Christians Must Choose Between Heritage and Empathy

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In a raucous rally a few weeks ago in Arizona, President Trump accused the media of trying to “take away our history and our heritage.” Presumably, the president was referring to the recent attempts by local governments to remove statues to Confederate leaders such as the statue of Robert E. Lee that was at the center of the Charlottesville, Va., tragedy Aug 11-12. While I have my suspicions of the purity of Mr. Trump’s motives, he does echo a position that I saw expressed frequently in the debate over the removal of four similar statues earlier this year in New Orleans.

The people that opposed the removal of the New Orleans statues did not consider themselves racists, and I take them at their word. For them, removing these statues was erasing history, a history that they had been taught to be proud of. They did not see these statues as symbols of racism and white supremacy, but as symbols of courage, independence and righteousness.

Many people are alarmed by the fact that so many white folks continue to praise historical white supremacists like Robert E. Lee, but to most of his modern supporters, General Lee wasn’t a white supremacist. He was a courageous, intelligent, and gentlemanly leader who fought valiantly against an invading enemy. They don’t think of Lee as a brutal slave-owner who invaded Maryland and Pennsylvania, abducting free African Americans to send into bondage as his army slaughtered American soldiers, but as a kindly grandfather dedicated to ideals of states’ rights. While we can try to educate people about Lee’s brutality towards his slaves or the cause of the Civil War, such a strategy may be a bit of a Lost Cause.

Instead, perhaps we can skip the dueling histories and focus instead on our empathy for one another. Imagine yourself a white person; you don’t see yourself as racist, but you do see Robert E. Lee as a great hero and you think that the local statue of him should remain. Then imagine that an African American friend tells you that they see Lee differently, and that every time they drive by that statue they feel fear and revulsion. What would your response be?

One possibility would be to ignore your friend as irrational and swept up in a left-wing, media-driven panic. After all, your friend is wrong; Lee was no more racist than anyone else back then, and just because his statue is downtown doesn’t mean that anyone supports discrimination against African Americans, which doesn’t even exist anymore, you think.

Or you could have empathy. You could think about the fact that you don’t know what it’s like to be black. You could take your friend at their word that they are scared and angry, that they still feel discrimination every day, even if you never do. You could compare your desire to retain what you believe is your history with their desire to retain what they believe is their safety and dignity.

Thus, we are faced with a choice between our desire to have our view of history preserved, and our desire to be Christ-like and to have compassion for another. If statues honoring Confederate leaders are conserved, a particular view of history will linger among Southerners for a few more decades, and that is clearly important for many people. But for people that seek to love as Jesus loved, preserving history cannot be the primary consideration. For Jesus-followers, the primary concern is not with statues, long-dead generals, or great-great grandfathers, but with our brothers and sisters today telling us that something is causing them pain.

Thus, it doesn’t really matter if Robert E. Lee was a great man or slave-master or some combination of the two. What matters is that his statue continues to intimidate many African Americans because of what it represents: the armed attempt by a confederation of white Americans to preserve the “peculiar institution” of black slavery. It doesn’t even matter if those feelings of intimidation and fear make sense to white people; it only matters that the feelings are genuine. And after August’s events in Charlottesville, how could anyone doubt the authenticity of such emotions?

For Christians in the South where most Confederate monuments are located, we can value our heritage, or we can value our empathy for our African American brothers and sisters; we can’t value both at the same time.

Brian Snyder is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Science at Louisiana State University and a member of First United Methodist Church in Baton Rouge, La.