Analyze & Write 5.1 (Stiem, Statue Wars)

Tyler Stiem, Statue Wars: What Should We Do with Troublesome Monuments?

Skim the first three paragraphs of the essay and notice how Stiem introduces the controversy over Confederate statues and how attitudes toward them have developed. Which of the who, what, where, when, why, and how questions does Stiem answer?

The Blindness of the Everyday

^{[Par. 1]} There was a time not long ago (though it feels like forever) when a kind of blindness was possible as you moved through your city any city. You could step out of your front door and cross street after street without giving much thought to the former colonies and forgotten diplomats they memorialized; go to school or work in a building named for a famous statesman without doing a moral accounting of his achievements; eat your lunch beneath the statue of another long-ago luminary renowned for his charity without wondering about the provenance of his wealth; stop on your way home to take in a view of the city at night without imagining what, or who, was there before. To never wonder, never imagine: this was possible if your skin was a certain color.

^{[Par. 2]} This is the blindness of the everyday. We grow used to the spaces we inhabit. We stop seeing them. And we grow used to the ideas around us until we can't see them either. Not long ago it was possible to believe the past was irrelevant that history had no purchase on the postcolonial, post-cold war, post-everything present. With the horrors of the 20th century behind us, the free market would deliver us into a future where democracy and prosperity were available to all. (Again, this was easier to believe if your skin was a certain color, if you belonged to a certain class, if you had a certain set of experiences.)

^{[Par. 3]} Little by little, that narrative began to fray. All around us the historical forces that have always shaped our lives have become visible. The urban monuments we barely noticed have become the center of protest movements around the world.