Regarding The Flap Over Confederate Statues

[TheBeardedDude]

This: "...gung-ho anti-statue movement..." is a straw man. We aren't "anti-statue," we are against statues of traitors being erected and we are especially against the reasons why they were erected in the 50's and 60's in the Southern US. It isn't the person per se, but the persons who erected them, when they erected, and why they chose to memorialize the people they did when they did. Robert E. Lee statues (and engravings like that of Stone Mountain Georgia) weren't erected to teach people about Lee and the Civil War, they were erected to remind the "uppity blacks" that they lived in a world of racism and bigotry where they still didn't have the power or influence that they should have in an equal society

Fair enough on the "anti-statue movment" line. I just wanted to put a name to the issue and think it's possible to recontextualise the statues as not only a commemoration of a historical general, but also a reminder of the darker chapters of our history now that we're at least trying to give black people the power and influence they deserve so we don't end up too complacent about our complicity in it, which I think is a legitimately dangerous consequence of this whole controversy (and on both sides, too).

We can remember and discuss our darker past without having to memorialize it. Especially when those memorials were erected for clearly bigoted reasons.