destroying history.
2. Auschwitz is a place of great reverence, solemnity, remembrance.  The statue of Robert E. Lee was, is and will forever be a simple symbol of intimidation.  Nothing more.  These two things simply are not equivalent.

The argument that maintaining a statue that is, according to the author of the article referenced, meant to serve as a warning about man’s inhumanity to man, is patently incorrect.  In response to the assertion that keeping a statue of a figure which serves as a constant symbol of intimidation is in any way comparable to the reason for maintaining the Auschwitz museum which actually provides historical context, extensive visual and verbal historical information, well sir, there is no gentle way to put this: You are a sick, ignorant, horrific being.  The statue of Robert E. Lee is not, as you argue, instructional or educational in the traditional sense.  It is a mind game deliberately designed to mentally attack those who would like to live equally under the law.

It and many statues like it need to come down.