A thread about statues.

The point of a statue is not, as many people seem to think, to keep history alive. No one who commissioned a statue of George Washington was concerned that he would otherwise be relegated to the dustbin of the American experience. 1/8

The point of statue is not to remind us of who someone was—the point of a statue is to declare a public alignment with the identity and values represented by that person. A statue says “This represents who we are as a people.” 2/8

A statue says “We hold up this person to the public as a representative for what we, as a society, hold dear.” It is not a window into the past, but a message about how we see ourselves NOW. 3/8

In fact, if we don’t already know who the person memorialized in the statue was, it can’t even do its job. What does the general public make of a statue of Ulysses S. Grant? What values am I meant to aspire to? I was a history minor in college and I don’t fucking know. 4/8

Well, here’s what a statue of Grant definitely DOES say, regardless of who Grant was or what he was intended to represent. It says: white men are important. That’s really all it CAN say today, unless you’re a civil war buff or real big into the politics of the 1870s. 5/8

Listen: Nobody who was going to care about Ulysses S. Grant was going to take their inspiration from a statue on a courthouse lawn. Nobody looks at a bronze likeness of a bearded white man from the 19th century and thinks “Oooooh, tell me more!” 6/8

And yes, Grant was kind of hot, as presidents go. But that doesn’t matter. 7/8

My point is, since these statues are developing a nasty habit of falling over lately, we should take the opportunity to ask: who are we as a community? Who is INCLUDED in that? What values do we want to share with each other? And who best represents those values NOW? 8/8