Don't Run, Forrest, Don't Run

Is the glass half empty or is the glass dragging you behind a speeding pickup truck?

Perceptions are at the heart of an ongoing controversy in Murfreesboro. The student government at Middle Tennessee State University has urged the administration to remove the name Forrest (for Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest) from the ROTC building.

One side perceives the building name as a tribute to a military genius who saved the city from an invading army. The other side chooses to perceive the name as (at best) a slap in the face, or even a trigger for a post-hypnotic suggestion to resume lynching.

I’ve heard the arguments underlying the latter view. “Forrest was a traitor.” “Forrest was on the losing side.” “Forrest was a slave trader.” “Forrest was linked to the original Ku Klux Klan.” “It’s time to put the Civil War behind us and heal.”

The issues of “state sovereignty” and “right to secession” were still up for grabs at the time Forrest chose to side with the Confederacy, so it’s a stretch to question his loyalties.

And so what if the South lost? After winning World War II, the U.S. magnanimously let Japan keep its emperor as a figurehead, with no dire consequences. When a high school football team has a losing season, the principal doesn’t ban the players from the yearbook (not even the ones who bullied smaller kids, made poor grades, or became deadbeat dads). While we’re dissing losers, do the students want to take a wrecking ball to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial???

The slavery era is a tragic part of American history, but the fact remains that the slave trade began with Africans selling fellow Africans. So it’s strange to denounce the name “Forrest” while giving babies phony African names or celebrating faux African holidays like Kwanzaa.

And, as many writers have pointed out, it’s intellectually dishonest to hold historical figures to modern standards. If you really want to nail Forrest on multiple counts, he probably didn’t rewind his videotapes, recycle his plastics, or support Hillary for president, either.

What will the student government do next – picket a school exhibit of Neanderthal artifacts because the cave men weren’t paid the federal minimum wage for making the tools?

It seems petty to demonize Forrest (who ordered the original Klan disbanded) because of what the Ku Klux Klan devolved into. I’ve never heard a single person hold Jesus Christ (founder of Christianity) personally responsible for the excesses of the Crusades or the chicanery of televangelists.

Being “divisive” is the new liberal bogeyman, but just how harmonious is it if one side always says, “I know you’re a lying racist scumbag when you say ‘Heritage, not hate’”?

One has to admire the wide-eyed idealism of the student leaders. They’ll probably hammer at this issue until they’re distracted by something more urgent, like, I don’t know, the right of endangered mussels to visit their life partners in the hospital or something.

But their view that certain groups have ownership of historical events and personalities is regressive, not progressive. If one side is allowed to trot out history when it suits its purpose and otherwise pretend the history didn’t exist, future generations will be denied the opportunity to study and debate issues.

“Putting the Civil War behind us” makes us forever prisoners of that war.

Note: Shortly after this column was written, the anti-Forrest resolution was withdrawn.