RAJ ANDREW GHOSHAL: Durham's statue valorized white supremacy. We can do better

As a scholar of commemoration and race, I’ve spent years researching how America remembers slavery, the Civil War, and segregation. As a Midwesterner-turned-Southerner, I’ve spent most of my adult life in North Carolina and Virginia.

This past week, I saw both my adopted homes embroiled in conflict over race and memory.

In Charlottesville, a Nazi sympathizer, resentful that a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee was to be removed, killed an anti-racist demonstrator. Days later, protestors in Durham knocked down a Confederate soldier statue after which Durham County Sheriff Mike Andrews announced plans to press charges against those who had toppled the figure.

In this confrontation over how Americans mark a divisive past, is the sheriff right to go after Durham’s protestors? How should our state deal with this case, and with Confederate memorials more broadly?

A few points are worth considering.

If the Confederacy had won, we wouldn’t be surprised to see representatives of the Confederate States support their own memorials. But by what right do public officials of the United States use their positions to defend a statue that honors treason?

Second, resources and attention are scarce. Wise governance demands setting priorities. Jaywalking is illegal, but police recognize that crimes like murder and rape warrant far more attention. They wisely do not aggressively pursue every jaywalker.

If Durham’s statue case proceeds, how many tens of thousands of tax dollars will be spent on prosecuting a crime with no victim? How many police officers and lawyers will be involved in further investigation and criminal proceedings -- and for how long?

Will attention to crimes like homicide or child abuse be diverted? Is prosecuting this case worth it for a piece of stone that, and let’s admit the obvious, most local residents were at best indifferent to, and at worst repulsed by?

Last, statues that honor the Confederacy are inescapably tied to signaling white supremacy.

Without slavery, economic tensions between the North and South would not have boiled over into war. The notion that the Civil War was over “states’ rights” misses an obvious point: it was over states’ “right” to maintain slavery.

For these reasons, citizens in communities throughout the South, like Durham, have come to recognize these statues are poor symbols of our shared values.

On their own, citizens in Durham, Charlotte, and other cities can’t reverse that law. But we can recognize that the demonstrators who broke it are more in line with the open and diverse state that we’ve become than the politicians who blocked local control.

What should be done with Confederate memorials? Some statue supporters argue that we shouldn’t “erase history.” They’re right. Most Confederate statues belong where most Hitler statues do; in museums, where they can be appropriately contextualized.

Durham’s case may be different. As its statue is already fallen, maintaining the rubble as is would serve as a powerful living memorial, marking a moment when we decisively turned away from honoring white supremacy.

Regardless, let’s not waste time mourning an insulting piece of stone. Durham County’s sheriff and district attorney should drop this case – and North Carolina legislators should stop spending money and time to defend symbols that neo-Nazis and KKK members hold dear.