Columbus Is The Next Target

I remember in the months after the debacle in Ferguson Missouri, feeling very upset when a high school student created a piece of art where police officers were depicted as pigs. A St. Louis congressman had it displayed at the U.S. Capitol. My more liberal friends said, hey, its art. It is supposed to evoke emotion if it’s good. My dad was a cop. I didn’t agree.

Against that backdrop, consider what’s going on now in St. Louis. A group of protesters successfully got a statue of a Confederate soldier put in storage. His mere presence offended them. Now their sights are directed to a sculpture of the explorer who first stepped foot in the west, Christopher Columbus.

Columbus.

 We have a national holiday in his honor, but he represents oppression against the natives after landing in the West Indies. So now he must go. The piece has stood at the entrance to Tower Grove Park since 1886. It is a focal point for Italian-American pride where flowers are laid at the base annually to commemorate his journey to the Americas.

Can’t I make the same case about Columbus and the Rebel statue that was made to me post-Ferguson? It evokes emotion in some-----that means it is good art, right?

Can’t we recognize the dark aspects of our history through art? Without it, how do we remember the Civil War or oppression of Native Americans?

Where does this end? We don’t like our history so we bury it…or worse…we revise it. That means it is all too likely we will re-live it. 

The real problem? 

There will not be a real debate on this. If the St. Louis city fathers blink and don’t act, someone is going to throw a chain around Columbus’ neck and connect it to a Buick at two in the morning. And then the dialogue will stop. This story represents, for me, the most inane waste of time in today’s society.