Preface: Rich’s
thoughts are expressed in a complexly formatted email that has seemed best to
publish intact as screenshots, of which there are three.
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| Rifkin 1 of 3 |
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| Rifkin 2 of 3 |
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| Rifkin 3 of 3 |
Rich,
Many thanks for your review remarks. You do a nice job of
identifying and clarifying what seem to me to be the three main issues. First,
does Madson’s intent matter or not? Second, can we discuss his act without also
imputing intent? Third, can we be certain of his intent?
1. I would agree that in a strict and logical way why Madson
commented as he did is irrelevant. His remarks did indeed have certain
consequences regardless of his intent.
2. The problem is that one cannot write about his act without,
of linguistic necessity perhaps, imputing
intent. To single him out and describe him with such muscular words as
“stand,” “leadership,” and “prevail” is to make a (perhaps “subtext” or
unintended) claim that he is an exemplar.
I notice that you call to attention to him in the context of
advocating putting up a “Davis history sign” in his honor. If you strictly
adhere to the rule of irrelevant intent, then I think the sign should honor
only the act and not mention his name, lest we inappropriately credit his
character, which is logically irrelevant to his act. (Public life would,
indeed, perhaps be elevated if, as a general practice, we honored acts rather
than people.)
3. You say neither of us knows Madson’s intent--at least not
with great clarity. I agree. But, I also think we can make reasonable and
tentative inferences about it. That is the point of my calling attention to other
things we know about him and suggesting consistency in his behavior.
Because you--albeit unintentionally--put Madson forth as a
Davis style Atticus Finch, I thought it reasonable to place him in the context
of his time and point to reasons to doubt this conception.
All of this fretting about intent and character makes a
difference because it affects how we honor or do not honor our predecessors. In
the case at hand, whether Madson was a “pragmatic realist,” an “inclusionist
champion,” an indecipherable cipher, or somethiing else altogether should
inform how we speak of him today.
Was he a racist acting pragmatically? Was he a racist who
grasped “the American dilemma” and rose to the occasion? Was he our own Atticus
Finch who did, indeed, provide genuine moral leadership?
We do not know for sure from the data we have at the moment.
But I think we do know that it matters for us to want to know and to get it
right. We do not want inadvertently to elevate tarnished figures to unwarranted
honor, to detract from those who truly deserve honor, or to be inaccurate about
the reasons we accord honor. Unfortunately, reality is often messy and the
empirically accurate course of action is unclear--as is true in this case.
I take heart in the appreciation that this kind of
disagreement is one of the most common, enduring, and unresolvable in
historical writing. We work on topics for which the data are poor and
incomplete and we try to make the best of what little information we can
muster. Virtually everything we write is tentative and subject to challenge and
revision time and time again.
Best,
John
