I understand this country’s history quite well, actually

Re “A strange monument phobia” letter by David Barsalou.

No, I don’t have a monument phobia. I don’t have a fear of large objects. I am able to leap over them in a single bound.

However, I understand why many people take offense with the public statues of Civil War officers. And I fully understand why the Charlottsville City Council voted to remove the statue by putting it up for sale.

For every person who viewed that statue as part of their southern heritage, there was also a person who saw the statue depicting their relatives being whipped or even hanged for not knowing their “place”. Their female ancestors were brutalized in other ways, and they could be sold at any time to other “masters”.

So “selective megaphobia” is not the correct description - it is neither a fear nor is it selective. And you don’t have to see me “at a distance, sort of like a child with chicken pox.” This type of analogy might come from a person with a more severe affliction. If you need to refer to those who might think differently than you as “snowflakes” or “cellar-dwellers,” then you have lowered your letter to new deaths of debate.

My knowledge of history goes a little bit beyond high school. It includes the concept of state’s rights and the dependency of the Southern economy on captive labor. It includes the knowledge of Jim Crow. So I know what it means when a protesting group emulated the KKK. And I know what those fascist symbols mean to the descendants of the almost six million Jewish people who perished under those symbols. I clearly heard what they chanted in Charlottsville. It was despicable and cannot be defended.

It was not a snowflake, cellar-dwelling child with chicken pox who decided to kill. History is not confined to statues; it lives in books.

And I don’t have bookaphobia.

This story was originally published September 30, 2017 at 4:15 PM with the headline "I understand this country’s history quite well, actually."