A giant bronze piece of cornbread would better represent southern heritage and decency.  

Not all racism is overt, the worst racism is subtle - and that's how it manages to persist for far longer than the showy displays.  The statues are overt, but what makes people rally around them is subtle.  That, will invariably outlast each and every one of them regardless of whether they're melted for scrap or stowed away in some temple to our mistakes.  

People can hem and haw about generalizing a group, but it fits.  If preserving these pieces of "heritage", to any given persons mind, takes precedence over the descendants of those oppressed people literally living in the shadow of monuments to their misery..they are either racial antipathists, or racial apathists...but both groups are racist.  I;d like to believe that the former group is smaller than the latter....and it certainly seems that we've suddenly come down with an plague of self unaware soft racists, and people who refuse to call a racist a racist out of some misplaced sense of decency or fairness to "both sides".  Sure, there are two sides.  One side is racist, the other side is not that - understanding the racist side is not possible without acknowledging their racism..however soft or subtle or unaware or "well meaning" - if there can be such a thing.

They can pretend to be statue enthusiasts, or heritage preservers, or whatever they like...and even if they truly believe, themselves, that this is all they are...what they are doing is euphemizing overt -and- subtle racism...and hey, maybe that's why -they- don't know that they're racists and racist sympathizers, come to think of it. It's probably on the rest of us to point this out to the "decent people" who -totally- wouldn't be racists, if they knew what they were doing served the cause of racism. OFC, none of this...exceedingly generous appraisal applies to the folks who go from zero to bitching about leftists and statues of MLK in .6 seconds. Those people have outed themselves as a literal Lost Cause beyond a shadow of a doubt.

"UM NO, just the opposite. You wont find Germany or Japan keeping their history of fascist symbols up."

Germany no, Japan yes. The Yakasuni (sp?) Shrine is for fallen soldiers, including the ones that used comfort women in the Great Pacific War.

In 1983 I was driving through Yokohama and saw a Mercedes dealership on a corner. It had a three-story atrium, street sides glass, the other two sides draped with the battle ensigns of Japan and Germany c. 1941.

(August 18, 2017 at 12:30 pm)Brian37 Wrote:

(August 18, 2017 at 12:15 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: Honestly, I think I can see both sides. I guess it just depends on which way you look at it.

To many southerners, the civil war wasn't about slavery. They see it as independence from the government up north, much like the revolutionary war was about independence from Britain. As someone else here said, many of the confederate soldiers did not themselves own slaves and there were even blacks who fought. Slavery was not the reason these people fought. If there is a southerner telling me that this is how he feels about it, I can't be like "Nope, no you don't. You just want to defend slavery." (Unless you are a supremacist, in which case you've already made it quite clear how you feel about non whites. But for the average decent person who is a southerner, if they tell me their view of the confederate army has nothing to do with slavery or racism, I can't tell them they are wrong.)

With that being said, I also see why/how a a black person or anyone else who sees the civil war as being all about slavery would be offended and would want those statues down for that reason. Because to them, the confederate soldiers do represent slavery and racism, since that is one of the differences between the north and south at the time. And those statues feel, to them, like a stand against their human dignity. That makes sense as well.

I think it is important to understand where each person is coming from before we mass label everyone in the former group racist and everyone in the latter group snow flakes.

CL seriously, who cares? 

Nazis are still nothing to glorify nor was slavery. Whatever empathy you think you have does not negate the evil of those ideologies. Our Neo Nazis support the attack on western values. White nationalism is not a reflection of western pluralism. The KKK ALSO is not a reflection of pluralism. 

I cannot see both sides. PERIOD. 

The only place Nazis and Slavery have any place in is a museum of what not to do to your fellow human being.

I said we shouldn't label *everyone* on the statues side as racist. If you see what I wrote in parenthesis, this does not apply to the supremacists, who are very clear about their feelings towards non whites.

(August 18, 2017 at 12:15 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: To many southerners, the civil war wasn't about slavery.

