Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there.
Speaker 1: So this is Stuff you Should Know Controversy Edition. Yeah. Sure,
Speaker 1: there will be some of that in here, for sure.
Speaker 1: But I also think it's important when we're talking about
Speaker 1: removing public monuments that it's not all about Confederate monuments. No. Actually,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you said that, because that actually brings up
Speaker 1: a pretty good intro. There's some monuments in New York City,
Speaker 1: New York City, New York City. Um. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: such a great commercial, wasn't it. And it's endured. Um.
Speaker 1: There's four of them actually that are being targeted for
Speaker 1: removal by UM activists. Baldy no all. The Columbus is
Speaker 1: one of them. I believe that the Columbus statue in
Speaker 1: Columbus Circle one of Teddy Roosevelt. I think it's at
Speaker 1: the Museum of Natural History. Interesting, and um, I was like,
Speaker 1: what's wrong with this one? It's from Teddy Roosevelt. And
Speaker 1: then if you go and look at the statue in
Speaker 1: this context, you're like, yeah, Okay, I can kind of
Speaker 1: see that one. He's like valiantly astride this horse, and
Speaker 1: this African tribesman and this Native American chief are down
Speaker 1: on the ground on either side of him, like he's
Speaker 1: just in charge of the show, right, So I can
Speaker 1: kind of see that one. There's another one of a
Speaker 1: guy named J. M. Sims I believe is his name.
Speaker 1: He's known as the father of guy in ecology. He
Speaker 1: I don't know why I laughed at that. I just
Speaker 1: I guess I'll just go ahead. So his that's why
Speaker 1: he had a statute. So it's just him, just him
Speaker 1: with a giant volva right behind him. It's just him,
Speaker 1: like you know, a normal statue honoring a man and um.
Speaker 1: The problem is is that although he's the father of
Speaker 1: gyne incology, he was also known in the first half
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century to carry out like um experimental
Speaker 1: surgery on slave women with like zero anesthesia, obviously without consent,
Speaker 1: and he's been compared to Joseph Mangel It basically it's
Speaker 1: just this mad scientist with zero regard for human life.
Speaker 1: And you might say, well, this is the first half
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century, but some people argue that even
Speaker 1: at the time what he was doing would have been
Speaker 1: considered by his contemporaries as as unethical. Well, and as
Speaker 1: you will see as we go through this, uh so,
Speaker 1: much of the conversation around this controversy is, Um, do
Speaker 1: we look at it through the lens of when it
Speaker 1: was put up, why it was put up, who it
Speaker 1: was put up by? Or do we look at it
Speaker 1: do lens of Hey, it's do we still need to
Speaker 1: honor someone now who we know did monstrous things? Yeah,
Speaker 1: those are all really great questions. Or should we leave
Speaker 1: it up as a cautionary tale is another argument? And
Speaker 1: we're gonna wait into all these waters. So the reason
Speaker 1: that we're even talking about this and and the reason
Speaker 1: why you can had you been around towns like Baltimore,
Speaker 1: New Orleans, um, Helena, Montana in the summer of two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen, you would have seen Confederate statues being removed,
Speaker 1: uh sometimes in the dead of night. Um. The whole
Speaker 1: reason all of this started was actually back in two
Speaker 1: thousand and fifteen when the the was it the Columbia.
Speaker 1: It was Columbia, South Carolina. It wasn't Charleston, right, it
Speaker 1: was Charleston. The church. Yeah, the church shooter, the Charleston
Speaker 1: church massacre where nine people died by an a bowed
Speaker 1: white suprema assist right, really started up this idea that
Speaker 1: and I think it woke a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: the establishment up to the idea that there's all this
Speaker 1: iconography all around the country that a pretty large section
Speaker 1: of people have a real issue with and that everybody
Speaker 1: has just totally ignored their their problems with it for decades. Right.
Speaker 1: That really kind of woke a lot of people up.
Speaker 1: And it got a lot of city councils around the
Speaker 1: country reevaluating why they had these things up still was
Speaker 1: it worth just taking down? And a lot of them
Speaker 1: did take some stuff down, right. And then in the
Speaker 1: summer of two thousand seventeen, I think it was, was
Speaker 1: it May or August? Um was it August, the Charlottesville
Speaker 1: rally was held. I can't remember the month, but but
Speaker 1: it was. It was two thousand seventeen. The hotter months
Speaker 1: of two thousand seventeen, there was a there was a
Speaker 1: white supremacist rally in favor of the Roberty Lee statue
Speaker 1: that was marked to be It was it was controversial
Speaker 1: the statue of Roberty Lee from Charlottesville UM and people
Speaker 1: have been talking about taking it down. So white supremacists
Speaker 1: met to support the statue. Counter protests UM were met
Speaker 1: the white supremacists and violence broke out. One woman died
Speaker 1: UM and it was just a bad scene that created
Speaker 1: even more like a second wave of people looking at
Speaker 1: these statues and said, Okay, not only are these possibly
Speaker 1: like creating an unfriendly public environment for people like whole
Speaker 1: swaths of people that are Americans here in the United States,
Speaker 1: but they can also serve as flashpoints for violence, and
Speaker 1: we should really rethink these. And by the time the
Speaker 1: second wave happened, state legislatures around the country, especially in
Speaker 1: the South, had intervened between the first wave and the
Speaker 1: second wave and started passing UM legislation that said, you
Speaker 1: can't move public monuments, especially ones that are dedicated to
Speaker 1: UM war heroes, wars that have been around for like
Speaker 1: forty years or more, basically putting an end to the
Speaker 1: easy removal of Confederate monuments around the country. And so
Speaker 1: all this is done is created this huge conflict. Well
Speaker 1: it was already a conflict one way or the other,
Speaker 1: but this the the the conflict is is now both
Speaker 1: sides are just butting up against each other. And you know,
Speaker 1: when you push two masses together, they tend to go upward.
