Every monument of civilisation is also a monument of barbarism
Walter Benjamin
At the turn of the 19th century, Joseph Conrad wrote of the African interior as ‘the heart of darkness.’ To enter the royal gates of Harvard for the first time, Latin inscriptions abounding, is to feel as though you are stepping foot in the heart of Whiteness. One does not need a detailed report of Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery, released in April 2022 documenting the University’s ties to slavery, to guess at the university’s roots. One does not need to know that a large number of Harvard’s houses still bear the names of slave-owners to know that slavery and imperialism are in the soil out of which this age-old institution was grown.
More brazenly, were you to enter Oriel College at the University of Oxford, you would have a life-sized, elevated statue of Cecil John Rhodes — the face of British imperialism — stare down at you. Rhodes stands tall at Oxford in spite of his notorious fall at the University of Cape Town, and in spite of strident calls for a similar fate to befall him at Oxford. Yet for history to read the survival of the statue as being symbolic of the ultimate failure of #RhodesMustFall would be a tragic mistake. #RhodesMustFall and its associated student protests across South Africa and beyond, known collectively as the #MustFall movements, have much to commend them that goes far beyond the statue. They also have much to teach Harvard in its reckoning with its legacy of slavery, and those lessons begin, ironically, with the statue.
‘A rose by any other name’
It is difficult to tell which is more jarring: a devastatingly conspicuous and domineering statue of a man known as the face of colonialism in Southern Africa lifted high at Oxford, or a broader host of houses, dormitories, professorships, streets, and towns punctuating Harvard’s campus with vestiges of enslavement and White supremacy practiced by its affiliates; the loud one or the more subtle many.
Here a tight balance exists: on the one hand, it is a selective and damaging characterisation of #RhodesMustFall to view the statue as its only concern; at the same time, that same statue must be viewed as incredibly significant.
Arguing for Rhodes to fall in a debate held by the Oxford Union, #RMF organizing member Athinangamso Nkopo said, “It’s true that for us as Rhodes Must Fall, the statue is emblematic of something that is a lot more problematic and perhaps more damning to the experience of Black and minority students in this environment … the statue is then, as a result, very important for us to interrogate.”
She goes on to contend that not only the presence of Rhodes at Oxford but the position of his statue, situated front and center on a pedestal on High Street, said something about the values of the university, about how Oxford University chose to portray itself and to imagine itself. The function of the statue is as vital to contend with as the existence of the statue itself.
This then becomes incredibly important in understanding why the many preservations of slavery’s legacy at Harvard ought not be shrugged off. There is something deeply unsettling about telling a Black student to live in a dormitory named after a man that, two centuries ago, might well have owned them, which is to say, enslaved, exploited, and degraded them. Harvard’s retributive, policy, and institutional preoccupations in light of the report are urgent, but the nomenclature is as urgent.
It is all well and good that outgoing President Bacow established a committee tasked with overseeing the process of renaming; its high ambitions fall flat when met with the reminder that two years later more than 300 Harvard affiliates wait for their demand for Mather House to be renamed to be actioned out. In the same debate at the Oxford Union, Yasmin Kumi said that she finds the question of the statue uneventful: “To me, it’s evident that a leader who led the ideology of the century long supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race such as Rhodes does not deserve the glorification through an elevated statue at Oxford University.” Harvard must be asked what it has to lose in swiftly stripping down names that have unequivocally been identified as actively harmful to those in its community its report was aimed at.
What had to fall the most
In retrospectively analyzing #RhodesMustFall, two truths must be held at the same time: the statue was important, and there was more to #RMF than the statue. Organizing member Ntokozo Qwabe framed it clearly, saying “we are raising these issues, using the statue as an emblem, under which we are sparking [a broader] debate.” Later in the debate, Yasmin Kumi put it boldly: “what has to fall the most is institutional racism at Oxford.”
In “Breaking a Rainbow, Building a Nation” by Rekgotsofetse Chikane (what has since become an authoritative book on the #MustFall movements) Chikane contends that #RhodesMustFall was, in actual fact, inevitable. “…[It] was a result of the crisis created by an institutional culture that felt designed to isolate, alienate and ‘other’ groups of people en masse who failed to fit the normative identity of UCT,” he writes.
The statue debate is nothing without the experiences and dynamics that set its context. Similarly, in confronting Harvard’s legacy of slavery in the present day, questions of the tangible objects that memorialise it must be closely connected to its intangible vestiges. Here one thing is more important than anything else: the act of listening. Black and Brown Harvard students and affiliates must be allowed to tell the stories of their own history, and they must be put at the center of the history that is now being written in light of the report. As UCT and Oxford students vitally did, it is only those at Harvard who can erect the goalposts that must be the target of a new institutional culture.
Colonialism and slavery were distinct projects; different in their means, similar in their ends. The danger and the harm of both lies firmly in their racist ideologies. To be Black, whether from the Global North or the Global South, is to know that in one way or another empire has stained your history, a in many cases sought to erase it. To see a statue, then, of one of empire’s faces overlook you as you enter your place of learning, or to live in a building that bears the name of a known slave owner, is a reminder that empire has its mark on your present too.
Harvard, with this latest report, has begun a new page in its history. The value of what follows cannot be understated. A mutual endeavor, led by those at the heart of the university, must see to it that this new history is one which every single one of its affiliates is proud of.
Image by flowcomm is licensed under the Flickr License.