But we don't get to make up history. It was very clearly about slavery. The independence from the north was about an overwhelming portion of the southern economy relying on slavery, and if slavery were outlawed, a lot of rich people would lose quite a bit of their fortunes. It was about whether the Federal Government could overrule a state law that it deemed to be incorrect. Anyone who says that the Civil War was about states rights has to then come up with how states rights were being infringed. And then they have to look me in the eye and say that the Federal Government was wrong to create a Federal Law abolishing slavery. (And if these people truly felt it were about the abstract form of states rights, then they'd have to tell me how the Trump administration is not now infringing on the right of states to allow sanctuary cities across the nation.)

Just because people have fabricated an alternative form of history where people weren't fighting to preserve the institution of slavery from the reach of the federal government, doesn't mean everyone else needs to honor that. These monuments were put up after the War was over to remind black people why they fought. This argument about "some of the soldiers were not even fighting for slavery" is a red herring. There are no monuments to these soldiers, the ground troops. It's the generals, the politicians, the 'thinkers' of the confederacy that are being deified in the south. They knew exactly what they were fighting for.

It is appropriate to learn this history. It is appropriate to memorialize these men by learning about them, learning who they were and what they stood for within the context of the bigger picture. It is not appropriate to venerate them as American heroes. They were definitionally not American heroes. They fought against America. They were American traitors. As a person who went to school in the south, slavery was whitewashed as a contextual footnote in my history classes. It is often not until you get to college that you learn about the horrors that people like Andrew Jackson inflicted upon the Original American tribes and the stances that these men had towards black people. Most of our founding fathers were racists. The fact that they owned slaves is not the reason to take down any monument. This is the red herring that the president is pushing. No one but the most fringe lunatics are arguing for taking down the monuments of anyone but Confederate Rebels, men who decided that defending the institution of slavery was worth turning their back on their country and seceding from the union. Men who decided that the future of their money making abilities was more important than whether it was moral to own humans.

Whether people want to acknowledge it or not, that is the reminder that these monuments bring to those of us who know the history.

Robert E. Lee Wrote:“I think it wiser, moreover, not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered.”

Let's not forget their fear of losing congressional power granted by the three fifths compromise....which, amusingly, abolition strengthened - leading to years of congressional dominance by the south - which they used to perpetuate the inequality they'd lost a war fighting for. It was during -this- time that those statues went up, a literal whitewashing of history. So, if some "statue enthusiast" wants to talk history and heritage...there's their history and heritage - probably ought to nail it round their necks.

Fortune is cruel, and rarely favors the just.

(there are, btw, monuments to the ground troops - they're coming down too - but you know what, there are plenty of monuments to fallen american grunts, and the fallen grunts won't miss any monuments anyway)

(August 18, 2017 at 12:59 pm)SteelCurtain Wrote:

(August 18, 2017 at 12:15 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: To many southerners, the civil war wasn't about slavery.

But we don't get to make up history. It was very clearly about slavery. The independence from the north was about an overwhelming portion of the southern economy relying on slavery, and if slavery were outlawed, a lot of rich people would lose quite a bit of their fortunes. It was about whether the Federal Government could overrule a state law that it deemed to be incorrect. Anyone who says that the Civil War was about states rights has to then come up with how states rights were being infringed. And then they have to look me in the eye and say that the Federal Government was wrong to create a Federal Law abolishing slavery. (And if these people truly felt it were about the abstract form of states rights, then they'd have to tell me how the Trump administration is not now infringing on the right of states to allow sanctuary cities across the nation.)

Just because people have fabricated an alternative form of history where people weren't fighting to preserve the institution of slavery from the reach of the federal government, doesn't mean everyone else needs to honor that. These monuments were put up after the War was over to remind black people why they fought. This argument about "some of the soldiers were not even fighting for slavery" is a red herring. There are no monuments to these soldiers, the ground troops. It's the generals, the politicians, the 'thinkers' of the confederacy that are being deified in the south. They knew exactly what they were fighting for.

