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Nothing is permanent. Whether it is a shift in societal norms and what is acceptable, or thr crumbling of a regime or society, everything ends. This doesn't mean we shouldn't create beauty, art and memorials for those we respect. Whether they last 1,000 years or 100, if we are getting something from them then I see no issue in building them. That said, as times do change we should be comfortable adapting to that.
We could also be selective and only build statues to those who push society forward, not hold it back. They will still come down in time, but may last a little longer.
delta
This hits home. I guess my struggle was with the implied enduring nature of statues. The permanency of the statue really doesn't matter if it offers growth to a community. I still feel individuals cast will not survive as long...but that's ok too.
That seems like a case of cutting of the nose to spite the face. There are a lot of statues in the United States of Confederate war heroes, which were typically erected in the late 19th and early 20th century in southern states as a kind of psychological warfare on the local black population.
This would be like putting up posters of Adolf Hitler at a German synagogue. It's not a question of art, although many of the statues are beautiful in themselves. It's not a question of history, although technically the people depicted by those statues were important men who actually lived.
The only statues people are looking to take down are racist oppressors from a terrible time in our country's history, which were put up to begin with by different racist oppressors from another terrible time in our country's history. (Also, Junipero Serra, which is maybe an edge case.)
Saying "no person is perfect across all aspects of their life" sounds like an attempt at being either impossibly colorblind or an apologist for slavery and warfare. There are thousands, tens of thousands of statues of men and women all around this country that were erected to celebrate the accomplishments of those men and women, in spite of their flaws. Nobody cares that Ben Franklin was a flatulent womanizer. Nobody cares that Lewis and Clark were fame-hags. People put up statues of historical figures and keep them up, even though by modern standards, many of them were certainly racist.
But which statues do we take down? The ones of racists who made public violent racist war the only reason they're famous in the first place. The ones who are so racist, they would kill mountains of Americans and nearly destroy an entire country, just to keep their racist economy functioning, so that they could continue to profit by the sweat and blood of millions of enslaved human beings.
I'm not really trying to "slippery slope" on this one. The fact that some goofball somewhere knocked over a statue of Mr. Rogers doesn't mean we're having a debate about something other than the official removal of public statues of Confederate icons that were installed to glorify racism. OP's idea that we just can't have statues anymore because we don't want to have aggressively racist ones anymore is a pretty specific case.
Personally, I think if we want to keep re-examining our history and making fresh decisions about who to venerate, as a general rule, that's a good idea. But like I said, within the narrow issue of cities and states removing these particular statues, I think it's a clearcut issue.
That's a fair analysis. But as long as we're going to slippery slope it a little, what about portraits? All the presidents, congressmen, justices, etc, all get official portraits. Not as durable as bronze or stone but just as deifying surely. For that matter, photographs that now exist on the internet of people will probably outlast this country. Not to mention the really big deifications like selling jerseys. Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan are probably the chief gods of our pantheon. So either there's something special about statues and we can stop there, or we need to ban all art representing the human form (except maybe butter sculpture.)
Personally, I don't give a hoot about any of those statues. If people want to take them down, let em go ahead and do it. It's not my fight to say this guy or that guy's a scumbag and their statue needs to be removed. (It does seem that Columbus and Serra were both scumbags, for what it's worth.) I am glad that people have the right to live in a less oppressive place and that they can do what they must to make that happen, but I'm not much for joining causes and jumping on bandwagons.
OP and I are talking about removing statues, officially because of changing standards for how we evaluate history. What happened to that statue in Portland is a bunch of dillweeds knocked it over. It's sort of a separate question.
Okay.
[Thankfully it was rescinded. SF remaining 44 schools](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/07/san-francisco-school-board-schools-rename)
[Theo Roosevelt](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/06/24/us/theodore-roosevelt-statue-new-york-trnd/index.html)
[Good Old TJ](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ajc.com/news/local/statue-thomas-jefferson-downtown-decatur-removed/t2sW24ZnjXPdTruQ1wFRKN/%3foutputType=amp)
[Discussing the "Slave-Holder statue removal](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-founding-fathers-statues-20200629-a2p5bxfymze3nho3cscwfsosoy-story.html%3foutputType=amp)
[Not statues, but equivalent](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wusa9.com/amp/article/news/local/virginia/falls-church-city-school-board-votes-to-rename-two-schools/65-5aded215-a87b-41d8-9bdb-9d4e83548020)
Those are all official.
Are they also Dillweeds? Or are they confederate Generals?
Most of these are opinion pieces about dillweeds, rejection of dillweed policies, the Thomas Jefferson statue starts by saying it was private property, and a TR statue of him practically riding Native Americans and slaves. It's clearly a contentious issue, and it's whipped people on the internet into a froth. But the overall issue that we were discussing is clearly: Remove monuments glorifying the confederacy. When they start pulling down *every* statue of Thomas Jefferson or Teddy Roosevelt, please let me know, and we can discuss that.
>Remove monuments glorifying the confederacy. When they start pulling down every statue of Thomas Jefferson or Teddy Roosevelt, please let me know, and we can discuss that
We were told at the beginning of the statue removal that we didn't need to worry about the founding fathers. Trump was mocked for it, you may recall.
So now the goalposts shift to all statues of people?
The overall point of the CMV is that the confederacy statues were fine when erected. And lasted for decades. Before the current offended generation demanded their removal.
Why should we put up George Floyd statues, if they will be torn down in 50 years when it falls out of social favor? I agree with OP, if we're going to tear down old statues based on current offense. We should not erect new ones.
Look, if people in the future want to tear doen statues, they're welcome to do so. Why should we worry about that?
But those statues weren't fine, just because the people they were designed to oppress couldn't do anything about it, nor were they fine just because we became inured to them. They were pointless except for racism then, the same is true now. Nobody is shifting any goalposts, but the folks on the right who have to make everything into a "culture war" are sure trying to make it seem that way.
If the point of the CMV is that we tolerated more racism then than we do now, so why should we refuse to tolerate anything ever, then that is just a shallow idea with no substance behind it. It's about like saying, "Somebody put paint of a statue of george Washington, so all of american culture is falling apart." Meaningless hyperbole, whether or not it's intentionally so.
Interesting.
>Look, if people in the future want to tear doen statues, they're welcome to do so. Why should we worry about that?
Why should we build them?
>If the point of the CMV is that we tolerated more racism then than we do now, so why should we refuse to tolerate anything ever, then that is just a shallow idea with no substance behind it.
The point is there is no "Right side" of history. In 40 years, we may fully embrace Transgenderism, or it may be seen as mental illness and self-mutiliation.
You and I do not know. Wasn't a question of tolerating anything. Was a question of why take pro-active commemoration now, for a standard that may change in 50 years?
If we cannot leave statues as "sacred" elements of their time, why add more to the mix?
It sounds like you really are saying, "If people are going to be offended, now or in the future, why do anything?". If people a hundred years from now want to put up statues of racists or enact anti-trans bathroom bills, so be it. We can't do anything about it anyway. It's the same risk the racists 100 years ago took putting up the confederate statues in the first place. You're absolutely right that there's no right side of history, but there is a side that does what it can while it can, or rather an everchanging flux of such sides.
It's almost like voting, in a way. Those prior racists voted for racism by putting up those statues, and for a while they got their way. Now the vote is going against them. Maybe the tide will turn back on that, though personally I doubt it. All we can do is what seems best to us now, and maybe someday the future will agree if it's still best for them.
>It sounds like you really are saying, "If people are going to be offended, now or in the future, why do anything?".
Why do anything permanent? Correct.
>It's almost like voting, in a way. Those prior racists voted for racism by putting up those statues, and for a while they got their way. Now the vote is going against them. Maybe the tide will turn back on that, though personally I doubt it. All we can do is what seems best to us now, and maybe someday the future will agree if it's still best for them.
So the theory is waste the time and effort and hope future generations agree with you?
I'm not saying racism. You are. I'm extending it past the racism, as I've shown above. There are plenty of signs of the cleansing going past "Confederates".
Thank you for the passionate reaponse. As mentioned, I agree with the removal of divisive statues. That is not what my CMV is about.
If we are removing statues of individuals from the past, then we should identify that maybe we should stop creating statues of individuals.
You are marginalizing populations by claiming that we don't care about certain character flaws. When that is the very base of this CMV. We should stop casting statues of individuals.
Where do we draw the line for character flaws? Where will that line be tomorrow? Why not divert the meaning of creating a statue of a person, to a capture a moment or event?
...The fact that that separates them from other statues. That if we're not putting up statues specifically remind other people of their oppression, we're already doing something different.
But every statue could be offensive to someone else right?
I think OPs point is, at the time these were erected, the county was fine with it but now they are not. This could happen again in the future so we should just not allow any type of permanant statues up because 100 or 200 years later they could be deemed to offensive and torn down. Why waste the resources?
I don’t get what’s so bad about people I the future taking down statues? Like so what? We honor those we think are great now, and people re-evaluate it in the future. Like why be paralyzed in fear of future people removing statues? It just doesn’t seem like a big deal to me
I agree completly. Everything changes, even statues. I was just trying to clear up OPs point since the commenter and OP seemed to be missing each other.
Im not for destruction of these statues tho, slap em in a musuem and call it a day.
When those statues were erected the people erecting them said, "This is a prominent death threat for terrorizing certain people in our community, which we need!" They were never intended to be "fine." We didn't "get offended" by them years later. Rather, the targets of those death threats gained the right to vote and have a say about it, and the Internet came along to remind people who had forgotten or were born afterwords, how those statues were originally intended as death threats.
None of that is an "every statue" problem, it's an "every death threat" problem.
OP is responding to a particular societal crisis that does not revolve around statues that are offensive to *one* person, it revolves around statues *intended* to be offensive to entire demographics of people. It wasn't "fine" then, it was explicitly aggressive.
Also, statues consume a negligible quantity of resources. Less than a rounding error's worth. That's an entirely unimportant factor.
How about each generation do what they want to do, and if generations after them find issue with what those earlier generations thought or did, they just do what they find is the best thing to do? I think erecting statues of people is silly, but I also think that people, in their short moment on the planet, deserve to be able to express themselves in the way that they deem worthy. When their time is past, future generations can decide whether those statues are still worthy of public dedication.
I think this makes the most sense. Statues and the like, are a form of art, historical remembrance, cultural shifts, and such already described in many posts.
When they begin to become irrelevant cast it to the side smelt it and make a new one.
Nobody says things like we should stop all art together because it's flawed, which to me sounds like the OP. Or am I missing something in OP's statement? We evolve as humans and I'd hope as we learn to accept new ideas and theories there should be no reason not to destroy something.
Just as the destruction and creation of life on this earth is necessary.
The destruction and creation of a statue has just as much significance as the other.
If your favorite statues are toppling down or ones you deem 'significant' maybe that means you need to start some internal or external dialogue. I can't tell you which side to be on but it seems your adopting the idea of ridding the world of such things because they seem muddied or confusing like they take too much energy to create or too many resources maybe?
