Celebrated Statue Removal – Elevation 3 Pros & Cons

An 1884 Confederate monument to Full general Robert East. Lee is removed from Lee Circle in New Orleans, Louisiana, on May 19, 2017.
Source: Abdazizar. "The Amalgamated Monument to Robert E. Lee Is Removed from Its Perch," Creative Commons, May 19, 2017

  • Overview
  • Pro/Con Arguments
  • Give-and-take Questions
  • Take Action

While the debate whether Confederate statues should exist taken downwardly has been gaining momentum for years, the event gained widespread attending later on the June 17, 2015, mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church building in Charleston, S Carolina. The shooter was said to have glorified the Confederate Due south, posing in Facebook photos with the Boxing Flag of the Northern Virginia Army (too known at present as the "Confederate flag," though information technology never represented the Confederate States) and touring historical Confederate locations earlier the shooting. [1] [2] [3] [iv]

The issue rose to prominence again in 2022 after an Aug. 12 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, turned violent and deadly. The rally protested the proposed removal of statues of Confederate Army Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. [5]

The Virginia statues still stood amid the protests following the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, though they were tagged with graffiti and so (and afterwards removed on July 10, 2021). During the global Blackness Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020, calls to take downwards the statues were met with citizens non only actively dissentious or removing statues of Confederate figures, only targeting statues of slave-holding Founding Fathers in general, as well as historic monuments to Abraham Lincoln and abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass. [6] [7] [eight] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [54]

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), 59 Confederate statues and nine markers or plaques were removed from public country in 19 US states between June 17, 2022 and July 6, 2020. The SPLC reported at least 160 monuments were removed in 2022 after George Floyd'south death, more than the prior iv years combined At terminal count, well-nigh 704 Amalgamated monuments remained on public land. [14] [55]

Should Historic Statues Be Taken Down?

Pro 1

The statues misrepresent history, and glorify people who perpetuated slavery, attempted secession from United States, and lost the Ceremonious War.

When eleven Southern states seceded from the Union in 1861, they were very articulate that the reason was the impending abolition of slavery. Mississippi's secession declaration states, "Our position is thoroughly identified with the establishment of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the production which constitutes past far the largest and near of import portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none merely the black race tin bear exposure to the tropical lord's day. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilisation… There was no option left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Spousal relationship, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin." [15] [sixteen]

However, afterwards the Confederate States lost the Civil War, the South revised history. The states declared they had not been fighting to preserve slavery and, instead, "fashioned a set of ideas and arguments that they were fighting to agree back the massive industrialization of America, they were trying to preserve rural agrarian civilization," according to David W. Bane, PhD, American History Professor at Yale University. [17] [18] The "Lost Cause" mythology was used to keep the thought that black people needed to be subjugated for their own skillful and as justification for Jim Crow laws. Erecting statues to the lost heroes of the Lost Cause was part of the campaign to revise history. [14] [17]

Other statues of historic figures, such as slave-owning presidents or imperialists similar Christopher Columbus, promote similar oppressive and revisionist messages. Glenn Foster, founder of The Freedom Neighborhood, stated of the Emancipation Memorial, which depicts Lincoln over a kneeling freed slave, "When I look at that statue, I'm reminded my freedom and my liberation is but dictated by white peoples' terms. Nosotros're trying to let the government know we're not going to wait any longer for our liberty to happen." [19] Celebrations of Columbus have long been criticized due to his colonization and genocide of Ethnic people, as well as the faux narrative that he discovered America when he never set foot on Due north America. [20] [21] These statues, like their Confederate counterparts, serve a revisionist purpose, allowing people to maintain a racist credo.