It is appropriate to learn this history. It is appropriate to memorialize these men by learning about them, learning who they were and what they stood for within the context of the bigger picture. It is not appropriate to venerate them as American heroes. They were definitionally not American heroes. They fought against America. They were American traitors. As a person who went to school in the south, slavery was whitewashed as a contextual footnote in my history classes. It is often not until you get to college that you learn about the horrors that people like Andrew Jackson inflicted upon the Original American tribes and the stances that these men had towards black people. Most of our founding fathers were racists. The fact that they owned slaves is not the reason to take down any monument. This is the red herring that the president is pushing. No one but the most fringe lunatics are arguing for taking down the monuments of anyone but Confederate Rebels, men who decided that defending the institution of slavery was worth turning their back on their country and seceding from the union. Men who decided that the future of their money making abilities was more important than whether it was moral to own humans.

Whether people want to acknowledge it or not, that is the reminder that these monuments bring to those of us who know the history.

Robert E. Lee Wrote:“I think it wiser, moreover, not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered.”

I hear you and see where you are coming from. I grew up in the north, so we learned that the war was all about slavery. But since then, I've heard from other people who supposedly also know their history, that it wasn't. That the north didn't care at all about the slaves, and were only forbidding them to handicap the south... and the South was merely fighting for Independence.

I'm not a history buff at all. I'm just someone who has heard 2 different stories. You could very well be 100% right. And if that's the case, then I would say the people telling the other story are ignorant, not necessarily racist.

Ignorance that leads to racist actions and sympathies -is- racism....CL.  Thing is, these people aren't ignorant of it.  Let me give you an example.

I can (and have, on these boards) explain to people that the rebel flag did not stand for slavery nor was it the confederate flag.  However, no one who flies that flag is ignorant of the fact that it menaces people for reasons entirely unrelated to it's historical use in the civil war.  Similarly, no one is ignorant of why monuments to confederate leaders erected in the post war period menace people for reasons entirely unrelated to what happened in the civil war...but more accurately, for what continued to happen after the civil war and to this very day.

No one is or can be ignorant of this. No one can legitimately contend that the last 200 years of our history as it relates to race relations and symbols are a cmplete blank for them. That they just don't know, and just can't understand why Some People™ take offense. They know it, and they fly the flag anyway, they know it, and they argue for the statue anyway. This is, at it's absolute best..... racial apathy. It is, easily, the most prevalent form of racism. Racial apathy is the silence upon which racial antipathy depends and thrives.

(August 18, 2017 at 1:07 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: I hear you and see where you are coming from. I grew up in the north, so we learned that the war was all about slavery. But since then, I've heard from other people who supposedly also know their history, that it wasn't. That the north didn't care at all about the slaves, and were only forbidding them to handicap the south... and the South was merely fighting for Independence.

I'm not a history buff at all. I'm just someone who has heard 2 different stories. You could very well be 100% right. And if that's the case, then I would say the people telling the other story are ignorant, not necessarily racist.

Does it matter if anyone in the North really cared about black people though? I mean, there are plenty of contemporary writings in the newspapers reflecting a growing progressive movement towards abolition. The term abolitionist was around for decades before the war. But even if the North's motivation was purely political, how does that change things?

I understand that not everyone is embroiled and reads about this stuff. What I don't understand is how people can take such a dogmatic stance on the issue without reading up on the actual history. There is no dearth of information. It is not dull, either.

(August 18, 2017 at 12:58 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:

(August 18, 2017 at 12:30 pm)Brian37 Wrote: CL seriously, who cares? 

Nazis are still nothing to glorify nor was slavery. Whatever empathy you think you have does not negate the evil of those ideologies. Our Neo Nazis support the attack on western values. White nationalism is not a reflection of western pluralism. The KKK ALSO is not a reflection of pluralism. 

I cannot see both sides. PERIOD. 

The only place Nazis and Slavery have any place in is a museum of what not to do to your fellow human being.

I said we shouldn't label *everyone* on the statues side as racist. If you see what I wrote in parenthesis, this does not apply to the supremacists, who are very clear about their feelings towards non whites.

