 | By Max Strasser International Editor, Opinion |
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While I was still sleeping Wednesday morning, something interesting happened in Bristol, a city about 100 miles west of London, where I live. A sculptor named Marc Quinn erected a statue of Jen Reid. |
Reid, a local stylist, wasn’t famous but she was iconic. At the same location last month, protesters had torn down a statue of Edward Colston, a 17th-century businessman who had made himself — and Bristol — wealthy by trading in enslaved people. After protesters yanked down his statue, Reid stood in its place on the plinth and defiantly raised a fist: a Black woman in her city. Quinn saw the image and was inspired. |
Then came his pre-dawn guerrilla installation. |
Twenty-four hours after Quinn’s statue of Jen Reid went up, it was gone. The city’s mayor explained that it had been “put up without permission.” Ah, yes. That. “Anything put on the plinth outside of the process we’ve put in place will have to be removed.” |
 | | Marc Quinn’s statue of Jen Reid.Matthew Horwood/Getty Images |
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As I followed this story it raised for me, once again, a set of questions that a lot of people have been thinking about recently: What are statues for? Who deserves to be immortalized in stone and metal? Which statues belong where and when and why? |
My colleagues here at The Times have been thinking about this, too — and so have our readers. Rachel L. Harris and Lisa Tarchak, two of our senior editorial assistants focused on audience engagement, put out a call to readers a few weeks ago asking what should be put in place of the statues that have been torn down this summer. They received more than a thousand responses and published a selection. |
Diane Lade, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., suggested replacing Thomas Jefferson with Harriet Tubman. Che Baraka in Brooklyn, N.Y., wants a memorial to the four girls killed in the 1963 bombing of a Baptist church by white supremacists in Birmingham, Ala., “so that we may never forget what racist hate has wasted.” A number of readers said the United States should put up memorials to Native American leaders. |
Several people wrote in saying that we should focus more on memorializing movements than individuals (an argument I personally find appealing). Thomas Lonergan of Minneapolis recommends “a collective monument to working people, encompassing all colors, classes and, most important, types of work,” while Robert L. Briggs, from Tulsa, Okla., suggested a monument to “the peaceful American protester.” |
The debate over statues is not going to end soon. And in some ways, deciding what to put up may be even harder to think about than deciding what to take down. But it’s a conversation that should involve as many people as possible. I was glad to hear the perspectives of Times readers. I hope you are, too. |
Speaking of hearing from our readers … In my newsletter on Wednesday I asked why you thought so many people were denying the existence or severity of the coronavirus. Hundreds of you wrote in with thoughtful responses and I really enjoyed reading them. I’ve included a few highlights below, lightly edited for length and clarity: |
Lisa Appignanesi: “The question is not why people like Bolsonaro, Trump, perhaps even Johnson, who think they are in control of everything (or can be), deny the severity of coronavirus. (Denial — according to Anna Freud — is a defense mechanism which involves a refusal to accept reality and blocks external events from awareness. If a situation is too much to handle, the person responds by refusing to perceive it or by denying that it exists.) Rather, the question, or the mystery, is why we vote for them.” |
Sue Phipps: “I think that there are ‘so many’ Covid-19 deniers because this is such an overwhelming event in our lives. A shock. A trauma to the human population. Therefore, a certain number of humans will be pre-wired to deny what’s happening. |
“But on the positive side, a certain number will be pre-wired to step up and help out. Rush in rather than hold back. To assume that there’s something wrong with the portion of the population that sit in denial, is itself a denial.” |
Susan Gardner: “I am a microbiologist and believe that there are three major components of pandemic denialism: |
“1. Politicization of the pandemic by the idiot sitting in the White House, his Republican lap dogs, the dangerous pundits at Fox, and misinformation disseminated by Facebook and other social media platforms. |
“2. Lack of education. The dearth of people who have a basic understanding of science and how the world works in general has never been as apparent as it is now. This may be due to a number of things, including teaching for those coveted standardized test scores rather than fostering curiosity and discovery in K-12 classrooms, allowing evangelical religion to have a say in what’s taught in the classroom, and generally devaluing the importance of great teachers and a good education. |
“3. The lack of ethics, empathy, and service to others. |
“I am hopeful that things will change in November. However there is no magical panacea that will reverse the course of ignorance that we as a nation have been on for far too long.” |
Forward this newsletter to friends … |
Here’s what we’re focusing on today: |
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