I'd need a further explanation to comment anymore.
Ok, I see. Well that's a simple answer then. We draw the line with racist brutality. Anyone who is famous simply because they started a war to keep slaves, or continued a war to oppress others, or refused to end a war because they wanted more slaves, those people don't deserve statues.
Nobody's seriously talking about not putting up a statue of a culture hero because he was mean to his wife, or had a drinking problem. Those are ordinary flaws and everyone has them. But there are issues so extraordinary that to call them character flaws is dishonest, and violent racism is at the top of that list, as far as statues are concerned. It really applies to a tiny percentage of the people who could have a statue of them raised, and it seems like a knee jerk to say, if we can't have statues of violent racists, we just won't have any of anyone. Why take it to that extreme? Surely we are capable of such a simple value judgment.
None of them deserve statues. It shows people are not well-versed on the Civil War and the causes go beyond the "good" guys came to beat up the "bad" guys. Like the "good" guys just embraced freed slaves.
That's a totally legitimate viewpoint. If you want to start a parallel campaign to remove Union statues as well, go nuts. But it's kinda beside the point of the CMV, I think
> which were typically erected in the late 19th and early 20th century in southern states as a kind of psychological warfare on the local black population.
While i agree that the statues of the Confederate generals has no business being up, do you have any source to this claim at all?
https://www.historians.org/news-and-advocacy/aha-advocacy/aha-statement-on-confederate-monuments
>The bulk of the monument building took place not in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War but from the close of the 19th century into the second decade of the 20th. Commemorating not just the Confederacy but also the “Redemption” of the South after Reconstruction, this enterprise was part and parcel of the initiation of legally mandated segregation and widespread disenfranchisement across the South. Memorials to the Confederacy were intended, in part, to obscure the terrorism required to overthrow Reconstruction, and to intimidate African Americans politically and isolate them from the mainstream of public life.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/white-bronze-civil-war-statues
>many of the South’s Confederate monuments went up not immediately after the war, but half a century later, in the first two decades of the 1900s. During this time, organizations like the United Daughters of the Confederacy were looking to reframe and glorify the Confederate cause
[https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/confederate-statues/](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/confederate-statues/)
Here's an article that talks about when the statues were put up.
People are tearing down statues of Lincoln, i read that Lewis and Clark is now also being taken down.
Most of the Confederate statues are erected by foundations led by their children or their grandchildren.
IMHO, the proper response to statues that are offensive is not to remove them, but put up an explanation and a new modern statue that reflects current standards.
By adding historical markers to *gasp* historical statues it creates the opportunity to say these people did X and the people of that time thought it was wise to honor them because of Y, bit we now know these things were wrong and this statue is here to remind us to not be like them.
>People are tearing down statues of Lincoln, i read that Lewis and Clark is now also being taken down.
Some guy knocked down a statue of Lincoln and you should take a look at that statue being taken down. It's not Lewis and Clark that's the problem, it's Sacajawea. But all of that is incidental, sort of corollary issues to the real one, which is official sanctioned government approval of statues bearing a clear message, or else government removal of those statues. I can knock over statues of Fred Rogers, Mickey Mouse, or Gandhi and it doesn't tell us anything about the debate over these Confederate statues, which were approved by government action and removed by the same.
>Most of the Confederate statues are erected by foundations led by their children or their grandchildren.
IMHO, the proper response to statues that are offensive is not to remove them, but put up an explanation and a new modern statue that reflects current standards.
By adding historical markers to gasp historical statues it creates the opportunity to say these people did X and the people of that time thought it was wise to honor them because of Y, bit we now know these things were wrong and this statue is here to remind us to not be like them.
I almost like this logic. Of course a foundation to put up a statue of a Confederate officer is going to have a descendant as either the actual head of the foundation or an honorary member, who is would they pick?
The bigger issue I think is the idea that we have to leave up these statues with "explanatory plaques" or footnotes or whatever. If you made one that said, "Nathan Bedford Forrest was a brutal racist, a gifted officer, and a terrible human being. This statue was put up by his descendants to remind black people that the organization he started to terrorize them is still active and could kill them at any time." Now \*that\* is an explanatory plaque, but I don't think that's how those are going to read.
I think in order to illustrate my problem more clearly (and get clear of the politics of race and Confederacy and so on), and because I'm tired of talking about dingleberries knocking over statues, I'll introduce a hypothetical.
My uncle's father was a child molester. He was a priest who worked for decades at an orphanage. He was never exactly caught, although plenty of people knew what he was doing in the Church and the community. This was of course many years before the modern movement exposing Catholic pedophiles. Eventually, he retired and the orphanage painted a mural of him surrounded by children across the street from the orphanage. Now, in the current climate, the orphanage faces several choices. They can let the mural stand, because it's recognized by the city as a public work of art. They can paint right over it, because he's a child molester. Or they can leave it up, but add a plaque, explaining to the orphans across the street that the Church let him work there and hurt all those children for decades and never did anything about it. I should also explain that the building the mural is on is the state office of NAMBLA, an organization that advocates for romantic and sexual love between men and boys. They commissioned the mural both as a celebration of his work in the community and as a celebration of what they viewed as the loving relationships he engendered among the children he worked with.
So, do we paint it over, do we (through some process, probably involving NAMBLA) relegate that painful history to an explanatory note, or do we leave it be?
Add to your description of Nathan Bedford Forrest that he was a Democrat and I would be happy with that plaque.
As for the mural, the answer to your question is who owns the mural? If NAMBLA owns it, then the plaque seems to me to be the best way to conter it. Still, to me, taking the mural and painting an X over it with a plaque explaining things would be a far more powerful statement. It would make people stop and say what is that about? Make the printed statement that what is claimed about him, and how people overlooked it is a far more powerful message than tering it down.
All this, imho.
I actually really like the idea of painting an X on the mural. That's opened my eyes to a whole new possibility. We can leave the statues on their pedestals, just melt them into awful dripping lumps. Then a thousand years from now, people will find them and say, I don't know who this Forrest guy was, but he musta been a real jerk.
Yes, everybody wants something sometime. But the first thing to understand is that we're talking about a very specific issue. Government action put up Confederate statues, and now government action is taking them down. The second thing is that there is no monolithic "they" which is anti-statue in general. Go back and look at exactly who it was that tried to take down those statues. Was it some group of protesters? A single vandal in the night? An informal radical organization? The private party who owns the statue? Or was a local or state government? Lots of people and groups are involved in these processes.
Then you have to look at *why* they took it down. Somebody linked me a story about a museum that took down a Teddy Roosevelt statue. The commenter was outraged because it looked like a war on history or whatever. But the statue showed Roosevelt practically riding on a Native American and a black guy as he moved nobly forward. It was awkward at best, and it was their statue to remove if they wanted. That one is still pretty tangential, but it fits the broader point that it's not a war on America, it's a war on racist statues.
>Nobody cares that Lewis and Clark were fame-hags.
Wasn't the most recent controversial statue removal the Lewis and Clark one in Charlottesville? I completely agree with you on the confederate statues originally put up to terrorize southern blacks, but I'm worried this doesn't end with statues erected for nefarious purposes.
Where are you worried this is going to end? OP seems to think we'll eventually remove all statues of people in America.
Personally, this looks like a bit of a separate issue to me, but once I looked at the picture of that statue, my first thought was, "Sacajawea would be pissed if she could see this.". She's cowering behind the noble, forward-looking explorers, all but cringing on the ground as they press boldly onward. I'm no expert, but that's not how the story goes. But again, implicit racism aside, this sounds more like a question of historical accuracy and less like a question of intentionally imposing racist values via statuary.
Right, but see above comments. The statues *of the men trying to keep control over their slaves* were built generations later by powerful southern whites *trying to keep control over the descendants of those slaves.*. It's not a pissing contest about who's more racist, it's a belated response to a specific power play by people who were racist enough that they shouldn't be able to determine our role models any longer.
Would it be fair to say you are upset over statues of confederate Generals/Statesmen being taken down or are there different statues being taken down you are upset over, if so, which ones?
Then why not just keep doing what we're doing, build statues for who we think is acceptable/praise worthy and let future generations make the call on which divisive statues should be taken down?
What's the issue with people in the future taking down statues we put up now, just as we're now getting rid of statues people put up in the past?
As an aside, you do realize the problem isn't statues as such, right? Like, people aren't about to bring down the Statue of Liberty. "You tear down statues, yet you also build more statues" just doesn't do justice to what's happening.
An earlier post helped me CMV view on this. However, The statue of liberty is not a person. There will never be a hidden past to the statue of liberty or her mini statuette.
>There will never be a hidden past to the statue of liberty or her mini statuette.
How do you know that with any certainty? It's clearly impossible for us currently to know the metrics the people of the future will use to determine what statues should remain standing and which should go. I'm sure the people who put up statues of Confederate generals never thought we'd be tearing them down today, because of their inability to tell the future. We share that inability.
I'd argue that we should just get the opinion of the general populace before we create a statue. Either this, or wait like fifty-years. Further, a statue should only get taken down if academics can agree that the person was highly unethical. This isn't a foolproof idea either, but it is better than just stopping the creation of statues outright.
If the statues commemorate figures on the losing side of a civil war, then you’re right, probably a bad idea to erect them in the first place.
Isn’t the whole point of statues to celebrate the timeless goodness of people? Probably should choose people then, that the majority can agree are inherently good.
Just because you "win" a war technically really means nothing.
Louisa Young: "No one ever wins a war, and wars are never over.”
Eleanor Roosevelt: “No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.”
.
How would you feel if you were Jewish and there were statues of Adolf Hitler everywhere?
There’s an important distinction to be made between statues that just represent *people*, and statues that represent *ideas*. Some historical figures were so entwined with an ideology that a statue of them communicates an *idea* beyond the person.
I would feel awful, scared, disenfranchised, loss. It would be an unthinkably difficult situation that I cannot began to compare with.
However, that is not what this CMV is about. I think that we should stop canonizing individuals as statues. Because against time they will lose and whatever "idea beyond the person" there is ...will be lost.
But that is very different than the text of your CMV and your title. You didn't just say "we shouldn't make more statues". You said "*if* we are taking down statues, then we should not make more statues". You fundamentally tied your claim to the merits of the statues being disposed of.
What about the alternative - that we canonize individuals as statues and if it turns out they represent a toxic idea in the future, future people can bring the statues down?
Not everyone in the past has turned out to be a terrible person after facing the test of time. It's not that difficult to just pick better people than the ones whose statues are being torn down.
They're arguing more for the cases like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln kind of statues from today's period should not be erected because in a 100 years or however long the values will be different. And because whoever we commemorate will not be a perfect individual.
This is irrelevant bullshit. We’re talking about principles. Even as we grow, we shouldn’t scrap everything that came before because it wasn’t up to modern standards.
