The Great American Cancel Culture

It's hard for any American of any race, creed or color to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States when there are so many Americans who have been trying to cancel important figures in American history.  I'm not talking about worthy initiatives like the 1619 Project to focus more on the evils of slavery or the effort to teach Americans that the greatest American leaders of the past - especially the Founding Fathers - were not as pure as Sir Galahad.  I'm talking about efforts to expunge historical figures - white men, mostly, of course - from the historical record.  It would be hard to find just one example of such cancelling that encapsulates the antipathy toward American historical figures that is a repudiation of the nation in general.  Nevertheless, I feel that the renaming and recontextualizing of Washington Park in Newark, New Jersey comes close . . .

After the brutal murder of George Floyd and the peak of the Black Lives Matter movement, which led to the painting of the slogan on city streets in big capital letters in cities across America (including Newark, where it was painted on Halsey Street), so that people would Get It, Newark's mayor, Ras Baraka, son of black nationalist literary figure Amiri Baraka, decided that it was hideously inappropriate for a black-majority city like his to have a downtown park named for George Washington, despite the park's proximity to where Washington appeared while traveling through Newark and despite his integral role in creating and defining the Presidency as our first President, because, well, Washington was a slaveowner, and while many of his slaves were freed when his wife Martha died in 1802, three years after George died, many of them remained in the "care" of Martha's in-laws from her first marriage to Daniel Custis, including her grandson George Washington Parke Custis, the father-in-law of . . . Robert E. Lee. 

After a period of consideration and reflection over the matter in which Mayor Baraka's preferred conclusion was likely foregone all long, the park was renamed Harriet Tubman Square, after the escaped slave who helped other slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad.  (Anything renamed for a black historical figure includes the individual's full name, as if no one will know who the thing was renamed for if just the surname is employed.)  That was actually find of funny, because the space is so large, it's really more of a park than a square.  Also, it's not even in the shape of a square - it's a triangle! 

The George Washington statue in the park's southern corner, installed in 1912, is still there, but, by one account, Mayor Baraka has allowed its foundation to decay from underneath, apparently to show his contempt for Washington's memory.  Nearby Washington Street is likely to be renamed soon, I suspect.

To compliment the newly renamed Harriet Tubman Square, Mayor Baraka commissioned a monument to the Moses of her people.  Good idea.  But then you actually see the monument . . . 

What the hell is this?

Well, I'll let Mayor Baraka explain it: 

"In a time when so many cities are choosing to topple statues that limit the scope of their people's story, we have chosen to erect a monument that spurs us into our future story of exemplary strength and solidity," Baraka said when the monument was unveiled.

Does that include a future that gives architects and sculptors an education in art in addition to training?

I mean, Harriet Tubman deserves a monument in a black-majority city - I can't emphasize this enough - but this is ugly.  I mean, really ugly.  But because it honors a black woman, was sculpted and designed by a black woman (Nina Cooke John), and features a recorded narration (that Disney influence again) by a black woman (the Newark-born rapper and actress legally known as Dana Owens),  no one dares criticize or object to this monstrosity.

I, on the other hand, live for that sort of thing.  Dangerously, I might add, as Bloomfield Avenue in Newark leads right up to where I live.  

I know that my insistence that I'm not opposed to a monument to Harriet Tubman, and that I only think the one that actually got put up is godawful, isn't going to shield me from criticism from its defenders.  But it is what it is.  And, given that the monument occupies only a small portion of the triangular public space formerly known as Washington Park, I have just one question: Why didn't the mayor and city council simply name the immediate square footage around the monument Harriet Tubman Square and leave the rest of the space as Washington Park, Washington being the Father of Our Country and all?

Because that would have involve compromise.  Anyone who knows anything about Ras Baraka and his dad is that a Baraka never compromises.  A Booker, yes.  A Baraka, no.   (Aside: Amiri Baraka successfully led an effort to have an elementary school named for Robert Treat - the whitey who founded Newark - renamed for black nationalist Marcus Garvey.  See what I mean?  The school has since been demolished.)

However, I would be remiss (there I go, using that flowery whitey language again) if I did not express of my approval of Mayor Baraka's decision to remove the public sculpture that was there before - a statue of Christopher Columbus. 

Mayor Baraka had the statue taken down and its pedestal removed because he felt it was even more hideously appropriate to have a statue of a promoter of colonialism and a genocidal maniac who killed most of the indigenous Caribbean peoples and introduced slavery to Spain's budding colonies in the region in a city populated by not just blacks but Puerto Ricans, whose Taino ancestors felt the brunt of Columbus's heinous crimes.  You know the cliché - having a statue of Columbus in a city heavily populated by blacks and Hispanics is like having a statue Adolf Hitler in a city heavily populated by Jews.  

Of course, when the statue was first erected, it honored the city's Italian-American population, which is now down to maybe a block in the Forest Hill neighborhood.  The inscription on the statue's base read:

TO CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

IMMORTAL GENOESE

ERECTED BY THE ITALIANS 

IN THIS LAND

PERCEIVED THROUGH HIS GENIUS

IN THE YEAR 1492

Attempts to remove Columbus statues in Newark suburbs have met with resistance from the state's many Italian-Americans, who consider Columbus a symbol of pride in their heritage and culture.

Gee, why don't we put up statues of Benito Mussolini while we're at it? 

As for my opposition to Columbus monuments, the fact that he was a genocidal maniac is only one of the reasons for my opposition.  Another reason is the fact - which I've mentioned here before - that the story that Columbus proved the world was round was invented by Washington Irving in his biography of Columbus.  (The ancient Greeks proved that the world was round because of how the earth casts a shadow on the moon.)  A third reason is that Columbus died thinking he had reached what we now called Indonesia, completely ignorant of the fact that he had reached a heretofore uncharted land.  But there's the fatal fourth reason - no one really knows what Columbus looked like.  Sculptors who create statues of him can only guess his features.

Mayor Baraka ran for governor of New Jersey in 2025 and made a strong showing in the primary, coming second behind Mikie Sherrill.  Had he been the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, he would certainly have lost to the Republican gubernatorial nominee, Giachino "Jack" Ciattarelli, who would have used Baraka's antipathy for the Italian Navigator as a cudgel against him.

That said, however, as someone who is part Italian, I'm glad that statue is gone.  But removing George Washington's name from the downtown park now named for Harriet Tubman and redesignated a square (it's a triangle!) is a bridge to far for me.  And I am not changing my mind about the Tubman monument - it's ugly.  Really ugly.  It's Newark's equivalent to the giant bust of Benjamin Franklin covered with pennies in Philadelphia.  The only way I could ever justify Washington's name removed from a park in Newark or anywhere in New Jersey is if the state secedes and becomes part of Canada or part of a new country that is ready to make history of its own.

That, of course, is my fondest hope.