(September 13, 2017 at 12:01 am)bennyboy Wrote:(September 12, 2017 at 10:39 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Intention is everything when it comes to symbolism, Benny. This isn't difficult.
"Intentional fallacy" is a thing. Do you think the creator of the statue wanted to show "Lee, the great Champion of Slavery?" If so, why doesn't he have a manacled negro boy walking behind his horse?
lol, I don't think that at all, for precisely that reason.
You know what they wanted to show? "Lee, the Warrior". You know why? Because the message they wanted to send is "we went to war to defend our right to own you." The majority of those statues didn't go up in the years after the war to commemorate the valiant losses. They went up in the 30 years between 1890-1920, and the fifteen years between 1955-1970. Hopefully you're historically astute enough to assess the significance of those eras in American race relations.
(September 13, 2017 at 12:01 am)bennyboy Wrote: No. . . the guy was a great leader, and his men and the people in Southern communities admired him.
Have you asked yourself why they admired him? If it was just for his leadership, they could have memorialized Patton, Scott, Ridgway, or many other great captains. Hell, they could have erected statues of George Washington, a Virginia boy.
This is a facile, self-serving explanation you're positing here, because you're deliberately ignoring what and who he led, and why.
(September 13, 2017 at 12:01 am)bennyboy Wrote: You don't have to start talking about symbolism and intent.
We are talking about memorials. Symbolism comes with the territory. We don't erect monuments to men and causes we don't appreciate. Whether you in your Canadian whiteness understand it or not, those statues have a message to American blacks, and it ain't, "Golly, wasn't that Bobby Lee a fine fellow?"