You keep missing my point. It does not matter. If you show up with others whom are bigoted, and you fail to see in any case that those statues were not put up as history lessons but DID glorify a horrible institution, then you are coddling that horrible history.

"I am not like the others" is a dodge. If you are on the right side of history, then you seek to put those icons in proper context without glorifying them. Our American Neo Nazis and Our KKK, see those icons as justification as a social pecking order based on race. If you don't agree, then you should be able to figure out what the right thing to do is.

And again, if you think there is nothing wrong with leaving those statues where they are at, ask a Jew if they would find it ok to leave statues of Rommel or Goebbles or Hitler in Germany today? Not acceptable? I agree, so that is how blacks feel about Slavery. 

Moving those icons is not an attempt to gloss over history or ignore history, but to put them in proper context, in that the message should be, "Don't do this to your fellow human being." We can teach those events in Museums and History classes without glorifying those events. 

"Heritage" is not a valid excuse to leave them there. So again, "I am not a bigot" is not my point. I don't care if you as an individual are not, others are and Nazis and KKK and Slavery are not to be glorified.

I really don't know how more clear I can make that. 


Those icons can be moved to Museums without being glorified.

(August 18, 2017 at 1:07 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:

(August 18, 2017 at 12:59 pm)SteelCurtain Wrote: But we don't get to make up history. It was very clearly about slavery. The independence from the north was about an overwhelming portion of the southern economy relying on slavery, and if slavery were outlawed, a lot of rich people would lose quite a bit of their fortunes. It was about whether the Federal Government could overrule a state law that it deemed to be incorrect. Anyone who says that the Civil War was about states rights has to then come up with how states rights were being infringed. And then they have to look me in the eye and say that the Federal Government was wrong to create a Federal Law abolishing slavery. (And if these people truly felt it were about the abstract form of states rights, then they'd have to tell me how the Trump administration is not now infringing on the right of states to allow sanctuary cities across the nation.)

Just because people have fabricated an alternative form of history where people weren't fighting to preserve the institution of slavery from the reach of the federal government, doesn't mean everyone else needs to honor that. These monuments were put up after the War was over to remind black people why they fought. This argument about "some of the soldiers were not even fighting for slavery" is a red herring. There are no monuments to these soldiers, the ground troops. It's the generals, the politicians, the 'thinkers' of the confederacy that are being deified in the south. They knew exactly what they were fighting for.

It is appropriate to learn this history. It is appropriate to memorialize these men by learning about them, learning who they were and what they stood for within the context of the bigger picture. It is not appropriate to venerate them as American heroes. They were definitionally not American heroes. They fought against America. They were American traitors. As a person who went to school in the south, slavery was whitewashed as a contextual footnote in my history classes. It is often not until you get to college that you learn about the horrors that people like Andrew Jackson inflicted upon the Original American tribes and the stances that these men had towards black people. Most of our founding fathers were racists. The fact that they owned slaves is not the reason to take down any monument. This is the red herring that the president is pushing. No one but the most fringe lunatics are arguing for taking down the monuments of anyone but Confederate Rebels, men who decided that defending the institution of slavery was worth turning their back on their country and seceding from the union. Men who decided that the future of their money making abilities was more important than whether it was moral to own humans.

Whether people want to acknowledge it or not, that is the reminder that these monuments bring to those of us who know the history.

I hear you and see where you are coming from. I grew up in the north, so we learned that the war was all about slavery. But since then, I've heard from other people who supposedly also know their history, that it wasn't. That the north didn't care at all about the slaves, and were only forbidding them to handicap the south... and the South was merely fighting for Independence.

I'm not a history buff at all. I'm just someone who has heard 2 different stories. You could very well be 100% right. And if that's the case, then I would say the people telling the other story are ignorant, not necessarily racist.

But, does it matter whether the north really cared about the slaves?  That doesn't alter what the confederacy stood for, or what the statues of its leaders symbolize today.