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Pro 2

The statues are a painful reminder of past and nowadays institutionalized racism in the United States.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., PhD, Director of the Hutchins Eye for African and African American Research at Harvard University, notes that "enduringly charged symbols of the former Confederacy… [add together] to our fears that, instead of embracing the promise of democracy in a diverse society, some want to return u.s.a. to a far more than restrictive time, when freedom was confining past race." [22]

"We can't get to learning from our history if we keep accepting that racism should be historic in American history," according to Khalil Gibran Muhammad, PhD, Professor of History, Race and Public Policy at Harvard University [1]

The statues were built to honour and enforce white supremacist views, and the intent or damaging upshot have non been erased by fourth dimension.

A black resident of Richmond, Virginia, Tommye Finley, remarked of the metropolis's Monument Avenue, which is home to v Confederate statues, "When I first moved here from Mississippi, I thought these statues were ridiculous. Why build a street for losers?… Psychologically, it'south perpetuating a organisation. It'due south proverb, 'We still have the upper manus.'" [23]

Finley hit not but on the current psychological impact of the statues, but besides on the intended historical impact. Equally James Grossman, PhD, Executive Director of the American Historical Association, notes, "It's non simply that the statues represent white supremacy, just the purpose of building the statues was the perpetuation of white supremacy. This is why they put them up in the beginning identify; to affirm the axis of white supremacy to Southern culture." [1]

Because the statues were intended to promote white supremacy, Richard Rose, President of Atlanta'due south NAACP, argues, "You tin't contextualize racism or compromise on racism." He states that the contextualization plaques added to Atlanta'southward Confederate statues "found that racism is valid." [24]

The statues still appeal to white supremacists, as demonstrated by the 2022 rally to defend the Lee and Jackson statues in Virginia and in Dylan Roof'due south 2022 pre-massacre tour of plantations and a Confederate museum. [4]

Monuments are ultimately about which values we want to accolade and put on public display. [23] For case, the Amalgamated statues in the Capitol building "should embody our highest ideals every bit Americans, expressing who we are and who we aspire to be equally a nation. Monuments to men who advocated cruelty and barbarism to achieve such a plain racist stop are a grotesque affront to these ethics. Their statues pay homage to detest, not heritage. They must be removed," according to Speaker of the Business firm Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). [25]

Farther, Americans pay to take Confederate statues and the associated values on display. A 2022 investigation published in the Smithsonian Mag found that over the prior ten years at least $40 million in taxpayer dollars were allocated for Amalgamated statues, other monuments, and heritage organizations. [4]

As Karen Cox, PhD, Historian of the American Due south at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, concludes, "The land is giving the stamp of approval to these Lost Cause ideas, and the money is a symbol of that approval. What does that say to black citizens of the state, or other citizens, or to younger generations?" [4]

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Pro 3

There are many other people who could be represented past statues who would better represent the historical progress and multifariousness of the country.

Of nigh 5,193 public statues of people in the United States, simply 394 are of women, and far fewer are of blackness Americans or other people of color. [26]

George Gerbner, PhD, and Larry Gross coined the term "symbolic annihilation" in 1976 to describe the lack of representation of a group of people. Symbolic anything tin upshot in society valuing groups of people less and in internalized negativity amidst those groups. [27] [28] Statues celebrating the diversity of the country could assist remedy symbolic annihilation of black Americans, women, and other groups.

A petition in Tennessee gained 22,736 signatures (and counting every bit of July 8, 2020) to supervene upon all Amalgamated statues in the country, including the statue of Amalgamated Army General and KKK Chiliad Wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest that stands in the state's capitol edifice, with statues of Dolly Parton. [29] [xxx]

Walmart donated $100,000 to help Arkansas replace statues of Confederate sympathizers Governor James P. Clarke and chaser Uriah Rose in the US Capitol, with statues of Johnny Cash and civil rights pioneer Daisy Bates. [31]

In Louisville, a statue of Amalgamated soldier John Breckinridge Castleman was removed. Residents offered replacement suggestions ranging from boxer Muhammed Ali to writer Wendell Drupe. [26] A monument to the victims of slavery has also been suggested. [32]

Statues could be congenital to honor George Washington Carver, Madame CJ Walker, Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Owens, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ruby Bridges, Mae Jemison, Charles Richard Drew, Mary Jackson, and endless others.