Speaker 1: And and that's basically what's happening right now. Lava is
Speaker 1: going upward here in the United States as tensions are rising,
Speaker 1: and it has never been more tense in my lifetime
Speaker 1: and probably your lifetime as well, Chuck, which are virtually
Speaker 1: the same thing. But that's where we stand right now
Speaker 1: in January of two thousand and eighteen. Right, Uh, can
Speaker 1: we cover some history here though? Yeah, let's all right,
Speaker 1: So this is nothing new though, Um, as far as
Speaker 1: just taking down public monuments, the world since the beginning
Speaker 1: of time has erected monuments and then eventually had someone
Speaker 1: that wants to take down that monument um right here
Speaker 1: in America when we one of the first things we
Speaker 1: did when the Revolutionary War kicked off was said, Hey,
Speaker 1: let's go down to the King George the Third Statue
Speaker 1: in Manhattan and let's pull that thing down. Uh. In
Speaker 1: on July six we just heard the Declaration of Independence
Speaker 1: for the first time and we got them. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: let's take down that statue. And you know what, let's
Speaker 1: not only do that, let's melt down that thing into
Speaker 1: forty plus thousand bullets to fire upon them with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty sweet. It's pretty pretty ironic. You know. He said,
Speaker 1: here's some King George for you red coat. I think
Speaker 1: that's what they said. Uh. And this, this goes well
Speaker 1: well beyond that. Of course, um Spanish raised Aztec and
Speaker 1: other temples in the America's so Catholic cathedrals could be built.
Speaker 1: Like basically someone would would take over, tear down those statues,
Speaker 1: put up their own. Then someone else would come along
Speaker 1: tear down those statues. And you know it wouldn't always
Speaker 1: a lot of times it was a good thing, So
Speaker 1: you would have like in in Hungary in ninety he
Speaker 1: had the Hungarian uprising against the Soviets and they storm
Speaker 1: Budapest and tore down a statue of Stalin. Stalin had
Speaker 1: quite a few, and Lenin quite a few statues of
Speaker 1: themselves the years. Yeah, wherever communism spread, if there was
Speaker 1: like a communist backed regime or country, or even just
Speaker 1: a non backed communist polarized country, you could probably find
Speaker 1: a statue of at least Lenin, if not Stalin two
Speaker 1: in this country, even like places like Ethiopia had them. Right,
Speaker 1: And so when there's an invading army or a revolution
Speaker 1: or a regime change. This is usually when you see
Speaker 1: a statue torn down. It's a symbolic gesture, sure it
Speaker 1: it is, and and it's almost like not it's but
Speaker 1: it's also like a part of the healing process that
Speaker 1: seems like too, or at least the transition process, let's
Speaker 1: call it that. Right. Yeah, Then there's another there's another
Speaker 1: type of situation where statues tend to get torn down,
Speaker 1: and that's when there's like a cultural shift. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of what we're seeing now in with this um
Speaker 1: with the Confederate monument controversies, right, and what you've also
Speaker 1: seen in the two thousands in Latin America where in
Speaker 1: places like Venezuela, statues of Columbus started to come down
Speaker 1: and replaced with things like uh indigenous chiefs who once
Speaker 1: tried to fight off people like Columbus. Yeah, Gouai kai Porto, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is a that's a full shift from not only
Speaker 1: are we gonna not walk by this Columbus statue every
Speaker 1: day now that we know we know, but we're gonna
Speaker 1: put up a statue of people that try to defend
Speaker 1: against him, right, right, So It's almost like they are
Speaker 1: hundreds of years later throwing off the uh, the shackles
Speaker 1: of imperialism, I guess, the stank of imperialism. Right. Should
Speaker 1: we take a break? I'm pretty worked up? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like we need to go rub each other's
Speaker 1: shoulders for a minute. All right, prepare for it, Josh, Okay,
Speaker 1: So the the place we find in ourselves right now? Well,
Speaker 1: how about this, chuck? Why why are there any public
Speaker 1: monuments anywhere anyway? Right? Look like, I think that's kind
Speaker 1: of the core of this. We have to get to
Speaker 1: what is really being talked about here, because it's if
Speaker 1: it's just some statue or something like that, especially in
Speaker 1: some places like far flung as Helena, Montana. Um. What
Speaker 1: does the statue of the Confederacy have anything to do with?
Speaker 1: What does any statue have anything to do with? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, they're more than um according to Southern
Speaker 1: Party Law Center, more than statues, flags, plaques, city names,
Speaker 1: county names, street names, and holidays uh named and even
Speaker 1: military bases named after Confederate generals or dedicated somehow to
Speaker 1: the American Confederacy. UM. And that includes everything from like
Speaker 1: like you said, street names and flags and all that.
Speaker 1: There's like, there's seven hundred statues and monuments just on
Speaker 1: public property UM in the so seven statues and monuments
Speaker 1: and thirty two of those who have either been dedicated
Speaker 1: or rededicated since two thousands, right, So what these these
Speaker 1: range anywhere from uh Confederate Avenue over on the east
Speaker 1: side of Atlanta, which is just a street name to um.
