It’s not unpatriotic to remove the Columbus statue

My name is Patrick McCarthy and I am a lifelong Syracuse resident. I am a member of the Class of 2020 and former columnist for The Daily Orange. I am writing today with some thoughts on a recent column written by Augustus LeRoux advocating against the removal of the Christopher Columbus statue in downtown Syracuse.

Unfortunately, LeRoux seems interested in using the statue as a proxy to sow greater division between his perceived “patriots” and “progressives.” The author’s argument in defense of the Columbus statue begins and ends with invocations of national heroes. When stripped of its logical fallacies, this column is left with nothing but the names of historical figures, names that are doing a lot of heavy lifting.

There is very little tangible defense of Columbus or his legacy, and even less that would condone a statue of him remaining in the center of Syracuse. Individuals advocating for keeping statues often argue that if we remove one monument, the rest will follow, that if Columbus comes down today, Lincoln goes tomorrow. But the tributes in the city of Syracuse bearing the names of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln are not the subject of local debate, protests nor petitions, so the aforementioned icons have no place in this discussion. And for the record a petition to remove the Columbus statue has garnered 18,888 signatures, while a petition for the statue to remain has garnered 3,012 signatures. But those for keeping the statue insist they somehow speak for the people.

The column draws a false dichotomy between “patriot” and “progressive.” The “progressives” LeRoux references have always been active in America and to imply that progressives are somehow unpatriotic is reactionary and inflammatory at best. It is not unpatriotic for citizens to take issue with the supposed “patriots” and their deification of a failed explorer and successful killer who hailed from Italy and sailed with Spain.

Many patriotic characters in American history — including Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Theodore Roosevelt, Samuel Gompers, Ella Baker, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr., and a laundry list of other activists, thinkers and artists — aligned with, espoused and enacted progressive politics. In their time, detractors labeled these progressives as unpatriotic, too, yet now they are revered as American heroes while their detractors’ names live only in infamy or oblivion. Were the Emancipation Proclamation, the New Deal and the civil rights movement not progressive? To suggest that progressivism is not patriotic is to betray one’s own ignorance of the American story.

LeRoux suggests that without 40-foot statues of 500-year-old explorers, our tethers to human history will be incontrovertibly severed. It’s a nice talking point, however, it loses its weight when one considers the hundreds of thousands of history teachers and professors who, every day, teach students history lessons that, believe it or not, do not rely on statues.

In fact, throughout the course of earning my Bachelor of Arts in American History degree from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, I never once completed an assignment that relied on the existence of a statue or monument to convey historical information to me. Furthermore, I was somehow able to comprehend the lectures in a course called “America in Crisis: Civil War and Reconstruction,” even though I’ve never laid eyes on a statue of the traitor Robert E. Lee or a monument to the failed rebel Jefferson Davis.

Next comes the oft-presented and absurd defense that the significance of monuments and statues lies not in the physical forms they take, but rather in what they “represent.” That is, you aren’t supposed to look at the Columbus statue and see Christopher Columbus, the failed explorer and genocidal conqueror. Instead, you’re supposed to look past the form of Christopher Columbus, standing atop the heads of Indigenous people, and make some sort of assessment of “how far we’ve come.” The irony arises, of course, as the author emphasizes American progress while arguing for the status quo and maligning the “progressives” responsible for moving the nation forward.

I understand the value of the statue for historical purposes and that many Italian Americans perceive the statue as a monument to the ingenuity and industry of Italian immigrants. That is all well and good, but if the best defense of the statue hinges on what the statue represents rather than its physical form, I am utterly confused as to how LeRoux misses that Columbus represents genocide and imperialism for many Indigenous people.

One image etched into the statue is a depiction of Columbus bringing Christianity to the New World — can the author not surmise why this may disgust residents and offend Haudenosaunee people?

Mayor Walsh ought to move forward with the removal of the statue, but it should not be destroyed. The interactive and educational experience, which some Italian Americans have suggested be constructed around the statue, is better fit for a museum.

Surely the New York State Museum or the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian could find room for a statue demonstrating the history of Italian immigrants, a statue of a person who has since fallen out of fashion as a symbol of American progress. Surely more people will interact with the statue if it is displayed in a larger museum. Surely the Italian Americans of Syracuse can understand that even if the Columbus statue makes them feel welcome, the majority of their fellow citizens feel otherwise.

At any rate, the column LeRoux has penned serves no purpose but to divide and detract from any productive conversation regarding the removal of Syracuse’s Columbus statue — which, by the way, Mayor Walsh has already confirmed.

Patrick McCarthy 20’