The Seattle Times once editorialized that it wasn’t really a big
deal that the state was named after a slave holder; in fact Washington is the
only state in the entire country that is named after a person (although
Virginia was named in “honor” of the “virgin” queen Elizabeth), and the
powers-that-be had to pick a slave owner. The
Times suggested that George Washington actually treated his slaves “well,”
and he was of course a product of his times, so he shouldn’t be judged too
harshly, and the citizens of this state can go to bed with a guilt-free
conscious. Of course it is just hypocritical; wasn’t it just dumb luck that the
state had Martin Luther King Jr. available to stand in for the former
slave-owning vice president King County wished to “honor”? Geez, were the first
residents of this territory Southern transplants?
Maybe we can rename the state
after Denzel Washington. Should I ask that brother who is being paid to be a
security guard, whose been down here in the break room for the past hour? I guess I’ll have to wake him up first.
Meanwhile, the current fad of
tearing down statues seem to me to be increasingly more about simple nihilistic
vandalism that it does concerning historical reality; pick a name and you will
find some skeleton in the closet (feminist hero Margaret Sanger was an adherent of Nazi-style racial and class eugenics theories and policies). The vandalism
of Albert Pike’s statue in Washington D.C. has excited the ignorance of both
Donald Trump and those who tore it down and burned it; Pike’s statue was in
commemoration of his Freemason ties, not because he was a Confederate general.
Pike was in fact a life-long supporter of the rights of Native Americans; he
agreed to a commission in the Confederate Army in order to enlist and lead a
contingent of Native American soldiers in support of the Confederacy, with the
promise by Confederate leaders to Native Americans within their jurisdiction that
they would have their own “state” if the South won the war. However, Pike came
to disbelieve this promise, and along with it his support of the Confederate
“cause.”
But the destruction of statues in
San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park this weekend was even more the action of
numskullery. I could understand why Francis Scott Key’s statue was torn down,
because he was a slave holder and possessed clearly racist views, rendering his
“The Star Spangled Banner” the subject of derision even in his own day for its
hypocrisies. Why it was chosen as the national anthem in 1931 over the much
more benign and more melodic “America the Beautiful” is something that should
be debated. Yet it has been sung millions times before sports events in this
country, and quite often proudly by black singers, for whom the racism of its
author is not an issue worth considering. I mean, if there was ever a reason
for athletes to kneel during the National Anthem, this would be the reason for
it. Yet there has never been a discussion to change the anthem itself, which
makes the destruction of the statue symbolic of nothing more than cynicism.
Then there was the toppling of
the statue of Spanish Catholic missionary Junipero Serra, a priest and
Franciscan friar, whose statue in Los Angeles was also taken down and
desecrated. Note that media references
to Serra fail to point out that in Catholic circles he is known as Saint Junipero Serra. This time the
historical ignorance and hypocrisy of the people responsible is even more
palpable. Serra is an important figure because he helped lay down the “civilizing”
that would become the foundation of the state of California. Serra’s mission,
as he saw it in his time, was to “save” the native peoples he encountered both
in Mexico and in California from a fate in “hell” because they were
non-believers. Why should we disbelieve his sincerity in this mission? Yes, he
attempted to enlist native peoples into the Catholic faith. Yes, he attempted
to force those who agreed to do so to live and work on mission lands. Why did
he do so? Because he knew, rightly, that if he allowed the “converts” to leave
and mingle with the unconverted they would likely reconvert, and his efforts
wasted. Serra was not some “monster” who enslaved native peoples. He also fought
to remove military interference from missionary business, which he believed was undermining his work.
Today, Native American Catholics in
California have a much different view of Serra than those who view him merely
as an oppressor, and unlike Anglos who invaded the rest of the country,
Serra—like the Spanish generally—did not attempt to drive Native Americans off
their land and onto reservations, but to convert them into “Spanish”
citizens for population purposes. The non-Hispanic Californians who are
supporting and participating in the violence against his statues actually are
hypocrites bar none, because what their ancestors did to Native Americans after
the seizure of California from Mexico was far worse than what the Spanish did
here.
Even more stupefying is the
destruction of the statue of Ulysses S. Grant. Like I said, everyone has a
“skeleton” in their closet—including those people engaged in this destruction
business—and so why shouldn’t Grant? His “sin” it seems, was that unlike his
abolitionist father he was at least before the Civil War more ambivalent about
slavery, mostly due to the fact that he was married to a woman whose family
owned slaves in Missouri. Before he became a hero in the Union Army, Grant was
mostly a failure at business. This included his stint as a farmer in Missouri,
where his father-in-law “loaned” him a few of his slaves to help him build a
house and work in his fields. Grant himself was no slave driver; he worked in
the fields alongside his “hired” help. It was observed that Grant was “ashamed”
of using slaves and was himself no good at making them do any work because of
his easy-going nature; because his father refused to give him loans to help make
a go of it, Grant gave it up and returned to Ohio.
Grant did in fact acquire one
slave which he kept for one year, before freeing him with no conditions on his
return to Ohio. Grant certainly deserves more credit than he is being given by
the vandals. He agreed with Abraham Lincoln that Union victory was made more
probable by emancipating slaves, and that enlisting black soldiers would have a
demoralizing effect on the Confederates. Grant also refused prisoners exchanges
unless all captured black
soldiers—including former slaves that the Confederates insisted on
keeping—were part of the exchanges. Grant also maintained the Reconstruction
policy throughout his presidency, which white Southerners to this day still decry,
but was necessary to enforce the 13th, 14th and 15th
Amendments to the Constitution against recalcitrant former Confederates, who
after Reconstruction would soon promulgate Jim Crow and the peonage “system”—i.e.
a form of slavery under a different name.
Grant also supported Native
American rights, to a point. His military secretary during the war was Ely
Parker, a Seneca Indian. As president he sought to reform the Indian affairs
division, which he believed (rightly) was corrupt to the core, and appointed
Parker as Commissioner of Indian Affairs, with the expectation that with
sufficient resources, Native Americans on still large reservations could be
converted into your typical average American citizens. Not all Native Americans
favored this, but Grant and Parker’s main adversaries were the wealthy Americans
on the Commission of Indian Affairs, mostly businessmen who sought to exploit
the Natives and enrich themselves through government contracts. The commissioners
had powerful allies in Congress, many who were outraged that a non-white like
Parker could be in a high position of authority; Parker was in short order
ousted on trumped-up charges, and the previous corrupt practices were
reinstated, which led to greater conflict between Native Americans and the U.S.
government and its military forces when Grant left office.
And then it gets even lower. The
statue of Miguel de Cervantes was defaced (although not destroyed) in the
Golden Gate rampage. What was Cervantes crime? Well, nothing, except that he
has a Spanish name, which is the excuse for many a racist crime in this
country. Cervantes, of course, is basically known for one thing, and one thing
only: He is the author of Don Quixote,
widely recognized as the first “modern” novel, and perhaps the most influential
work of fiction, ever.
What is that saying, about giants
being torn down by midgets?
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