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Yeah, like what’s up with that Crazy Horse monument? Didn’t that guy lose? He fought against the American government and lost and we let them build a statue of this guy?
He was not fighting to keep people enslaved but quite the opposite. But if you can't see the difference.
I think there are a whole bunch of people who want to keep the statues only because people they disagree with politically want them gone.
I am a libertarian from the west coast. Not a liberal Democrat but I see no real argument why the statutes need to stay up.
Maybe it is time for the South to move beyond the Confederacy.
Although that is true, there is more to it than that. What kind of "families" raised that sort of violent behavior. They demonstrate a pure lack of moral compass or sense of community.
No respect for our country, flag, and peaceful Americans.
Confederate leaders are not worthy of public recognition outside of hometown museums.
If authorities won't take steps to remove the statues from public view for either disposal, storage or movement to an appropriate historical venue, the majority who want this inappropriate recognition ended will do it for them.
Did I miss anything? Or would some promoters of slavery and oppression like to step up and defend the memorials on the grounds that "not everyone likes everything"?
It cuts the other way too. If "it's about history", then we could start putting up statues of Osama Bin Laden. Yes, there was all of that about terrorism and Sept. 11, but some will try to claim that he got the US to be on guard, formed the TSA which employed many people, etc. etc. Someone's always going to try to reach for these things.
Quote:
Originally Posted by msgsing
Guess I better check the news from my old home town back in Ohio. There’s a statue of Christopher Columbus in front of city hall that’s been there for years. I guess these statues represent the old order and history to some people. When icons come tumbling down in other countries it’s oftentimes a sign of seismic shift in society and government.
I'm surprised statues of Columbus are still around. In his letters, he openly bragged about how he sold 9 yo girls into slavery, cut off the ears of indigenous people, and cut off the hands of them and forced them to wear them around their necks on a necklace. At least in my day, they celebrate Columbus' journey since that's how the US got started. However, they don't mention his atrocities (which I guess would've been too much for a grade schooler. When they covered holocaust victims being put in gas chambers, they waited until high school for that), but acknowledge that he wasn't a person of any decent character.
As this thread continues to veer more into the present, let me try again to look at the history of the topic.
The vast majority of statues honoring the racist failures of the Confederacy were erected between 1890 and the 1960s. Those dates are key.
The Jim Crow era began around 1890. While the 'Compromise' (ie, corrupt bargain) of 1877 led to the removal of the last federal troops from Southern states, blacks continued to be elected in black majority areas of the South into the 1880s. But white Southerners were determined to put a stop to that. Many Southern states held constitutional conventions beginning at that time to create new legal frameworks to disenfranchise blacks entirely. The Mississippi constitutional convention of 1890 - which convened an assembly of 133 white men and just 1 black man, in a state with then a black population of 58% - enacted poll taxes and literacy tests to vote. This proved to be a template other Southern states would follow, with whites invariably being able to pay the tax and passing the tests* while blacks - no matter how wealthy - were never accounted as having paid their tax and no matter how educated were never allowed to pass the tests. Thus, they could not vote. The Charleston News and Courier stated, in support of South Carolina's constitutional convention in 1895: "We can trust white men to do right by the inferior race, but we cannot trust the inferior race with power over the white man." John B. Knox presided over Alabama's 1901 constitutional convention of 1901, where he declared that its purpose was "to establish white supremacy in this State".
That was the context in which the statues began appearing. They served the same purpose as a cross burned on a black family's lawn, or a black man hung from a tree. The hanging black man might be the only one dead, but his murder was a message sent to every black. So, too, were the erection of statues establishing Confederates as icons. The message being sent was one of white supremacy.
The statue-raising in furtherance of the cause of idolizing the traitors began to subside in the 1920s. Jim Crow was firmly established, blacks had been chased from government, shunted off to inferior schools, banned from serving on juries, and systemically marginalized in every way. If they 'got out of line' (ie, demanded their rights) a massacre or two would ensure the white supremacist order. But beginning in the 1950s, more statues began being raised. Why? Because of the civil rights movement, of course. Again, a message was being sent. That message was "Don't get too uppity!" (ie, don't even think about expecting to share the liberty that us whites have). Georgia incorporated the Confederate banner in its state flag in 1956. South Caroline began flying it atop the state capitol in 1962. And, as mentioned, more statues. The Civil War had been over 90+ years at that point. Why then? To remind black people who was in charge. To remind them that if they tried demanding their rights, out would come the firehouses and the police dogs and the truncheons. Or maybe they'd find themselves killed and buried under a dam, as in the Freedom Summer murders.
History? My ass.
Those statues were meant to remind black people that the ideal of those raising those statues was "Segregation Yesterday, Segregation Today, Segregation Forever!" - with the tacit message that if you didn't go along, you could expect violence up to the point of murder to be inflicted upon you.
I think the vandalism of our history is almost sinful. A statue, brand of food etc. does not create feelings of pain or inequality. I'm Jewish. Do public displays of crosses exemplify Christian dominance?
I think the vandalism of our history is almost sinful. A statue, brand of food etc. does not create feelings of pain or inequality. I'm Jewish. Do public displays of crosses exemplify Christian dominance?
Mmm..
Try to put them up in Islamic countries and see what happens.
Those statues were meant to remind black people that the ideal of those raising those statues was "Segregation Yesterday, Segregation Today, Segregation Forever!" - with the tacit message that if you didn't go along, you could expect violence up to the point of murder to be inflicted upon you.
I tend to agree that Robert E Lee doesnt need to watch over a traffic circle. And there doesnt need to be a auction block on a street corner (which was removed this week). But museums should be a safe way to teach and learn about painful parts of history. These 11 statues are in the Hall Of Statues in DC which could be considered a museum and you can 100% avoid coming in contact with them if what they represent is offensive.
It seems a dangerous precedent to set to hold historical figures to the morals and ethics we decide. Human rights establishment and the abolishment of slavery were the correct moral choice but these men lived in the world that had not established this as the moral majority and its dangerous to start reevaluating every name on a building and a street and statue to determine who does or does not adhere to our current moral standings. By removing all trace of someone who does not meet the standard you erase all historical significance that person represented. And none of the people who are being attacked were immortalized simply for being racist. They contributed something people considered historically significant, even if that was military prowess on the losing side.
History is written by the victors. But in the US, there is a lot of history also written by the losers. History becomes very one sided and incomplete when only the winning side gets to contribute to the conversation. By destroying the history the losers contributed you lose half of a very short history. We are very young in the world and we are already trying to eliminate the bad things weve done because they hurt us to be reminded of them, but reminded is what we need to be. If you look closely enough everyone does something or participated in something that is now considered morally reprehensible. and Im very concerned that slowly we are going to erode what has historically birthed our country in favor of only things that are easy to digest.
WELL....
While we are tearing down statues across the nation, we really should tear down any statues or monuments to the following American presidents. The reasons are self-evident that these presidents were morally corrupt and antithetical to American values.
Slave owners Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Andrew Johnson.
Fought in wars against Indians: Washington, Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Taylor, Lincoln
Fought in wars against Hispanics: Taylor, Pierce, Grant, Teddy Roosevelt
Known to have cheated on their wives: Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Cleveland, Garfield, Wilson, Harding, FDR, Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, Reagan, Clinton, Trump
This tearing down history is nothing more than BULL CRAP!!
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