I have to disagree. Symbols and symbolic gestures can be very powerful and can lead to real effects. You don’t need to look any further than the enduring power of the swastika and Confederate flag as something to rally towards. But throughout history symbols have had power effects. It is believed that Justinian rallied his forces by painting the Christian cross on their shields and telling them that if they fell in battle they would have a place in heaven. Ghandi’s hunger strikes had a real effect. Mohamed Bouazizi burning himself sparked* Arab Spring. When the Iraqis toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein they were saying something. Bringing downs these monuments is very similar, it is sending a message about the kind of society you want to have. As a last example, that perhaps will be a bit more American, some people get very angry when somebody tramples or burns their flag? Why? The flag is just a colored sheet of cloth so no big deal right? No, it is because the flag is a symbol of something they love and to see it treated with disrespect is a powerful message.
with caveats that I don’t want to get into because it isn’t that important
If we’re going to fix the big problems of racism, then we need to fix the attitudes behind racism. And changing the symbols is a big part of how to do that.
On the contrary, there should be a statue erected to honor the people who illegally tore down the statue. We shouldn’t try to cover up history by not having a statue that commemorates this event. While their actions may not have been strictly by the book, you have to put yourself in their shoes at the time they performed their actions – rightly or wrongly, they perceived that Southern aggressors were threatening their way of life. And they were simply rallying to the defense of their families, society, and their way of life. It is also possible that some good people just got swept up into the conflict that resulted in the statue coming down – we may never know for sure.
It’s unfair to judge the mob’s actions in the comfort of looking through the lens of history. It was a different time, and who are we to judge whether their true intent was right or wrong? I’m just saying that we should honor them because they are Americans, too.
I’ve been thinking about Stone Mountain. It’s been mentioned in this thread (since the OP, in fact), but it’s a special case – it’s freakin’ huge. It was established, when all’s said and done, as a rallying point for the KKK and as a monument to the ideals of the Confederacy (despite attempts to turn it into a for-everybody tourist site, a la Mount Rushmore, which Gutzon Borglum also worked on.) The Klan DID use it as a meeting place. Originally the plans were more grandiose, calling for an entire army carved up there (along with the KKK), but it took long enough to carve the three main figures. Regardless of how to try to repackage it, this monument really was about the things everyone’s complaining about with the other Confederate statues.
George Gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams has already called for removing the images (which form the largest bas-relief in the world, according to Wikipedia)
Apparently, Stone Mountain is protected by state law – there can’t be any changes. It’s probably a hotter topic with deeper divisions than any of the statue removal arguments. This one could prove to be a real mess.
And it will come up in our national debate. That I think I can predict. Right now, most Americans have probably never even heard of Stone Mountain. That’ll change.
How about this: Let’s institute a tax that will pay to have a Sherman statue put beside every Confederate statue in the country. The Sherman statue will be taller and bigger than the accompanying statue. Every Confederate statue that doesn’t have a partner Sherman statue must come down.
Then we can start naming the northward side of every Confederate-named highway the William Tecumseh Sherman Memorial Highway. The southward side can keep the Confederate name.
We’re told these statues and symbols don’t matter and also that they are learning opportunities. So let’s really teach who won the war. Who could object to that?
And we can add Sherman to Stone Mountain. Very fitting!
This is actually a very strong argument for keeping the monuments. Maybe there could be some sort of compromise in which the statues are permitted to remain but that there is also a greater effort to put them in their proper context somehow. At minimum, there ought to be information explaining the real stories as to why these statues and monuments where erected. Such information should explain the ante-bellum period, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the efforts to glorify the lost cause during the Jim Crow era.
How about you–do you similarly advocate for reinstalling the flagship statuary of the third Reich, with its glorification of the Aryan ideals, just putting a plaque on them?
Town squares are valuable real estate. There’s a lot of history in a town that you could teach people about using that real estate. You could put up something to teach people about civic values like helping one another, or being active in government, or bravery in the face of oppression. Using that limited, valuable real estate to teach people about a minor white supremacist organization and their outsized influence on town squares doesn’t seem like the best use to me.