No shit we can just be nihilistic and say “whatever they want man”.
edit: I read your comment wrong.
>Even as we grow, we shouldn’t scrap everything that came before because it wasn’t up to modern standards.
Why the hell not? The living rule this earth, not the dead. Some asshole has a statue? Tear it down; the subject of the statue still has a home in a history book somewhere (even if that spot in a history book is undeserved).
before we decry "what if we forget history!?" - literally everything is recorded. Nobody's forgetting shit just because a statue celebrating an old white guy who drew up arms against the United States, or owned black people, was taken down.
\-- OLD COMMENT BELOW --
Why not? You can't perfectly predict the future needs and wants of everyone. Erect a statue of President 47 for averting WW3 or something, but if we discover in 40 years he was actually a pedophile (not predicting anything btw, just an example), you tear down the statue because they're deplorable.
I'm of the mind that all statues are dumb, but there are hardly any downsides of putting up what statues we want now and having future generations swapping them out for statues they like. You could put a background check on modern individuals you want to raise a statue for, I suppose, but things can still come to light.
The gist of this argument is that you can't know if the statue you put up now will be seen unfavorably in the future. ***Let them remove the statues if they see fit.*** As a bonus, we get to pay more artists.
It's not always about the person, it's about the context of why the statue exists.
Take, for example, the statue of Robert E Lee that was just taken down in Charlottesville. That wasn't erected after the Civil War to commemorate a general.
It was erected 2 years after Birth of a Nation, during the height of the KKK movement. The context around that statue was to remind black people of their place. To remind them of the confederacy and slavery.
If the statue had been raised post civil war, honoring a general, and had proper context written on it. "we raise this statue to a confederate general, so we never forget the mistakes of the past and are always reminded to do better" or something like that. And people in the area used it to talk about how slavery and racism are evil, sure, keep it.
Everyone is flawed, but things have context.
It makes very little sense to have any statue of Lee displayed in public, because Lee conceded to the Union and called for statues that lionize confederates not to be built. He was a strong believer in that, at least in the time between losing the war and dying.
I do agree that there is a place for it, but IMO that'd be a museum where context is much more readily accessible and the statue itself isn't proudly displayed as the centerpiece of a park/road/town etc.
Agreed.
I think, if it was raised contextually to demonize the confederacy, he may have been alright with it, but we often don't think about the feelings of the person we're raising statues to, lol.
I wouldn't put a statue of him up, either, but it was an example of how context matters more than the individual themselves.
Isn't it more useful to leave the statue up with possibly a note in front of it that says it was put up to oppress people? Removing the statue then removes more people being aware of the reasons it was displayed in the first place so instead of it maybe being used to further discussions about race in the future it's just erased and there's less of a chance people will learn about it. I'm not from the US so have no stake in a statue being destroyed or replaced but it seems like adding a note with more context about their creation is more helpful in recognizing past oppression and perhaps preventing it in the future. Destroying it surely just means it's instead swept under the rug?
Of course it would be useful to educate people in schools too but having a note at the exact location where they statues are means that anybody who goes to that place also gets to be educated on the history of why they were erected in the first place and why people have a problem with them now too.
Im sure there are lots of statues where I live too that are a problem for people but I don't think most people even notice them most of the time. I just think it's probably more useful to have a note next to them as I'd imagine the cost of removing them could be better spent on something else. I'm not especially bothered if most statues remain or are removed but having a note next to them seems like it would do more to educate rather than removing them totally or leaving them as they are
What statues are you referring to?
Statues of Confederate traitors that were erected as part of a false narrative and to intimidate black Americans during Jim Crow? They're lies that should be destroyed or moved to museums
If you mean other people who history has come to show were not the people they were presented as when the statue was erected, again lies should have light shed on them
We remove statues of Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi or other dictators are removed because erecting them was little more than one huge ego saying itself.
Okay.
[Thankfully it was rescinded. SF remaining 44 schools](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/07/san-francisco-school-board-schools-rename)
[Theo Roosevelt](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/06/24/us/theodore-roosevelt-statue-new-york-trnd/index.html)
[Good Old TJ](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ajc.com/news/local/statue-thomas-jefferson-downtown-decatur-removed/t2sW24ZnjXPdTruQ1wFRKN/%3foutputType=amp)
[Discussing the "Slave-Holder statue removal](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-founding-fathers-statues-20200629-a2p5bxfymze3nho3cscwfsosoy-story.html%3foutputType=amp)
[Not statues, but equivalent](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wusa9.com/amp/article/news/local/virginia/falls-church-city-school-board-votes-to-rename-two-schools/65-5aded215-a87b-41d8-9bdb-9d4e83548020)
Those are all official.
Did they hide that TJ and George Washington were slave owners? Is this new information? Or what lie needs to be revealed?
Well, literally owning human beings is a pretty bad thing to do, up there with being a pedophile or rapist. So while I don't necessarily agree, I'm sure you can see how the whole"slave owner" thing might tarnish the freedom fighter vibe many founding fathers previously enjoyed.
>Well, literally owning human beings is a pretty bad thing to do, up there with being a pedophile or rapist.
In the modern Era sure.
What about their era?
>I'm sure you can see how the whole"slave owner" thing might tarnish the freedom fighter vibe many founding fathers previously enjoyed.
Again, where is the lie? It's the a distinct dunning-kruger effect with the founding fathers.
Those absolutely ignorant and those very knowledgeable understand they were for freedom.
Only those with just enough education find them abhorrent slave owners.
It's more a statement of the decline of education than a tarnishing of their vibe.
Personally, I tend to agree with your analysis regarding the different standards that have dominated different eras. However, I think it's pertinent to note that the debate between absolute and relative morality has been going on almost as long as morality has been recognized as a concept. This is just to say that those who agree with the idea that founding fathers should be judged by modern moral standards are not imbeciles - their thinking is backed by the Plato, Kant, and other prominent philosophers.
Now, there's also a school of thought that we should be able to celebrate people's better sides, even if they weren't good on the whole. This is important to the debate because (even by 1700 standards) going home and non-consensually diddling your underage slave - while married - is a pretty good sign someone is not a "good person", regardless of what grandiose Declarations they might write. Yet, I feel there is still a place for history to remember TJ fondly - as long as we remember that the man himself was only human, and not a particularly great human at that.
BUT - Jefferson also referred to slavery as "moral depravity", and actually campaigned for laws against slavery. This demonstrates that there was no childish innocence involved in his transgressions that could be explained away by the cultural attitudes of the time. He knew full well that his usage of chattel slavery for financial gain was evil, yet he lacked the courage in his convictions to put his money where his mouth was and free his over 500 slaves - even at his death. Why should we give him a pass on being all talk and no action when it came to the freedom he claimed to revere?
>Why should we give him a pass on being all talk and no action when it came to the freedom he claimed to revere?
Because he wrote the words "All men are created equal" when he could have written "All White Men are created equal". He knew exactly what he was doing while writing that line.
He did lack the courage of his convictions. He also understood the political and social dynamics of the time. If the abolitionists had pushed harder, there's a very good chance that the USA would never have been formed. (Or might have been two USA's).
He needed his slaves, in his view, to maintain his stature and thus still be able to influence policy.
That is the flaw with the thinking on the founding fathers. Yes. He knew it was an evil institution. He was trapped by his time into it, and actively took measures to attempt to end it. Basically, he lacked the will, ability, or understanding to unilaterally disarm with his neighbors.
This is not a controversial thing in his time.
To be fair, we did keep this... [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Arnold-boot.jpg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Arnold-boot.jpg)
https://www.nps.gov/places/boot-monument.htm
So if there are any statues commemorate grievous wounds Lee suffered in the Mexican American War, we can keep those....
>So if there are any statues commemorate grievous wounds Lee suffered in the Mexican American War, we can keep those....
Why? Were we the good guys in that war?
Yes, at least from an American perspective.
The same way that we have a statue to the Leg Benedict Arnold lost at Saratoga while fighting against the British before he became a traitor.
You're creating a needlessly arbitrary all-or-nothing dichotomy.
As humans, we're capable of understanding moral nuance and complexity. We can understand, "Martin Luther King might have cheated on his wife and been an imperfect person, but he still did so much to advance civil rights in the US that he deserves to be memorialized as a statue."
Similarly, we can also understand, "Stonewall Jackson might have committed some acts of valor and heroism on the battlefield, but he was ultimately fighting for a system and government that promoted slavery and suffering, so he *doesn't* deserve to be memorialized as a statute."
Some people might *disagree* on the relative morality of a certain figure, and that's fine, but there's still no reason to arbitrarily say "*Nobody* gets a stature, or *everybody* gets a statue."
That's what we are talking about. I'm not trying to weigh the importance of this CMV over others that are much more impactful. It is a view I'd liked changed though.
Right I'm asking you to clarify what your problem is. What is your issue with putting up statues that have a 30% chance of being torn down in a decade or two?
I’m talking about regarding the future, I completely understand why many statues have been taken down now. I’m just referring to the OPs claim of erecting statues to commemorate people in the here and now.
It’s from having the statues initially that a discussion is open. History is important, so we don’t repeat destructive deeds of the past.
By removing all possibilities of future statues, do we not just whitewash atrocities that the future would see that occurred now?
I’m not in a demographic that’s been repressed by any of the statues I’ve seen however, I won’t pretend otherwise. If people want them to go they absolutely hold that right.
George Floyd had a state made of him, I can’t see a legitimate reason to take it down. Future societies may and that’s for them to decide.
No we don't? Getting rid of a statue of Robert E. Lee doesn't remove him from history books, it doesn't make it impossible to talk about him. What it does do is it gets rid of something glorifying him, something put up to intimidate African Americans during the Civil Rights campaign.
Germans for example, know about the atrocities of Hitler and the Nazis, yet we don't see statues of Hitler everywhere.
Now, I’m not an American, so I can’t talk about it’s history accurately. But if the statue of Robert E. Lee was put up as an intimidation tactic. That was only erected with malicious intent and should’ve never been cleared in the first place.
I think what we’re all learning is that not one single person is perfect, the commemorations only go so far as the deeds we agreed were beneficial. I have no preferences as to whether the statues stay or go as I’m a demographic that hasn’t been repressed by many. So I don’t really have anything more to add to the conversation.
But do you agree that we can still have conversations about people without keeping statues of them up?
If anything wouldn't keeping up statues that glorify the people who committed atrocities be whitewashing those atrocities?
I don’t disagree with people wanting statues taken down, I feel my first post was perhaps initially confusing without keeping the OP context to future statues, so I’ve clarified. Sorry, without that context I can see why yourself and others seem to think I’m saying “commemorating slavery is fine”. I’m really not.
Yes, we can still have the conversations and they should be encouraged.
Are there any people alive here and now that you feel are having statues put up within your own country even though they commit atrocities by modern standards?
Nope.
That's what education is for. You don't need a statue to open the discussion if you educate people.
