When I heard the statue of Kate Smith in Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Complex had been taken down I had two questions.
Why did Kate Smith have a statue inside a hockey venue? And what could a singer who’s been dead for 33 years possibly have done to deserve the sort of treatment generally reserved for Civil War generals?
The first question is irrelevant, though apparently she was somehow once seen as a good luck charm for the Philadelphia Flyers.
The second question seems even sillier, but we’re a society that’s really into tearing down not just statues but people. So Smith is paying the price for some songs she recorded in the 1930s that included racist lyrics.
Mind you, Smith didn’t write these songs. And this was an era when performers had far less control over their own careers. And history shows that Smith was an advocate for African-American performers. And many are arguing one of the songs in question was satirical, actually mocking white supremacy.
Still, down goes the statue.
But it’s more than that. Down goes her legacy. Down goes a life that included Smith contributing mightily to raising money for the war effort in the 1940s, calling for racial harmony in 1945 and winning the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Her iconic, beloved rendition of “God Bless America” is no longer being played at Flyers games or in Yankee Stadium during the seventh inning stretch of Yankees games. It would be perfectly understandable if the songs with racist lyrics were banned, not that anyone has listened to them or even known of their existence since FDR was in office, but because she sang them, now her most famous song is disappearing from playlists.
Be careful, folks. Go check out lyrics written by your all-time favorites.To be consistent, in addition to Smith, Chuck Berry, Elvis, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Aerosmith, Eminem, Jay-Z, Katy Perry, and Taylor Swift among many, many others, should be banned.
Rock, rap, R&B, country, you don’t have to look hard to find myriad examples of racism, misogyny, homophobia and insensitivity. Often wrongheaded, sometimes to make a larger point. Because music is art, just like the paintings hanging in any gallery, the books shelved at the local library and the movies streaming on Netflix.
Holding Smith accountable for songs she sang is akin to condemning Robert DeNiro for some of the characters he has played onscreen.
And none of that touches on the fact that the era in which Smith recorded this music was a vastly different time.
“Times change” sounds like a revisionist excuse for bad behavior, but the way we behave and think really does change over time. We learn from our mistakes, move forward as a society, evolve as a species.
I’m a father of two girls. My expectations and hopes for them are decidedly different in 2019 than they would’ve been in 1919 — before women could even vote.
When everything you see and hear and live through tells you one thing, it takes great resolve to believe something else. That doesn’t make antiquated ideas right, but it should at least inform discussions and decisions.
A word of advice to those who revel in re-examining with a microscope those who came before, applying today’s standards to a much different period in history: We don’t know exactly what we’re going to be celebrating or condemning 50 or 100 years from now.
Technology will allow the preservation of all manner of acts and words for future generations to poke through and critique. Something that is perfectly acceptable — politically correct, even — today, very well may not be tomorrow. And an entire life’s work could be wiped out by a video or tweet that seemed wholly insignificant at the time.
Sort of like Kate Smith’s, thanks to some long-forgotten songs.
Maybe we should just agree not to build any more statues?