Thread by @PLSOliveira, It's not that statues can't teach, but that they can also erase [...]

It's not that statues can't teach, but that they can also erase (often the very purpose of monumentalization). We see this dynamic in two representations of Thomas Jefferson in D.C, one at the Jefferson Memorial, the other at the National Museum of African American History.

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The more famous one, in the Jefferson Memorial, depicts Jefferson as an enlightened champion of freedom. It's the purest distillation of the Jeffersonian myth. It's not a presentation of a complex reality but an ideological fiction—his canonization as a Founding Father.

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While there is a reference to slavery, it is one that ends up shining more light on Jefferson's genius, rather than his paradoxes. The quote, which is an amalgamation of passages from various works, reads:

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It is worth noting, though, that the National Parks Services recently added a section on slavery in an adjacent exhibit.

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Compare the Jefferson Memorial with his representation in the "Paradox of Liberty" section of the @NMAAHC.

Jefferson stands in a posture typical of memorializing statuary. On the wall behind him are the revolutionary words he authored for the Declaration of Independence.

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But when you approach the statue you notice an unfinished structure. You notice that there are names carved on the bricks. There are 609 of them, and most have a names carved into them. They are the names of the people Jefferson enslaved throughout his life.

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Why unfinished? Well, obviously because the aspiration toward freedom was incomplete. Not only that, but it was built on the backs of those who were in chains.

The bricks without names are just as poignant, for they gesture to how slavery dehumanizes its victims.

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But Jefferson does not stand alone. Next to him are four statues.

1. Toussaint L'Ouverture, who led the Haitian Revolution—the only successful slave rebellion to abolish slavery and establish an independent nation (a nation that Jefferson infamously screwed over).

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2. Phillips Wheatley, the African-American poet whose complicated relationship with Jefferson reveals the complexities of his racism (he believed in the humanity of blacks, but thought they were infinitely inferior in intellectual abilities compared to3 other races).

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3. Benjamin Banneker, the AfAm man of science who clapped back at Jefferson for his racist views: "however variable we may be in Society or religion, however diversifyed in Situation or colour, we are all of the Same Family, and Stand in the Same relation to [God]."

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4. Elizabeth Freeman, the first enslaved African-American to win a freedom suit in Massachusetts, justifying her case through the very framework that Jefferson and his colleagues developed to justify American Independence.

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Each of these figures is presented with the same dignity as Jefferson. There's no submission, no obsequious posturing (unfortunately a common trope in a lot of memorials). They are agents of history in their own right.

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It's not that protestors (and many of us historians) are against monuments of controversial historical figures. But it is very disingenuous to claim that they teach us history if they do not provoke dialogue, reveal paradoxes, and make us question those we look up to.

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