Amid Raging Debate Over Statues, a Calm

Discussion in New York

By William Neuman

Nov. 17, 2017

Mayor Bill de Blasio may have opened up a civic can of worms when he promised to wipe
“symbols of hate” from city property, ultimately creating a commission to consider what to do
about potentially offensive statues and monuments.

But the New Yorkers who attended the commission’s first public hearing on Friday approached it
in a spirit of near genteel civic-mindedness.

The greatest attention was paid to statues of Christopher Columbus — there are at least four on
city property — and the statue in Central Park of Dr. James Marion Sims, a 19th century surgeon
who is known for developing the field of gynecology, but also for performing operations without
anesthesia on enslaved black women.

But other statues got their moment. One man suggested that a statue of William Shakespeare in
Central Park could offend some people because of the depiction of Jews and blacks in “The
Merchant of Venice” and “Othello.”

One speaker, Theo Chino said that he wanted the statue of Columbus at Columbus Circle, to stay,
but suggested renaming the area “Taíno Circle,” to commemorate the Native American people
who lived on some of the Caribbean islands where the explorer first made contact in the New
World.

Several students from the John F. Kennedy Jr. School, a special needs school in Queens, made
moving statements. One of them, Trashawn Pace, 20, called for the removal of the Columbus and
Sims statues.

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“I believe the statues of people who hurt others to become famous should be removed,” Mr. Pace
said. “No one should ever have to suffer to make another person so famous that they get to be
remembered forever.”
Mayor de Blasio stuck his oar into turbulent waters in August in the aftermath of the deadly riot
in Charlottesville, Va., where white supremacists, neo-Nazis and others rallied to oppose the
removal of a statue of the Confederate general, Robert E. Lee.

Mr. de Blasio tweeted that the city would conduct a review of “all symbols of hate on city
property.” The tweet led to an outcry, with some calling for the removal of a variety of statues, and
others defending the statues or opposing the entire effort as an attempt to erase history.

Mr. de Blasio eventually named a panel to consider the problem, then backpedaled, saying it
would merely suggest a process to evaluate the problem.

Five members of the panel attended the hearing on Friday, in the atrium of Queens Borough Hall,
including its co-chairman, Thomas Finkelpearl, the cultural affairs commissioner. The event got
little publicity and its timing, during the workday, did not seem conducive to massive
participation. About 50 people attended, not including journalists and city employees, and about
half that number spoke, with the speakers mostly limited to three minutes.

Some speakers broadened their comments beyond statues and monuments. Some called for the
Tweed Courthouse in Lower Manhattan, which is home to the Department of Education, to be
renamed, because of the corruption associated with its namesake, Boss Tweed. One man
suggested removing people’s names from public schools, and simply calling the schools by their
numbers, to avoid complications. He also suggested that instead of giving students a day off on
Columbus Day, that it be turned into a day for studying history in school.

Gerald Matacotta, who teaches a history course at Queensborough Community College, said that
the creation of the monuments commission had made him angry but that his anger had
diminished because he concluded that the panel’s “findings will be meaningless.”

“This is a country built on freedom and democracy, not bureaucrats telling us what is correct and
not correct,” he said.

Shawnee Rice, an organizer with the American Indian Community House, who is of Mohawk
descent, said that when she looks around New York she sees statues of “a lot of older white men.”

She called for more statues to be erected that reflect the diversity of New York today.

“For indigenous people, people of color,” she said, “it’s problematic when we have to look up and
see white men and not see anyone who looks like us.”

Jeffrey Kroessler, a librarian at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, cautioned that removing
statues could be a way of erasing history. Better to be faced with the ugly facts of history, he said.
Mr. Kroessler lamented that a statue of Roger B. Taney, a chief justice of the Supreme Court who
wrote the Dred Scot decision, was recently removed in Baltimore.
“By removing the statue we have eliminated the possibility of someone walking by and telling his
companion, ʻHey, you know who that is? Roger Taney. Do you know what that son of a bitch
did?’” Mr. Kroessler said. “Now Roger Taney doesn’t exist.”

A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 18, 2017, on Page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: An Often-Incendiary Topic,
Monuments Get a Polite Hearing