I support removing Silent Sam. But do we have to tear each other down?
Raised by one mob and now razed by another, there’s poetic justice in the life and almost-death of Silent Sam.
And through it all the statue erected more than a century ago to honor Carolina students who died for the Confederacy has reflected the world around him. Once a memorial to bravery as well as a symbol of the Jim Crow South, Sam now represents potent contemporary forces bent on delegitimizing our past.
The recent ruckus surrounding Sam is not an isolated reckoning with our past that will end when UNC decides where to put him. He is but one piece of the broader effort to transform American culture into a fierce battleground of race and gender, of victims and oppressors.
Its ideology pivots on the assertion that America is a racist, sexist nation constructed to serve just one group: white males, who’ve gamed the system to preserve their entitled station. Recognizing that those who define the language control the conversation, its proponents seek to destroy this enemy within by viewing most social interactions through the lens of divisive buzzwords, including “white supremacy” and “white privilege,” “patriarchy” and “toxic masculinity.”
Take a moment and ask yourself: is this an accurate description of our society?
Examples of their program abound but let’s start with the current brouhaha over the classic Christmas song, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” For decades it’s been a beloved call-and-response duet in which a man tries to convince a woman to stay while she claims she ought to go. Frank Loesser’s lyrics playfully capture the dynamics of pitch and woo, the traditional role of men as pursuers and women as the coy pursued, as this lyric makes clear:
“I ought to say, no, no, no sir (mind if I move in closer?)
“At least I’m gonna say that I tried (what’s the sense in hurtin’ my pride?)“
But now this delightful ditty is being cast as an homage to date rape and many radio stations are refusing to play for fear of offending … someone. That someone — so amorphous and powerful in the age of Twitter — represents the false and ugly belief that most men (including your father, husband and son) are predators driven by a toxic masculinity that must be eradicated to ensure public safety. It suggests that all art must serve an approved political purpose — in this case, sidelining men to empower women.
One wonders where it will end — and why we’re letting it happen?
One answer comes from another telling example that occurred earlier this year after the astronaut Scott Kelly tweeted a quote from Winston Churchill — “In victory, magnanimity.” Kelly was instantly assailed for honoring a man who is no longer the stout British leader who stood up to Hitler but an irredeemable racist. Tail between his frightened legs, Kelly responded: “My apologies. I will go on and educate myself further on his atrocities, racist views which I do not support.”
This demonization of Churchill is of a piece with the larger effort in America to portray almost all of our historic figures, from the Pilgrims and Founding Fathers onward, as craven tools of often murderous oppression. As Kelly showed, this movement is shutting down push back through aggressive intimidation.
No one wants to be labeled a racist or sexist — so why bother? This is the authoritarianism creeping over America.
Don’t get me wrong, it is important to confront our past — I support the removal of Silent Sam. It is necessary to hear once more marginalized voices; I am stirred by the new prominence of female and black writers. But if we can only raise one group by tearing down another, we are in deep trouble.