The hatred that the KKK has for blacks is just as intense as the hatred a lot of black people have for the Confederacy and its “heros”. And? Some hatred is completely understandable and sympathetic, while others aren’t. You seem to think there’s something wrong with taking a side here. And it’s fuckin’ crazy to liken opponents of Confederate glorification to members of ISIS. WTF.
This is something that will be difficult to prove. When the monuments were installed on Monument Ave in Richmond, the government was full of hard-core racists since that was the norm. But I’m guessing the people at the ribbon-cutting ceremony left the “let’s put the nigras in their place” rhetoric at home.
Here is my humble opinion. The Confederate soldiers that fought the civil war went back to their homes after the war ended and resumed life. They weren’t tried, they weren’t jailed. The nation rebuilt, the former soldiers went back to farming and business and politics and many other professions, just like before the war.
The slaves went from being property to being free, to an extent anyway. Lots chose to stay in the South and though things were still very rough for another 100+ years, great progress has been made nationwide in recent decades. I think you could even argue that race relations in the South are now better than many other areas.
Now, after all this time, why is it necessary to tear down statues that honor ancestors of Americans that, right or wrong, fought in that war? What is that going to help at this point? They were Americans before the war and they were made part of America again after the war. Many many Americans today are the descendants of those men.
These statues are as much a part of the local parks and courthouses as the buildings, hitching posts, iron fences, and other historical features. They are part of what makes The South what it is. All of it could be torn down and replaced with modern structures, but is it really necessary to erase history like that just because some people find it unpleasant? People that live in the South near the monuments live there by choice.
Those monuments, for the most part, were put up decades after the Civil War to symbolize resistance to black civil rights and support for Jim Crow and segregation, not to honor ancestors or Southern valor. Tearing them down doesn’t erase history – especially when the supposed history they’re supposed to represent is the false Lost Cause version of history.
We shouldn’t waste public space honoring “wrong” fights and “wrong” people. Why should we pretend that we don’t have the ability to judge historical events against our present-day values? If we know certain events and people were wrong, we should have the guts to remove the monuments to them so there is no doubt where we collectively stand on the issue. If we can’t collectively agree the Confederacy was wrong, then there’s something wrong with us.
If people want to honor their ancestors not matter what they did, let them do that on their own property. But the public square should be reserved for monuments that uphold the values of the existing community, not the one that existed a century ago. It shouldn’t be an arena for ancestor worship. People shouldn’t be held hostage to someone else’s revisionist history and sentimentality. These are not virtues in and of themselves. And last weekend’s tragedy proves they are dangerous.
I don’t think most of the locals think of them that way, they are just local historical features that have been there their whole life and their parents whole life, and not some grand symbol of oppression. And polls indicate that most Americans think they should stay.
Antifa thugs (chanting “pig” at the lone police officer there) try to tear down the Peace Monument, a sculpture that features an angel standing above a Confederate soldier, guiding him to lay down his weapon.
I’m not likening opponents of Confederate glorification (which is where my personal politics lie. I cannot stand the Confederates (or Alt-Right) or ISIS. I’m just saying that you can’t just dismiss their disgust against the pagan statues as simple religious chauvinism while insisting YOUR (and mine, actually) disgust at the Confederate cause should be taken seriously.
I had more, but it’s just Devil’s Advocate. I’d just as soon see the statues defiled and destroyed, too, but is it justified just because I have a different cultural opinion?
I think most Americans are wrong, as they were when most Americans opposed the Civil Rights movement at the time, and opposed gays in the military until recently, and opposed interracial marriage until the last few decades, etc. Sometimes most Americans are wrong about something – and most Americans are very often wrong about things that are related to race and civil rights.
Those statues have historic and artistic value. In 6000 AD, people wanting to preserve surviving 4000 years old statues of Lee will definitely have a point.
Also, ISIS isn’t a democratic government. There’s no reason to assume that locals actually want these temples and statues to be destroyed.
I don’t agree with this being “cultural opinion.” I don’t not stand Confederates. They were objectively evil. We’ve had over a hundred years of this being settled.
ISIS are people who want to cause World War III and destroy everyone who isn’t like them. It’s different. And I think we can acknowledge that.
People who live near the monuments in Charlottesville are the ones who, by choice, decided to remove local statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson; they didn’t, as far as I know, conclude that to do so would be to “erase history” – and why the heck would they? Near as I can tell, they want the historical record to reflect exactly what happened back then – but, instead, they concluded that, yeah, we’re the locals, and we don’t want that stuff here any longer.
And then . . . outsiders from damnyankee states showed up to protest?
This article is a pretty good summary of what has happened leading up to last weekend.
There was not anything like a public referendum on whether to remove the statues, just actions of the city council and the mayor/vice mayor. And there was plenty of local opposition before all this shit happened. The city hosted a long series of contentious meetings about it, but most people figured it was a foregone conclusion what council would decide. Charlottesville city council voted to get rid of the statues, but last I heard the case is in court because of some state law that precludes them from removing the statues. City council did rename the parks from Lee to Emancipation and Jackson to Justice.
Uh, yes; that article mentions Charlottesville’s elected officials and a petition from Charlottesville residents. It adds that it’s not a matter of local unanimity, sure; but that’s not what democracy is, is it? I expect that, when it comes to just about anything, you can find some locals in favor of it and some against; that’s kinda sorta the point of ‘voting’ this and ‘elected officials’ that. And ‘America’, sometimes.
Someday, maybe the locals will vote to go back to celebrating the CSA again; maybe they’d vote to double the number of such statues. By which I of course don’t mean that all of them would; I mean that some of them would, that enough of them would. I don’t think that’s so; but I admit the possibility.
But I add, in the same breath, that, as of now, that doesn’t seem to be so.
This “erasing history” meme is seriously irritating me. Which things are we not allowed to change because changing them would erase history?
The idea that we can’t exercise any judgment about things in our public spaces because some astounding racists decades ago took control of them is absurd. Changing things, even things that reference history, does not erase history. Erasing history takes a TARDIS and a snarky dude with an accent from the British Isles.
Another knock on the erasing history argument, at least in the case of the Charlottesville statues, is that they weren’t going to destroy the statues. They were going to be sold to private owners.
The thing that’s irritating me is that people seem to be neglecting the fact that we have a TON of history that isn’t being properly commemorated now due to lack of space. It is only practical for some of the old stuff to be taken down and updated with homages to more recent heroes and events.
Here in Richmond, there was an angry cry when the city removed an ancient oak tree to make room for a monument to Maggie Walker. I love old trees, but I can’t fault for the city for this. We’re running out of real estate for these things. Something has to give. Why shouldn’t it be a statue that had a good run for 100+ years, but has long since lost its luster and relevance?