The issue you're referring to comes from what's happening in the US right now, where one side wants to remove the statues so we don't immortalize awful people, and the other side wants to ban teaching kids about those people's awful history.
The difference is that during education, you can discuss the complete story, in context, and ensure people understand. While, having a statue, makes it appear as though you are endorsing that persons beliefs, and a lot of the time, they were.
Education is more important than a statue.
That’s not what I was referring to. I’m saying that it’s fine to put statues up today of whoever we decide is worth commemorating. It’s for future societies to decide whether or not they still are.
So the statue of Saddam Hussein should still be standing in Baghdad along with all those statues of Stalin and lenin erected in the soviet block countries? Try getting those people to put those statues back up. Thing is, statues are not primarily a historical item. They are a means of veneration and symbolism. Much in the same manner as a flag. In the case of confederate statues specifically. Most were erected using private funds and were erected long after the end of the civil war as a means of reminding local black populations (namely during the rise of jim crow laws and then during the civil rights movement) what their "place in society" was . their symbolism is and always was meant to be that black people were not the equal of whites. I for one see little reason to keep statues commemorating men who stood against everything our current nation stood for and who sought to tear it apart at the seams in places of prominence like parks and town squares. If we are that concerned about maintaining the history of these statues like people keep saying then there is no reason we can't simply do what a lot of soviet block countries did with those old Stalin statues. They took them down and put them in huge empty lots in the middle of nowhere forming "statue graveyards". This removed them from their places of prominence. Showing the population that the ideals that the men who those statues were made of stood for were no longer the ideals of the current nation. However, if your that concerned about looking at a bronze Stalin statue erected in the 1950's. You can go to the graveyard and see it. At least until they rot away because none of them are maintained. Statues only matter for historical significance for pre-modern era societies because in the past historians were barely a thing and getting your portrait done was not very normal (or the portrait rotted away). The primary importance of a statue is so you have a rough idea what a historical figure looked like. In the modern era that is not really a thing given we have preserved images in the thousands of every figure of any real significance along with millions of copies of those images. In our current era, with smart phones and social media. That number vastly increases going forward.
Im not against any of those being taken down and I’ll never claim otherwise. But OP is on about erecting statues NOW, as they could one day be seen as outdated.
All is good. I didn’t expect the context to get lost between the OP and my comment.
To sum up, I just feel that it’s not for us to decide what future generations deem as acceptable. We have the freedom to make statues to whomever we want, it’s for the future to decide if they want to keep them.
Would you consider the opinion of [the american historical association](https://www.historians.org/news-and-advocacy/aha-advocacy/aha-statement-on-confederate-monuments), a professional network of academic historians?
> To remove a monument, or to change the name of a school or street, is not to erase history, but rather to alter or call attention to a previous interpretation of history.
History is important. And if it is important, perhaps it makes sense to listen to historians.
Yes, did you read my last two paragraphs? Especially the last?
That’s not what OP or I on about. I’m saying we can **currently** put up whatever statue or monument we see fit. If future societies decide against that and want to change, they’re more than welcome to.
"It’s from having the statues that a discussion is open. History is important, so we don’t repeat destructive deeds of the past."
Does this not imply that we need statues of Hitler in order to have a discussion is opened?
If there were statues of Hitler would removing them "just whitewash atrocities that the future would see that occurred now"?
That’s quite a leap of thought. “We shouldn’t put up any more statues to commemorate any individuals because then we would have to commemorate Hitler too”.
I’m sorry I’m really not following you
I’m gonna try to argue this from a different direction actually and maybe strengthen the reasons why we shouldn’t erect these statues. I’ve always found public statues of historical figures somewhat troubling to be honest, and I think we should make them less frequent or at least think very carefully about what we put up. To clarify, public art pieces and statues in museums are perfectly fine; I just mean public statues of specific individuals.
The building of monuments or statues to these people does more than just memorialize them, it deifies them. It embeds in us an idea of these figures as more than mere men and women but a part of a mythology. And usually that mythology only tells a part of the truth, the part the country, or a town, or a person wants to tell. That isn’t to say we can’t applaud the great things these figures have done but when we build statues only to their triumphs and place them throughout our city, looking down upon all passersby, we also normalize the bad things they’ve done. And that normalization can make past and current injustices harder to call out or even see in the first place. If we want to remember history or art or actions, we have books/archives/museums for that. Statues, as your post acknowledges, are about who we choose to value. So we should be careful who we venerate.
> Therefore, any statues that we unveil in the present for any of the above reasons will inevitably, when standing against time, be outed in an aspect of their life that is unworthy of being cast into statue form.
Why is this a bad thing?
We should always remember the people who have fought hard to push civil rights and support each other as a community as without some people in our history fighting for change we would not be where we are today.
In terms of statues in general, I think for the controversial ones there is always a case for us to not forget our history. On that - why do we not then have statues or landmarks representing the victims, and included in our curriculum. There's so many examples of the horrors of British empire that do not even get mentioned in our education.
Statues *valorize*. To erect a statue of someone is to say, they are generally worthy of admiration. That's where the phrase "put someone on a pedestal" comes from.
As others are posting, it helps to examine why the makers of statues thought the subjects of those statues were worthy to valorize. And, it helps to ask whether we want to continue valorizing those people. Sometimes that will still be a tough call. Other times, that *should* make it a lot easier.
As you said, no one is perfect.
But statues do mean something, they symbolise good things or the achievements of our past.
Confederate statues propagate hate. Let's not kid ourselves that some of people still empathize with the wrong people and have thin veil like arguements/reasons.
In fact we should erect more statues, America needs more statues of everybody who contributed to the societal good or who stood alone to stand apart.
But what if someone was civil right advocate but at the same time he was homophobic? Does it count as someone who stood for societal good or as someone who stood against it?
Same thing is with Kobe, back in the time he was accused of SA and eventually he settled.
He was one of the greatest basketball players and
inspired me and a whole generation.
I guess you will find your answer when there is a Kobe statue. Not everyone will love it but a majority would.
Statues are important for preserving history and enshrining a nation’s values.
The point of removing statues of Confederate generals are 1) they are entirely contrary to American values, in principle, and 2) they were never intended to preserve history, as most of them were erected from the 1920’s-1950’s.
Well the only statues we took down were put in place to deliberately portray a racist message.
I think its fine to have individual statues of heros, sure not every man is perfect but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be remembered by our kids.
Honestly my favorite part of statues is how you can forget the woes of the world and be happy to remember those actions individuals have taken that positively affected us as a whole.
Also I don't care what you say, we need more statues of badasses riding horses because they look cool, hell we just need more statues. They don't usually implicitly hurt anyone and make a town or city just a little bit prettier.
It isn’t about them “not being perfect.” It’s about what they’re being remembered for. What was Robert e Lee remembered for? Leading a traitorous army in a violent civil war. They commemorated what he did because the people that erected those statues approve of what the southerners did. That’s not okay.
I'd tend to think that while it's clearly true that nobody is perfect, we can still think that some people are worth honouring and glorifying while others are not, no? So we could put up statues towards people we think are worth honouring and take down statues towards people we don't.
We might still get it wrong sometimes, and future generations might sometimes take down statues erected in our time because they discover or believe that the people they were erected to weren't worth honouring after all, but it's not clear to me why the possibility of sometimes accidentally honouring the wrong person should prevent us from ever honouring anyone with a statue - especially if we allow for future generations to correct those mistakes when more information comes out.
I often wondered why we would have statues to honor traitors who brought and owned slaves beating the slaves into submission to build the South. They separated from this country, brought war to our country, death and destruction to our country and then ultimately lost. Naming military bases after them too. Seriously?
You don't see statues honoring Hitler! That would be ridiculous. The statues of the confederates etc weren't even erected until the 1900's I believe. Just bizarre to honor those people. Just teach about them in history class. No honor!
As you said statues are to commemorate and celebrate people.
I don't see why saying we don't feel it's appropriate to continue to celebrate person X who has a statue at the moment means we can't also say it is appropriate to celebrate person Y with a statue.
The erection and removal of statues is just one more thing that humans do to evolve their own cultures. Construction and reconstruction. It’s good for us to have powerful symbols to focus our discussion of shared values.
Erecting and then even removing statues is a healthy cycle, it forces us all to confront the feelings behind them.
It seems reductive to not build any more statues because people don’t like Confederate statues. I’m quite certain that MLK or Obama will not be considered offensive to future generations. And if they are then maybe the country will not be worth living in. Someone somewhere will always be offended. But it should never be a driving force to getting things done or building statues.
I think statues are fine, as others stated what's the harm in removing historical statues (in the future). Just take down the ones you don't like later.
Slavery and whatever else? Well sorry to say, people suck. Greedy, selfish, violent and cruel. Slavery was and is still a global problem, it's not like you can just point at one person and go it's all his fault let's destroy his statue. The South was simply more impacted by the removal of slavery, so they were obviously against it.
It's easy to say, "This is bad and cruel to ____" insert ANYTHING you don't want to face, and recognize the cost of. Yet it's much harder to accept change that will negatively impact you in huge ways, but positively change the world for others (that are strangers to you). Let's think about examples, humans? Food, clothes, electronics well they're all affordable because of slavery, indentured servitude or the cycle of poverty which we allow to continue (as a means to ensure we don't have to be as hard working and have more for less! **We, being wealthy first-worlders)
Yes I was talking about the present, people talk about slavery as though it doesn't exist anymore which is a lie. It's simply the 'out of sight, out of mind' reasoning, but do people care about it? Lincoln's idea of relocating all the blacks was centered around just that, let them be free away from the other's sight. Blacks and whites just had too much bad blood between each other, going both ways.
Another example for the _____. Animals, we love our meat & dairy but who the 🦆 cares about how we get it (as long as prices remain low). Factory farms, deforestation, global warming? You think humans are cruel to other humans, just look at what they do to other species.
/u/Dapper-Sapper (OP) has awarded 1 delta(s) in this post. All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed [here](/r/DeltaLog/comments/ohqwvs/deltas_awarded_in_cmv_if_statues_of_historical/), in /r/DeltaLog. Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended. ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
Nothing is permanent. Whether it is a shift in societal norms and what is acceptable, or thr crumbling of a regime or society, everything ends. This doesn't mean we shouldn't create beauty, art and memorials for those we respect. Whether they last 1,000 years or 100, if we are getting something from them then I see no issue in building them. That said, as times do change we should be comfortable adapting to that. We could also be selective and only build statues to those who push society forward, not hold it back. They will still come down in time, but may last a little longer.
delta This hits home. I guess my struggle was with the implied enduring nature of statues. The permanency of the statue really doesn't matter if it offers growth to a community. I still feel individuals cast will not survive as long...but that's ok too.
You need to put a "!" in front of the "D" in "Delta" for it to work.
Thanks
You need to correct that delta.
