gtn130 wrote:montestewart wrote:gtn130 wrote:
He literally said "I'm not one who advocates destroying all Confederate monuments, though a reduction in number, relocating many others from the most prominent spots, and contextualization of the remainder makes a lot of sense. "
I'm not advocating removal of all Confederate monuments. I'm not defending any particular monument. Those two positions do not contradict each other.
It just sounds like you're equivocating on the issue when you don't need to be. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the position that all confederate monuments should be removed. You don't need to offer an olive branch or whatever to racists.
Sure, a lot of people opposed to removing statues are racists, but a I think many other people just haven't thought it through. I grew up in Virginia, and over time I got a bit of exposure to these statues, memorials, street names, and other Confederate symbols. I had no idea they had any meaning beyond long dead people and historical events, until I started to realize they did have other meanings. If you asked me when I was a kid if they should be removed, I probably would have said no, because I didn't know anything different.
As I mentioned above, I don't think there's sufficient political will/public support behind a full scale removal of all statues at this point, so there is time for a conversation on this subject. It's my guess that, over time, the wider circulation of that well-documented backdrop against which the statues proliferated in the South (Jim Crow, KKK, lynching, etc.) will change some views about the meaning of the statues themselves.
I understand that some people might be in favor of removing and destroying all statues and other identifiable figurative memorials, and otherwise renaming anything connected to the Confederacy in any way. I think many people on early Street in Alexandria will be surprised to find it's named for Gen. Jubal Early. There would be a lot of that going on across the South (some in the North too). But some people might not view all the memorials equally in terms of offensiveness or in terms of priority. Just some examples off the top of my head of issues people might consider:
1) Are the statues of Confederate political leaders (those whose defense of slavery led the South into war) in prominent public spaces more offensive than those of Confederate military leaders?
2) Some might consider memorials to rank-and-file soldiers--likely not slaveholders, merely following orders, subject to Southern propaganda, and suffering the depressed wages of a slave-based economy—to be less problematic than memorials to leaders. Would it make a difference if those lost were named on a plaque? Would it make a difference if it was in a local cemetery rather than the village square?
3) Are battlefield memorials to be treated differently than memorials in public squares? What about joint Union-Confederate battlefield memorials? Are preserved battlefields themselves offensive?
4) What should be done regarding memorials to people who were prominent quite apart from their role in the Civil War or in the slaveholding economy of the South? Considering the number of times I have heard the mention of a “slippery slope” to removing all memorials to Washington and Jefferson, this is one to really think about.
Not an exhaustive list of potential issues. As already mentioned, the timing of a statue's erection (sorry AFM, it's the correct word choice) might influence any of these analyses, as would the proposed resolution as to how to respond to a memorial--removal and destruction, relocation, maintenance with historical context (see the post-Soviet Union comment), etc.
