Geography, History, and How We Remember
Geography, History, and How We Remember
My father was a history professor. His mainstay course was Western Civilization. He passed before I could discuss world events and my experiences of them and different countries with him. He was a Goldwater Conservative, and I am an Obama Liberal. What he instilled in me was an understanding of our place in history, and to treat how we view the world and its events with a sense of ‘historical detachment,’ enabling a broader understanding of what is happening, putting things in context, and removing ourselves from painful world events. I have difficulty doing this. History is lived through the experiences of generation after generation, and we cannot remove ourselves from its import, or legacy. How a country deals with racism, xenophobia, systemic oppression, and authoritarianism is easy for those who don’t experience its impacts to remove themselves from. Living these things sweeps you up in the immediacy of the issues, and makes you confront them.
While I was living in Berlin, Trump was elected. After this the debate about removing Confederate statues began. Pithily, someone tweeted that Berlin had no monuments to Nazis – only the Holocaust Memorial. This made me think. I had lived in the South. I am from the NYC area, did undergrad in DC, then went to Japan. After this I lived at home, then NC, then home, then Berlin, then home again. I did an internship that took me to Raleigh, the capital, while in NC. There I pointed out a statue of a Confederate leader to others, expressing how baffling I found this. Common among cities in the South, this is how History is chosen to be remembered. A fellow intern said, ‘I can be proud of my ancestor’s service without necessarily agreeing with him.’
Can you, though?
I have a deep love of Japan. It is the country that took me in and gave me my first real job, a community, and a sense of international exchange and purpose that remains with me to this day. Some of my greatest friends were made there, and, both before, while there, and afterwords, I have maintained Japanese hobbies that provide my sense with a sense of meaning, balance, and purpose. Also, living in Japan taught me much of teamwork, respect, manners, and basic decency. Japan, like any country, is not perfect, however. Similar to Germany, the country of my ancestors and self, Japan has a past that is difficult to acknowledge, and deal with. The general public does not know much about things Japan did during WWII. Like students in the American South in the past, students are taught a selected version of history, and not of war time activities in China, or Korea, or the Philippines. Prime Ministers lay wreaths at Yasukuni Shrine, to the frustration of other East-Asian countries. This is a complex issue. There is a deep respect for one’s elders, and especially for those who fought or gave their lives in battle. This is established in history, culture, and norms. In Japan, elders are revered.
In Berlin, things were again different from what I had experienced previously. Every corner had a monument, memorial, or museum. Places with names like ‘Topography of Terror’ litter a tourist’s map. There is no escaping the dramatic history Berlin’s inhabitants experienced throughout the 20th Century. Its people were forced, on a daily basis, to remember the past, acknowledge it, and attempt to move on. This felt different from the cities I had been to in the South, perhaps because the overall tone of the city and its museums, monuments, and memorials felt so apologetic. Things like institutional racism, nationalism, bigotry, and xenophobia are not dealt with overnight, nor even in decades. To successfully vanquish these foes, generations must work tirelessly to overthrow the systems and structures that keep them in place. Only then can a country, or population, truly move on from their past.
And America? I left America for Japan in part out of interest in the culture, and in part because I was fed up with domestic politics. Bush had just been reelected, and I wanted out. I came back to the country with the desire to work on the Obama campaign, which I did. I remember, after the election, talk of our entering a ‘post racial’ era. I lived happily in the US for the subsequent eight years. During the Presidential campaign of 2016, this sentiment was to come crashing down. With the advent of dog whistle politics, and outright rebirth of Nazism, it was quite apparent that the issues of race and History in America had simply gone underground, and festered.
Perhaps it is best to view History with a sense of detachment. This is easy to say when you aren’t on the receiving end of its consequences. I wonder how my father, an immigrant and naturalized citizen, would’ve dealt with Trump’s attitudes and positions, and the conversations we could’ve had. I hold them in my head from time to time, and try to keep a sense of intellectual detachment from my work. Perhaps this is the only way to make sense of the world.
I don’t think so, though. As my father himself must have found throughout the 20th century in America, you cannot remove yourself from History, or its impacts. Attempt to not let events affect you too greatly, sure, but allow them to be a source of motivation, inspiration, and a rallying cry to work for the greater good. If we forget History we are doomed to repeat it, so the phrase goes. If we remember it too closely, perhaps we can be equally blinded. How and why we do this, when dealing with things like racism, informs not just our inner life, but the lives we live in society. I carry my experiences with me. I use them for fuel. And I hope that my father would’ve understood that, even if he wouldn’t agree.
For more information on the debate over memorialization, history, and facing racism, see Harvard-trained Philosopher and Ethicist Susan Neiman’s new book: Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019.
References:
[1] “Removal of Confederate Monuments and Memorials.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, October 01, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Removal_of_Confederate_monuments_and_memorials.
[2] “Structural Violence.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, October 01, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_violence.
[3] “Institutional Racism.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, October 01, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_racism
[4] “Susan Neiman.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, October 01, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Neiman.