Beyond edifice monuments to honor black Americans, monuments could apply and elevate living black artists, such as Kehinde Wiley, whose 2022 "Rumors of War" statue depicts a black man on horseback in a pose reminiscent of statues of Robert E. Lee. [32] [33]

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Con 1

The statues represent the land's history, no matter how complicated. Taking them down is to censor, whitewash, and potentially forget that history.

Of the calls to take downwards Confederate monuments, President Donald Trump stated, "This barbarous entrada of censorship and exclusion violates everything we concord dear as Americans. They want to demolish our heritage and then they can impose a new oppressive government in its place." [9] Trump argued the plight to save the statues "is a battle to save the Heritage, History, and Greatness of our Land!" [34]

Citizens of the United States have the right to hold controversial opinions and build statues to honor their beliefs. The First Amendment protects everyone'south speech, not just the spoken communication canonical by the majority. [35]

The history of the United States is multi-layered, complicated, and ever-evolving. Those who disagree with the beliefs upheld past the statues should piece of work to sympathize the history these monuments represent, rather than trying to but remove them and the history from sight.

John Daniel Davidson, Political Editor at The Federalist, explained, "That they were wrong about slavery does not excuse the states today from the burden of trying to sympathise what motivated them to fight—and what motivated them and their families to undertake a flurry of monument-edifice decades later equally the surviving veterans began to die off… A more mature order would recognize that the past is always with you and must always be kept in heed. There's a reason Christians in Rome didn't topple all the heathen statues and buildings in the city, or raze the Colosseum." [36]

Each Confederate monument is a reminder not merely of the Civil War and the end of slavery, only the assertion of the federal regime'southward dominance over states' rights, besides as the persistence of systemic racism. [37]

Lawrence A. Kuznar, PhD, Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University–Purdue Academy Fort Wayne, states, "removing Confederate statues amounts to whitewashing our history, turning our heads away from the inconvenient truths of our past. We should permit them stand and use them to remind ourselves of what we are and are not, the cost our forebears paid for our freedom and to educate our children." [38]

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Con 2

Removing statues is a slippery gradient that could lead to the brash removal of monuments to whatever slightly problematic person.

During the protests following the death of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, many Confederate statues were damaged or toppled, as were statues of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Ulysses S. Grant. [x] [11] [12]

Washington, Jefferson, and Grant had undeniable ties to slavery. Washington owned over 300, Jefferson over 600, and Grant worked on his wife'southward family unit plantation and inherited one slave upon his father-in-law'south death. [39] [40] [41]

Still, Washington led the Continental Army to victory over the British, held together the country as the get-go President over two terms, resisted calls to go King of the country, and, in his will, freed his slaves upon his married woman's decease. [42]

Jefferson is the author of two of our most dear principles every bit a country: equality and religious freedom. He was also an abolitionist, though a hypocritical and businesslike ane who understood the country would non surrender slavery and then easily. While he hoped the side by side generation would abolish slavery, he wrote in 1820 that maintaining the institution of slavery was like holding "a wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go." [40]

Grant came from an abolitionist family unit, freed the one slave he owned in 1859, supported black enlisted Ground forces men, led the Union Ground forces in the Civil State of war to abolish slavery, and was endorsed by Frederick Douglass for president. [41]

Should nosotros not honour the contributions of Washington, Jefferson, and Grant to the United States because they endemic slaves, as did many men of their continuing at the time, fifty-fifty though they struggled with the institution?

