Tinkering or Honoring?

Jan Reid observed the removal of Jefferson Davis's statue of honor from the University of Texas south mall and angrily declared, "The Absurdity of Tinkering with Texas History." However, "tinkering" is a blatantly inaccurate word.

Filled with a dedicated love for Texas, Jan Reid has established himself as a well-qualified author and journalist with successful novels and contributions to Esquire, New York Times, and other media sources. As with most of his work, his editorial on Davis's statue gears itself towards those enamored with Texas and nostalgic with its history. The University's recent decision to remove the statue honoring Jefferson Davis did not fit with Reid's history nostalgia.

In "The Absurdity of Tinkering with Texas History," Reid summarizes the more positive accomplishments of the four men - Woodrow Wilson, Albert Sidney Johnson, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis - honored with statues at the UT south mall, along with a few other honored men commemorated on UT campus, then briefly makes the case that removing these statues is, "a surrender to vandals," and an attempt, "to airbrush our state's past."

Jefferson Davis, president of the confederacy, stood at the forefront of the racism of civil war south. He fought for his ideas of, "The inferiority stamped upon that race of men by the Creator." He referred to African Americans as, "This species of property." He not only admitted but was proud of the fact that Caucasians exploited and benefited from racism. As he said it, "White men have an equality resulting from the presence of a lower caste."
Jan Reid describes Davis as, "A Mississippi planter and congressman, he championed Texas' entry into the Union as a slave state." Reid, arguing to preserve the authenticity of history, makes no mention of Davis's passionately racist views.

The statue of Jefferson Davis is not a learning moment in a history class to discuss the political power or public speaking skills of Jefferson Davis. The statue is an honor. Davis's methods to get his cause accomplished were effective and convincing, and maybe we can learn from them. Yet regardless, Davis's cause was the brutal enslavement of human beings no longer recognized as human. "Tinkering with Texas history" would be to take mention of Davis out of history classes. In fact it might even be summarizing his life without a single mention of his idea that "African slavery, as it exists in the United States, is a moral, a social, and a political blessing," exactly as Reid did.

The statue that used to sit in the south mall did not teach history, it honored a man who led the split of our nation and sought to preserve slavery inevitably. Its removal does not in any way tinker with history; it is not a surrender to vandals or an airbrushing of history. It rightly takes away the honor from an evil man. It is listening to the voice of the people and recognizing our state's wrongs. 

I wonder if Jan Reid would like to critique the 2012 removal of all Russian statues of Vladimir Lenin. Maybe he could emphasize how Lenin got a gold medal in school. After all, removing statutes honoring a man who tried to destroy a nation is, of course, tinkering with history.