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Equal Justice Initiative's National Memorial to Victims of Lynching

simosfrostyone said:
You cannot be serious. Shaming doesn't change people's hearts--they have to believe it was wrong. Do you really think that anyone who still believes in gas ovens or lynchings is going to have a change of heart because you rub their noses in it?
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So you disagree with the holocaust museum? Really?
 
simosfrostyone said:
You cannot be serious. Shaming doesn't change people's hearts--they have to believe it was wrong. Do you really think that anyone who still believes in gas ovens or lynchings is going to have a change of heart because you rub their noses in it?
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Seeing them every day will have impact on future generations. It shows certain types of actions are abhorrent. It shows kids coming up certain events won't be accepted.

Will it change current neo-Nazis or David Dukes? Nope, but nothing will.

These building and monuments are much more about tomorrow than today.
 
DeaconSig said:
So you disagree with the holocaust museum? Really?
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The purpose of the holocaust museum wasn't to force people's hearts to change by shaming them. You don't usually see that many Nazis walking through there.
 
People should be shamed for having the temerity to be born white in the south.
 
knowell said:
People should be shamed for having the temerity to be born white in the south.
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No, but they should be informed about what happened in their counties in the recent past with the goal of it not repeating.
 
I don't see the distinction between a Holocaust Memorial and something like this idea. It does seem the intent of the memorials are different. The distinction on here from at least Simos appears to be that the Germans now know the Nazis were wrong and so it's okay to have that up there, but since many Southerners don't appreciate that their actions was wrong that we should avoid shaming them?
 
simosfrostyone said:
Timing can mean a lot. Seems to me that racial tension (hatred) is way up right now. Even if this is a good idea I don't think now is a good time to do it.
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Hit me up with the right time so I can put it in my calendar.

sailordeac said:
not all victims of lynchings were black, do you know where the word lynching comes from? well, then why don't you look it up?
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Originally yes. But lynching became a racialized practice over time.


DistrictDeacon said:
No, but they should be informed about what happened in their counties in the recent past with the goal of it not repeating.
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Yep. Hanging is not practiced anymore but lynching still is.
 
There's a "doomed to repeat it" element of learning from the past that is at the heart of these museums, memorials, etc, that I think is being overlooked.
 
I don’t think the monument is about shame (apart from the part with the murals to be brought home). As others have noted, no one today was involved with those murders, they shouldn’t feel shame. It is about remembering our shared history and fighting the white washing of our history. I was never that into history as a student, but I realize now that it is so important to know our history to understand the present. When we see people don’t feel closure after George Zimmerman was found not guilty by a jury, it is important to remember that Emmett Till’s killers were as well. It is important to remember that it was not that long ago that a black person could be killed in a public square, that a black person could be killed without the killer being concerned that they may have to face justice. That impacts how people feel today, it impacts the lens through which they view current events.
 
Just for the record, Germany has memorials at a number of former concentration/"work" camps. Not only have these memorials not inflamed tensions they have likely defused them because German children are required to take two field trips during their schooling to memorial sites. The power of imagery cannot be understated. Seeing a picture in a museum is not the same as actually walking through a gas chamber or through the furnace houses. Germany made the conscious decision to face its ugly history head on and make sure every citizen is aware of the depraved and disgusting nature of what happened. The fact the US has never done this is a major reason why people can say memorials to lynching will increase tension. If every US citizen had to travel and see a real place where lynching/violent racism happened, things would become incredibly real incredibly fast. The ugliness of the Holocaust is very real to German citizens in large part because it hasn't been relegated to a sanitized museum setting. These memorials SHOULD make people feel very uncomfortable. That is a good thing. We, in the US, have had an ugly and uncomfortable history of racism and discrimination. The more people who are forced to confront real life imagery of this the better IMO.
 
The same has been true, in my experience at least, in non-German countries with concentration camps.
 
avalon said:
I don’t think the monument is about shame (apart from the part with the murals to be brought home). As others have noted, no one today was involved with those murders, they shouldn’t feel shame. It is about remembering our shared history and fighting the white washing of our history. I was never that into history as a student, but I realize now that it is so important to know our history to understand the present. When we see people don’t feel closure after George Zimmerman was found not guilty by a jury, it is important to remember that Emmett Till’s killers were as well. It is important to remember that it was not that long ago that a black person could be killed in a public square, that a black person could be killed without the killer being concerned that they may have to face justice. That impacts how people feel today, it impacts the lens through which they view current events.
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By "not that long ago," do you mean 24 hours?
 
Germans have a phrase and an entire concept on this - "Kollektivschuld" or collective guilt. The idea that when something horrible is done on such a large scale, it's not individuals alone that bear the guilt - but the entire society that housed them. Acknowledging and confronting that collective guilt is a core basis of the post-war history of the country (and is in stark contrast to Austria, which was painted by the allied powers as "the first victims of German naziism" as a political step required to avoid the splitting of the country and giving Vienna over to the Soviets ... which has led to a warped and twisted relationships between many Austrians and the war that is quite different than the one in Germany).

The fact that the US, and especially regions of the US, has refused to acknowledge this collective guilt for the scars that still so clearly remain is a huge mistake. I like Wrangor, he's a good poster, but I think he's very clearly wrong here. I think we should preserve slaves quarters, lynching sites and the rest and I think every school child should have to visit them. When you have major political figures still saying things like "the slaves that built the white house were well fed and had decent lodging" in 2016, we clearly have not educated our population of our own failings nearly well enough.
 
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