In the Shadows of Statues
by Christopher Carmona
For one hundred years we have lived in the shadow of statues. Of monuments. Of the long white blanket of the American schism. This is a place where progress is preached like the word of God itself, while in the dark it whispers that we are not welcome. This is a conquered land. We are too much a reminder of their sins. Sins that began in 1492 when the Spanish stepped onto these lands and declared themselves gods. It began in 1619 when they brought the first stolen souls from across the sea. They sang to Anansi, their god of all knowledge, but Anansi could not hear them because he knew that they were destined for 400 years of bondage and invisible chains. It began when the first shots were fired at Crispus Attucks, the shot that created this country of inalienable human rights for some. Certainly not for Crispus Attucks. It began when they pushed us from the Constitution, labeling some 3/5 of a person, others savages, and others erased.
And when the country was ripped in two by the crime of slavery. Some needed it. Some wanted it. Others fought for freedom. From slavery. From the bonds of our dark skins. But always there were those that rebelled. That burnt the homes of their masters. That followed Nat Turner. That ran for freedom. That wove their suffering in song. Songs filled with freedom dreams. I think Lorraine Hansberry put it best when she said, “Seems like God don't see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams - but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worthwhile.” These children created towns and communities that were all their own. They created Zion, Freed Towns, and their own Wall Street. But like any good monster, white supremacy could not leave good enough alone. It rolled over them with a napalm-filled fury that took their homes, their wealth, and their lives. It left them dangling from trees. It left us shot in the back. Left like roadkill. Never allowed to be buried like human beings. We were left as warnings to those that chose to rise up and challenge the whiteness of American Progress. We the brown & the black share so much, but we are kept separate in the history books. We are taught to hate each other. We are taught that we are better than the Blacks. But we all suffer under the same sword. The same noose. The same bullets. Even though there are no longer slave catchers. No longer pinches rinches. No longer soldiers killing Sitting Bull. Crazy Horse, or us. Instead they wear badges. Dress in blue and drive around in cars that say, ‘Protect and Serve.’ But as Ralph Ellison writes, “I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers.” And those triggers are mostly let loose on us when we sell loosies. When we drive in cars. When we buy Skittles and Iced Tea. When we play with toys in parks. When we clap back at the brutality of that long white blanket. But the worst of it is not the violence that we see and hear and feel. It is the invisible war that is waged upon us with quiet resolve.
For a hundred monuments of white supremacy slowly rose from the ashes of defeat. They lost their right to own human beings. They lost their ability to call us niggers, greasers, wetbacks, and savages. W.E.B. Dubois, William Trotter, Langston Hughes, Ida B. Wells, Jovita Idar, J.T. Canales, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Russell Banks, Anna Mae Aquash, Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, and others made sure of that. Reconstruction took care of the rest. It forced the hatred to come back by other means. One of those means was the creation and installation of Confederate statues all across this country. From Washington D.C. to New Orleans to Atlanta, Georgia, to Charleston, Virginia, and finally to Brownsville, Texas. For 92 years, a monument to Jefferson Davis stood to commemorate the Confederate cause. These statues were the work of the Daughters of the Confederacy, the women’s arm of the KKK. These statues served only one purpose as W.E.B. Dubois voiced in the 1931 issue of The Crisis:
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The most terrible thing about war, I am convinced, is the monuments – the awful things we are compelled to build in order to remember the victims. In the South, particularly, human ingenuity has been put to it to explain the Confederacy on its war monuments. Of course, the plain truth of the matter would be an inscription something like this: “Sacred to the memory of those who fought to Perpetuate Human Slavery.” But that reads with increasing difficulty as time goes on. It does, however, seem to be overdoing the matter to read on a North Carolina Confederate monument “Died Fighting for Liberty”!
For almost a hundred years now, we have lived under these monuments, these reminders that we are invisible to history. Our histories, our struggles, slowly erased. Leaving only the people and their songs and their tales told by the firelight. These monuments were not only rock and stone but ideas that permeated the education of our children. Written out of existence. Reduced to invisible shadows that serve to scare the white children. We became the boogeyman, the Candy Man, the cucuy in the closet. Bandits, rapists, murderers, and those that work the fields, the factories, fixing their cars, cleaning their houses, and being their sacrificial lambs sent off to prisons. Images reinforced by shows like Cops. We are always the villains of American History. Worse than second class citizens. And when we rise up and scream, they say, “See, they are animals. Just as we were taught.” But those screams are only songs for freedom, like corridos or the spirituals sung by the slaves in the cotton field. They are our only voice to be seen again. And when we burn the world around us it is because we are tired of being invisible. We are tired of living in the shadow of statues. Because as Zora Neale Hurston writes, “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
So, now when all of these statues are toppling all over the country. We are no longer invisible. They can see us. We can see ourselves. And sometimes the light is blinding. Sometimes it is freedom. Sometimes it shows who we really are. And I say, we are finally on the road to making the true villain visible. No more statues to protect you. No more shadows to cast over us. Just the cold hard light of the truth. We were once invisible in your shadow, but no more. We can see you now.
*Note – There will an online panel, open to the public, regarding this topic and Christopher Carmona's upcoming novel. The panel titled El Rinche Revolución: The Power of Telling Histories Through Literature will be held through Zoom on July 3rd, 2020, 7PM CDT, and is FREE. To register for this FREE event, click the button bellow and follow the instructions on eventbrite.
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