High-minded vandalism

Tearing down statues of historic people who have made valuable contributions to society but wouldn’t meet today’s conduct standards seems like high-minded vandalism.

Alaskans should stick together and try to right as many wrongs as we can, but committing new wrongs by judging the past by today’s standards is unworthy. Changing opinions can obviously call for new ways of looking at things, but people should be judged in the context of the time and place they lived.

Some people are arguing that the statue of Captain James Cook in downtown Anchorage should be removed because Alaska’s Native people became disadvantaged and sometimes mistreated with the influx of non-Natives from other parts of the world.

Cook is honored because he was an intrepid British explorer and sea captain who came here while searching for the fabled and non-existent Northwest Passage from the North Pacific Ocean to the North Atlantic. He was the first non-Native to explore the upper reaches of what is now known as Cook Inlet.

Cook didn’t stay here or even spend a lot of time looking around once he realized that the Inlet wasn’t a short-cut to Cape Cod. So the impact of his visit in later years on Alaska’s Indigenous people can hardly be blamed on Skipper Jim. So removing his statue seems an improper attempt to erase history.

Mayor Ethan Berkowitz supports another idea that seems a more reasonable approach to me.

That is modifying the Cook statue site, perhaps by adding statues or other artwork portraying the fact that Alaska’s Native people were here first and have made important contributions to this state’s history.

It should be noted that the proposals to remove the Cook statue are at least a civilized approach to changing the way we recognize historic characters. That is far better than the actions of those who are tearing down or defacing statues elsewhere in the country.

Among the statues defaced was one in Virginia of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who had a mixed record on his treatment of black people. But he was opposed to slavery and freed those inherited by his wife.

There were many others and most of the damage was done by crowds protesting the murder by arresting police officers of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Floyd was arrested after trying to pass a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill.

When he resisted, the arresting officer pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes. He failed to ease the pressure for several minutes after Floyd was dead. Such behavior by a police officer is absolutely unacceptable and review of police choke-holds, among other practices, is very appropriate right now. Changes must be made.

But the people who are rioting and defacing or toppling historic statuary are misguided and their behavior needs to be curtailed.

Taking out their anger on statues raised to honor past heroic characters is vandalism, no matter how high-minded they claim their actions to be.

The world is a constantly changing place and judging people who lived in the past by today’s standards can be unfair to say the least.

A careful application of common sense can put the past in perspective and provide guidance on where we should go from here.

Tom Brennan is an Anchorage columnist and author of five books. He was a reporter/columnist for The Anchorage Times and an editor and columnist at The Voice of The Times.