The Boston Globe - 05.08.2019

(Brent) #1

MONDAY, AUGUST 5, 2019 The Boston Globe Opinion A


that city’s entertainment dis-
trict?
Is there another, as yet un-
discovered, manifesto railing
against anyonewho isn’t
white?
At a Walmart in El Paso, a
predominantly Latinx city, a
gunman Saturday killed at
least 20 people and injured
more than 25. According to
the New York Times, the store,
just 10 minutes from the
Bridge of the Americas linking
El Paso, and Cuidad Juarez, its
sister city in Mexico, is a popu-
lar stop for Mexican tourists.
In a hate-drenchedscreed


police believe may have been
posted by the 21-year-oldgun-
man, the writer rambles about
a “Hispanic invasion of Texas”
and cautions that white people
are being pushed out by
brown people.
Those words could have
come straight from President
Trump.In May, he said this
nation “has been invaded by
hundreds of thousands of peo-
ple coming through Mexico
and entering our country ille-
gally.” In the statement, Trump
talkedaboutthe“profound
consequences” this is having
on America, and how “it must

end NOW.”
When Trump speaks of
America, he always means
white people. In Texas, anoth-
er white man with a gun seem-
ingly heard his president’s call,
and did what he thought nec-
essary to end it.
The president, of course,
will claim his words aren’t re-
sponsible for emboldening fee-
ble white men. He’ll also stick
to his NRA talking point that
mental illness, not readily
available high-powered weap-
ons, is the problem.
In the meantime, flags will
lowered, memorials will grow

where people died, teary
speeches will be applauded,
and nothing with change.
Guns – and whitesupremacy –
will remain abundant and ig-
nored because America despis-
es nothing more than facing it-
self.
And more will die every
day, every week, and every
year in a nation drowning in
hate, guns, and useless
thoughts and prayers.

Renée Graham can be reached
at [email protected].
Follow her on
Twitter@reneeygraham.

MARKRALSTON/AFP/GETTYIMAGES

VirginiaChaconreacts as shetellshersurvival story to a policeofficeroutsidetheCieloVista Mall Walmart wherea
shootingleft 20peopledeadin El Paso,Texas,onAug. 4.


Inbox

Whattodo

abouttheDems

Letters should be written exclusively to the Globe and
include name, address, and daytime telephone number.
They should be 200 words or fewer. All are subject to
editing. Letters to the Editor, The Boston Globe, 1 Exchange
Pl, Ste 201, Boston, MA 02109-2132; [email protected]

I am dismayed by the ongoing slew of allusions regarding
Joe Biden “collaborating with segregationist senators” (the
latest, in “It’s actions, not words, that made Reagan a
racist,” by Taymullah Abdur-Rahman, Opinion, Aug. 2).
The point Biden was making is that when elected senator
you have to collaborate with all kinds of other senators —
some you agree with, someyou don’t — if you want to get
anything done. Democracy demands collaboration. This
business of saying: “No; I’m going to take my political bat
and ball and go home if I don’t agree with you” is one
reason Congress is so dysfunctional right now.
PATIENCEWALES
Ipswich

Don’t disparage Biden’s ‘collaborating’

Well. It seems every Globe columnist disliked the debates
and doubts that any candidate can beat Donald Trump
(“Debates roundup,” Opinion, Aug. 2). This is what we all
fear. But I also believe this fear is Trump’s weapon. Trump
has openly stated that this is the source of his power. When
we fear, we doubt, and when we doubt we attack our own.
We are doing his work for him. He is a master at this. We
do need to challenge each other. I watched only Wednesday
night, but I thought it was good for lower-tier candidates to
bring up the weak points of the upper-tier candidates’ past
records so we can deal with them. But we also need to
support each other and look as much as possible to the
positive. Which means in my book Elizabeth Warren won
the early rounds of debates.
JANA HOWE
Merrimack, N.H.