Speaker 1: You drive through Atlanta and you see, if you pay attention,
Speaker 1: you see Civil War battle plaques all over the place.
Speaker 1: And these are I put these in a slightly different
Speaker 1: category because they are literally just historical markers. Like they're
Speaker 1: very neutral on this in this sonic parking lot, there
Speaker 1: once was was a battle waged between this brigade and
Speaker 1: this brigade on this date, and this is what happened here,
Speaker 1: not even that. Sometimes it'll be like the the the
Speaker 1: Confederate Army thought about making camp here but decided not to,
Speaker 1: So they did a quarter mile east of this because
Speaker 1: it's a little hilly, don't you think. Can you blame them? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And those I put those in different category because those
Speaker 1: are historical markers of where something happened. It's not saying
Speaker 1: maybe some of them do, but it's not saying this
Speaker 1: is where the proud sons of the eighteenth Brigade fought
Speaker 1: off the evil Yanks in their bid to ensure slavery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that tends to be. You'll find those more unlike monuments
Speaker 1: or statues, especially ones that were bankrolled by private individuals
Speaker 1: or private groups who were just one and the same
Speaker 1: with the people who were running that that little town
Speaker 1: at the time. Yeah, I mean all right, So that's
Speaker 1: that's sort of the crux for me with this whole
Speaker 1: thing is when, where, when, and why were these things
Speaker 1: erected to begin with, and by whom and in many
Speaker 1: many cases, uh, some private rich person paid for this
Speaker 1: thing to be put up as a definitive screw you
Speaker 1: to what was going on in the country at the time.
Speaker 1: And it's very rarely has it just been like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, we should just put up a statue
Speaker 1: because we think Robert Lee is a great general um.
Speaker 1: Time and time again, you see stories, for instance, Charlottesville,
Speaker 1: that statue of Robert E. Lee. It was commissioned and
Speaker 1: paid for by a wealthy individual named Paul Goodlow McIntyre
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventeen, when he also bought the surrounding park
Speaker 1: and said this is for whites only, and let's put
Speaker 1: a statue of general lee Like, the context of how
Speaker 1: that happened is key to me, right, and actually, Chuck,
Speaker 1: that still goes on today. A lot of the monuments
Speaker 1: that are erected to the Confederacy are erected through private funding,
Speaker 1: private land, which makes them wholly out of reach of
Speaker 1: any debate over whether they should be removed or not.
Speaker 1: Because that, uh, that is covered by two very important
Speaker 1: American rights, which is the right to free speech whether
Speaker 1: people like it or not, and private property rights. You
Speaker 1: put those two things together, something is basically untouchable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and listen, we say all of this, uh, like,
Speaker 1: I'm not really weighing in. I think people probably know
Speaker 1: I feel let's be honest, Um, I'm not weighing in
Speaker 1: here one way or the other. But we say all
Speaker 1: that just to say that just because there is a statue,
Speaker 1: uh that looks great and it was really expensive, um
Speaker 1: in a in a town square, it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: it represented ever maybe or certainly now the um wants
Speaker 1: of the community at large. Sometimes it may have just
Speaker 1: been a single individual that had enough sway and money
Speaker 1: to say I'm at the statue. Yeah, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. So it's a very and I think who
Speaker 1: wrote this was a Dave Ruce. He put it best.
Speaker 1: He said, you know, what it represents is a very
Speaker 1: narrow historical record. Right, especially at the time, it might
Speaker 1: have really not represented a lot of people. It might
Speaker 1: even in some cases it may more people may feel
Speaker 1: represented by it now than they did at the time. Um. Apparently,
Speaker 1: especially for some of these older ones, it was not
Speaker 1: a normal thing to erect some sort of memorial to
Speaker 1: the Confederacy immediately after the Civil War. Two for a
Speaker 1: couple of reasons. One is that there are plenty of
Speaker 1: Union veterans still around the country and they would not
Speaker 1: have been very happy to have seen something like that.
Speaker 1: And then secondly, the South was very, very poor for
Speaker 1: decades after the war. Um it was. It was not
Speaker 1: a wealthy place. There's not a lot of money running
Speaker 1: around for towns to put together, um enough money to
Speaker 1: erect a decent statue that would last for a hundred years. Um.
Speaker 1: But like you said, though, by the time that they
Speaker 1: did start to be erected, um there there there, it's
Speaker 1: it coincided with some really important something very important, which
Speaker 1: was the Jim Crow era. Yeah, either Jim Crow a
Speaker 1: lot of them or the civil rights movement. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: this it's not an accident. Now, the Southern Poverty Law
Speaker 1: Center UM is a it's an organization that tracks hate groups.
Speaker 1: And if you're a hate group, you probably don't put
Speaker 1: much stock into studies created by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Speaker 1: But um, the the SPLC did a study of Confederate markers,
Speaker 1: monument statues, street names, all that stuff around the country
Speaker 1: tree and they found that the vast majority of these
Speaker 1: things were erected in like the Jim Crow era at
Speaker 1: the from like say eight ninety till just after the
Speaker 1: First World War. That that's when most of the statues
Speaker 1: to the Confederacy and monuments were erected. And this is
Speaker 1: a time when the South had gone through reconstruction, the
Speaker 1: North had abandoned the reconstruction project. From what I understand,
Speaker 1: I didn't realize this before, but basically there was this
Speaker 1: period what was called a period of healing between the
Speaker 1: North and the South, that the divisiveness between the two
Speaker 1: areas grew so so deep that war broke out, and
Speaker 1: then afterwards the hurt feelings started to subside enough that
Speaker 1: there was this desire to to come back together to heal,
Speaker 1: and the North and the South decided that they would
Speaker 1: heal at the expense of the African Americans and they
Speaker 1: would find common ground by saying, yeah, I think we
Speaker 1: can find we can all agree that that whites are
Speaker 1: the supreme race. And the African Americans, who had just
Speaker 1: recently been freed in the South and we're carrying out reconstruction,
Speaker 1: said wait what and um, this is the Jim Crow
Speaker 1: era that kicked off the Jim Crow era, and this
Speaker 1: was the time when these monuments started to be erected.
