National Park Service acting director David Vela on Wednesday discussed the complexities of dealing with racism associated with parks as the movement to remove Confederate monuments gains momentum nationwide.
Hes a coward and using “as a person of color” shield is offensive. He doesn’t seem to understand his service is a custodian for ALL Americans.
“Let’s talk about who put it up, why they put it up. The context, the lens that they used in putting it up, and then give you more information,” Vela said. “And then when you leave that visitor experience, you decide, visitor, what do you do with it?”
Okay…and what if we learn and find out it was put up to intimidate and terrorize a portion of the local population? What if we, the visitors, decide we want to tear it down anyway?
Vela said that “there’s no question that the vast majority of the protests and demonstrations have been peaceful,” but that it’s “painful” to see the defacement of statues and memorials on park land.
What about the pain felt by the victims of the hatred symbolized by these statues?
I have no problem with what acting Director Vela is saying, but that shouldn’t protect the statues that were erected in places that are not National Parks or Monuments.
Disagree, I he is trying say that statues in federal parks are there so that rangers can put them into context. I have no problem with this.
And it doesn’t.
Vela is correct in saying that explanatory signage or lectures and some historical context can lead to a greater understanding of our history—whether or not that history is pleasant or makes us uncomfortable.
If you’re talking a battlefield, I don’t mind a memorial or statue to the fallen on either side. But Confederate statues have been used to intimidate in the past. I think there are some that are clearly inappropriate in a diverse country and should be taken down. But in general, I’m not opposed to looking at the situation.
Statues are not stories, stories are. The stories will remain.
I do. It’s the wrong answer. Museums are the place where you put something into context. Leaving them in places of prominence only serves to continue to offer an air of legitimacy to the message.
There is exactly one statue of Lenin left standing in Ukraine. In Chernobyl, where for obvious reasons nobody was running around tearing it down.
Should they have left all of them up in the town squares to “tell the story”?
And the national parks are the peoples’ parks. One thing to have monuments at Gettysburg, another to have the author of the Trail of Tears commemorated right in front of the WH (that’s on land administered by the NPS).
removing statues or memorials paying tribute to Confederate figures, arguing that removal would risk removing “the stories that they contain.”
This is a weasel argument. I knew about Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and the rest of the traitors long before I had seen a single statue of them. And I knew the reason behind their treason: Slavery.
If you want the stories go to the freaking history books, those statues don’t talk, they are just to honor participants in a lost cause. Slavery happened, the civil war happened, and these men to the wrong side of the war, I see no need to honor them.
Speaking from my training as a former classical archaeologist here: These kinds of issues are not new, particularly in other parts of the world. Italy constantly struggles with the former monuments of Mussolini, which actually include the present day reconstruction of the Roman Forum, the multiple reconstructions of the monumental buildings surrounding the Ara Pacis, Fascist architecture in general, and hundreds if not thousands more. We can look to them and others and maybe have a more nuanced discussion ourselves.
with that said… I’m all for taking the monuments down but I do think it’s important that we talk about how when and why they were put up in the first place, and really get dirty with that history. I sort of see his point about their removal acting as a way to whitewash history so to speak, because if we don’t see them, we stop grappling with why they’re there.
And don’t forget, Bureau of Land Management is the original BLM.
Statues are often the product of stories—and some of the stories are true and some are not.
So we need to explicate the stories that go with the statues so that the historical context is accurately portrayed and so that the reason for the statues’ existence can be understood—whether that statue is in its original location or has been removed to a museum.
The ones I think should be removed are the ones in front of a city hall, or county court house, and those that were not erected on federal park lands.
Those that were erected 1890-through the early 20th century are there to remind the “colored” folks where their place is and not what Reconstruction brought.
Why is everyone missing my point and Vela’s that he is talking about statues in National Parks? Vela, acting director of NPS has no say over statues and monuments erected on private land, county land, or state parks.
Take them down
That’s a possibility but I was persuaded otherwise, by this:
“I’ve had conversations even today about the position of the Park Service is that we’re not tearing down, removing any statue or memorial,” Vela said. “If we do that on park land, we then remove the stories that they contain. And if those stories are further sanitized in the history text, we may completely lose that narrative. We can’t.”
Vela added that the role of the Park Service is to foster discussion if a statue or memorial in a national park is offensive to visitors.
“Let’s talk about who put it up, why they put it up. The context, the lens that they used in putting it up, and then give you more information,” Vela said. “And then when you leave that visitor experience, you decide, visitor, what do you do with it?”
I’m not suggesting that any particular statue should be retained – but Vela is making a decent point about history and how we can learn it.
They are just statues. They are not the fucking pyramids. They are statues that were put up with one motive in mind - to intimidate a large percentage of our population.
They were put up for the public. The public doesn’t want them anymore. Therefore they can go soonest.
OK . Where is the statue of Sitting Bull in Little Big Horn? Should we put a statue of Gerd von Rundstedt or Erwin Rommel on Omaha Beach? How about a statue of Chūichi Nagumo in Pearl Harbor?