Annette Gordon-Reed, JD, Professor of American Legal History at Harvard University, explained, "At that place is an important difference between helping to create the Us and trying to destroy it. Both Washington and Jefferson were disquisitional to the germination of the country and to the shaping of it in its early on years… No one puts a monument upwards to Washington or Jefferson to promote slavery… I call back on these two, Washington and Jefferson, in item, you have the biting with sweetness. The principal duty is non to hide the biting parts." [43]

Eight US presidents owned slaves while in office, with an additional four owning slaves while not in office. [44] Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the white suffragists purposefully excluded black women. [45] [46] Martin Luther King, Jr. regularly cheated on his wife. [47] Exercise nosotros exclude the achievements of these figures from public display because they displayed controversial behavior? Where practice we draw a line? Do we protect Confederate graves and battlefields? [48] Or should those besides exist destroyed? The line is subjective, difficult to draw, and easy to reinterpret, leaving no memorial protected.

The slippery slope goes further, allowing anyone to destroy any statue they disagree with. For instance, a statue of black abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass was damaged over the July 4, 2022 weekend in Rochester, New York. [9] And a statue of black tennis star and Ceremonious Rights activist Arthur Ashe was tagged with "white lives matter" graffiti in Richmond, Virginia. [49]

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Con 3

The statues exercise not cause racism and could exist used to fight racism if put into historical context.

Writer Sophia A. Nelson, JD, who notes she is the granddaughter of a slave, states that she does non "fright 150-yr-old statues of one-time dead white men." Nelson argues that her classmates at Washington & Lee University "didn't hate [black students] because there were statues of Robert East. Lee or George Washington (our nation's first President and a slave possessor) on campus. They didn't similar having blackness classmates because they had racist hearts. They honored racial prejudice. They harbored cultural bias. That, my friends, is what we must work toward eradicating." [fifty]

Ellis Cose, Senior Beau at the ACLU, states that the statues should remain, with "plaques and other material in place that point out that these men were traitors, not American heroes, and that their ugly legacy haunts us still. In illuminating how vulnerable Americans have long been to ugly racial appeals, and how willfully blind we take been to racial injustice, those statues could remind united states of the catastrophic consequences of not putting bigotry aside." [51]

Some jurisdictions take called to put explanatory plaques beside Confederate monuments to teach a more complete history. The plaques can non only detail the history of slavery and the Civil State of war, simply also the white segregationist history that promoted the building of such statues to promote the revisionist Lost Cause history. [52]

Next to the Peace Monument in Atlanta, Georgia, a plaque reads, "This monument should no longer stand as a memorial to white brotherhood; rather, it should be seen as an artifact representing a shared history in which millions of Americans were denied civil and human being rights." [24]

Sheffield Unhurt, JD, President and Chief Executive of the Atlanta History Heart, stated of the plaque, "I do think it gives [people] a starting point, which is sorely needed right at present, in our society, equally a way to deal with contentious issues. Allow's argue about the facts, let's put them down on paper – or on a mark – and have a conversation nigh them." [24]

Geoff Palmer, Scotland's starting time blackness professor, who disagrees with taking downwardly the statues, warned against being distracted by the simple, concrete action of taking down statues: "We don't want to get out this so that people looking back in 50 years will say: you know, they took the statues down, why didn't they practice something virtually racism?" [53]

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Word Questions

  1. Should historic statues be taken down? Explicate your reply with examples and reasoning.
  2. Do the statues represent or misrepresent the land'south history? How?
  3. Regardless of whether celebrated statues are removed or remain, what sort of statues, memorials, or other art would you like to encounter in public spaces? Explicate your answers.

Take Action

1. Explore the Southern Poverty Constabulary Middle's "Whose Heritage: Public Symbols of the Confederacy" resources, which promotes the removal of confederate statues.

ii. Consider the idea of placing the removed statues in museums with the American Alliance of Museums.

3. Defend the existence of confederate statues as ways of honoring the by with the United Daughters of the Confederacy, an organization devoted to the retention of Confederate soldiers.

4. Consider how you felt near the issue before reading this article. Later reading the pros and cons on this topic, has your thinking inverse? If so, how? Listing two to three ways. If your thoughts take not inverse, list two to three means your amend understanding of the "other side of the outcome" now helps you better argue your position.

