Removing statues, renaming institutions is a complex subject worth much discussion

My father was ahead of his time Although he has been gone about 40 years, in his day he was in the habit of doing something that is very much here and now. If he had a photograph of a group of people, he would take a pair of scissors and cut out a person from the photo that he didn’t like.

His actions could be considered as a mild precursor of the kind of excision that is gaining traction throughout the country today. Our family was both shocked and amused at my father’s actions, but what is happening today is not amusing and is much more serious.

How does one decide what public statues or institutional names are worthy of maintenance and which must be changed or removed? This is a tough issue and one which further polarizes elements in our already confrontational national discussion. I tried to come to a decision in my own mind about what I believe, and it wasn’t easy.

Let’s start with what I consider the obvious. The place for statues and memorabilia from the Confederacy is in a museum. The history of the United States needs to be preserved, that is true, but the negative past does not need to be glorified. The good — if any — and the bad information about these figures can be included in the usual wall plaques and booklets that are available in such institutions.

Similarly, military bases, museums, colleges and other government-supported buildings that are named for Confederate figures should be renamed so as not to mislead the public to assume that these individuals played a positive role in our history.

Now comes the hard part. What about figures like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Elihu Root and other slaveholders? And in our own region, what about the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in the Fresno State Peace Garden?

This reminds me of an argument from my childhood about the composer Richard Wagner. He was associated with Hitler, Nazism and anti-Semitism because even though Wagner died before Hitler was born, Hitler claimed that Wagner’s music had an immense impact on his thinking and that Wagner’s music predicted Germany’s future.

Wagner also was a prolific writer who frequently penned nationalistic and anti-Semitic messages. I remember tremendous controversy in New York during World War II over whether Wagner’s music should be performed at Carnegie Hall. I remember marches and posters taking sides on this issue. To this day, Wagner’s music is played infrequently in Israel. So do we remember and honor Wagner the great composer, or Wagner who was Hitler’s inspiration?

The Wagner issue makes it obvious that people can hold both good and evil within themselves. Getting back to Washington and Jefferson, who were known slave holders; and to Gandhi, who is known to have written negative and prejudicial statements about Africans’ place in society; and the advice he offered to Jews to voluntarily be killed by the Nazis so as to gain inner strength and joy: how do we balance the good and the evil?

In an article about good and evil, the magazine Psychology Today cites Hitler as the embodiment of evil while Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr are cited as the embodiment of goodness because of their empathy and compassion. Yet while we all agree on Hitler’s designation, there is controversy about Gandhi and King. As the article notes, goodness is fluid, and most of us lie somewhere between these two extremes.

Is it possible to balance the work of the majority of one’s lifetime against some actions that show self-centeredness and a lack of empathy? Should these be judged in the context of the era in which they occurred or only by today’s standards? Whether statues or institutional names should be removed is a complex subject requiring public discussion and should not be accomplished in a haphazard manner as a result of co-occurring violence.

The Washington Post has noted that of 5,193 public statues in this country, only 394, or 13 percent, are of women. That leaves plenty of room for replacing some Confederates and others with representations of outstanding females in our history.