One fewer Confederate statue: does anyone notice?

This post was originally published in the Wilson Times Nov. 30, 2019.

The statue of a Confederate soldier in front of the Chatham County Courthouse and within a traffic circle surrounding the old courthouse has been removed. During my four years of college, I drove around that courthouse and passed that statue each time I went home or returned to campus. In all those times passing the statue, I never gave it much thought; it was just background scenery.

The statue was removed Nov. 19 after the Chatham County Board of Commissioners chose to remove it. This removal follows actions in other towns and states to remove Confederate monuments from public land. Some statues, including the “Silent Sam” statue on the University of North Carolina campus and a statue at the Durham County Courthouse, were brought down by protesters who took the law into their own hands.

Confederate statues, mainly installed in the first quarter of the 20^th century to honor local residents who had fought on the Confederate side in the Civil War, are ubiquitous across the South and, therefore, little noticed. The statue at Chapel Hill was a memorial to the UNC students who postponed their studies to fight in the war. Many of the memorials across the South were paid for or advocated by United Daughters of the Confederacy chapters.

Many African-Americans have objected to the statues and other reminders of the Civil War, including the display of Confederate battle flags. Other protesters against memorials to Confederates, including left-wing “anti-fascists” and veterans of other demonstrations for liberal causes, joined the original protesters. Controversies like this have brought out angry counter-protesters who see the toppling of monuments as a way to erase history.

Emotions are strong. The Chatham County commissioners’ meeting about that county’s statue was called “rowdy” as residents on both sides of the issue loudly made their views known. Some arrests were made in Chatham County and during the Silent Sam protests in Chapel Hill.

Estimates are that there are more than 1,000 Confederate statues or memorials across the South, and about the same number of memorials to Union soldiers in the North, reminders of the deadliest war in American history.

You can mark me as ambivalent about Confederate statues. I have never felt inspired by one, although two of my great-great-grandfathers died in the Civil War while wearing Rebel gray (one in battle, one from disease). I don’t think of my ancestors when I see a Confederate statue, nor do I find the statues to be an endorsement of slavery.

The overwhelming proportion of Confederate soldiers (including my dirt-poor great-great-grandfathers) had no interest in slavery or the slave economy. They fought for what they saw as their patriotic duty, defending their homes and their sovereign state from what they saw as an invading army. These boys in gray were in many ways victims of the war that was thrust upon them by wealthy, slave-owning aristocrats. As N.C. Gov. Zebulon Vance said, “It’s a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.”

What disturbs me most about the toppling of Civil War monuments (from South or North) is the fact that they are memorials to a generation who died doing their duty as they saw it. The memorials were an effort to assuage the grief of losing a father, brother, son or neighbor in that awful war. Every family in the South lost someone. I find it particularly sad that today’s UNC students cannot see the sacrifice that students and their families made, rightly or wrongly, 160 years ago.

Today’s partisans of the Confederate memorials issue might want to take a look at some photos from the 50^th anniversary of the 1863 battle of Gettysburg. The photos from the 1913 reunion show aged Union and Confederate soldiers sharing food, smiles, seats and mementos with a camaraderie that would shock today’s protesters. They celebrated their sacrifices and achievements together and gave honor and respect to those on the other side. Fifty years before, they had been intent on killing each other.

Today’s Americans, unlike the frail former combatants of 1913, seem determined to refight the past.

 
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NCAA lays out charges against UNC

The NCAA's notice of allegations against the University of North Carolina has been released, and although there are no real surprises, the expanse of the accusations are breathtaking. The primary allegation involves "lack of institutional control," a felony in the NCAA enforcement jurisprudence. For years, members of the academic counseling program and faculty members — faculty members! — arranged for student athletes and a few others to take classes that were shams. There were classes that never met, classes that required only the submission of a paper, which was graded by a non-faculty member with extraordinarily low standards. Papers that couldn't pass a decent high school teacher's scrutiny got A's from the generous grader, who lacked academic credentials.

This sham went on under the noses of academic administration. The African-American Studies Department and the College of Arts and Sciences utterly failed to provide adequate oversight. The AFAM department head was part of the conspiracy to give generous grades and not require class attendance in order to keep athletes academically eligible.

This is shameful, and many a Carolina alumnus feels deeply embarrassed. School pride has been grossly wounded. What punishment the NCAA might impose seems less important than the facts found in earlier investigations and the NCAA's notification. This embarrassment is rooted in the hell-bent determination to make UNC a football power, regardless of the cost. College acceptance standards have been reduced or vacated in order to sign athletes who spent more time in high school honing their athletic skills than in learning basic reading, writing, history and math. Other sports fell into the lure of easy grades, and the grotesque abandonment of academic standards emerged.

Some blame for this scandal reflects the poor preparation for college so many high school students receive. Students — and not just athletes — arrive on campus unprepared to do college-level work. Remedial education has become a major task of colleges. "Paper classes" just go one step beyond remedial education.

The university's response to the NCAA allegations is due within 90 days, but don't expect any significant mediating factors. At best, UNC can proclaim that the conspiracy has been disbanded, the major conspirators have been fired, and academics are back in control (or let's hope so).

