This morning, Facebook showed me two interestingly juxtaposed stories. First was an interview Ezra Klein conducted entitled “Bryan Stevenson explains how it feels to grow up black amid Confederate monuments.”

Second was this video from WDBJ-7 with the following caption: “Neesey Payne‘s hometown of Pulaski sure is beautiful from above! We definitely know why she loves it so much.”

 

The footage opens with a clear shot of the Confederate monument which sits in Jackson Park and faces Route 11 (Lee Highway), one of which was named for a Confederate icon. (Unlike Charlottesville’s Jackson Park which is named for the Confederate general, Pulaski’s Jackson Park is actually named for the late mayor C.V. Jackson.)

The interview with Stevenson is moving in its entirety, but to me the most poignant segment includes Stevenson’s reflections on his mother that began:

“My mom was one of these people who could answer any question in the world you asked her even though she didn’t go to college, and no one in my family had gone to college. She really valued education. The only time I could remember my mom not asking answering my question is when we would drive pass the public school and I would ask my mom what the word public meant. She didn’t want me to understand that it meant I should be able to go to that school but instead we’re going to this little shack called the colored school.”

This part reminded me of a recent walk through downtown Pulaski with my 3-year-old. As we walked past the Confederate monument featured in WDBJ-7’s video, he interrupted his normal stream of 3-year-old questions to ask, “What is that?” We were rushing across the street to narrowly miss an oncoming truck so I used that as an excuse to put him off. “I’ll tell you later,” I promised.

We were quickly distracted by pending festivities in Jackson Park and he forgot his question for a few minutes. After finding out what was going on, we continued our walk and, as we crossed over Peak Creak, he asked again, “Who was that man standing on top of that big block?” I’d forgotten his earlier question and had no idea what he meant. “What are you talking about?” I asked. Exasperated, he whined loudly, “Back there! The man holding the gun! You said you’d tell me what it was!”

Right, I thought. Now that he’s 3-and-a-half, he’s less easily distracted from the important questions. Even though I’ve spent a good chunk of my life working towards racial justice, in part by examining our dominant narratives around race in this country, I was momentarily at a loss. My son and I have talked about race and slavery and the Confederate flag before, but not in a way that he’s really internalized. At 2-years-old, after our regular “lullaby” of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song,” he did avert an early bedtime when he asked, “What is freedom, mommy?”

I like those questions. Answering them was a little easier because I could stay a little abstract and didn’t have to directly and obviously implicate a town my son and I, like Neesey Payne, love so much. Explaining to my son why we have a Confederate monument in a central location in a town that he loves and believes loves him back was hard. Prior to this conversation, I fancied myself  “one of those people who could answer any question in the world you asked her,” but this conversation was making me question whether or not that was true.

I scrambled to come up with an answer. I wanted to start by telling him that, as far as Confederate monuments go, ours is really not that bad. It’s not like the one in the middle of the town square in Oxford, MS that celebrates the Confederate soldiers who died for a “just and holy cause.” Our little monument in Pulaski shows a scrappy soldier with torn trousers holding a rifle of some sort and it reads, “In memory of the Confederate soldiers of Pulaski County.” But I knew that even a 3-and- a-half-year-old would see through that whitewash.

Then I wanted to tell him that John Brown chose his location for his raid on Harpers Ferry because he believed that if any white people were likely to find joint cause with enslaved Black people, it would be those in the Appalachian Mountains. But, again, I’m pretty sure my preschooler would realize that I was changing the subject.

My final attempt to dodge the question was to explain that the monument isn’t as important as the structural ways racism continues to be reinforced through overlapping policies and cultural norms. I was also going to explain that poor white people suffer under these systems, too.  But before I could finish rehearsing that wonky answer in my head, I knew it wouldn’t satisfy my kid. Nor should it.

So I mumbled something about how the guy on the pedestal was fighting to protect slavery even though he probably didn’t own slaves himself. And as I started to remind him about what slavery is, he interrupted to ask, “Who put the statue there?” I was relieved when he got distracted and asked a question about the train store on the corner of Main and Jefferson. “Why is it called a train store if it is never open?” he asked. (Another very good question to which I don’t have an answer.) So I was given a reprieve and now have until our next downtown walk to think of a better answer to his very good questions.

Perhaps I should enlist the help of the social media staffers at WDBJ-7. After all, they “definitely know” why Neesey Payne loves Pulaski so much and they chose to illustrate her love with a video that features the “ragged rebel” Confederate soldier. Was it an oversight? If so, what does that say about the ways in which our narratives around race and our history serve to invisibilize or at least neutralize the presence of something as problematic as a Confederate monument?

There are well-intentioned, non-racist arguments for not removing Confederate monuments. They tend to be based on the premise that we can not rewrite history and must, therefore, keep these symbols front and center so that we don’t repeat the past. But if we are so comfortable with our Confederate monuments that  local news outlets don’t even notice when they feature them prominently in a widely-circulated video, I’m not sure that argument holds much water.

On this topic, Bryan Stevenson said:

“In my state of Alabama, Jefferson Davis’s birthday is a state holiday. Confederate Memorial Day is a state holiday. We don’t even have Martin Luther King Day in Alabama. We have Martin Luther King/Robert E. Lee Day. Our two largest high schools are Robert E. Lee High and Jefferson Davis High. They’re both 90-some percent African-American. If we don’t think it matters, then I think we’re just kidding ourselves.”

In my beloved hometown of Pulaski, we have a Confederate monument in the middle of our downtown. If we don’t think it matters, then I think we’re just kidding ourselves.