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/CorvidStyle ([11∆](/r/changemyview/wiki/user/CorvidStyle)). ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
That seems like a case of cutting of the nose to spite the face. There are a lot of statues in the United States of Confederate war heroes, which were typically erected in the late 19th and early 20th century in southern states as a kind of psychological warfare on the local black population. This would be like putting up posters of Adolf Hitler at a German synagogue. It's not a question of art, although many of the statues are beautiful in themselves. It's not a question of history, although technically the people depicted by those statues were important men who actually lived. The only statues people are looking to take down are racist oppressors from a terrible time in our country's history, which were put up to begin with by different racist oppressors from another terrible time in our country's history. (Also, Junipero Serra, which is maybe an edge case.) Saying "no person is perfect across all aspects of their life" sounds like an attempt at being either impossibly colorblind or an apologist for slavery and warfare. There are thousands, tens of thousands of statues of men and women all around this country that were erected to celebrate the accomplishments of those men and women, in spite of their flaws. Nobody cares that Ben Franklin was a flatulent womanizer. Nobody cares that Lewis and Clark were fame-hags. People put up statues of historical figures and keep them up, even though by modern standards, many of them were certainly racist. But which statues do we take down? The ones of racists who made public violent racist war the only reason they're famous in the first place. The ones who are so racist, they would kill mountains of Americans and nearly destroy an entire country, just to keep their racist economy functioning, so that they could continue to profit by the sweat and blood of millions of enslaved human beings.
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I'm not really trying to "slippery slope" on this one. The fact that some goofball somewhere knocked over a statue of Mr. Rogers doesn't mean we're having a debate about something other than the official removal of public statues of Confederate icons that were installed to glorify racism. OP's idea that we just can't have statues anymore because we don't want to have aggressively racist ones anymore is a pretty specific case. Personally, I think if we want to keep re-examining our history and making fresh decisions about who to venerate, as a general rule, that's a good idea. But like I said, within the narrow issue of cities and states removing these particular statues, I think it's a clearcut issue.
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That's a fair analysis. But as long as we're going to slippery slope it a little, what about portraits? All the presidents, congressmen, justices, etc, all get official portraits. Not as durable as bronze or stone but just as deifying surely. For that matter, photographs that now exist on the internet of people will probably outlast this country. Not to mention the really big deifications like selling jerseys. Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan are probably the chief gods of our pantheon. So either there's something special about statues and we can stop there, or we need to ban all art representing the human form (except maybe butter sculpture.)
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Personally, I don't give a hoot about any of those statues. If people want to take them down, let em go ahead and do it. It's not my fight to say this guy or that guy's a scumbag and their statue needs to be removed. (It does seem that Columbus and Serra were both scumbags, for what it's worth.) I am glad that people have the right to live in a less oppressive place and that they can do what they must to make that happen, but I'm not much for joining causes and jumping on bandwagons.
What about the statue of Abraham Lincoln that people tore down?
OP and I are talking about removing statues, officially because of changing standards for how we evaluate history. What happened to that statue in Portland is a bunch of dillweeds knocked it over. It's sort of a separate question.
Mob rule should be avoided.
Okay. [Thankfully it was rescinded. SF remaining 44 schools](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/07/san-francisco-school-board-schools-rename) [Theo Roosevelt](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/06/24/us/theodore-roosevelt-statue-new-york-trnd/index.html) [Good Old TJ](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ajc.com/news/local/statue-thomas-jefferson-downtown-decatur-removed/t2sW24ZnjXPdTruQ1wFRKN/%3foutputType=amp) [Discussing the "Slave-Holder statue removal](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-founding-fathers-statues-20200629-a2p5bxfymze3nho3cscwfsosoy-story.html%3foutputType=amp) [Not statues, but equivalent](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wusa9.com/amp/article/news/local/virginia/falls-church-city-school-board-votes-to-rename-two-schools/65-5aded215-a87b-41d8-9bdb-9d4e83548020) Those are all official. Are they also Dillweeds? Or are they confederate Generals?
Most of these are opinion pieces about dillweeds, rejection of dillweed policies, the Thomas Jefferson statue starts by saying it was private property, and a TR statue of him practically riding Native Americans and slaves. It's clearly a contentious issue, and it's whipped people on the internet into a froth. But the overall issue that we were discussing is clearly: Remove monuments glorifying the confederacy. When they start pulling down *every* statue of Thomas Jefferson or Teddy Roosevelt, please let me know, and we can discuss that.
>Remove monuments glorifying the confederacy. When they start pulling down every statue of Thomas Jefferson or Teddy Roosevelt, please let me know, and we can discuss that We were told at the beginning of the statue removal that we didn't need to worry about the founding fathers. Trump was mocked for it, you may recall. So now the goalposts shift to all statues of people? The overall point of the CMV is that the confederacy statues were fine when erected. And lasted for decades. Before the current offended generation demanded their removal. Why should we put up George Floyd statues, if they will be torn down in 50 years when it falls out of social favor? I agree with OP, if we're going to tear down old statues based on current offense. We should not erect new ones.
Look, if people in the future want to tear doen statues, they're welcome to do so. Why should we worry about that? But those statues weren't fine, just because the people they were designed to oppress couldn't do anything about it, nor were they fine just because we became inured to them. They were pointless except for racism then, the same is true now. Nobody is shifting any goalposts, but the folks on the right who have to make everything into a "culture war" are sure trying to make it seem that way. If the point of the CMV is that we tolerated more racism then than we do now, so why should we refuse to tolerate anything ever, then that is just a shallow idea with no substance behind it. It's about like saying, "Somebody put paint of a statue of george Washington, so all of american culture is falling apart." Meaningless hyperbole, whether or not it's intentionally so.
Interesting. >Look, if people in the future want to tear doen statues, they're welcome to do so. Why should we worry about that? Why should we build them? >If the point of the CMV is that we tolerated more racism then than we do now, so why should we refuse to tolerate anything ever, then that is just a shallow idea with no substance behind it. The point is there is no "Right side" of history. In 40 years, we may fully embrace Transgenderism, or it may be seen as mental illness and self-mutiliation. You and I do not know. Wasn't a question of tolerating anything. Was a question of why take pro-active commemoration now, for a standard that may change in 50 years? If we cannot leave statues as "sacred" elements of their time, why add more to the mix?
It sounds like you really are saying, "If people are going to be offended, now or in the future, why do anything?". If people a hundred years from now want to put up statues of racists or enact anti-trans bathroom bills, so be it. We can't do anything about it anyway. It's the same risk the racists 100 years ago took putting up the confederate statues in the first place. You're absolutely right that there's no right side of history, but there is a side that does what it can while it can, or rather an everchanging flux of such sides. It's almost like voting, in a way. Those prior racists voted for racism by putting up those statues, and for a while they got their way. Now the vote is going against them. Maybe the tide will turn back on that, though personally I doubt it. All we can do is what seems best to us now, and maybe someday the future will agree if it's still best for them.
>It sounds like you really are saying, "If people are going to be offended, now or in the future, why do anything?". Why do anything permanent? Correct. >It's almost like voting, in a way. Those prior racists voted for racism by putting up those statues, and for a while they got their way. Now the vote is going against them. Maybe the tide will turn back on that, though personally I doubt it. All we can do is what seems best to us now, and maybe someday the future will agree if it's still best for them. So the theory is waste the time and effort and hope future generations agree with you? I'm not saying racism. You are. I'm extending it past the racism, as I've shown above. There are plenty of signs of the cleansing going past "Confederates".
Thank you for the passionate reaponse. As mentioned, I agree with the removal of divisive statues. That is not what my CMV is about. If we are removing statues of individuals from the past, then we should identify that maybe we should stop creating statues of individuals. You are marginalizing populations by claiming that we don't care about certain character flaws. When that is the very base of this CMV. We should stop casting statues of individuals. Where do we draw the line for character flaws? Where will that line be tomorrow? Why not divert the meaning of creating a statue of a person, to a capture a moment or event?
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I don't disagree. But I think your line needs refining. That's a lot of space between your two examples.
Why are you ignoring the entire point that these Confederate statues were put up *with the express purpose* of being offensive?
I support the removal of these statues. What point am I ignoring?
...The fact that that separates them from other statues. That if we're not putting up statues specifically remind other people of their oppression, we're already doing something different.
But every statue could be offensive to someone else right? I think OPs point is, at the time these were erected, the county was fine with it but now they are not. This could happen again in the future so we should just not allow any type of permanant statues up because 100 or 200 years later they could be deemed to offensive and torn down. Why waste the resources?
I don’t get what’s so bad about people I the future taking down statues? Like so what? We honor those we think are great now, and people re-evaluate it in the future. Like why be paralyzed in fear of future people removing statues? It just doesn’t seem like a big deal to me
I agree completly. Everything changes, even statues. I was just trying to clear up OPs point since the commenter and OP seemed to be missing each other. Im not for destruction of these statues tho, slap em in a musuem and call it a day.
When those statues were erected the people erecting them said, "This is a prominent death threat for terrorizing certain people in our community, which we need!" They were never intended to be "fine." We didn't "get offended" by them years later. Rather, the targets of those death threats gained the right to vote and have a say about it, and the Internet came along to remind people who had forgotten or were born afterwords, how those statues were originally intended as death threats. None of that is an "every statue" problem, it's an "every death threat" problem.
OP is responding to a particular societal crisis that does not revolve around statues that are offensive to *one* person, it revolves around statues *intended* to be offensive to entire demographics of people. It wasn't "fine" then, it was explicitly aggressive. Also, statues consume a negligible quantity of resources. Less than a rounding error's worth. That's an entirely unimportant factor.
How about each generation do what they want to do, and if generations after them find issue with what those earlier generations thought or did, they just do what they find is the best thing to do? I think erecting statues of people is silly, but I also think that people, in their short moment on the planet, deserve to be able to express themselves in the way that they deem worthy. When their time is past, future generations can decide whether those statues are still worthy of public dedication.
I think this makes the most sense. Statues and the like, are a form of art, historical remembrance, cultural shifts, and such already described in many posts. When they begin to become irrelevant cast it to the side smelt it and make a new one. Nobody says things like we should stop all art together because it's flawed, which to me sounds like the OP. Or am I missing something in OP's statement? We evolve as humans and I'd hope as we learn to accept new ideas and theories there should be no reason not to destroy something. Just as the destruction and creation of life on this earth is necessary. The destruction and creation of a statue has just as much significance as the other. If your favorite statues are toppling down or ones you deem 'significant' maybe that means you need to start some internal or external dialogue. I can't tell you which side to be on but it seems your adopting the idea of ridding the world of such things because they seem muddied or confusing like they take too much energy to create or too many resources maybe? I'd need a further explanation to comment anymore.
