Regarding The Flap Over Confederate Statues

[TheBeardedDude]

We certainly can remember and discuss the darker aspects of our past, but, if we don't have to, do we?

Honestly, in your experience, has a statue of a civil war general caused you, or your kids (if applicable), or your spouse or your neighbors to "discuss the darker aspects of our past"?  I can't say I've seen statues encourage that kind of discussion, apart from field trips to monuments that kids/highschoolers already do as part of history classes.

"...apart from field trips to monuments that kids/highschoolers already do as part of history classes." And it is the fact that they are in the class that has sparked the conversation, not the statue. 

I think there is this perception that a statue is like a fossil in a museum. You go and you look at it and then you go read and discuss information about it. But that is not what these statues commemorate and memorialize and is clearly not what their purpose was. They weren't erected to bring communities together to discuss how wrong it was for the Confederate states to secede from the Union or how it was wrong for humans to own other humans, they were erected as monuments to racism and bigotry. They were erected to remind a proportion of the population that they are not seen as equals and (as far as the people who erected them are concerned) never will be.

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Yeah, we do. This is why we have history classes. Are they perfect? No, but that is why people should extend their education beyond K-12. People can, do, and have written a plethora on the subject.

The problem is the people's discussion doesn't often go beyond simply switching who's considered a "good guy" and a "bad guy" in the narrative. I mentioned the example with Andrew Jackson in Zinn's book, and I suspect that if people tried to look at it with more nuance, we  might actually be able to have this discussion more civilly, and we wouldn't have people using it as an excuse to run people over in their Dodges.

And you think a statue somehow would make the discussion more accurate?