Written at Work: Toppling

[minoanmiss]

Written about 10 PM tonight at work, with a postscript.



During an otherwise lovely work day, I did my best not to listen to TVN* and another couple nurses discussing current events. I have never been so grateful for call bells going off.

Also, I have made a decision not to argue with people about whether the Confederate monuments should come down. It's not going to do
my any good to bang my head against that one. I don't need a statue to remind me that people fought for the right to keep my ancestors
subjugated as possessions instead of allowing us full legal personhood, nor do I need a statue to remind me that those assholes lost. It is nice to see at least a few people demonstratively not lionizing the slaveholders, though.

ETA: I need to remember this through the next few days as I keep seeing person after person after person decrying the removal of Confederate monuments. It won't do me any good, especially not as a Black woman but also as a sentient and tender-hearted soul, to argue with them.

Comments

[lilysea]

I am sorry your workplace is being so rubbish about the statues coming down. :(

The statues coming down feels long overdue.

They can always park them in museum archival storage somewhere if they want to, but at least they won't be in people's faces every day, causing hurt, harm, and inciting hatred against people of colour...

[minoanmiss]

A museum of You Lost And Don't Get To Own People Anymore would be so awesome. :)

My workplace is... medical people, especially nurses, often are kind of conservative. At least they're not murderous about it, I suppose. sigh There are times I've gotten into it with my coworkers but yesterday I decided not to. One must pick one's battles.

Thank you a lot for your sympathy and commiseration. :) hugs you acrsoss the Internet

[julian]

I'm like... historical information does not have to be provided by uncritical memorializing, people.

Also: Oy. Sympathies.

[sabotabby]

It's so weird to me. I don't see the Confederates, or any slaveholders, as morally different than Nazis. And I can't imagine that people would argue for keeping statues of Hitler up. And yet. Like I know, logically, that some people are bigots, but the fact that they actually don't seem to understand why it might harm the descendants of people who were literally enslaved by these fucks is beyond me.

[minoanmiss]

The bigots, well, whatever, they weren't going to listen to little Black me anyway. But a lot of people of goodwill still think it's 'historical revisionism' to take down monuments to slavers, as if there are no history books, as if a statue that says "YAY FOR FIGHTING TO PROTECT SLAVERY" is the same as a dispassionate textual analysis of a complex war.

.. I said I wasn't goting to get into it anymore. OTOH, commiseration is the oppositve --- what was I saying? I just spent ten minutes talking to a patient.

[amaebi]

I said on fb, "History is a long argument about competing stories. Monuments are religious artifacts."

I have only fairly recently realized that the majority of USians seem to identify scholarship with Knowing Facts, and of course history is a subset of scholarship. I'm still trying to digest this nasty big bolus and figure out what to do with it. Probably I'll be dead first.

[cellio]

Ugh.

I heard a comment recently (I don't remember who said it) that the best place for those monuments is in history museums, where they can be presented with their context. I like that idea; it answers the challenge of "you're trying to wipe out history" (u, no) while reducing the ability for veneration. And it educates the next generations, who need to learn more than just "statue, so must be important".

[johnpalmer]

Arguing is no good, but if you wanted, a very simple point, like "I don't understand why people revere the confederates as heroes," could be useful.

Note: that's not intended as a start of a discussion - just a note that one might inject before leaving/tuning out. Let the other person realize what they're doing and saying, and let them think about how indefensible it is.

[minoanmiss]

one would think, but for some people, any statement is an invitation to a harangue (which is their half of the argument one is trying not to have). wry smile