5. Push for the position and policies you lot support by writing US national senators and representatives.

Sources

1. Jasmine Aguilera, "Confederate Statues Are Being Removed amongst Protests over George Floyd's Decease. Hither's What to Know," time.com, June 24, 2020
2. Jack Jenkins, "How the Charleston Shooting Is Linked to the Confederate Flag, According to A South Carolinian," thinkprogress.org, June nineteen, 2015
three. Amanda Holpuch, Ed Pilkington, and Oliver Laughland, "Charleston Shooting: Confederate Flag at Eye of Growing Political Storm," theguardian.com, June 20, 2015
four. Brian Palmer and Seth Freed Wessler, "The Costs of the Confederacy," smithsonianmag.com, Dec 2018
five. New York Times, "From 2017: Amalgamated Monuments Are Coming downward dcross the United States. Here's a List.," nytimes.com, Aug. 28, 2017
6. Richard Allen Greene, "King Leopold 2 Statues Are Being Removed in Kingdom of belgium. Who Was He?," cnn.com, June 11, 2020
7. CBS News, "Protesters in England Topple Statue of Slave Trader Edward Colston into Harbor," cbsnews.com, June 7, 2020
8. Gino Spocchia, "Christopher Columbus Statue Torn Down, Set on Fire and Tossed in Lake by Anti-Racism Protesters in Virginia," independent.co.united kingdom, June ten, 2020
nine. Scottie Andrew and Anna Sturla, "A Statue of Frederick Douglass Was Toppled over the Fourth of July Weekend, the Ceremony of His Famous Speech communication," cnn.com, July vi, 2020
x. Phil Davis, "George Washington Monument in Druid Loma Park Spray-Painted with 'Destroy Racists,' Anti-Police force Sentiment," baltimoresun.com, June 21, 2020
11. Latisha Jensen, "Portland Man Describes Tearing Down Thomas Jefferson Statue: 'It's Not Vandalism,'" wweek.com, June 20, 2020
12. Caleb Parke, "From George Washington to Ulysses S. Grant: Statues, Monuments Vandalized Extend across Confederates amid Blackness Lives Affair Protests," foxnews.com, June 22, 2020
13. Ted Mann, "Lincoln Statue With Kneeling Black Man Becomes Target of Protests," wsj.com, June 25, 2020
14. Southern Poverty Law Eye, "Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy," splcenter.org, February. ane, 2019
15. The Avalon Project, "Confederate States of America - A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the Country of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union," avalon.police.yale.edu  (accessed July eight, 2020)
16. The Avalon Project, "A Annunciation of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.," avalon.police force.yale.edu  (accessed July 8, 2020)
17. Becky Little, "How the Cult of Robert East. Lee Was Born," history.com, Aug. 14, 2017
18. Adam Serwer, "The Myth of the Kindly General Lee," theatlantic.com, June 4, 2017
nineteen. Aishvarya Kavi, "Activists Push for Removal of Statue of Freed Slave Kneeling Before Lincoln," nytimes.com, June 27, 2020
twenty. BBC, "Confederate and Columbus Statues Toppled past US Protesters," bbc.com, June 11, 2020
21. Valerie Strauss, "Christopher Columbus: three Things Yous Call up He Did That He Didn't," washingtonpost.com, Oct. xiv, 2013
22. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "Monuments of Hope, Memorials to a Poisoned By," britannica.com, May 25, 2018
23. Robert Draper, "Toppling Statues Is a Showtime Step toward Ending Confederate Myths," nationalgeographic.com, July 2, 2020
24. Khushbu Shah, "Atlanta's Confederate Monuments: How Do 'Context Markers' Assistance Explain Racism?," theguardian.com, Aug. 3, 2019