Speaker 1: Like you said, it doesn't seem to have been much
Speaker 1: of an accident the timing. And if you talk to
Speaker 1: some historians, they say, Nos, no accident whatsoever. This was
Speaker 1: white saying you might not be under by law under
Speaker 1: white control any longer. But it's pretty plain and simple.
Speaker 1: We've just directed a monument to remind you that about
Speaker 1: white supremacy and that that's the law of the land.
Speaker 1: Where's your statue and your monument. I don't see it anywhere,
Speaker 1: So I guess we win. Yeah. I mean the Georgia
Speaker 1: State flag controversy is the prime example I remember when
Speaker 1: that was happening on the early two thousand's. For those
Speaker 1: of you don't know, the Georgia state flag, uh, from
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six to two thousand one, um was was
Speaker 1: changed and had the the good old Confederate stars and
Speaker 1: bars on the right hand right half of it. And
Speaker 1: I remember at the time a lot of people saying,
Speaker 1: you know, this is our history, this is uh, you
Speaker 1: can't change our flag. You can't change our flag racing history.
Speaker 1: And I think many of them may not even have
Speaker 1: realized that that was not the original flag. They went
Speaker 1: back to the original flag after two thousand one, but
Speaker 1: they they threw those stars and bars on there in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six. And what what was going on in
Speaker 1: Atlanta in nineteen fifty six, you know, right the civil
Speaker 1: rights Sarah de segregation or desegregation, I should say, yeah,
Speaker 1: And it was just very plainly a middle finger to
Speaker 1: desegregation and once again a reminder, we're gonna fly this
Speaker 1: flag now that has the Confederate battle flag on it.
Speaker 1: And in you know, fifty something years later in the
Speaker 1: two thousand's, maybe a lot of people will forget that
Speaker 1: this was not the original flag. And that's exactly what happened. Man,
Speaker 1: it happened in aces too, So the that so the
Speaker 1: SPLC study found the same found what you were saying
Speaker 1: that there are basically two big and and there are
Speaker 1: always Confederate monuments and statues being erected or streets being
Speaker 1: named that, or flags going up. But there were two periods,
Speaker 1: the Jim Crow era in the Civil Rights era where
Speaker 1: they really increased. And the fact that those those statues
Speaker 1: and monuments really increased and coincided with these these times
Speaker 1: of struggle for white supremacy um really provides a pretty
Speaker 1: compelling case that those Confederate monuments and those rebel flags
Speaker 1: on those state houses are meant to express white supremacy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's tough to it's tough to look at it any
Speaker 1: other way when you when you look at this timeline
Speaker 1: like that, And that's what's that issue. You know, what
Speaker 1: what is the meaning of the Confederate flag on a
Speaker 1: state house, What is the meaning of a Confederate monument
Speaker 1: or statue in a town square? What is it ultimately
Speaker 1: trying to say? And that's that's really at the heart
Speaker 1: of this controversy, is what are you trying to say
Speaker 1: with that thing? What are we now, as the society
Speaker 1: in the small little town in Georgia, Alabama, or Louisiana wherever,
Speaker 1: What are we saying by fighting over keeping this statue
Speaker 1: or this flag flying? What's what's what's the argument here? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: people in favor of keeping them will say that it's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's dangerous to a race history. You're we
Speaker 1: can learn from these things. They can serve as reminders
Speaker 1: of how not to be maybe, Um. But at the
Speaker 1: very least, you can't erase history. So don't even try
Speaker 1: to erase history. Um. So that's basically the one of
Speaker 1: the main arguments against taking these down, right, Just you
Speaker 1: can't whitewash history. You can erase history, right. So that's one.
Speaker 1: Another one is um and this is a big one.
Speaker 1: That's that's really kind of kept a lot of these
Speaker 1: things up so far, is that, Um, the Confederate monuments,
Speaker 1: the Confederate statutes, the Confederate flags are not meant as
Speaker 1: symbols of hatred or slavery or oppression. They are Um.
Speaker 1: You'll see people say that it's heritage, not hate, right,
Speaker 1: And what they mean with that is this thing called
Speaker 1: the lost Cause narrative. Right. So the Lost Cause narrative
Speaker 1: is this idea that um, well, actually I found that
Speaker 1: there's like six parts to it. All right, are you
Speaker 1: ready for these, because I'm gonna lay them out. So
Speaker 1: the Lost Causes basically this narrative that says that the
Speaker 1: the South, the Confederacy, the Civil War, none of it
Speaker 1: had to do with slavery, or if it did, it
Speaker 1: had very very little to do with slavery. That really
Speaker 1: the Civil War was the War of Northern aggression. There
Speaker 1: was the North that started it. The South just wanted
Speaker 1: to seceed from the North, just wanted to get away
Speaker 1: from this federal government that cared not about states rights,
Speaker 1: that cared not about the South and it's its economy
Speaker 1: or it's anabellum mansions or anything like that. That really
Speaker 1: was the War of Northern aggression, and that the Confederacy
Speaker 1: was just protecting their homeland, protecting their way of life,
Speaker 1: and that it was secession not slavery that was um
Speaker 1: at issue here. And a lot of people say, well,
Speaker 1: what was the South seceding from if not the the
Speaker 1: the right exactly right. There's some other tenants to it too.