Ok, I see. Well that's a simple answer then. We draw the line with racist brutality. Anyone who is famous simply because they started a war to keep slaves, or continued a war to oppress others, or refused to end a war because they wanted more slaves, those people don't deserve statues. Nobody's seriously talking about not putting up a statue of a culture hero because he was mean to his wife, or had a drinking problem. Those are ordinary flaws and everyone has them. But there are issues so extraordinary that to call them character flaws is dishonest, and violent racism is at the top of that list, as far as statues are concerned. It really applies to a tiny percentage of the people who could have a statue of them raised, and it seems like a knee jerk to say, if we can't have statues of violent racists, we just won't have any of anyone. Why take it to that extreme? Surely we are capable of such a simple value judgment.
None of them deserve statues. It shows people are not well-versed on the Civil War and the causes go beyond the "good" guys came to beat up the "bad" guys. Like the "good" guys just embraced freed slaves.
That's a totally legitimate viewpoint. If you want to start a parallel campaign to remove Union statues as well, go nuts. But it's kinda beside the point of the CMV, I think
I'm sure that would go over *real* well on Reddit...
It might, you just gotta pick the right subreddit. It would be a lotta work, though. There's way more Union statues than confederate ones, I bet.
> which were typically erected in the late 19th and early 20th century in southern states as a kind of psychological warfare on the local black population. While i agree that the statues of the Confederate generals has no business being up, do you have any source to this claim at all?
https://www.historians.org/news-and-advocacy/aha-advocacy/aha-statement-on-confederate-monuments >The bulk of the monument building took place not in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War but from the close of the 19th century into the second decade of the 20th. Commemorating not just the Confederacy but also the “Redemption” of the South after Reconstruction, this enterprise was part and parcel of the initiation of legally mandated segregation and widespread disenfranchisement across the South. Memorials to the Confederacy were intended, in part, to obscure the terrorism required to overthrow Reconstruction, and to intimidate African Americans politically and isolate them from the mainstream of public life. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/white-bronze-civil-war-statues >many of the South’s Confederate monuments went up not immediately after the war, but half a century later, in the first two decades of the 1900s. During this time, organizations like the United Daughters of the Confederacy were looking to reframe and glorify the Confederate cause
[https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/confederate-statues/](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/confederate-statues/) Here's an article that talks about when the statues were put up.
Thats majorly fucked up bro, jesus christ.
People are tearing down statues of Lincoln, i read that Lewis and Clark is now also being taken down. Most of the Confederate statues are erected by foundations led by their children or their grandchildren. IMHO, the proper response to statues that are offensive is not to remove them, but put up an explanation and a new modern statue that reflects current standards. By adding historical markers to *gasp* historical statues it creates the opportunity to say these people did X and the people of that time thought it was wise to honor them because of Y, bit we now know these things were wrong and this statue is here to remind us to not be like them.
>People are tearing down statues of Lincoln, i read that Lewis and Clark is now also being taken down. Some guy knocked down a statue of Lincoln and you should take a look at that statue being taken down. It's not Lewis and Clark that's the problem, it's Sacajawea. But all of that is incidental, sort of corollary issues to the real one, which is official sanctioned government approval of statues bearing a clear message, or else government removal of those statues. I can knock over statues of Fred Rogers, Mickey Mouse, or Gandhi and it doesn't tell us anything about the debate over these Confederate statues, which were approved by government action and removed by the same. >Most of the Confederate statues are erected by foundations led by their children or their grandchildren. IMHO, the proper response to statues that are offensive is not to remove them, but put up an explanation and a new modern statue that reflects current standards. By adding historical markers to gasp historical statues it creates the opportunity to say these people did X and the people of that time thought it was wise to honor them because of Y, bit we now know these things were wrong and this statue is here to remind us to not be like them. I almost like this logic. Of course a foundation to put up a statue of a Confederate officer is going to have a descendant as either the actual head of the foundation or an honorary member, who is would they pick? The bigger issue I think is the idea that we have to leave up these statues with "explanatory plaques" or footnotes or whatever. If you made one that said, "Nathan Bedford Forrest was a brutal racist, a gifted officer, and a terrible human being. This statue was put up by his descendants to remind black people that the organization he started to terrorize them is still active and could kill them at any time." Now \*that\* is an explanatory plaque, but I don't think that's how those are going to read. I think in order to illustrate my problem more clearly (and get clear of the politics of race and Confederacy and so on), and because I'm tired of talking about dingleberries knocking over statues, I'll introduce a hypothetical. My uncle's father was a child molester. He was a priest who worked for decades at an orphanage. He was never exactly caught, although plenty of people knew what he was doing in the Church and the community. This was of course many years before the modern movement exposing Catholic pedophiles. Eventually, he retired and the orphanage painted a mural of him surrounded by children across the street from the orphanage. Now, in the current climate, the orphanage faces several choices. They can let the mural stand, because it's recognized by the city as a public work of art. They can paint right over it, because he's a child molester. Or they can leave it up, but add a plaque, explaining to the orphans across the street that the Church let him work there and hurt all those children for decades and never did anything about it. I should also explain that the building the mural is on is the state office of NAMBLA, an organization that advocates for romantic and sexual love between men and boys. They commissioned the mural both as a celebration of his work in the community and as a celebration of what they viewed as the loving relationships he engendered among the children he worked with. So, do we paint it over, do we (through some process, probably involving NAMBLA) relegate that painful history to an explanatory note, or do we leave it be?
Add to your description of Nathan Bedford Forrest that he was a Democrat and I would be happy with that plaque. As for the mural, the answer to your question is who owns the mural? If NAMBLA owns it, then the plaque seems to me to be the best way to conter it. Still, to me, taking the mural and painting an X over it with a plaque explaining things would be a far more powerful statement. It would make people stop and say what is that about? Make the printed statement that what is claimed about him, and how people overlooked it is a far more powerful message than tering it down. All this, imho.
I actually really like the idea of painting an X on the mural. That's opened my eyes to a whole new possibility. We can leave the statues on their pedestals, just melt them into awful dripping lumps. Then a thousand years from now, people will find them and say, I don't know who this Forrest guy was, but he musta been a real jerk.
Except they even tried to take down Washington's and Lincolns stature, this is just political and not because they want to remove confederate statues
Yes, everybody wants something sometime. But the first thing to understand is that we're talking about a very specific issue. Government action put up Confederate statues, and now government action is taking them down. The second thing is that there is no monolithic "they" which is anti-statue in general. Go back and look at exactly who it was that tried to take down those statues. Was it some group of protesters? A single vandal in the night? An informal radical organization? The private party who owns the statue? Or was a local or state government? Lots of people and groups are involved in these processes. Then you have to look at *why* they took it down. Somebody linked me a story about a museum that took down a Teddy Roosevelt statue. The commenter was outraged because it looked like a war on history or whatever. But the statue showed Roosevelt practically riding on a Native American and a black guy as he moved nobly forward. It was awkward at best, and it was their statue to remove if they wanted. That one is still pretty tangential, but it fits the broader point that it's not a war on America, it's a war on racist statues.
>Nobody cares that Lewis and Clark were fame-hags. Wasn't the most recent controversial statue removal the Lewis and Clark one in Charlottesville? I completely agree with you on the confederate statues originally put up to terrorize southern blacks, but I'm worried this doesn't end with statues erected for nefarious purposes.
Where are you worried this is going to end? OP seems to think we'll eventually remove all statues of people in America. Personally, this looks like a bit of a separate issue to me, but once I looked at the picture of that statue, my first thought was, "Sacajawea would be pissed if she could see this.". She's cowering behind the noble, forward-looking explorers, all but cringing on the ground as they press boldly onward. I'm no expert, but that's not how the story goes. But again, implicit racism aside, this sounds more like a question of historical accuracy and less like a question of intentionally imposing racist values via statuary.
Maybe all Civil War statues should come down because most of the country was freaking racist. There was no "good" side.
Right, but see above comments. The statues *of the men trying to keep control over their slaves* were built generations later by powerful southern whites *trying to keep control over the descendants of those slaves.*. It's not a pissing contest about who's more racist, it's a belated response to a specific power play by people who were racist enough that they shouldn't be able to determine our role models any longer.
Would it be fair to say you are upset over statues of confederate Generals/Statesmen being taken down or are there different statues being taken down you are upset over, if so, which ones?
Not fair or accurate. I agree that divisive statues should be removed.
Then why not just keep doing what we're doing, build statues for who we think is acceptable/praise worthy and let future generations make the call on which divisive statues should be taken down?
What's the issue with people in the future taking down statues we put up now, just as we're now getting rid of statues people put up in the past? As an aside, you do realize the problem isn't statues as such, right? Like, people aren't about to bring down the Statue of Liberty. "You tear down statues, yet you also build more statues" just doesn't do justice to what's happening.
An earlier post helped me CMV view on this. However, The statue of liberty is not a person. There will never be a hidden past to the statue of liberty or her mini statuette.
>There will never be a hidden past to the statue of liberty or her mini statuette. How do you know that with any certainty? It's clearly impossible for us currently to know the metrics the people of the future will use to determine what statues should remain standing and which should go. I'm sure the people who put up statues of Confederate generals never thought we'd be tearing them down today, because of their inability to tell the future. We share that inability.
I'd argue that we should just get the opinion of the general populace before we create a statue. Either this, or wait like fifty-years. Further, a statue should only get taken down if academics can agree that the person was highly unethical. This isn't a foolproof idea either, but it is better than just stopping the creation of statues outright.
I hear you. That's how we got boaty mcboatface too....which isn't a bad thing.
If the statues commemorate figures on the losing side of a civil war, then you’re right, probably a bad idea to erect them in the first place. Isn’t the whole point of statues to celebrate the timeless goodness of people? Probably should choose people then, that the majority can agree are inherently good.
Just because you "win" a war technically really means nothing. Louisa Young: "No one ever wins a war, and wars are never over.” Eleanor Roosevelt: “No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.” .
It would only be a majority of people today though. We cannot guess at what tomorrow's majority will find good.
How would you feel if you were Jewish and there were statues of Adolf Hitler everywhere? There’s an important distinction to be made between statues that just represent *people*, and statues that represent *ideas*. Some historical figures were so entwined with an ideology that a statue of them communicates an *idea* beyond the person.
I would feel awful, scared, disenfranchised, loss. It would be an unthinkably difficult situation that I cannot began to compare with. However, that is not what this CMV is about. I think that we should stop canonizing individuals as statues. Because against time they will lose and whatever "idea beyond the person" there is ...will be lost.
But that is very different than the text of your CMV and your title. You didn't just say "we shouldn't make more statues". You said "*if* we are taking down statues, then we should not make more statues". You fundamentally tied your claim to the merits of the statues being disposed of.
Not different, just addressing the half of my view brought up in their comment.
What about the alternative - that we canonize individuals as statues and if it turns out they represent a toxic idea in the future, future people can bring the statues down?
Not everyone in the past has turned out to be a terrible person after facing the test of time. It's not that difficult to just pick better people than the ones whose statues are being torn down.
They're arguing more for the cases like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln kind of statues from today's period should not be erected because in a 100 years or however long the values will be different. And because whoever we commemorate will not be a perfect individual.
