Intersections
Intersections
Over the past year, we’ve
tread the intersection of Kaley and S. Orange as it’s become a crossroads
swollen with mourners: with meaning. It meets the intersection of Christopher
and Seventh. It meets the intersection of Pride and unity, where the Rainbow
Flag meets an ongoing aggregation of initials. It meets the intersection of
politics and partisanship and guns and economic equity. Then, we’ve stumbled
onto the perplexing three-way intersection—between love, hate, and anger—that’s
emerged—like Seventeenth and Market and Castro—where an uncomplicated city’s
grids are disrupted by geography or happenstance and become engorged with blood
and kisses—and martyred spirits.
Even as we make these
intersections into hallowed spaces, each carrying the foot traffic of omnipresent
ghosts, we are obliged to recognize that history is a gift from the past to the
present—another intersection where the crosswalks are overwhelmed by facts and
their pedestrian interpretations. The past lives alongside the present: history, more than merely a series of events
leading up to the now, recollects and
reanimates in the context of myriad intersections. Today’s history is palpably
different than yesterday’s. That same history, based upon where we’ve stood—or
danced—further complicates our understanding of all the swirling
interpretations available to us.
To believe that history is
set in stone, we might also believe in a flat Earth, a vengeance-riddled-Jesus-less
Bible, and an un-amended Constitution. Indeed, the setting in stone of history—memorialization—is
tantamount to crucifying it. Bronze and marble statues are sinister constructs
along the pathways to the future. And yet, memorials become their own events,
reflective pools of both their subjects and the reflectors who erect them.
Witness the decades that intervened between the Stonewall riots and the
dedication of a National park to memorialize them. We are called to understand
the historical events that link them, that fill their meanings: castigation,
oppression, resistance, visibility, pride, equality. The challenge, as we stand
in the square today in that building’s cool shadow, is to simultaneously feel
the full morning sun. We are called in these places and moments to bathe in the
ultraviolent light of history. Further, we are called to share this space and
the history of the now with those for
whom the narrative is different.
We are also called to do the
difficult work of understanding those for whom memorials, in spite of their
originalism, have become engorged with discomfort: even as alt-narratives
intersect with events like London terrorist attacks, domestic assassination
attempts, elementary school shootings and Jim Crow lynchings. With each passing
moment, a stone monument—or a hallowed space like the 9-11 museum or the Pulse
building—is touched and transformed by new spirits, intervening events, and new
narratives. Likewise, we must negotiate the traffic around icons whose original
intent was hateful and for which decades of spite and apologism attempt to
recast their meanings into something not so hateful and not so spiteful.
And so it is with flags and
monuments (and even words, ultimately re-appropriated, like “Queer” and the
“n-word”) that salute a meaning-engorged past. Andrew Jackson was a war hero and
populist who fought valiantly to preserve American freedom. He was also a
slaveholder and responsible for atrocities against America’s first people.
Robert E. Lee was a decent man and military genius whose ideals forced him to
fight against a nation he loved—ideals like states’ rights and, yes, the
institution of slavery. The confederate flag is at once a symbol to some of
freedom from tyranny, to others of perpetual black oppression, and still others
of remembrance for ancestors whose blood was spilled in a losing war for rundown
homesteads and meager existences.
Each individual brings the
totality of their own experience to memorials; to expect that a single
narrative could possibly underwrite a memorial is to misunderstand what
memorials are. To assert a single narrative is to disrespect, not only the intersectionality
of history, the souls and ghosts that enliven the history of the now. Further, it casts a long shadow on
the trajectory of history’s future. When the value of the individuals for whom
a memorial imbued with painful narratives is minimized, when the valid read by
a disempowered minority of a horrible legacy is cast aside—when the statue of a
confederate soldier, for instance, is given a place in the public square where
all members of a community should feel valued and respected—the “owners” of the
dominant narrative have overstepped their bounds.
When a single narrative comes
to dominate to the exclusion or to the disempowerment of individuals, the value
of the memorial requires revisiting. Does the memorial foster meaningful,
constructive, and engaging discourse? Does the memorial stand as a current
assertion of the power that actively—historically—worked to prevent the
less-empowered from participation in meaningful, constructive, and engaging
discourse?
At some point, discomfort—a
fair and vital raison d’etre for a memorial—stumbles into oppression and
alienation. In these cases, however popular it may be among the (implicitly) tyrannical
majority, a memorial may need re-location to a more appropriate contextual
space—or removal from the public square entirely. Such a litmus test—discomfort
versus oppression—should stave off “slippery slope” rhetorical rage.
We, as an American people,
know how to do the right thing: to respect and honor the best among us while
also recognizing and lamenting the imperfection of the best among us while also
respecting and honoring the least empowered individuals among us while also recognizing
and lamenting the imperfection of ourselves in light of how we fail to respect
and honor the least empowered among us. This encapsulates the inner and
external discourse that should accompany a visit to any memorial.
We know that, at least for
now, Pulse is a valid and valuable memorial to all of us. We also know, deep in
our collective, pulsing American heart, that memorials to slavery—if slavery is
the oppressive narrative celebrated by a single neighbor—must go. We know that,
perhaps, even Stonewall and the MLK and the Vietnam and the Rainbow Flag may
overstay their welcomes in the public square. We must commit to ensuring that
our memorials maintain their value, that they—like our Constitution and our
DNA—are allowed to continue evolving lest they dead-end alongside the divoted stone
intersections that we paved over long ago. The road to a better tomorrow runs
through the prism of the now,
coloring the past with a usable and empowering—sometimes discomfiting—memorial
to us all.
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