No symbols, no problem?

When we first moved to Miami from Havana, I was enrolled in Catholic school and my two brothers went to public. For us kids, integration to the zeitgeist came easily; there were few Cubans in Miami back then--not enough to be targeted for prejudice. Granted, it wasn't all smooth sailing. I spoke near perfect English, but was still viewed as different--weird--by my classmates and even teachers. (Mrs. Mongelia disliked me for no discernible reason).And a few days ago, my brother Jorge told me a childhood story I'd never heard before. As adults, we three siblings have scattered along the Eastern Seaboard, and,as too often happens in the US, we're reunited only by family tragedies. It is on these occasions that reminiscences emerge from the vault of time, and sometimes, you're surprised by what people closest to you hide deep in the recesses of memory. Miami in the 60's was still very much segregated. Signs designating drinking fountains as "white" and "colored" could be found in schools. My brother remembers an open discussion between two of his teachers about which drinking fountain he should use. Is a Cuban white or colored? "Look at him... Just ... LOOK at him!", one teacher kept yelling, without specifying what should be looked at. My brother felt confused; he'd never had to consider his racial identity before. The truth is that Cubans come in all colors, from pink, to yellow, to black, but mostly in varying shades of tan. Moreover, the Cuban take on race is quite simple: you are what the mirror dictates. If you look white, that's what you are. And if your fraternal twin sister happens to look black, well, she's black. And you're still white. There's no arguing with optics; no wrestling with one-drop rules. My brother was one of only two Cubans in that school at that moment.Much to their credit, school administrators did the right thing,perhaps figuring, correctly, that more of these nondescript, olive-skinned creatures might soon arrive to further confound their notions of race. They removed the signs from the drinking fountains.Problem solved. Oh, if only everything was that easy... Recently, a gigantic statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee was hoisted off its pedestal in downtown Richmond, Va. where it had been since 1890. This was greeted with much fanfare; removal of Confederate symbols all over the South has become a way to make white Southerners face the truth of their violent racial past and all the pain they inflicted n others, to strip away their cover story of the Civil War as a lost but noble cause. Nurturing illusions of past greatness was how Southerners consoled themselves in defeat and how the rest of the country finessed them back into the fold. For over 100 years, the memory of soldiers on both sides was honored,the Civil War remembered as a generic catastrophe that affected the whole nation---much like World War I--instead of an act of treachery by one segment of the population.Growing up in the South, this is how I assimilated history, but now it seems the time for finessing is over and the brass knuckles are out. And while I understand the downpour of long-supressed rage from those who've had to suffer the glorification of slavery for so many years,it still shocks me to hear war veterans described as "traitors". They were products of their time and place,they thought they were doing right-- most didn't even own slaves. You could say they didn't know any better, though their descendants arguably should. But should we now ask these people to remove from their walls all those yellowed photos of ancestors in Confederate garb? That's a part of their history, and you can't erase it--you can only try to cast shame on it through public acts. Unfortunately, ripping Confederate statues off pedestals won't yield the same quick beneficial results as removing "white" and "colored" signs off drinking fountains.People can be coerced to immediately say and do what's considered right at the moment, but it always takes longer to truly change hearts and minds.