Cancel Culture's Next Targets: Street Names and Logos
Northern Virginia's Arlington and Alexandria Counties to Spend Lots of Time and Money and Create Inconveniences by Erasing History
While our woke cultural march through institutions to “cancel” people of unforgivable past “sins” continues unabated, their battlefield has expanded to include not just Confederate statues (and a few Unionists), but now logos and street names. At least in a couple of large northern Virginia counties that border our nation’s capital. It apparently has not yet reached multi-unit housing developments, but wait.
Let’s start with Alexandria’s new “Confederate Street Renaming Pilot Program Policy and Procedure,” launched via a county ordinance imposed on August 10th. Alexandria made a small splash almost 15 months ago when it removed an iconic statue entitled “Appomattox,” featuring an unarmed, surrendering Confederal soldier. It was erected in 1889. Even though Alexandria was union-occupied during almost all of the Civil War (as was neighboring Arlington), its location was known for “where many Confederate soldiers gathered to leave for war.”
Cancel culture actually first took root in 2017 in Alexandria when historic Christ Church, affiliated with the Episcopal Church where both George Washington and Robert E. Lee worshipped, removed plaques and memorials to both. Robert E. Lee’s boyhood home is located just a few blocks away. There is no word yet on whether it will be “canceled” in some form, but it was purchased for $4.7 million 14 months ago. The memorial plaques to our nation’s first President and General Lee at Christ Church made parishioners feel “uncomfortable.”
“The plaques in our sanctuary make some in our presence feel unsafe or unwelcome. Some visitors and guests who worship with us choose not to return because they receive an unintended message from the prominent presence of the plaques,” the church leaders said in a letter to the congregation that went out last week.
I’m pleased to report that Christ Church is now a “safe space,” one I no longer feel compelled to visit.
Alexandria’s new street renaming pilot will start with a process to rename three unspecified streets under a prescriptive program. If you want to change your offending street name, that will require a petition signed by at least 25 percent (formerly 75 percent) of residents affected by the change. “Before collecting signatures and holding a community meeting, the petitioner must present historical research and justification at a Naming Committee meeting and request a waiver from the 75% signature requirements.” Whatever happened to a simple majority? I guess the tyranny of the minority is now official policy. There are other filing procedures and other requirements for any new name they wish to use.
At least Alexandria realizes there are costs and inconveniences to affected residents by this effort to erase history.
And there aren’t just three streets named after Confederate officers and officials. There are, by my count, 68 of them.
Given the political leanings of Alexandria in recent years (overwhelmingly Democratic), it won’t take much effort to find 25% of affected residents who 1) never knew their street has Civil War connotations, and 2) will be “made uncomfortable” by the one-sided historical research laced with presentism and devoid of historical context that is likely to be conducted and presented. Others will sign just to get woke activists off their porches so they can get back to their normal lives. This will be interesting, even instructive, to watch.
I would not be surprised to see or hear someone suggest that Alexandria replicate a street named in Paris, France, that honors Mumia Abu-Jamal, a notorious Philadelphia cop killer. The late cop’s wife, Maureen Faulkner, has been on a somewhat lonely quest for justice, given the celebrity support for Mumia, whose death sentence was recently commuted to life on a dubious technicality. Let’s hope not.
Not to be left out, Arlington County was alerted by a local chapter of the NAACP that they were offended by the use of Arlington House, the Robert E. Lee National Memorial, as the centerpiece of its official logo. It was the pre-Civil War home of former West Point superintendent, Mexican War veteran, and former US Army Colonel Robert E. Lee and his father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis. Lee inherited Custis’s slaves when he passed. The home is now one of the centerpieces of Arlington National Cemetary, where about 40,000 thousand war dead - including Confederate soldiers - and other distinguished Americans are buried. Lee fled the home in 1861 - leaving behind George Washington’s Revolutionary War tent after he chose to defend his home state over an offer from President Lincoln to lead the Union Army at the outset of the war.
In a recent visit to the cemetery, a must-visit for any American traveling to the national capital, my wife and I learned that Arlington House had been closed for renovations, including a “repurposing” of history to de-emphasize Lee’s presence and focus more on the enslaved who lived and worked there.
Arlington chose to replace its logo with a new one that would be part of a contest. Voting is still underway from a variety of options, which are not popular. No word yet how many hours that Arlington County public employees have spent on this project or what it will cost to replace or repaint signs, vehicles, flags, logos, and much more throughout the county. I guess it is not enough to consider how the Custis-Lee mansion and property became the final resting place of heroic Americans, including the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
And that may be the real cost of erasing history, or at least “renaming” it. We will never learn why they were memorialized in the first place. Why they chose to defend their home states over the union. The roles they played to help unify the nation after a devastating conflict. Some Confederate generals served in Congress after the Civil War, including the first commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, Joseph E. Johnston. Four others rejoined the U.S. Army and fought in the Spanish American War. Three former Confederate soldiers become Justices of the US Supreme Court. More than a dozen others became US Ambassadors. And, yes, a few have Army forts and bases named after them. But Congress is fixing that, too.
The reunification efforts that occurred many years later are now being reversed to tear open old wounds and divide us amidst a China-style cultural revolution. And, sadly, it seems to be working. It is long past time to stand athwart history and yell, “stop.”
There are better ways, starting with teaching history instead of erasing it, or worse. After all, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Can you think of more important issues than the costly and inconvenient replacement of logos and street names? I can.