This nightmare will not be over in another 90 days or six months. The NCAA is likely to impose future penalties in the form of scholarship restrictions, post-season bans, vacated victories or other long-term sentences. Even when the last post-season penalties are lifted, this embarrassment will not go away. We who have loved this university will continue to live with it for decades to come.

Coach's mentor would never do that

Coach Dean Smith, whose innovations, creativity and commitment to players as men and family forever changed college basketball, is dead, and the accolades keep pouring in from former players, associates and rival coaches. Meanwhile, his most diligent disciple is finding Smith's old team in a funk and facing its biggest rival tomorrow night in a hostile arena.

Roy Williams professes to pattern his every move after his mentor, but any concerned Tar Heel fan with a long memory can see that ol' Roy is doing some things Smith would never do. I like Roy. I think he's a good coach. He's done a great job at Chapel Hill and did a terrific job at Kansas. But he may be letting his own personal style take away from his shadowing of Coach Smith.

Dean Smith was famous for never taking credit for the 879 wins in his career and never letting the players take the blame for a loss. After a win, Smith always praised his players, often starting with the obscure bench warmers who came in and gave a few respectable minutes of basketball. After a loss, Smith always took the blame. "I did a poor job of coaching," he'd say. He always deferred any criticism of the players, even when there were bonehead plays or obvious goofs.

Williams' style contrasts with Smith's example. The past couple of years have been frustrating ones for Williams, and his frustrations sometimes spill over in public. He has publicly chastised the team for lack of effort or for lack of concentration. I don't know that this shift of blame has anything to do with this year's Tar Heels' sometimes poor performance, but I do know that criticism of his players is something Smith would never do.

While Smith could occasionally vent his anger at the referees or something, his demeanor on the bench was almost always calm, even relaxed. In the past couple of weeks, some former players have mentioned that when Smith called a timeout, he was always the calmest person in the huddle, calmly telling them exactly what to do and what the opponent would try to do. He once reminded players during a tense timeout that there were a billion people in China who didn't even know this game was happening. Williams, in contrast, can be seen yelling at players in the huddle instead of calmly explaining the situation to them.

There's another habit — call it a tactic, if you want — that Smith did and that other coaches picked up. That habit has faded among coaches since Smith's retirement. In comments before a big game, or even a minor one, Smith always praised the opposing team. He would compliment the way they pass or the way they run the fast break or the way they play defense. Even against a clearly mismatched and woebegone team, Smith would make it sound as if the game was a toss-up at best. Maybe it was Smith's way of never underestimating an opponent or maybe it was a ploy to make the opponent overconfident and keep his own team on its toes. Whatever the reasons, the result was that Smith never played a team that was, in his description, anything less than a powerhouse.

When other coaches adopted this tactic, the result was laughable — two coaches each claiming the other team was far superior than his own.

Williams has not underestimated opponents, I don't think, but he has not been as effusive in praising opponents as Smith was. I doubt that this has anything to do with the Heels' struggles this year, and the other ways that Williams has deviated from Smith's example might have no impact on his success, either. No one is a perfect copy of a mentor, and Williams is no exception.

UNC: Give yourself the 'death penalty'

The news — and the embarrassment — just keeps getting worse at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Today's News & Observer reports on a leaked transcript of football superstar Julius Peppers' days at Chapel Hill. The transcript shows that Peppers was, to say the least, a marginal student who was bailed out by a series of classes he took in the African and Afro-American Studies Department. Peppers majored in African and Afro-American Studies, a major that qualifies you for two kinds of jobs — teaching African and Afro-American Studies or professional athlete. (The latter pays better.)

The implication of this leaked transcript — beyond the fact that the university might be in violation of a federal law requiring that student academic records be kept top secret — is that the academic embarrassment of non-existent courses, special consideration for athletes, tutors and advisers who kept athletes' heads above the academic flood, and a disconnect between the university's academic mission and its athletic practices have existed for at least a decade in Chapel Hill. The withdrawal of football wins, the firing of a coach, the banishment of football players and the post-season ban by the NCAA are minor annoyances compared to the shame of subverting a great university into a football factory.

UNC does not seem to have grasped just how discrediting these athletic misdemeanors are. More drastic action is needed to put the whole episode (however far back it goes) into context.

Here's my suggestion: UNC should give itself the "death penalty." It should shut down the football program for one year, maybe two, and if the basketball, baseball, soccer or other sports programs are shown to be involved in these transgressions, shut them down, too. Spend that year or two examining the university's priorities and studying the ways academics were subjugated by intercollegiate athletics. Establish a protocol to ensure that never again will unqualified students be admitted because they can dunk a basketball or catch a football, never again will student athletes be given a pass on academic standards and never again will an academic department be established for the apparent purpose of keeping athletes in school with inflated grades. Television contracts and coaches' exorbitant salaries should also be examined. While football is suspended, the African and Afro-American Studies program should be examined and either absorbed into other disciplines or re-established as a genuine academic pursuit.

The football fans will scream, as they did when Coach Butch Davis was fired, but more is at stake here than a dozen football games; the university's entire reputation and qualifications are in jeopardy because sometime in the past, some university officials decided winning ball games was more important than educating North Carolina's students.