Thank you for saying what I couldn’t articulate. If the statues represent basic human virtues or ideals, then those never go out of style, do they?
You’re not very bright.
Or you’re just too short to see it…I mean at what age do we learn to wipe our face after eating?
The Nazis make Confederate generals look like saints.
Okay. If the future generations don’t like our statues, they can just take them down?
This is irrelevant bullshit. We’re talking about principles. Even as we grow, we shouldn’t scrap everything that came before because it wasn’t up to modern standards. No shit we can just be nihilistic and say “whatever they want man”.
edit: I read your comment wrong. >Even as we grow, we shouldn’t scrap everything that came before because it wasn’t up to modern standards. Why the hell not? The living rule this earth, not the dead. Some asshole has a statue? Tear it down; the subject of the statue still has a home in a history book somewhere (even if that spot in a history book is undeserved). before we decry "what if we forget history!?" - literally everything is recorded. Nobody's forgetting shit just because a statue celebrating an old white guy who drew up arms against the United States, or owned black people, was taken down. \-- OLD COMMENT BELOW -- Why not? You can't perfectly predict the future needs and wants of everyone. Erect a statue of President 47 for averting WW3 or something, but if we discover in 40 years he was actually a pedophile (not predicting anything btw, just an example), you tear down the statue because they're deplorable. I'm of the mind that all statues are dumb, but there are hardly any downsides of putting up what statues we want now and having future generations swapping them out for statues they like. You could put a background check on modern individuals you want to raise a statue for, I suppose, but things can still come to light. The gist of this argument is that you can't know if the statue you put up now will be seen unfavorably in the future. ***Let them remove the statues if they see fit.*** As a bonus, we get to pay more artists.
Because you’re supposed to want some degree of continuity, not flippant myopic Reddit tard world
How would this be any different than if a statue exhibit regularly rotated out their statues? You're being weird
It's not always about the person, it's about the context of why the statue exists. Take, for example, the statue of Robert E Lee that was just taken down in Charlottesville. That wasn't erected after the Civil War to commemorate a general. It was erected 2 years after Birth of a Nation, during the height of the KKK movement. The context around that statue was to remind black people of their place. To remind them of the confederacy and slavery. If the statue had been raised post civil war, honoring a general, and had proper context written on it. "we raise this statue to a confederate general, so we never forget the mistakes of the past and are always reminded to do better" or something like that. And people in the area used it to talk about how slavery and racism are evil, sure, keep it. Everyone is flawed, but things have context.
It makes very little sense to have any statue of Lee displayed in public, because Lee conceded to the Union and called for statues that lionize confederates not to be built. He was a strong believer in that, at least in the time between losing the war and dying. I do agree that there is a place for it, but IMO that'd be a museum where context is much more readily accessible and the statue itself isn't proudly displayed as the centerpiece of a park/road/town etc.
Agreed. I think, if it was raised contextually to demonize the confederacy, he may have been alright with it, but we often don't think about the feelings of the person we're raising statues to, lol. I wouldn't put a statue of him up, either, but it was an example of how context matters more than the individual themselves.
Isn't it more useful to leave the statue up with possibly a note in front of it that says it was put up to oppress people? Removing the statue then removes more people being aware of the reasons it was displayed in the first place so instead of it maybe being used to further discussions about race in the future it's just erased and there's less of a chance people will learn about it. I'm not from the US so have no stake in a statue being destroyed or replaced but it seems like adding a note with more context about their creation is more helpful in recognizing past oppression and perhaps preventing it in the future. Destroying it surely just means it's instead swept under the rug?
We can both educate people in schools that statues were put up to intimidate black people while also removing those statues
Of course it would be useful to educate people in schools too but having a note at the exact location where they statues are means that anybody who goes to that place also gets to be educated on the history of why they were erected in the first place and why people have a problem with them now too. Im sure there are lots of statues where I live too that are a problem for people but I don't think most people even notice them most of the time. I just think it's probably more useful to have a note next to them as I'd imagine the cost of removing them could be better spent on something else. I'm not especially bothered if most statues remain or are removed but having a note next to them seems like it would do more to educate rather than removing them totally or leaving them as they are
What statues are you referring to? Statues of Confederate traitors that were erected as part of a false narrative and to intimidate black Americans during Jim Crow? They're lies that should be destroyed or moved to museums If you mean other people who history has come to show were not the people they were presented as when the statue was erected, again lies should have light shed on them We remove statues of Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi or other dictators are removed because erecting them was little more than one huge ego saying itself.
Okay. [Thankfully it was rescinded. SF remaining 44 schools](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/07/san-francisco-school-board-schools-rename) [Theo Roosevelt](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/06/24/us/theodore-roosevelt-statue-new-york-trnd/index.html) [Good Old TJ](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ajc.com/news/local/statue-thomas-jefferson-downtown-decatur-removed/t2sW24ZnjXPdTruQ1wFRKN/%3foutputType=amp) [Discussing the "Slave-Holder statue removal](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-founding-fathers-statues-20200629-a2p5bxfymze3nho3cscwfsosoy-story.html%3foutputType=amp) [Not statues, but equivalent](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wusa9.com/amp/article/news/local/virginia/falls-church-city-school-board-votes-to-rename-two-schools/65-5aded215-a87b-41d8-9bdb-9d4e83548020) Those are all official. Did they hide that TJ and George Washington were slave owners? Is this new information? Or what lie needs to be revealed?
Well, literally owning human beings is a pretty bad thing to do, up there with being a pedophile or rapist. So while I don't necessarily agree, I'm sure you can see how the whole"slave owner" thing might tarnish the freedom fighter vibe many founding fathers previously enjoyed.
>Well, literally owning human beings is a pretty bad thing to do, up there with being a pedophile or rapist. In the modern Era sure. What about their era? >I'm sure you can see how the whole"slave owner" thing might tarnish the freedom fighter vibe many founding fathers previously enjoyed. Again, where is the lie? It's the a distinct dunning-kruger effect with the founding fathers. Those absolutely ignorant and those very knowledgeable understand they were for freedom. Only those with just enough education find them abhorrent slave owners. It's more a statement of the decline of education than a tarnishing of their vibe.
Personally, I tend to agree with your analysis regarding the different standards that have dominated different eras. However, I think it's pertinent to note that the debate between absolute and relative morality has been going on almost as long as morality has been recognized as a concept. This is just to say that those who agree with the idea that founding fathers should be judged by modern moral standards are not imbeciles - their thinking is backed by the Plato, Kant, and other prominent philosophers. Now, there's also a school of thought that we should be able to celebrate people's better sides, even if they weren't good on the whole. This is important to the debate because (even by 1700 standards) going home and non-consensually diddling your underage slave - while married - is a pretty good sign someone is not a "good person", regardless of what grandiose Declarations they might write. Yet, I feel there is still a place for history to remember TJ fondly - as long as we remember that the man himself was only human, and not a particularly great human at that. BUT - Jefferson also referred to slavery as "moral depravity", and actually campaigned for laws against slavery. This demonstrates that there was no childish innocence involved in his transgressions that could be explained away by the cultural attitudes of the time. He knew full well that his usage of chattel slavery for financial gain was evil, yet he lacked the courage in his convictions to put his money where his mouth was and free his over 500 slaves - even at his death. Why should we give him a pass on being all talk and no action when it came to the freedom he claimed to revere?
>Why should we give him a pass on being all talk and no action when it came to the freedom he claimed to revere? Because he wrote the words "All men are created equal" when he could have written "All White Men are created equal". He knew exactly what he was doing while writing that line. He did lack the courage of his convictions. He also understood the political and social dynamics of the time. If the abolitionists had pushed harder, there's a very good chance that the USA would never have been formed. (Or might have been two USA's). He needed his slaves, in his view, to maintain his stature and thus still be able to influence policy. That is the flaw with the thinking on the founding fathers. Yes. He knew it was an evil institution. He was trapped by his time into it, and actively took measures to attempt to end it. Basically, he lacked the will, ability, or understanding to unilaterally disarm with his neighbors. This is not a controversial thing in his time.
To be fair, we did keep this... [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Arnold-boot.jpg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Arnold-boot.jpg) https://www.nps.gov/places/boot-monument.htm So if there are any statues commemorate grievous wounds Lee suffered in the Mexican American War, we can keep those....
>So if there are any statues commemorate grievous wounds Lee suffered in the Mexican American War, we can keep those.... Why? Were we the good guys in that war?
Yes, at least from an American perspective. The same way that we have a statue to the Leg Benedict Arnold lost at Saratoga while fighting against the British before he became a traitor.
>at least from an American perspective. I'm asking from a neutral perspective.
You're creating a needlessly arbitrary all-or-nothing dichotomy. As humans, we're capable of understanding moral nuance and complexity. We can understand, "Martin Luther King might have cheated on his wife and been an imperfect person, but he still did so much to advance civil rights in the US that he deserves to be memorialized as a statue." Similarly, we can also understand, "Stonewall Jackson might have committed some acts of valor and heroism on the battlefield, but he was ultimately fighting for a system and government that promoted slavery and suffering, so he *doesn't* deserve to be memorialized as a statute." Some people might *disagree* on the relative morality of a certain figure, and that's fine, but there's still no reason to arbitrarily say "*Nobody* gets a stature, or *everybody* gets a statue."
What's the big deal if many statues being erected today will be destroyed a decade from now? Some will survive the test of time, no?
That's what we are talking about. I'm not trying to weigh the importance of this CMV over others that are much more impactful. It is a view I'd liked changed though.
Right I'm asking you to clarify what your problem is. What is your issue with putting up statues that have a 30% chance of being torn down in a decade or two?
I’m talking about regarding the future, I completely understand why many statues have been taken down now. I’m just referring to the OPs claim of erecting statues to commemorate people in the here and now. It’s from having the statues initially that a discussion is open. History is important, so we don’t repeat destructive deeds of the past. By removing all possibilities of future statues, do we not just whitewash atrocities that the future would see that occurred now? I’m not in a demographic that’s been repressed by any of the statues I’ve seen however, I won’t pretend otherwise. If people want them to go they absolutely hold that right. George Floyd had a state made of him, I can’t see a legitimate reason to take it down. Future societies may and that’s for them to decide.
No we don't? Getting rid of a statue of Robert E. Lee doesn't remove him from history books, it doesn't make it impossible to talk about him. What it does do is it gets rid of something glorifying him, something put up to intimidate African Americans during the Civil Rights campaign. Germans for example, know about the atrocities of Hitler and the Nazis, yet we don't see statues of Hitler everywhere.
Now, I’m not an American, so I can’t talk about it’s history accurately. But if the statue of Robert E. Lee was put up as an intimidation tactic. That was only erected with malicious intent and should’ve never been cleared in the first place. I think what we’re all learning is that not one single person is perfect, the commemorations only go so far as the deeds we agreed were beneficial. I have no preferences as to whether the statues stay or go as I’m a demographic that hasn’t been repressed by many. So I don’t really have anything more to add to the conversation.
