I’m still a bit unclear as to what the motive to take down the statue is: Removing it would remove the oppressive force it symbolizes in the same way that removing all American flags from campus would make us an independent territory. Its removal would be a vital part of removing oppressive forces in the same way that asking someone to remove their hat would be a vital first step to eventually ripping their heart out. But something’s got to be done about it, or else eventually more than police cars and fences will be assaulted, and nobody should get hurt over a vaguely life-like chunk of bronze.
That something could be that we just let it be. Generally, this would be defended by an argument like “We’re in the south, and lots of students view the Confederacy as part of their heritage.” But regardless of what we think about that and regardless of what the merits of Confederate heritage may or may not be, no principles of heritage are worth people getting hurt over a statue right now. Present people are more important in the present than past people are.
Which brings me to the second standard argument for keeping Samuel: “It’s revisionist to remove what is by all means just a historical symbol, a symbol which doesn’t indicate anything about the present values of the university or its students unless we assume that passively letting it stand is a constant and active reaffirmation of the values it was erected for, and that assumption would be wrong if we accept that passive and active are opposites.”
Regardless of how reasonable or unreasonable this argument is, the point still stands that people’s safety now is more important than their conceptions of history: One can still easily live a good life while being a revisionist. It’s much harder to live a good life while in prison for rioting or after being killed in a riot. Not that rioting is always bad, but that being imprisoned for rioting over a dormant piece of metal might keep perfectly good, even gifted rioters away from future riots which may have far more potential.
Which leaves me to conclude that the statue’s got to be taken down. Easier said than done, as we saw at Tuesday’s protest when chants of “Tear it down!” rang out for hours as nothing was torn down. Why not? Because UNC’s Board of Governors and basically every legislator outside of this county and Asheville are firmly on the right wing and therefore probably firmly believe in one of the two arguments above.
UNC’s students and faculty have essentially no bargaining power by which to influence any of these people, and so we’re forced to hold what looks like old-fashioned Sunday masses where we congregate and chant to the never-to-be-seen higher powers, hoping they’ll hear us but knowing full well that their wishes will be done regardless.
And so the solution must be to gain some bargaining power. Now, in the old days this was done by civil disobedience or rioting: If the university starts losing a ton of money because of sit-ins, walk-outs, or bricks through office windows, its administration will have to weigh how much it wants to ignore protesters against how much it wants to be maximally wealthy, and the money always wins. But of course, protests must always be peaceful, even when its peacefulness relegates it to near-uselessness, because peace is always the best option and property is insuperably sacred.
Therefore there seem to be two options: Trick the administration into taking down the statue for apolitical reasons or present such a convincing alternative statue that the Powers Above can’t help but be won over.
Option 1, the trickery, is simple: Plant beautiful trees near the statue. We’ve all seen, between the UL and Greenlaw, what happens when trees have the misfortune of being placed somewhere that they’re too useful: They get chopped down. But not only the trees: The bike racks next to the trees were removed with them. And so we have clear precedent. If trees are too useful and placed next to a small metal structure, the metal structure will go with the trees.
Option 2 is also simple. If the chief evils of Sam are that he is a symbol of oppression and that he represents a UNC that no longer exists and that we don’t want to exist, we should suggest a replacement figure with neither of these evils. After long consideration and deliberation with some of those at Tuesday’s rally, the best candidate seems to be Juan David Roa, a senior anthropologist and bass ukelelist who left his birth country of Colombia to settle in Wallace, North Carolina at the tender age of five.
Investigations have led me and several other prominent juanologists to conclude that he has never oppressed anyone, even though he is a deadly force, having won an archery competition at summer camp ten years ago. Animals, who we all know to be the best judges of character, love him: His roommate’s cat, indeed, uses the same blanket every time she mounts the couch, so as to spare him from constantly laundering unduly hairy blankets, so strong is her inestimable love for him.
Asked to define the most impressive things about himself, Juan divulged that he “has been to far-off exotic lands like suburban Ontario” and that he has “started making his bed most of, but not all of, the time.” Who better to memorialize? Who better to remember? He is not the Confederacy, no, he is you and me, and certainly our administration would agree.
Or maybe they won’t, and we’ll have to resort to trees. I dunno. In any case, though, we can confidently conclude that the statue should come down, but that absolutely no property should be damaged in the realization of this goal, because violence has never done anything good, and damage to inanimate objects counts as violence. We’ve got to keep it calm, keep it peaceful, and keep it Carolina.