I personally wish they didn’t exist at all and I personally would give a toss if someone came in and just bulldozed the damn things. But there might be more than one solution to the problem of confederate monuments. If there’s one potential negative to the bulldozer approach it’s that removing them allows us to live with the illusion that race is out of our consciousness. As much as I’ve disagreed with the supporters of these monuments I will agree with them on point: removing them doesn’t necessarily mean the end of our problems, and I think that for too long, there’s been a tendency to just avoid talking about race completely for fear that someone might be offended. We can remove the monuments but until this country starts having honest conversations about race and, more importantly, looking at ways to create a fairer society, we’re not going to move past racism and any other ism.
4 pages in and this has probably already been addressed, but who is ‘we’? Are we talking about we, as in society as a whole? We as in the voters of each state? Or we, as in a bunch of people taking it on themselves to jump up on monuments with straps and tear them down on their own initiative so as to take the burden of choice off of us? If it’s the former, I’m good with ‘we’ as a society deciding, collectively, to take them down (either tear them down and destroy them or tear some down and put some in museums). I’m also good with the voters in each state deciding for themselves what they want…that would probably be my optimal choice, actually. If the latter, then I’m all for those folks getting arrested and tossed in jail. While I agree with them wrt whether the things should be taken down, I disagree with their methods and the fact that they have taken the decision on themselves for removing them without consultation with the other voters in their city, state or nation.
Anyway, probably already been addressed but I don’t have the energy to slog through the thread to see.
Something about those monuments that I haven’t seen mentioned that has nothing to do with racism is simply pride in being a southerner, pride in being tough and enduring. After the war the south was ripped to pieces, it took generations for those people to recover, for a lot of those people all they had was their pride. I don’t believe in what those statues represent either but I do believe in respecting people and I know enough not to assume that I know what that statue might mean to someone else.
Ok, I’ll check out the link…thanks for doing that, so I don’t have to slog through a 4 page thread to participate, even peripherally.
Well, I don’t know much about North Carolina, unfortunately (I’ve been there, but can’t say I know anyone who lives there and it’s been years). ISTM that, instead of taking it upon themselves to tear down monuments by fiat a better course would be to address the fundamental issue. If, as you say, voting rights are being suppressed, THAT would be a bigger issue than some monuments and would be a better place to focus efforts. The thing with tearing down statues like this by fiat is, to me, it can be a slippery slope…and one, if it’s not addressed by the law, that could end up backfiring on those who were for it. Let’s say that another group wants to tear down other statues of things they don’t like. Doesn’t matter what or who the statues are, but should they be able to? I mean, these guys did it (leaving aside they were, rightfully IMHO, arrested)…why can’t other groups do similar things? Maybe someone wants to tear down all the statues and monuments to Columbus. There are certain groups who don’t like him (I don’t like him) and don’t want to see any statues or monuments to him. There are other statues around to other Spanish explorers and the like as well…I and my theoretical group hate that. Or, maybe someone has it in for Washington…or Lincoln…or some sports guy or girl. I know a bunch of vets who HATE the Vietnam Memorial in DC…and some folks who hate the Korean war memorial.
That’s the thing…who is ‘we’ who decides what we should or shouldn’t do about this stuff? Myself, I think it needs to be more than some group deciding by fiat to take it upon themselves to just go out and jump on a statue with a strap and pull them down. And the right way to do that is to figure out what the people in the states WANT to do about it. If votes are being suppressed, then that seems a bigger issue at this point to deal with than statues of long dead white racists (or long dead Spanish racists who are hopefully burning in hell, lo these many years :p).
There can and should be symbols that can represent the parts of southern heritage that have nothing to do with oppression – and those symbols need to come from southerners (like me and, I presume, you). We can take pride in famous southerners who advocated for honorable causes (such as MLK Jr. or Robert Carter III, a wealthy slave-owner who became an abolitionist and freed all of his slaves). Or symbols of great food or natural beauty.