Speaker 1: There's this is very important. This is an important part
Speaker 1: of the Lost Cause narrative is that actually e slaves
Speaker 1: were happy to be enslaved. They were happy with their servitude.
Speaker 1: They didn't have to think about what to do with life,
Speaker 1: they didn't have to worry about wondering what they were
Speaker 1: gonna do, and they were maybe too shiftless to really
Speaker 1: be responsible to manage their own life anyway. So they
Speaker 1: were actually happier under the Anabellum plantation system of slavery
Speaker 1: than they were free. That's a huge tenant of the
Speaker 1: Lost Cause UM. And then the other part of it,
Speaker 1: and the whole reason that it has the name the
Speaker 1: Lost Cause, is that the only reason, the only reason
Speaker 1: that the Confederacy lost the Civil War was because the
Speaker 1: UM the North was just so so vastly richer with resources, manpower,
Speaker 1: UM industry, that the South from the beginning UM was
Speaker 1: destined to lose the war. It just couldn't couldn't compete
Speaker 1: in that respect. Hence the name lost cause. The South's
Speaker 1: cause was lost from the outset. So if you were
Speaker 1: a defender of Confederate at monuments, this is probably the
Speaker 1: reason you're giving for defending them, that these are these
Speaker 1: things are not up to intimidate anybody that the people
Speaker 1: who are intimidated by them, the people who are taking
Speaker 1: them as white supremacy are simply taking them the wrong way.
Speaker 1: And then Chuck, there's one other thing that, like is
Speaker 1: a question that has to be answered around this whole thing,
Speaker 1: and that is that, like, if if it's true that
Speaker 1: like the original Confederate monuments that were put up around
Speaker 1: like say the eighteen nineties or up to the nineteen
Speaker 1: twenties or something, right, if those things like actually were
Speaker 1: put up out of like respect for the people who
Speaker 1: fought for their homeland, um, and for family members who
Speaker 1: have just recently died, and was actually out of like
Speaker 1: this respect for heritage, rather than as a symbol of
Speaker 1: hate and oppression. Isn't it possible though that those still
Speaker 1: those same monuments could develop racist symbolism over time for
Speaker 1: some people. And if that's the case, then you know,
Speaker 1: if you are somebody who believes in them as a
Speaker 1: point of heritage and pride, how do you reconcile that
Speaker 1: that for other people there there? Um they're saying, hey, yeah,
Speaker 1: white supremacy, buddy, I'm with you on that. How do
Speaker 1: you how do you separate those two? And if that
Speaker 1: is the case, if you do agree that there are
Speaker 1: people out there who you have nothing to do with
Speaker 1: who view these things as a as a symbol of
Speaker 1: white supremacy. Then isn't your beef with them rather than
Speaker 1: the people who are offended by that and want to
Speaker 1: take those things down. That's a good point. I don't
Speaker 1: have the answers, of course. Well no, I don't either,
Speaker 1: But I mean, just the this is just such a
Speaker 1: hornet's nous. It's just a ball of worms writhing around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's complicated with with you know, seven hundred plus like
Speaker 1: literal statues, each with their own backstory. It's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to make some huge generalization probably for sure, for
Speaker 1: sure it's true. All right, we let's take another break.
Speaker 1: Let's take our final break, and what's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about just the ins and outs, like the sort
Speaker 1: of the mechanics of really removing these and how that works.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh the counter argument to lost cause legally,
Speaker 1: which would hinge on the equal protection argument right after this. Alright, so, um,
Speaker 1: here's how these things are generally, um, not only taken down,
Speaker 1: but how they're how they're put up. To begin with,
Speaker 1: we already mentioned the private, wealthy citizen who UM, just
Speaker 1: want to do something like this. It's obviously one way
Speaker 1: you can go down. Uh. The other way is as
Speaker 1: a lot of cities now UM, starting in the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: have commissions for approving these monuments. UM. The US Savannah, Georgia,
Speaker 1: very historic city in our own state as an example,
Speaker 1: they have a Historic Site and Monument Commission. They meet
Speaker 1: every month. They look at applications. Most cities will have
Speaker 1: an application process that you fill out that has to
Speaker 1: prove certain criteria to us if you want a public monument. UM.
Speaker 1: And they look over these all over the country all
Speaker 1: the time and either approved them or not. UM. I
Speaker 1: always thought it was funny that one of the big
Speaker 1: parts is usually like what's this gonna cost us? Right exactly?
Speaker 1: You know, like upkeep like what are we looking at here? Um?
Speaker 1: And like I said, these are pretty new, starting mostly
Speaker 1: in the nineteen nineties and later. UM. But it's generally
Speaker 1: to ensure that newer monuments has public support, whereas many
Speaker 1: of these older monuments did may not have had wide
Speaker 1: public support, but it was influential, wealthy few that decided
Speaker 1: what went up, right, right, Yeah, So like what like
Speaker 1: we said, the the the massacre at the church in
Speaker 1: Charleston really set off the first wave, and then the
Speaker 1: um Charlottesville protests set off the second wave of statue removal.