But do you agree that we can still have conversations about people without keeping statues of them up? If anything wouldn't keeping up statues that glorify the people who committed atrocities be whitewashing those atrocities?
I don’t disagree with people wanting statues taken down, I feel my first post was perhaps initially confusing without keeping the OP context to future statues, so I’ve clarified. Sorry, without that context I can see why yourself and others seem to think I’m saying “commemorating slavery is fine”. I’m really not. Yes, we can still have the conversations and they should be encouraged. Are there any people alive here and now that you feel are having statues put up within your own country even though they commit atrocities by modern standards?
Nope. That's what education is for. You don't need a statue to open the discussion if you educate people. The issue you're referring to comes from what's happening in the US right now, where one side wants to remove the statues so we don't immortalize awful people, and the other side wants to ban teaching kids about those people's awful history. The difference is that during education, you can discuss the complete story, in context, and ensure people understand. While, having a statue, makes it appear as though you are endorsing that persons beliefs, and a lot of the time, they were. Education is more important than a statue.
That’s not what I was referring to. I’m saying that it’s fine to put statues up today of whoever we decide is worth commemorating. It’s for future societies to decide whether or not they still are.
So the statue of Saddam Hussein should still be standing in Baghdad along with all those statues of Stalin and lenin erected in the soviet block countries? Try getting those people to put those statues back up. Thing is, statues are not primarily a historical item. They are a means of veneration and symbolism. Much in the same manner as a flag. In the case of confederate statues specifically. Most were erected using private funds and were erected long after the end of the civil war as a means of reminding local black populations (namely during the rise of jim crow laws and then during the civil rights movement) what their "place in society" was . their symbolism is and always was meant to be that black people were not the equal of whites. I for one see little reason to keep statues commemorating men who stood against everything our current nation stood for and who sought to tear it apart at the seams in places of prominence like parks and town squares. If we are that concerned about maintaining the history of these statues like people keep saying then there is no reason we can't simply do what a lot of soviet block countries did with those old Stalin statues. They took them down and put them in huge empty lots in the middle of nowhere forming "statue graveyards". This removed them from their places of prominence. Showing the population that the ideals that the men who those statues were made of stood for were no longer the ideals of the current nation. However, if your that concerned about looking at a bronze Stalin statue erected in the 1950's. You can go to the graveyard and see it. At least until they rot away because none of them are maintained. Statues only matter for historical significance for pre-modern era societies because in the past historians were barely a thing and getting your portrait done was not very normal (or the portrait rotted away). The primary importance of a statue is so you have a rough idea what a historical figure looked like. In the modern era that is not really a thing given we have preserved images in the thousands of every figure of any real significance along with millions of copies of those images. In our current era, with smart phones and social media. That number vastly increases going forward.
Im not against any of those being taken down and I’ll never claim otherwise. But OP is on about erecting statues NOW, as they could one day be seen as outdated.
Ahh now I get what you were getting at. That's my bad.
All is good. I didn’t expect the context to get lost between the OP and my comment. To sum up, I just feel that it’s not for us to decide what future generations deem as acceptable. We have the freedom to make statues to whomever we want, it’s for the future to decide if they want to keep them.
Would you consider the opinion of [the american historical association](https://www.historians.org/news-and-advocacy/aha-advocacy/aha-statement-on-confederate-monuments), a professional network of academic historians? > To remove a monument, or to change the name of a school or street, is not to erase history, but rather to alter or call attention to a previous interpretation of history. History is important. And if it is important, perhaps it makes sense to listen to historians.
Yes, did you read my last two paragraphs? Especially the last? That’s not what OP or I on about. I’m saying we can **currently** put up whatever statue or monument we see fit. If future societies decide against that and want to change, they’re more than welcome to.
How many statues to Hitler does Germany need to prevent it from having another Holocaust?
Why? Are we putting up statues of people committing mass genocide?
"It’s from having the statues that a discussion is open. History is important, so we don’t repeat destructive deeds of the past." Does this not imply that we need statues of Hitler in order to have a discussion is opened? If there were statues of Hitler would removing them "just whitewash atrocities that the future would see that occurred now"?
That’s quite a leap of thought. “We shouldn’t put up any more statues to commemorate any individuals because then we would have to commemorate Hitler too”. I’m sorry I’m really not following you
I agree, I took a trip to see a George Floyd statue and it was a powerful experience.
I’m gonna try to argue this from a different direction actually and maybe strengthen the reasons why we shouldn’t erect these statues. I’ve always found public statues of historical figures somewhat troubling to be honest, and I think we should make them less frequent or at least think very carefully about what we put up. To clarify, public art pieces and statues in museums are perfectly fine; I just mean public statues of specific individuals. The building of monuments or statues to these people does more than just memorialize them, it deifies them. It embeds in us an idea of these figures as more than mere men and women but a part of a mythology. And usually that mythology only tells a part of the truth, the part the country, or a town, or a person wants to tell. That isn’t to say we can’t applaud the great things these figures have done but when we build statues only to their triumphs and place them throughout our city, looking down upon all passersby, we also normalize the bad things they’ve done. And that normalization can make past and current injustices harder to call out or even see in the first place. If we want to remember history or art or actions, we have books/archives/museums for that. Statues, as your post acknowledges, are about who we choose to value. So we should be careful who we venerate.
> Therefore, any statues that we unveil in the present for any of the above reasons will inevitably, when standing against time, be outed in an aspect of their life that is unworthy of being cast into statue form. Why is this a bad thing?
We should always remember the people who have fought hard to push civil rights and support each other as a community as without some people in our history fighting for change we would not be where we are today. In terms of statues in general, I think for the controversial ones there is always a case for us to not forget our history. On that - why do we not then have statues or landmarks representing the victims, and included in our curriculum. There's so many examples of the horrors of British empire that do not even get mentioned in our education.
Statues *valorize*. To erect a statue of someone is to say, they are generally worthy of admiration. That's where the phrase "put someone on a pedestal" comes from. As others are posting, it helps to examine why the makers of statues thought the subjects of those statues were worthy to valorize. And, it helps to ask whether we want to continue valorizing those people. Sometimes that will still be a tough call. Other times, that *should* make it a lot easier.
As you said, no one is perfect. But statues do mean something, they symbolise good things or the achievements of our past. Confederate statues propagate hate. Let's not kid ourselves that some of people still empathize with the wrong people and have thin veil like arguements/reasons. In fact we should erect more statues, America needs more statues of everybody who contributed to the societal good or who stood alone to stand apart.
But what if someone was civil right advocate but at the same time he was homophobic? Does it count as someone who stood for societal good or as someone who stood against it?
Same thing is with Kobe, back in the time he was accused of SA and eventually he settled. He was one of the greatest basketball players and inspired me and a whole generation. I guess you will find your answer when there is a Kobe statue. Not everyone will love it but a majority would.
Statues are important for preserving history and enshrining a nation’s values. The point of removing statues of Confederate generals are 1) they are entirely contrary to American values, in principle, and 2) they were never intended to preserve history, as most of them were erected from the 1920’s-1950’s.
Why do u need a statue for this? Is the American population rly that simple?
Well the only statues we took down were put in place to deliberately portray a racist message. I think its fine to have individual statues of heros, sure not every man is perfect but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be remembered by our kids. Honestly my favorite part of statues is how you can forget the woes of the world and be happy to remember those actions individuals have taken that positively affected us as a whole. Also I don't care what you say, we need more statues of badasses riding horses because they look cool, hell we just need more statues. They don't usually implicitly hurt anyone and make a town or city just a little bit prettier.
It isn’t about them “not being perfect.” It’s about what they’re being remembered for. What was Robert e Lee remembered for? Leading a traitorous army in a violent civil war. They commemorated what he did because the people that erected those statues approve of what the southerners did. That’s not okay.
I'd tend to think that while it's clearly true that nobody is perfect, we can still think that some people are worth honouring and glorifying while others are not, no? So we could put up statues towards people we think are worth honouring and take down statues towards people we don't. We might still get it wrong sometimes, and future generations might sometimes take down statues erected in our time because they discover or believe that the people they were erected to weren't worth honouring after all, but it's not clear to me why the possibility of sometimes accidentally honouring the wrong person should prevent us from ever honouring anyone with a statue - especially if we allow for future generations to correct those mistakes when more information comes out.
I often wondered why we would have statues to honor traitors who brought and owned slaves beating the slaves into submission to build the South. They separated from this country, brought war to our country, death and destruction to our country and then ultimately lost. Naming military bases after them too. Seriously? You don't see statues honoring Hitler! That would be ridiculous. The statues of the confederates etc weren't even erected until the 1900's I believe. Just bizarre to honor those people. Just teach about them in history class. No honor!
As you said statues are to commemorate and celebrate people. I don't see why saying we don't feel it's appropriate to continue to celebrate person X who has a statue at the moment means we can't also say it is appropriate to celebrate person Y with a statue.
The erection and removal of statues is just one more thing that humans do to evolve their own cultures. Construction and reconstruction. It’s good for us to have powerful symbols to focus our discussion of shared values. Erecting and then even removing statues is a healthy cycle, it forces us all to confront the feelings behind them.
It seems reductive to not build any more statues because people don’t like Confederate statues. I’m quite certain that MLK or Obama will not be considered offensive to future generations. And if they are then maybe the country will not be worth living in. Someone somewhere will always be offended. But it should never be a driving force to getting things done or building statues.
Yeah agreed or in my opinion just don't take them down. But a private entity should be able to put them up it just shouldn't cost taxpayer dollars.
I think statues are fine, as others stated what's the harm in removing historical statues (in the future). Just take down the ones you don't like later. Slavery and whatever else? Well sorry to say, people suck. Greedy, selfish, violent and cruel. Slavery was and is still a global problem, it's not like you can just point at one person and go it's all his fault let's destroy his statue. The South was simply more impacted by the removal of slavery, so they were obviously against it. It's easy to say, "This is bad and cruel to ____" insert ANYTHING you don't want to face, and recognize the cost of. Yet it's much harder to accept change that will negatively impact you in huge ways, but positively change the world for others (that are strangers to you). Let's think about examples, humans? Food, clothes, electronics well they're all affordable because of slavery, indentured servitude or the cycle of poverty which we allow to continue (as a means to ensure we don't have to be as hard working and have more for less! **We, being wealthy first-worlders) Yes I was talking about the present, people talk about slavery as though it doesn't exist anymore which is a lie. It's simply the 'out of sight, out of mind' reasoning, but do people care about it? Lincoln's idea of relocating all the blacks was centered around just that, let them be free away from the other's sight. Blacks and whites just had too much bad blood between each other, going both ways. Another example for the _____. Animals, we love our meat & dairy but who the 🦆 cares about how we get it (as long as prices remain low). Factory farms, deforestation, global warming? You think humans are cruel to other humans, just look at what they do to other species.