ON POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND HISTORY ERASURE
A RESPONSE TO PRESIDENT OAKS’S DEVOTIONAL
On October 27, President Dallin H. Oaks, a leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, spoke about our committee’s efforts to try to unname BYU campus buildings. He called efforts like these an attempt to “erase” history and “symbolic actions that accomplish nothing but a bow to the cause of political correctness.” He then said to the audience, “let us now honor [our country’s founders] for what they have done for us and forgo quarrelling over the past.” As a response to his speech, our committee would like to address a few of the points he brings up in these quotations.
First, political correctness can be defined as an effort to avoid offensive, insensitive, or charged language so as to not exclude oppressed and marginalized groups. The primary argument against political correctness (PC) is that it is a form of censorship and inhibits people’s freedom of speech. Proponents of PC recognize that language is a powerful tool that can both unite and divide. They recognize that insensitivity and ignorance about the language one uses can inadvertently exclude people who have a personal connection to the words being used.
The most blatant example with regards to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was when the current Church President, Russell M. Nelson, called on members, media, and citizens to address the Church by its correct title and to call its members “Latter-day Saints who believe in Jesus Christ” or “members of Jesus Christ’s restored Church.” He noted that calling members “Mormons” or to call the Church the “Mormon Church” is offensive because these terms do not show that members of this Church believe in Jesus Christ. President Nelson further noted that “In the early days of the restored Church, terms such as Mormon Church and Mormons were often used as epithets—as cruel terms, abusive terms—designed to obliterate God’s hand in restoring the Church of Jesus Christ in these latter days.” President Nelson made sure that members and the media knew that this emphasis was not “cosmetic” nor “inconsequential.” He told members that by not using the correct name of the Church they were “inadvertently removing [Jesus Christ] as the central focus of [their] lives.” After this announcement, the Church revised every manual, website, and subsidiary Church program so that they did not include the term “Mormon.” Now the question must be asked: If The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the same Church to which President Oaks belongs, asks the world to call his organization and its members by its correct name, would he or any other opponent of political correctness dare say that such an act was an erasure of the past or that that action should be avoided because it was just a bow to political correctness? This response does not seek to address the point at which offensive language should be criminalized. Instead, we wish to highlight that what some have demonized as political correctness is what is known to most people as decency and respect. There is a broad range of words that we do not use because of the historical and social baggage those words carry.
Second, the idea that un-naming buildings and removing monuments as historical erasure ignores what we see as history. If by history, President Oaks means the connection a historical figure has to a monument or building, then his definition is tenuous. Physical monuments are not history; history is history. The existence or lack of existence of a monument does not make the past any more real than it is. Monuments, buildings and their namesakes represent a collective memory about the past, but we must make sure not to conflate these representations of history with the objective history that actually took place. This is not to say that the namesakes of BYU buildings did not exist. However, to feel that the unnaming of a building is an erasure of the physical life someone lived is all the evidence needed to see how some conflate representations of history with history itself.
Take, for instance, Stone Mountain, a carving that depicts three of the most prominent Confederate Civil War leaders. This carving was commissioned by a leader of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1916, 50 years after the Confederate States of America were dissolved. When some wanted to get rid of symbols of the Confederacy in 2015, some argued that this would be an erasure of history. This latter view, however, misunderstands the idea that Confederate history took place and is real regardless of whether that mountain exists or not. If an earthquake somehow flattened Stone Mountain and its carving, this in no way erases the history of the Civil War or even the lives of the three Confederate leaders. At most, the removal of the carving would eliminate a post-hoc depiction that has no connection to the original historical event of the Civil War.
In like manner, many of the buildings on BYU’s campus were not erected or named until nearly a century after the University was founded. These buildings and the names later placed on them did not bring about the University. The buildings are not the founders’ legacy; the university is their legacy.
Finally, though people may have lived in the past, their legacy has implications on the present. Using a quote from Winston Churchill, President Oaks said that “we should not ‘open a quarrel between the past and the present’ lest we jeopardize our attempts to improve our future.” Our committee’s efforts are trying to improve the future of BYU to be a more welcoming place for Black and Brown students who, in many instances, have felt ostracized by a racially dominant and hegemonic culture. In order to create this change, a conversation has to occur between the present and past because the past has implications on our present. Even though someone’s physical life may have ended, the teachings they upheld while they were alive have consequences on our present day. It is, therefore, shortsighted to say that quarrelling with the past limits the future for it is only through addressing the past and repenting for its wrongdoings that we may move with more integrity into the future.
Written for the Committee by Preston Thatcher