Speaker 1: But in between, a lot of state legislatures intervened and
Speaker 1: said no, because you towns and cities, you're in our
Speaker 1: state and where the law of the land. So we're
Speaker 1: saying you can't remove these monuments without our approval, and
Speaker 1: we're not going to give our approval to these things. Right.
Speaker 1: But previous to that, when the states previously them reacting
Speaker 1: to that and making these laws, it could be the
Speaker 1: city that decided or the county or whatever the local
Speaker 1: government was, or if it's on state owned land, obviously
Speaker 1: it would be the state legislature. Yeah. So I mean
Speaker 1: there's a lot of ways that, Like if the state
Speaker 1: hasn't intervened and created a state law that says you
Speaker 1: can't remove that, Yeah, if you're a city council or
Speaker 1: a board of commissioners in a county or something like that,
Speaker 1: you have full authority to remove these things. Um, and
Speaker 1: you can remove them for all sorts of different reasons. Um.
Speaker 1: There's this the article sites the statue in New York,
Speaker 1: the scary lucile ball statue. Remember that, man, I went
Speaker 1: back and looked, and oh, I feel so bad for
Speaker 1: that sculptor. The fish guy. The second lady nailed it.
Speaker 1: I mean she did such a good job. I didn't
Speaker 1: see the second one, man, the first Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: did see the second one. It's just when you see
Speaker 1: him side by side, you just one looks like Lucio
Speaker 1: Ball and one looks like Lucio Ball. Got um zombie
Speaker 1: Lucio Ball. Yeah, you're drawn by Ralph Steadman or something
Speaker 1: weird like that, you know, so um her, No, it
Speaker 1: really doesn't. So the city council of Sellern, New York,
Speaker 1: Lucio Ball's hometown, said, uh, we're we don't like the statue.
Speaker 1: It's terrible. We're gonna take it down, scaring the kids.
Speaker 1: So they took it down because it was an ugly statue.
Speaker 1: But a city council could say we're gonna take it
Speaker 1: down because we've heard from enough of our citizens that
Speaker 1: they're intimidated by it, or they think that this is
Speaker 1: um uh, they it's it's it's creating an unsafe place,
Speaker 1: like it could be a flashpoint for violence, or it
Speaker 1: could it's in the way of the new whole foods
Speaker 1: that our town's getting. So let's get rid of this monument.
Speaker 1: So they can do this stuff unless the state has said,
Speaker 1: you guys can't move those things. This is where the
Speaker 1: state and you guys can't move these monuments, even on
Speaker 1: city land right right. So there's there's been I think
Speaker 1: in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, UM at the very least, and
Speaker 1: I think several other states UM they've have have passed
Speaker 1: these laws that say you can't, you can't remove these things.
Speaker 1: So some states have had or some cities have had
Speaker 1: to get creative where their will has continued. Their desire
Speaker 1: to take these statues down has continued even after the
Speaker 1: states that they can't. So the city of Memphis, which
Speaker 1: had a couple of statues that wanted to take down,
Speaker 1: one of Robert E. Lee and one of one of
Speaker 1: Nathan No, they're not touching that one of Nathan Bedford Forest,
Speaker 1: who was one of the early leaders of the clan Um.
Speaker 1: They wanted these these statues taken down, but they couldn't
Speaker 1: take them down because they resolved to take them down
Speaker 1: after Tennessee passed its protection law. Well, the city of
Speaker 1: Memphis sold the land that those two statues were onto
Speaker 1: a nonprofit, and the nonprofit just immediately took them down
Speaker 1: to work around. So, as I mentioned before the break,
Speaker 1: we talked about the the lost cause narrative, and the
Speaker 1: flip side of that legally is the equal protection argument.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about the fourteenth Amendment, ratified in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight to grant citizenship and equal rights two former slaves. UH.
Speaker 1: And this, to be clear, has not been used successfully
Speaker 1: yet in court as an argument to have a statue removed,
Speaker 1: but it is what groups like the a c l
Speaker 1: U or UH does, the Southern Poverty Law Center, they
Speaker 1: actually argue cases like this probably, I'm sure this is
Speaker 1: what they would try to use, most likely as a
Speaker 1: legal argument or a tactic at least to say that
Speaker 1: this isn't right, because basically what it means is what
Speaker 1: you were saying earlier, is it would be it would
Speaker 1: be under the guys that this was erected as an
Speaker 1: expression of white supremacy, and that's why it was erected,
Speaker 1: That's why it's there. States supported racism that's still there
Speaker 1: to make people feel unequal in the fourteenth Amendment says
Speaker 1: we can't do that. Yeah, that's the that's the approach
Speaker 1: that there will be some test case at some point
Speaker 1: in the next year two that will make it to
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. So the Supreme Court will probably rule
Speaker 1: on that, and then that will either open the floodgates
Speaker 1: or shut down that legal argument one way or another.
