This weekend our family took a quick roadtrip that included Coronodo Heights, just north of Lindsborg, KS. Here's the backstory: in 1541, Coronado was looking for his cities of gold, and legend has it that as he climbed this little hill on the Kansas prairie he looked out and said to his friends, "Screw it, boys...it's time to go home." Almost four centuries later some transplanted Swedish scholars at the college in Lindsborg found a piece of Spanish armor on top of this hill and declared that this was where Coronado had made his fateful decision. Thus they dedicated the place to the principle of "Give Up...It's Good For You!" and built something of a castle monument on top of it that looks out over the prairie...thus the name Coronado Heights. Likely there's very little to substantiate the claims that Coronado made his decision on this hill. But it makes for a nice story and it allows tourists like me to to go up on this hill and recount some kind of vision of history, no matter how true or incomplete it may be.
I got to thinking about this today, in light of the marches and counter-marches and general forms of hand-wringing that seems to have consumed our country in recent weeks. Basically all over the south (and elsewhere) cities are bowing to pressure to remove statues that stand to honor the 'heroes' of the Confederacy, men like Robert E Lee or Stonewall Jackson. Many white southerners are very upset and have had their feelings hurt about this, claiming that this is simply whining on the part of people who don't want their own feelings hurt, that we shouldn't be 'erasing history' after all these years Proponents of taking down these statues claim on the other hand that these statues should never have been built, as they give public honor to those who rebelled against our country and supported a slave system that is immoral.
I've come to the firm belief that, while some people are overly sensitive about all things and this can turn into a slippery slope that would even take down Jefferson, Washington, and other slave-owning leaders who fall out of favor of history, it's a good thing to take down these statues. What clinched it for me was reading about how many of these statues were erected. Most were built in the 1910s and 1920s during a time in which the Ku Klux Klan was on the march in this country; Woodrow Wilson and other leading politicians were openly anti-negro (Wilson closed off much of government employment to blacks, for instance) and the impending death of the last Confederate war veterans prompted many who fondly remembered 'the good 'ol days' to build these statues as a memorial to the 'lost cause'. It was not only not politically incorrect to publicly proclaim white superiority, it was almost expected and even demanded. And so, with claims that restoring Southern Heritage was vital, these statues of heroic Confederate war heroes, always in military pose and dress, were erected.
Needless to say, blacks and other minorities did not have a say at this time...indeed, they were politically powerless to stop the building of statues. To do so would have meant great danger and even lynching...remember, Jim Crow laws were at their height during this time, and approved of people in the highest of offices in our country. And so these statues were erected, and have now stood for almost a hundred years.
But of course now we live in a different age. Racism is no longer openly accepted by most, and the rise of 'alt-right' Klansmen and Nazis brings about universal condemnation (except by the President, but that's another post). Many who still support these statues are by no means racist...they genuinely do feel that this is a part of their heritage that outsiders do not understand, and they feel that they are being singled out for ridicule and contempt. They are correct in saying that race is not only a southern problem, but a national one...indeed, many northern cities such as Chicago and Boston have faced equally challenging racial issues over the years and often have a shameful history of their own.
Yet simply crying 'Heritage!' is no longer good enough. The heritage that is being supported is naive at best and immoral at worst, because it's a form of heritage that looks back to a time in which 'blacks knew their place', a time in which southern values openly tolerated belittlement and hatred of certain people simply because of their skin color and ancestry. How on earth these things could have been considered Christian continues to amaze me; and the fact that many people still defending these things claim Jesus as Lord shows me that this blind spot is still very real. Shouldn't Christians want to break down walls of hostility rather than build them up? Shouldn't followers of Jesus Christ look to the good of others instead of their own in all things? Yet in this instance Christians have fallen woefully short of living out their faith.
I wonder what would happen if revisionist history came to inspect Coronado Heights. Again, there's very little real evidence that this hill is anything more than an interesting geological spot on an otherwise flat landscape. But what if Native American groups decided that Coronado was a villain and a thief, would we need to change the name of that hill? Would the good people of Lindsborg fight valiantly to keep that name and claim that it's about heritage?
Honestly, I doubt anybody would care that much. 5 centuries in the past is a long time, and nobody has a vested interest in keeping Coronado's name alive; remember, the people who wanted to lift up Coronado were Swedes, not Spanish. But I'm sure that somebody would fight to the end as a matter of their self-identity, and spout all kinds of foolishness and falsehood to keep the spirit of Coronado's 'heritage' alive. Maybe they would even claim the economic argument, that this place brings about tourism and jobs and other forms of what has become the conservative religion. Rather than realize that true history is dependent upon actual scholarship and truth, creating symbols that have nothing to do with reality seems to be the way many want to live out their history. People will always have a way of getting worked up about the dumbest of things.
