What History can Teach Us

While music was long known to be the area that I would devote my professional life to, history was always a close second.  I was almost a college history major….ok, it wasn’t really that close, but when your dad works for a college that you could get free tuition to, but that college doesn’t offer your top area of focus, you have to humor him, right?  Plus, my grades and portfolio were plenty to get in to the program as a back-up…  What always fascinated me about history wasn’t the dates, or the wars, but the social development of cultures based upon learning from their history (or in many cases their lack of learning and their cyclic repetitions).  History can teach us a great deal of where we’ve been as a society, and how to avoid making the same mistakes, as well as offering ways to do things differently.  After all, those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it.  

Two issues lately, have grabbed my attention with regards to history.  One is the legacy of Christopher Columbus (or lack thereof), and the treatment of Civil War heroes statues.  Let’s start with Columbus.  Or really, any of the so called “discover’s” of the new world.  First off, Columbus was about as good a navigator as I am an engineer.  He set out to find India…and missed it by like 8 thousand miles.  But what he lacked in navigation skills, he made up for as a bullshit artist.  Because he managed to claim that he had found India…and got away with it because no one had really ever made it there (especially going west).  Thus, we can attribute the fact that the Caribbean islands are sometimes known as the “West Indies” to Columbus’ terrible navigation skills.  

Second, the whole point of celebrating Columbus is that he discovered the new world.  Well discovery implies that he was….shall we say the first to the party?  Columbus was hardly the first to discover the American continents.  You can look back at Amerigo Vespucci (where we actually get the name America) who very likely beat Columbus to the Americas, but there is debate amongst historians.  Or you can look even further back (like hundreds of years back) to the ancient Vikings who settled in present day north eastern Canada.  Or you can go even further back to the time when the original indigenous people (Native Americans) likely travelled to the America via the land bridge from Russia around the end of the last Ice Age.  So to say Columbus discovered the continent, is wrong in many accounts.  

Then, there’s the atrocities committed.  There’s the genocide.  You can point to any conquistador, any hero of exploration, and death and disease followed them.  Hernan Cortes?  He stole from the ancient Aztecs, and introduced European diseases to the population which all but wiped them out.  Columbus?  He wiped out communities that inhabited modern-day Hispaniola.  Pizzaro? Did immeasurable damage to the ancient Incas.  And so many others can be painted in these terms.  

So why do we continue to devote an entire weekend in October to celebrate this rosy picture of a genocidal con-artist who’s also likely a giant fraud?  Well, for one thing, our society does love the idea of the European discovery (*cough* white man’s) of America, because we also casually speak of how these “heroes” brought civility to the masses.  And its easy for us to brush away how incredibly horrifying that nature is.  Think about Pocahontas (the Disney movie).  Bravo to Disney to romanticize “Their savages…savages, barely even human… now we start the drums of war (or rather the Europeans started the process of wiping out the Natives, because let’s face it, the Natives really didn’t stand much of a chance)” And a crazy, representative of King George (voiced by the immortal David Ogden Stiers, rest in peace), wants to rape the land to make…what’s the word again? Right Little Mermaid…MONEY!  Its all about money and wealth.  But damn its also a good movie….

I really figure that what we have to learn from Christopher Columbus, is that we need to open our eyes and embrace all the viewpoints on things.  We can’t be manipulated by the media (because history can be manipulated depending on who is telling the history…imagine the game of telephone, but done deliberately), we must do the research and not leave any viewpoint of the story out.  It seems far too easy to ignore the suffering of a people we don’t know or can’t relate to.  And for me, that leaves Signore Fraudulumbus a bit out in the cold.  

Now the other issue these days, is how we remember the big-name players and events of the antebellum south before and during the Civil War.  I find that these symbols carry a bit of a double-edged sword.  We can’t ignore history just because we don’t like it.  There are so many reasons why the Civil War was fought (slavery was only one of the reasons, although you can make a valid argument it was the root and therefore intertwined with other economic and social issues), and there are many who still feel the vibe of the antebellum south, and many that are disgusted by everything it stands for.  It was a rebellion after all.  And in any other country, a rebellion isn’t so celebrated, allowed to exist, as the symbols of the Confederacy have been in this country.  In any other country, the defeated would have eventually just faded away (that’s without taking a step into Reconstruction which for more info check out my post: Why Is America Still Racist).  But not in America…which is both a beautiful thing because we are the nation that accepts anyone, even those who disagree with us, but also damaging and dangerous. 

So what are we to do with symbols like the statues of Civil War generals, or even the flag of the confederacy itself that still to this day is in the Mississippi state flag (although just today, they might’ve passed a resolution through the MS state government to get rid of it)?  I find myself trying to balance two things:  1). These symbols are celebrated in the south.  They don’t just exist, they are celebrated.  The Confederate flag and Nazi Swastika are almost synonymous with each other in terms of being symbols of hate and oppression.  It is a rallying point for gatherings of white supremacists, and associated with violence and oppression of people of color.  2). We cannot simply eliminate these things because we are ashamed (rightfully so) of what they represent.  Because history is about learning.  And burying our heads in the sand, and pretending these things didn’t happen isn’t an effective way to learn…its only an effective way to forget.  And forgetting they ever happened is the most dangerous thing we can ever do, because it does nothing to keep them from happening again.  I fear a society that has become ignorant of these events ever taking place…our children never learning…because the stench and sentiment of racist isn’t going away.  Its being cultivated in the minds of the young and impressionable right now.  In the North, we might think its far, far away in the evil Deep South where it can’t effect us, but that’s so far from true.  Its on the street where you live.  Its your next-door neighbor.  Hell, at times, its even you (even when you don’t intend it to be).  If we take away the history that can teach us to be a better society by reminding us where we’ve been, we’re leave ourselves defenseless to the pervasive poison of racism that will eventually consume us and knock us back a few hundred years.  

So what are we to do?  Knocking down a couple statues might be a symbolic move now, but statues can’t be racist to anyone.  It’s what we choose to do with those ideas that matters.  Think about a line that’s practically the credo of the NRA:  Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.  We must evaluate whether the destruction of these statues is to bury our heads, or to extinguish dangerous ideologies that are inhumane and have no place in a civilized 21st Century American society.  If its the latter, destroy the statue.  But if its the former (and even if its the majority the former) be extremely careful.  Those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.