As a bona fide: I was the project manager for the Pack Square Park fundraising campaign at the consulting firm that coordinated fundraising, for a little over a year.
The Vance Monument is an obelisk that used to tower above downtown Asheville, and now sits in the shadows of tall buildings. It is both a lasting symbol to patriarchy, and to a local war hero who was awkwardly progressive* for some people and vehemently racist to anyone who wasn’t like him. It’s also a lasting symbol to the forefathers of some of the citizens of this county, and a monument to people who claimed what might have been at the time, the hardest place in America to claim. Anyone who has driven through Southern Appalachia on a modern highway can conceive of the difficulty of trespassing the never ending folds of mountains — what Kerouac called the sinews of the mountains. It’s horrible; and it’s beautiful.
There is a debate going on about whether or not this monument, like many Southern monuments, ought to be torn down. A middle ground has emerged, of de-naming the monument, basically. Activists highlight its offense; preservationists highlight that it’s their story, their personal history. A compromise does not seem in sight to me, as this is not a place progress comes easy, even if it’s shockingly progressive as a downtown, culturally. That extends not much further than the city limits, though.
While I could dedicate paragraphs to the problems of obelisks themselves, and the constant reminder of the power of patriarchy over women, queer people, and even other men with less power; I’m going to leave that for another day.
I want to propose a new framework for thinking about the monument: an investment the community can make for the future, because of its amazing value. The monument is valuable and means a lot to people. It even probably has a quantifiable brand value as a tourist attraction and recognizable symbol. Tearing it down would, in fact, be a waste of that value. I agree.
I think of it mathematically. The monument has x in value today. The tear it down crowd wants to take x to zero, which really upsets the keep it up crowd. So the middle ground says we’ll take the name off, which we can call y value since name recognition matters. x - y = z. Now we have z value preserved and hopefully the activists feel good about taking y from the equation, as it humbles us.
But what if we could invest x and make it x^C where the big C is collaboration? What if we could not erode the value in compromise, but instead double or triple the value to the community, while mostly keeping x intact.
Here’s one practical way we could do that:
The Vance monument isn’t a bronze sculpture; it’s a bunch of stones. It’s just lego blocks. We can do a lot with it. So we disassemble the monument and build six smaller monoliths from the bricks, in a circle, in the same place. Keep one for Vance. Put another for local black leaders. Another for local queer leaders. Another for Billy Graham. Recognize all of our elders.
This would mean a lot to the community, and symbolically show we’re not versus but in it together.
From a tourism perspective, this story would be worth its weight in gold in PR. Asheville: where we made it work for everybody. Where we didn’t say tear down or leave up, but pay forward. That’s what our ancestors did for us and that’s what we’re doing for the kids in front of us.
I think it’s beautiful to deal with the paradox. Vance was bad. Vance was good. History should be remembered and cherished. Progress must be made.
Let’s invest, not de-value or continue to loom offensively over the city.
*Someone I follow, Dr. Kevan Frazier, pointed out on social media that Vance was, in some ways, progressive.
** Photo credit https://www.flickr.com/photos/mrjincks