It is a National Historic Landmark. But a new poll by Harvard CAPS/Harris taken for The Hill finds that most voters do not support these measures. Many people have observed that Confederate memorials were mainly erected in defiance of progress towards civil rights for liberated slaves and their descendants. But that doesn’t mean everyone who fought for the South did so because he was a devotee of the “peculiar institution” — let alone a slaveowner. The removal of this statue cost $130,000. No. Public art challenges, changes and shapes the way we see things. Statuary monuments are landmarks. The recent spread of iconoclasm was never just about Confederate monuments or even statues. After all, their heroes' may not have prevailed in that awful Civil War, but they were revered all the same. More specifically, most Americans can appreciate that such monuments retain artistic value apart from any ideological baggage they might carry simply because they are of higher quality than the memorials we are apt to produce today. The vandals seek the destruction of the artistic manifestations of higher ideals guiding our nation and its leaders throughout its often turbulent history. It is part of their heritage. Historical memory is grounded in the literary and documentary narratives of different kinds and in symbolic works such as statuary monuments, which often seek to redeem historical experience by idealizing its noblest aspects. If one takes down the statues of slave owners and changes names of schools, streets, etc. The history of the United States should never be forgotten nor altered. The underlying objective of the crusade of modern iconoclasts is to undermine our civilization by demolishing its symbols. Would we arrange the statuary figures in the same way now? And going forward, university and public officials should take more time to consider the implications of removing Confederate monuments. He simply articulated the common sense informing a wide swathe of American public opinion: to destroy public monuments, Confederate or not, is to destroy part of the nation’s history. Many argue that the monuments should remain simply for the sake of southern pride, and that is a valid argument. Stuart along Richmond’s Monument Avenue to the many solitary soldier statues across the South, such as the demolished Durham figure, we should be mindful of the issues they raise. Please limit all comments to the topic of the post. These monuments are historical and should not be removed based on the the fact that they can be associated with slavery. The Student News Site of Van Nuys High School, The Mirror • © 2021 VNHS Publications • Advertise • FLEX WordPress Theme by SNO • Log in, It’s out with the old and in with the new, Crazy covid customers demand to speak to the manager, BLOG | LGBT Nation: The entertainment industry overlooks lesbians, When Armenians needed you most, you stood in silence. Confederate statues remind blacks of the torture, death, slavery, slave sales, and other forms of oppression their people suffered. Jim Crow went down more than half a century ago. The Confederacy evidently differed from the rest of the country simply by being more explicit in its racism. When they destroy statues of Columbus, they tell us the European settlement of this continent was illegitimate, a simple matter of unbridled greed and plunder unredeemed by any higher civilization-building dynamic. Why We Should Keep Confederate Statues Standing. The problem of what to do with them has convulsed the US since recent violent protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, over a proposal to remove a statue of sometime Confederate generalissimo Robert E. Lee. They should not be allowed to inflict their nihilism on the rest of us. As a historian, I don’t like the idea of banning statues. Many Southerners fought mainly because they believed their homeland was being invaded. They want to restart society themselves as a perfect utopia. then one must remove the statues etc. This elegant, mile-long thoroughfare is one of the great civic art venues in the United States. This is a silly, ignorant idea. Does that mean the sculpture should go? E. Benjamin Andrews/Wikimedia Commons. Nobody has to honor the Confederacy or the brutality of the Civil War, but these statues remain a reminder of our nation’s past. They all need to come down.”. When they go after statues of distinguished figures in our nation’s history, they tell us the American political system was erected on a foundation of “systemic racism.”. The statues stand as a testament to the nation’s origins, and how far we’ve progressed from our often very backwards ways. Copyright © 2021 The Federalist, a wholly independent division of FDRLST Media, All Rights Reserved. The media types who indulge them have been indoctrinated in similarly simplistic national-guilt narratives at our colleges and universities and dwell in a social-media echo chamber in which deviation from current orthodoxies often has quite unpleasant consequences. Hundreds of statues dedicated to the Confederacy - the southern states which revolted against the US government - exist all throughout the United States, and … Confederate heritage groups derided the need for an interpretive sign. of all slave owners. Salon sophisticates, of course, assume they must fervently and unanimously support the avenue’s statuary purging. I’ve heard many arguments as to why statues commemorating Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and other Confederate war heroes should come down in Charlottesville; and not many why they should stay… These statues are offensive to certain people for sure, but why should they still stay up? The heritage of others and the stone and bronze figures attesting to their past should be the least of America’s worries with the North Korean and terrorist threats affecting our present. How do they know? Monuments are thus selective — history without warts — and there is a vital and by no means necessarily tidy interplay between them and historical actuality. As president of a cultural heritage organization, I feel obligated to weigh in on the current controversy over Confederate monuments. Confederate statues honor the Confederate war heroes and soldiers with buildings, statues, plaques and other forms of commemoration of the Confederacy; and now those buildings and statues are causing violence and arguments throughout the United States. He lives in Washington. If conservative leaders can’t figure that out, this country is in serious trouble. And it will do absolutely nothing to improve life for black Richmonders. For example: political commentator Angela Rye said this on CNN on August 15th this year. Today they inspire awe and wonder at the accomplishments of ancient civilizations. The rest said, “I don’t know.”. Material prosperity helps civilization thrive, but its survival requires more than material prosperity. Sheriff’s deputies were on hand to observe, but did not intervene. Few if any of our statue-desecrators have ever experienced real political oppression or economic privation. That’s because history is complex and complicated. Everyone knows there would have been no Civil War but for the existence of slavery, and almost everyone knows the right side prevailed. They are reminded that Rosa Parks had to fight for her seat on the bus because the society in which Rosa Parks lived didn’t see her as equal to a white man. The poll shows that 58 percent say the statues should stay and 42 percent saying they should be removed. Instead, they are memorials of beauty and ancient history. Florida school districts continue to look at renaming schools named after Confederate leaders. Tucker Carlson is one of the few commentators to forcefully denounce it. We do not build war memorials to celebrate war, but as a reminder of the tragic cost of war and a warning to future generations. A 106-year-old statue of Confederate soldiers will remain on public property unless opponents raise enough money to move it to a private cemetery, officials decided. The U.S. is a work in progress. Rather, Confederate monuments were intended “to celebrate … the re-subjugation of the formerly enslaved and their progeny into the economic peonage and racial caste system of Jim Crow.”. I think the better way would be to leave most of these memorials where they are with some kind of explanation of who put them up, and when, why, and what they stand for. Confederate statues are 'billboards for racism.' Comments are encouraged and appreciated. Sometimes, their resonance is universal, as with the majestic Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. It will impoverish the River City’s cultural patrimony. In the wake of the recent police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and widespread protests against police brutality and systemic racism in America, there are renewed calls for Confederate monuments around the country to come down—from Birmingham, Alabama, where a 52-foot obelisk known as the Confederate Soldiers … The statues must go because they remind us constantly of a past that needs only to be overcome and forgotten. It can even dictate how we feel in public … They also know that many statues’ originally intended symbolism is thankfully obsolete. Columbus, Washington, Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Grant, and even Abraham Lincoln are all apparently fair game now. Back in 2017, soon after the fatal Charlottesville clash, a 22-year-old African-American student named Takiyah Thompson climbed a ladder and tied a tow-strap around the statue of a Confederate soldier in Durham, North Carolina. 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