Democrats needto support eachother
aswell aschallenge

As pointed out in Friday’s Globe (“Democrats concerned
that attacks went too far,” Page A1, Aug. 2), the only people
happy about the charade presented by the Democratic
Party last Tuesday and Wednesday nights are the
Republicans. It is painfully obvious that, as prompted by
the talking heads on TV who spoke incessantly beforehand
about who might successfully “land a punch” on his or her
opponents, and thus qualify to oppose Trump when
debating him, that is exactly what characterized the whole
debacle.
Thatis,exceptforMarianneWilliamson,theonly
participant who focused on the needs of the country, not
the least of which beingthat of defeating the catastrophe
that now occupies the White House.
Unfortunately, the article was oblivious to that, and
further, dismissed her as a “self-help guru” who it predicted
“may not be there” (at the next debate) “to warn of dark
psychic forces.” As if such a warning is patently absurd,
instead of calling attention to the cruel reality that faces the
country and the world.
I pray that Marianne Williamson is indeed at the next
“debate” to continue injecting sanity into (to use her word)
the “wonkiness” thus far served up by the rest of the Demo-
cratic candidates.
JOHNHAGAN
Dracut

Give Williamson credit

Bravo to Yvonne Abraham for writing about the era of
climate change heat waves we have entered and which will
become much worse (“Like it hot? Just wait.” Metro, Aug.
1). Summer will become a time that people dread instead
of anticipate. One area she did not adequately address is
the role of fossil-fueled private transportation methodsthat
far too many people use. It is not just the heat-trapping
CO2 emitted by cars but also the vast quantities of waste
heat they generate. Fossil fuel engines use only between 25
and 50 percent of the combustion to move the vehicle.
Stand next to any idling car on a hot day, as I do as a daily
bicyclist, and one will quickly realize that these machines
are heat islands of their own.Our political leaders needto
act quickly to transform our transportation system away
from the current destructive method. Governor Baker
should start by imposing tolls on all major highways and
congestion pricing in the Boston urban area.
ALANWRIGHT
Roslindale

Anumentionedfactor in heat waves—
and climate change

I

am the artist who proposed and
recently withdrew a design for a
memorial artwork at Faneuil Hall
that acknowledges the connection
between Peter Faneuil, his family,
and the trafficking of Africans and
African-Americans in the Trans-Atlantic
slave trade.
That work, titled “Auction Block Me-
morialat Faneuil Hall: A Site Dedicated to
Those Enslaved Africans and African-
Americans Whose Kidnapping and Sale
Here Took Place and WhoseLabor and
Trafficking Through the Triangular Trade
Financed the Building of Faneuil Hall,” has
beencharacterized, denounced, and mis-
understood by many people and organiza-
tions. I would like to set the record
straight.
This work cameout of BostonAIR, the
city’s artist-in-residence program. “In the
program,’’ describes the city’s website,
“artists, community members, and City
employees workon projects that help
reframe social conversations. These
artists explore the ways they can use art
and media to improve and bolster City
initiatives. They also search for ways to
make artistic social practice a part of
government and community work.”
As a result of this public engagement, I
proposed an artwork to honor the actual
and metaphorical space my ancestors
occupied when they were broughthere
during the colonial period by Faneuil and
men like him. No one asked,
commissioned, or hired me to do this. I
did it because in the terms of the
residency, we werecharged to look at the
city throughthe lenses of resilience, and
racial equity. As I stood in front of Faneuil
Hall, I realizedthat at somepoint, a black
person, far from home, wouldhave been
standing shackled in that marketplace, or
on Long Wharf, or in a private home, or
in one of the many sites in New England
where slave trading took place, not
knowing what was being said, but
knowing that thesepeople had control
over their body. That struck me then and
it strikes me now as obscene.
If we are going to talk about racial
equity in Boston and in this country, we
need to be clear about the circumstances
that have brought us to this point. We
need to name the names of who did what.
It is not enough to say that people were
enslaved. Who enslaved them? Who
turned theminto products? Who
kidnapped and sold them?Whoworked
them to death? Who was able to secure
loans and mortgages based on how many