25. Kelly Grovier, "Blackness Lives Matter Protests: Why Are Statues So Powerful?," bbc.com, June 12, 2020
26. Ashlie D. Stevens, "As Confederate Monuments Come down, What Should Replace Them?," salon.com, June 17, 2020
27. Juan De Anda, "Why Representation Matters Now," mediapost.com, Apr 21, 2020
28. Charisse L'Pree, "Racial and Gender Exclusion from Media Affects Novel Group Identity; An Experimental Investigation of Symbolic Anything," sites.google.com/site/charisselpree2 (accessed July viii, 2020)
29. Dessi Gomez, "Hi, Dolly? Petition Pushes for Parton Statues," arkansasonline.com, June 23, 2020
xxx. Alex Parsons, "Supercede All Confederate Statues in Tennessee with Dolly Parton," change.org (accessed July viii, 2020)
31. Catherine Thorbecke, "Walmart donates $100K to supercede Arkansas' Confederate-linked statues at the US Capitol," abcnew.go.com, July vii, 2020
32. Nellie Peyton, "Every bit the Men of Rock Fall, Who Should Ascension up and Take Their Place?," news.trust.org, July 2, 2020
33. Kehinde Wiley, Instagram.com, June 4, 2020
34. Donald Trump, Twitter.com, June 30, 2020
35. Greta Anderson, "When Free Speech and Racist Voice communication Collide," insidehighered.com, June 23, 2020
36. John Daniel Davidson, "Why We Should Keep The Amalgamated Monuments Correct Where They Are," thefederalist.com, Aug. eighteen, 2017
37. George Martin, "Why Confederate Monuments Should Be Preserved and Honored," charlotteobserver.com, July half dozen, 2017
38. Lawrence A. Kuznar, "I Hate Our Amalgamated Monuments. but They Should Remain.," washingtonpost.com, Aug. 18, 2017
39. Mount Vernon, "Slavery," mountvernon.org (accessed July seven, 2020)
40. Monticello, "Jefferson's Attitudes toward Slavery," monticello.org (accessed July 7, 2020)
41. Sarah Fling, "The Formerly Enslaved Household of the Grant Family," whitehousehistory.org, April. 17, 2020
42. Stephen E. Ambrose, "Founding Fathers and Slaveholders," smithsonianmag.com, Nov. 2002
43. Colleen Walsh, "Must We Allow Symbols of Racism on Public Land?," harvard.edu, June xix, 2020
44. Evan Andrews, "How Many U.South. Presidents Owned Enslaved People?, history.com, Sep. 3, 2019
45. NPR Morning Edition, "For Stanton, All Women Were Not Created Equal," npr.org, July 13, 2011
46. Linda Lopata, "If Susan B. Anthony Was Racist," susanb.org (accessed July 7, 2020)
47. Jeff Kelly Lowenstein, "Martin Luther Rex Jr., Women, and the Possibility of Growth," chicagoreporter.com, Jan. 18, 2019
48. Elliot Ackerman, "The Confederate Monuments We Shouldn't Tear Down," nytimes.com, July 7, 2020
49. Rebecca Klar, "Arthur Ashe Statue on Richmond's Monument Artery Tagged with White Lives Affair Graffiti," thehill.com, June 17, 2020
fifty. Sophia A. Nelson, "Opinion: Don't Have Down Amalgamated Monuments. Here's Why.," nbcnews.com, June 1, 2017
51. Ellis Cose, "Keep Confederate Monuments, just Put Their Horrific History on Center Stage," usatoday, Aug. 21, 2017
52. Hannah Natanson, "In that location's a New Way to Bargain with Confederate Monuments: Signs That Explain Their Racist History," washingtonpost.com, Sep. 22, 2019
53. Natalie Huet, "Sir Geoff Palmer, 'Don't Take downwards Statues - Take down Racism,'" euronews.com, June xi, 2020
54. Jason Hanna and Ralph Ellis, "Charlottesville Removes 2 Confederate Statues every bit Onlookers Cheer," cnn.com, July ten, 2021
55. Neil Vigdor and Daniel Victor, "Over 160 Amalgamated Symbols Were Removed in 2020, Group Says," nytimes.com, Feb. 23, 2021