Sanitizing Reality

Today, as usual, there were many disturbing stories in the news.  Many will be discussed ad nauseum.  But let me mention three that I find disturbing for their attempt to sanitize reality or turn it into something it is not.

I learned that a mural of a Dr. Seuss character in a Massachusetts museum dedicated to Dr. Seuss will be replaced because it is being called racist (http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2017/10/06/dr-seuss-museum-mural-to-be-replaced-amid-claims-racist-depiction.html).  This is Dr. Seuss we’re talking about - the children’s books revered by parents, children, and children’s librarians until recently when Melania Trump attempted to donate some Dr. Seuss books to a library whose librarian was severely anti-Trump.

I also learned that a new holocaust memorial in Canada had absolutely no mention of Jews as being the target of Hitler’s “final solution.”  When this was pointed out after the unveiling of the memorial, a plaque which had simply stated that millions of people were murdered during the Holocaust was replaced to reflect the experience of the Jews.

A third story this week also involves an attempt to sanitize, though it may be somewhat more understandable in light of the current debates about removal of civil war statues.  This story involves the request to remove the Pittsburgh statute of Stephen Foster, composer of such songs as "Oh! Susana,” "Old Folks at Home,” and "Old Black Joe.”  This statue, which stands outside the Univ. of Pittsburgh’s Stephen Foster Memorial, was erected in 1900.  It portrays the composer with a Black man sitting below him playing a banjo.  There was a city hearing on removal of the statute:  of 126 written comment, 60 favored removing or relocating the statue and 19 advocated altering or adding signage.  80 people attended the hearing and about a dozen spoke, with the majority of those favoring moving the statue to a non-public venue.  (The population of Pittsburgh is just under 304,000). 

The above three news items all involve some sort of attempt to sanitize something from the past that is or may be upsetting to some people or some group or some segment of society today.  What they don’t involve is any attempt to understand the time, place, culture, or reasons that led to those upsetting acts or images; the news stories don’t involve this because when one simply wants to sanitize or remove something, there is no attempt to understand that something, or the time, place, culture, reasons, or people who created it.

Let me digress for a moment about my childhood.  I attended schools in which I had classmates of a variety of ethnicities.  Some today would refer to themselves or be referred to by others as “people of color.”  At the time, I just saw them as classmates with a slightly different skin or different hair or different foods in their lunch boxes.  I also had some Black classmates.  I did recognize that they were a different color, but that was about it.   I don’t recall grouping them into one identity; rather there was the one who was a wonderful singer, there was the bully, there was the one who was good at math, and even the one who for a period of time I referred to as “sister.” Identity politics was not the way we looked at the world; if we had, I might have assumed that all Blacks were bullies or out to get me because one was. But in those days we saw beyond group think and saw people as people. And, when something offended someone, we talked about it. 

I grew up in a predominately White world.  I was first introduced to the N-word when I was assigned Huckleberry Finn.  The beauty of that word being in that book was that our teacher could lead us into a discussion of not only the history of the word, but the history of the people to whom it referred.  It became an avenue to discuss slavery and the treatment of Black people following slavery and into our current daily lives.  That would not have happened had the word been sanitized from the book (and I know there was a movement to do so after my schooling ended; I do not know if the word appears in Huck Finn today, but I hope that it does so that current and future generations can learn what I did upon reading the book).

The point is, that having to face unpleasantries and worse from the past is an opportunity to learn about that past and all the people involved in it.  That some might find the drawing of a Chinaman in a Dr. Seuss book published in 1937 offensive is an opportunity not to cleanse it from our sight and minds, but an opportunity to discuss why one would have drawn that picture in that way at that time and why it is offensive.  It is an opportunity to understand history, people, and culture. 

The horrors of the Holocaust are emotional and upsetting, but they are not just another mass shooting.  Cleansing them to make them seem so again denies us the opportunity to understand and to learn from the horrendous philosophy of Hitler and the Nazis and the evil that it can impart on one identified group of people.

The image of the Stephen Foster statue is one that people of all colors might take offense at.  But the remedy to such offense is not to pretend it did not happen.  The remedy is to discuss it:  why is it offensive?;  why was it not seen as offensive when the artist created it and it was erected?;  what are we as a society aware of that we were not aware of then?

History, even offensive history, can provide us understanding, it can open dialog, it can help us from repeating ugly and horrendous mistakes.  It is that dialog that I remember having, not only in school when faced with such things as the N-word in a book, but when I or someone I know sees an image or a piece of history differently than the other.  Not until identity politics became such a driving force in our society did people seem so determined to be offended to the point of hatred of entire groups and then to cleanse all offense from reality.  

An act or depiction that might be uncomfortable now, but that was created in a different time and place is not an act of hatred directed at one group by all members of another group.  It is an opportunity to talk and to see beyond group identity.   And in order to do that, people must be able to talk with one another and discuss their different experiences and histories.  And our shared history, even when viewed differently, is one way to open that dialog and that understanding and to see people as people. 

Cleansing history may do away with unpleasant emotions and memories, it may give us another justification for hate, but it does not make for a healthy present.   We need those unpleasantries of history to remain with us as venues for understanding one another and making reality not sanitized but honest, genuine, open and, improvable.