Deacfreak07
Ain't played nobody, PAWL!
Many of those statues go up in the early 20th century?
Many of those statues go up in the early 20th century?
Think about it this way. If you were the grandson of a Holocaust survivor living in Germany, how would you feel if you had to walk to school every day past a statue of a Hitler Youth with that plaque? Does generic wording somehow sanitize the message of that statue?
Note: Germany has no such statues, because they understand that the attempt to build a society on the dehumanization of an entire race of people is something to be ashamed of, not glorified.
Think about it this way. If you were the grandson of a Holocaust survivor living in Germany, how would you feel if you had to walk to school every day past a statue of a Hitler Youth with that plaque? Does generic wording somehow sanitize the message of that statue?
Note: Germany has no such statues, because they understand that the attempt to build a society on the dehumanization of an entire race of people is something to be ashamed of, not glorified.
You are simpleton, where history is concerned. In Germany there are statues all over to people who were serf owners, and the serfs were hardly better off than slaves.
Do you even know the first damn thing about Robert E. Lee an his family beyond he was a Confederate general and they owned slaves ? Like, the Revolutionary War might not have gone so well without Lee's father ?
let's not act like the average southerner didn't have any choice in the matter.
https://www.ncpedia.org/union-volunteer-regiments
It is amusing to me that attitudes toward the Confederacy are markedly more positive in Wilkes County today than they were in 1863.
I will say in response to those statues you mentioned, good on a lot of cities for teaching their history. It's great to see that many cities are beginning to highlight (or at least acknowledge) the [continued] struggle for liberation/equality.
The Denmark Vesey statue in Charleston is great, and gives a lot of context: from the history, to the action, to the aftermath of the revolt, including showing how the Citadel was born out of the effort to police Black freedmen.
This doesn't really change the fact that many (most) of these Confederate monuments/memorials were erected for the purposes of either intimidation, or to rewrite the history of the period, uplifting the narrative of The Lost Cause.
I know we took his dang house to inter the actual heroes
And the statue of a Hitler Youth with that plaque was erected in 1993.
But the motive behind the statue doesn't make the statue racist on its own. If I dance around a KKK hood and put an apple in the street, I may be a racist but it doesn't make the apple in the street a racist symbol.
This is/was the plaque on Silent Sam:
How is that any different than pretty much any plaque on any other memorial to soldiers? You could unbolt it from Silent Sam and bolt it to a Civil War statue at the University of Vermont and it would mean the exact same thing. Would it be racist there? If you changed the years and put it on a Vietnam Memorial, would it be racist there?
I will say in response to those statues you mentioned, good on a lot of cities for teaching their history. It's great to see that many cities are beginning to highlight (or at least acknowledge) the [continued] struggle for liberation/equality.
The Denmark Vesey statue in Charleston is great, and gives a lot of context: from the history, to the action, to the aftermath of the revolt, including showing how the Citadel was born out of the effort to police Black freedmen.
This doesn't really change the fact that many (most) of these Confederate monuments/memorials were erected for the purposes of either intimidation, or to rewrite the history of the period, uplifting the narrative of The Lost Cause.
I think that, in many cases, the “original intent” of the people who put the statue up is not discernible, nor should it be dispositive. Even putting aside the problem of ascertaining the motivations of a multi-member body, for a statue honoring the confederate dead, for example, unless there is a plaque describing the purpose of the statue, how could we possibly say it was to remind black people of their place, rather than commemorate the confederate dead? Sure, the timing matters, but but reconstruction and the early Jim Crow era coincided with the death of many confederate veterans (I agree that the 1960s did not), and, in any event, actions often have dual motivations, and how could we, 100 years later, possibly say with any assurance, which one predominated for a statute erected, say, in the late 1800s?
Moreover, in cases involving religious displays, like carvings of the 10 commandments on government property, the SCOTUS has said, for displays that have been up for scores of years, whatever the religious motivations of the people who put up the display, that motivation has to be considered against the backdrop of the evolution of the purpose of keeping the display up. On that point, if the legislative body with decision making authority comes out and says something like “we recognize that this statue may have been put up for improper purposes, but we roundly reject any such purpose, and we keep the statute up to commemorate the confederate dead,” it is hard for me to say the original, rejected, intent must be the only one we focus on. The meaning of displays like this evolve over time, and focusing only on the original intent obscures that fact.
I think that, in many cases, the “original intent” of the people who put the statue up is not discernible, nor should it be dispositive. Even putting aside the problem of ascertaining the motivations of a multi-member body, for a statue honoring the confederate dead, for example, unless there is a plaque describing the purpose of the statue, how could we possibly say it was to remind black people of their place, rather than commemorate the confederate dead? Sure, the timing matters, but but reconstruction and the early Jim Crow era coincided with the death of many confederate veterans (I agree that the 1960s did not), and, in any event, actions often have dual motivations, and how could we, 100 years later, possibly say with any assurance, which one predominated for a statute erected, say, in the late 1800s?
Moreover, in cases involving religious displays, like carvings of the 10 commandments on government property, the SCOTUS has said, for displays that have been up for scores of years, whatever the religious motivations of the people who put up the display, that motivation has to be considered against the backdrop of the evolution of the purpose of keeping the display up. On that point, if the legislative body with decision making authority comes out and says something like “we recognize that this statue may have been put up for improper purposes, but we roundly reject any such purpose, and we keep the statute up to commemorate the confederate dead,” it is hard for me to say the original, rejected, intent must be the only one we focus on. The meaning of displays like this evolve over time, and focusing only on the original intent obscures that fact.
I could be wrong, but I believe most such statues purport to honor confederate dead.
Sure, that should weigh into the calculus, but I personally don’t put much stock into the ersatz “oppression” created by a statue, which, by the way, explains my view on why we shouldn’t glorify people taking the law into their own hands and tearing these statues down. This isn’t actual oppression — no one is being held back by these statues. That said, I think changing school names is different from bringing a statue down.
I’m not telling them how they should or should not feel. That’s up to them. I’m saying that in a society with people of different views, backgrounds, and experiences, there are going to be some hurt feelings that have to be lived with.