Speaker 1: What's interesting to me, though, is that historians are probably
Speaker 1: going to come into these lawsuits. Right Like, if you
Speaker 1: ask just about any professional historian what started the Civil War,
Speaker 1: the consensus is and has been for a long time
Speaker 1: that it was slavery. That all the other stuff, the
Speaker 1: ability to succeed, states rights, um, hatred of Lincoln, all
Speaker 1: of these other things are are follow slavery, the the
Speaker 1: South's um desire to continue aus as slave based economy. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: If you ask the general public what caused the Civil War,
Speaker 1: apparently something like forty percent will tell you that it
Speaker 1: was secession, and only like will say slavery. So here's
Speaker 1: here's the problem with that. This is part of a
Speaker 1: kind of a larger trend that we've been seeing the
Speaker 1: last like five years or so maybe less, where there's
Speaker 1: just been a loss of faith in expertise, right where
Speaker 1: like the people who we used to turn to for answers,
Speaker 1: we we have just kind of tossed to the wayside,
Speaker 1: and so just shut up. We don't want to hear
Speaker 1: what you have to say any longer. We'll will decide
Speaker 1: what's true on our own, and when that happens with
Speaker 1: enough people, then history has a chance of being rewritten
Speaker 1: just by just by sentiment. Hey can I have nothing
Speaker 1: to do with reality, But everybody can decide that they're
Speaker 1: going to collectively remember things a certain way, and brother,
Speaker 1: that's history. That becomes history, whether it's fact based history
Speaker 1: or revisionist history or not. And that's a that's a problem.
Speaker 1: Like we have to remember history, whether it is enjoyable,
Speaker 1: whether it's um something that it stands as a cautionary tale,
Speaker 1: whether it's something that is painful, whether it's something that's inspiring.
Speaker 1: We have to remember our history. We just have to,
Speaker 1: or else we're gonna lose a lot of valuable lessons.
Speaker 1: The question that still remains is whether we have to
Speaker 1: remember that history in through monuments and statues or if
Speaker 1: we can in other ways. So it's weird. There's a
Speaker 1: defensive history, but there's also a loss of faith in
Speaker 1: historians and and their reading of history. It's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: It's a bizarre and it's a weird place to be
Speaker 1: right now here in the States. It is. And that's
Speaker 1: why I'd never buy the you're a racing history argument
Speaker 1: because it's not like these are. It's not like the
Speaker 1: Civil War placke that just says this thing happened here.
Speaker 1: Like to me, that is a historical marker, that just
Speaker 1: says this, this action took place. It's not a monument
Speaker 1: glorifying the thing. Yeah, there's just this. There's a monument
Speaker 1: in Rossville, Georgia, which is close to Andersonville, South Carolina,
Speaker 1: and it's a it's a monument to a guy named
Speaker 1: Henry Wors who was one of the few executed war
Speaker 1: criminals from the Confederacy. He ran Andersonville Prison and um
Speaker 1: basically ran like a concentration camp, and he was executed
Speaker 1: by the North. Publicly, he was he was hanged, and
Speaker 1: very quickly, within a couple of decades UM, I think
Speaker 1: the Daughters of the Confederacy UH erected this monument to
Speaker 1: him and basically explained that he had been unfairly tried,
Speaker 1: that evidence against him had been faked, and that he
Speaker 1: was actually a war hero, not a war criminal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's kind of like not the neutral plaque that
Speaker 1: you're talking about. It's the the antithesis of that. Well,
Speaker 1: I certainly don't have the answers. It's a complicated thing.
Speaker 1: But and there's so many of these and things, and
Speaker 1: you know that there's the whole can of worms argument
Speaker 1: that like do we then where where does it stop?
Speaker 1: Do we blast off the face of Stone Mountain or
Speaker 1: or Mountain rot more people think we should? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: stone Mountain one for sure, Yeah, yeah, Or where does
Speaker 1: it stop with the founding fathers because at the time
Speaker 1: some of them on slaves and this and that. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't purport to have the answers. I just my
Speaker 1: my advice would be to encourage people to just for
Speaker 1: a moment, to think about to walk in someone else's
Speaker 1: shoes and think about what how some of these monuments
Speaker 1: might make you feel. In twenty thousand eighteen, that's the
Speaker 1: way in the future in two thousand eighteen, just maybe
Speaker 1: step outside yourself for a minute and walk in someone
Speaker 1: else's shoes. That's just Uncle Chuck's advice. I think it's
Speaker 1: good advice no matter what. And I think what this
Speaker 1: is is a symptom of the need to a society
Speaker 1: that needs to heal and is not healing in productive
Speaker 1: ways right now? Ye what I think? Well, I don't
Speaker 1: have the answers either, though I certainly don't purport to.
Speaker 1: So I agree with you on that. I look forward
Speaker 1: to hearing all sides and email. Yeah, no death threats, please,
Speaker 1: no death threats. Oh quickly. We should talk about very
Speaker 1: famously in the Iraq War, when Saddam Hussein's statue was
Speaker 1: toppled on television, uh, And there was always a lot
Speaker 1: of speculation like this really reeks of something America cooked
Speaker 1: up as a bit of a rara thing um, and
Speaker 1: apparently Pro Publica looked into it along with the in
Speaker 1: the New Yorker magazine was where the piece was said.
Speaker 1: It was a crowd of Iraqis and it was it
Speaker 1: happened to be a statue in front of the Palestine
Speaker 1: Palestine Hotel, which is where a lot of the journalists were,
Speaker 1: so that's why it got the coverage. And they there
Speaker 1: were Americains and they were saying, hey, can we have
Speaker 1: that sledgehammer? Can we have a little help? Can we
Speaker 1: use that crane on that humby Now that we think
Speaker 1: about what you guys, just go ahead and do it
Speaker 1: for it. Well, apparently there was an official request submitted
Speaker 1: by the army sergeant saying, hey, they want to use
Speaker 1: our crane. Can we do this? And they got to
Speaker 1: go ahead to do it. So that is the party
Speaker 1: line story at least. Yeah, take it or leave it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but very indelible image. You know when that statue was
Speaker 1: taken down, Oh yeah, it definitely was, like it felt
Speaker 1: pretty hard. And Saddam was still alive at the time too,
Speaker 1: which made it even more shocking. He's hiding in a hole.