people they owned? Who received
compensation when enslaved people died
in the Middle Passage? If we do not name
the names, then we are bound to look at
enslavement as something that just
“happened,” as if there were no active and
willing agents making it happen and
benefitting from it. If we ignore the
agents, then we ignore the wealth that
comes from their activity.
I developed and proposed the memori-
al in the service of those women and men
who were stolen, sold, and worked to
death to create the wealth of the nation. I
proposed it to alter the Faneuil Hall mar-
ketplace into a site of contemplation of an
atrocity against black people.I proposed it
because part of the goal of the BostonAIR
program is to have contemporary artists
engage with the city.
I went through the appropriate
channels with the Boston Art
Commission, securing the many
approvals needed to begin the process of
arranging public discussion of the
proposed memorial. I reached out to
many artists, historians, architects,
educators, civil rights activists, the
Freedom Trail Foundation, and curators
— some of whomconsented to be on the
advisory board for the project. A public
hearing was scheduled for July 23, and I
was looking forward to beginning the

larger public discussion that is necessary
in the creation of a public memorial.
The origin, nature, and purpose of my
work has been mischaracterized and
malignedby people who have other
agendas. Because of sustained
misinformation linking my work to other
people’s campaign to rename Faneuil Hall,
respected organizations — notably the
Boston NAACP — developed incorrect
beliefs about how this project came about.
I saw my work being weaponized in order
to promote the notion that the City did not
care about having an engaged dialogue
about race, that I was the “house negro”
pawn of a whitemayor, and that I was not
engaged with “the community” in a public
processto create the work. My repeating
that none of this was true was not enough
to reframe the dialogue and derailedany
hopefor an engaged discussion about my
workas proposed.
To prevent people fromclaimingthat
my work was created and presented by a
white mayor to stifle Boston’s needed
dialogue on race; to prevent people from
claiming that my workwas created in
order to deflect from the issue of
renaming Faneuil Hall; and to allow
people to make their own arguments
about theirown positions without
claiming that my workis an obstacle to
discussion, I decided that it would be best
to withdraw my work.
This memorial as conceived will not
happen here, but because of the attempt
to have the memorial, the City of Boston
agreed that the lives of the kidnapped,
stolen, trafficked, and worked-to-death
blackpeople deserved to be honored in a
public work. That alone gives me a
tremendous amount of joy and
accomplishment. It is my hope that a
more talented contemporary artist will
find a way to memorialize those stolen
lives. I would never claim that my work or
any art could stop racism, but I do believe
that a site in Boston that acknowledges
the open wound could become a place
where we begin to heal.
That desire for healing is at the core of
what I tried to do. Anyone who suggests
otherwise does not know me, the project,
and how hardI have worked and fought
to have a 10-by-16-foot space in this city
to acknowledge the trauma that
originates from Faneuil Hall.

Steve Locke is an artist. A former
professor at Massachusetts College of Art,
he will be a professor of painting at Pratt
Institute in New York this fall.

Why I withdrew my proposed

slave memorial at Faneuil Hall

BySteve Locke

FaneuilHall

I developedand

proposedthememorial

in theserviceof those

womenandmenwho

werestolen,sold,and

workedto deathto

create thewealthof the

nation.

In his July 30 column on whether Americans favor capital
punishment (“Whenmurder rates fell, support for the
death penalty fell too,” Opinion), Jeff Jacoby makes the
case that support for capital punishment increases as
homicide rates increase, because that’s what the data
shows. Jacoby correctly acknowledges that correlation
does not equal causation, but then makes the logical error
of stating that “six decades of correlation are hard to
discount.” He should knowthat the persistence of a
correlation does not in any way increase the likelihood
that it should suddenly be promoted to causation. For
example, there is an extremely strong correlation between
Jacoby’s age and the cost of living in the United States. The
fact that it has persisted for the 60 years of his life does not
make his aging the cause.
BILLLEVIN
MarshfieldHills

One man’scorrelation is another man’s

causation
Free download pdf