Speaker 1: Kind of an interesting time, like I said, to be
Speaker 1: in America, weird, weird time. Well, I've seen other people
Speaker 1: call for saying like maybe don't take it down, Maybe
Speaker 1: erect another statue next to Roberty Lee of Rosa Parks
Speaker 1: or something, and maybe add to the stone Mountain my
Speaker 1: hum it and make it a history of it of Atlanta,
Speaker 1: and add Martin Luther King to it and make it
Speaker 1: more of a diorama and more inclusive. So it's I've
Speaker 1: seen arguments all over the place with all kinds of suggestions,
Speaker 1: because with fifteen hundred Confederate markers of some kind, I
Speaker 1: mean that's a lot of it's a lot of stuff,
Speaker 1: a lot of statues to balance things out that we'd
Speaker 1: have to erect that kind of thing well, or a
Speaker 1: lot of statues to tear down. Um. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: it's going to come down to and should come down to,
Speaker 1: whatever they want to do locally. But we have one
Speaker 1: right here indicator Georgia still you know which one. I
Speaker 1: can't remember the name of it, but it's right there
Speaker 1: in the town square. And there there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of talk in the obviously the last couple of years
Speaker 1: about getting rid of that. So yeah, and then also
Speaker 1: like some people dig in so much to leave that
Speaker 1: statue there, they take it down and then a week later, like,
Speaker 1: is your life really changed materially? Is it that big
Speaker 1: of a deal that that's not there anymore? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think this whole I think this
Speaker 1: is all just innuendo, nuance, um and illusion and allegory
Speaker 1: and nobody's really talking about where most people aren't talking
Speaker 1: about what's really being discussed here. It's it's weird, weird time, man,
Speaker 1: such a strange time. It's a sad time for America,
Speaker 1: but it's also a very hopeful time too, if you
Speaker 1: really think about it in the right way, it is
Speaker 1: and you know what this uh, I know this is
Speaker 1: gonna be a lightning round in some ways, but I
Speaker 1: am happy we're a part of this conversation in some way.
Speaker 1: Nice again, No death threats, please everyone, No one likes
Speaker 1: to get those. Put yourself in our shoes. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: like getting them. If you want to know more about
Speaker 1: Confederate monuments, monuments in general, and possibly removing them, go
Speaker 1: type those words into the search bar how stuff works.
Speaker 1: That common will bring up the article. And since I
Speaker 1: said that it's time for a listener mail, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call this, um, well, this one's pretty current, so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call this current clearing up of accordion definition. Oh boy,
Speaker 1: that's good choice, Chuck. Okay, so this is a day
Speaker 1: or too late, guys, But I just had a chance
Speaker 1: to listen to the Great Mary Celeste episode, and I
Speaker 1: figured i'd be remis if I didn't heed the call
Speaker 1: of the alluring weird Al Yankovic shout out, because everyone
Speaker 1: loves weird Oult. So it now comes apart where I
Speaker 1: say that I don't actually know anything about accordions, but
Speaker 1: I think Josh pretty much nailed it the second time through.
Speaker 1: According to my sources, in general, melodeon is an accordion
Speaker 1: with buttons, and an accordion technically known as a piano
Speaker 1: accordion is an accordion with piano keys, not unlike the
Speaker 1: style played by both Alfred and Frankie Yankovic. No relation,
Speaker 1: believe it or not, No way, Uh yeah. Basically all
Speaker 1: melodions are accordions, but not all accordions or melodians, So that,
Speaker 1: in a nutshell, is how melodians work. Not to be
Speaker 1: confused with the concertina pictured here. And that is the
Speaker 1: literal handheld thing that you like, I might think of
Speaker 1: an old Italian man playing in the eighteen hundreds that
Speaker 1: you just there are no there may be, but it's
Speaker 1: it's a squeeze box, like the who talked about mom
Speaker 1: has got a squeeze box. Yeah, and that is from anonymous?
Speaker 1: Is it really? You're not gonna say who is from?
Speaker 1: Wow that anonymous? Have no idea who it's from. It's
Speaker 1: just some some weird, weird al fan. That's funny. No.
Speaker 1: My My exclamation of surprise was that Alfred and Frankie
Speaker 1: Yankovic have no relation to weird Al Yankovic. That's beyond bizarre. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I not don't even know who Alfred and Frankie Ankovi
Speaker 1: car I don't either, but surely every Yankovics related to
Speaker 1: weird Al Yankovic. Right, Yeah, but I also have a
Speaker 1: feeling that like they're eight percent of Yankovic's play the accordion.
Speaker 1: All right, well, weird Al, please please, as is custom,
Speaker 1: we end every episode like this, please get in touch
Speaker 1: with us and let us know how you're doing. Okay,
Speaker 1: if you're weird Al Yankovic and you want to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us, you can tweet to us. I'm
Speaker 1: at josh um Clark and you can also hit up
Speaker 1: the official s Y s K podcast one. You can
Speaker 1: join Chuck on Facebook dot com, slash Charles W. Chuck
Speaker 1: Bryant or slash stuff you Should Know either one. You
Speaker 1: can also send us an email and Jerry too to
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com, and weird
Speaker 1: Al join us as always at our home on the web,
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how Stuff Works
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