Leave the statuary in place.
Yesterday’s events (8/12/17) in Charlottesville, VA over the disposition of the equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee continues a difficult question: How to treat the past
I think we have to take our history as a whole. We officially rejected and ended slavery nearly 160 years ago, but the slave economy was built into the American foundation, on which rested all sorts of personal and institutional fortunes, north and south. When John C. Calhoun defended slavery, he was defending beneficiaries throughout the pre-Civil War nation.
There may not be any pre-Civil War American leaders, north south east or west, who could be found unstained by now condemned, discredited, disapproved, disliked, and/or unfashionable policies and job performance. The same goes for post-Civil War leaders.
Lee and Calhoun are currently contentious names. Some people want to remove southern commemorative statuary because it now offends. Some people in Minneapolis want to change Lake Calhoun to Bde Maka Ska, a Sioux name. The large, now urban lake was given its current name in the 1820s by surveyors who were mapping the territory around Ft. Snelling. The surveyors, sent by Secretary of War Calhoun, did the naming. It turns out that Bde Maka Ska was the name provided by the Iowa Indians who were driven out of the area by the Sioux in the 1700s.
Maybe we should employ a Soviet style of naming and call it Lake #2743.
I think we have to take our history as a whole. We officially rejected and ended slavery nearly 160 years ago, but the slave economy was built into the American foundation, on which rested all sorts of personal and institutional fortunes, north and south. When John C. Calhoun defended slavery, he was defending beneficiaries throughout the pre-Civil War nation.
There may not be any pre-Civil War American leaders, north south east or west, who could be found unstained by now condemned, discredited, disapproved, disliked, and/or unfashionable policies and job performance. The same goes for post-Civil War leaders.
Lee and Calhoun are currently contentious names. Some people want to remove southern commemorative statuary because it now offends. Some people in Minneapolis want to change Lake Calhoun to Bde Maka Ska, a Sioux name. The large, now urban lake was given its current name in the 1820s by surveyors who were mapping the territory around Ft. Snelling. The surveyors, sent by Secretary of War Calhoun, did the naming. It turns out that Bde Maka Ska was the name provided by the Iowa Indians who were driven out of the area by the Sioux in the 1700s.
Maybe we should employ a Soviet style of naming and call it Lake #2743.
Comments (144)
Then it would be a good idea to supplement the celebratory statues of heroic arseholes with a plaque detailing the shit they produced.
I don't doubt David Duke's remark to Trump yesterday. He tweeted:
Trump has yet to make a direct statement regarding the White Supremacists, sure his minions have said he denounced these bigots, but he has yet to respond directly. Apparently he looked in the mirror.
Reparations in some form or the other are needed if we want to see subsequent generations to become freed from the bigotry that is still so ingrained in our culture. Removal of the statues of historic oppressors is only one small step.
Quoting Cavacava
If the idea is that public resources should not pay for the creation, presentation, storage and preservation of symbols of injustice and oppression, that is one thing.
If the idea is that all such symbols should be eradicated, that is another.
Context matters. If something is being kept as a record, artifact, etc. from history and pre-history, that is one thing. If something is being kept to glorify injustice and oppression, that is another.
Changing the name of a place? won't cost us any cultural resources. Relocating something won't cost us any cultural resources.
But trying to eradicate records of the past will cost us valuable cultural resources that tell us who we are and how we got to where we are. A sanitized, sugar-coated past is not reality and cannot be used to heal or to make positive, permanent change.
So, are you in favor of removal of Robert E Lee's statue or are you suggesting that it be archived in some manner?
By whom? People who never had anything to do with past injustices? Guess what, that would itself be unjust. So no, no debt needs to be repaid.
Quoting Cavacava
Which are inherently racist and counter-productive.
Quoting Cavacava
I do. He's in the wrong. Trump won because he got more white votes and more black and Hispanic and Asian votes than Romney in 2012.
By the Nation, specifically to the black people who suffered under white oppression for 350 years...maybe you missed that. Black people, Hispanics, women, and others continue to suffer under a bigotry that is has been the rule not the exception in US
It's the law in the US.
Quoting Thorongil
And to whom?
To the descendants of "white trash" indentured servants who were cleaned off the streets of England and shipped over here?
To the descendants of the Irish who were scorned and abused?
To the descendants of the Italians?
To the descendants of the Jews?
To the descendants of the Japanese?
To the descendants of the Eastern and SE Europeans?
To the descendants of the Mexicans (lost much of their country)?
To the descendants of the Native Americans--as few of them as there are?
To the descendants of the blacks?
To the women who were discriminated against and who worked for nothing at home?
Quoting Cavacava
And you think the debate over reparations (to whom, from whom, how, and for what purpose) will end all of the bigotry? Ha!
Which is an abstraction designating a bunch of living, breathing human beings. Making them pay for crimes they did not commit is unjust.
Quoting Cavacava
This would be highly selective, as there were plenty of white slaves, Chinese slaves, Native American slaves, and so on. You would basically have to give money to everyone, unless you've created a special genetic device and a time machine so as to determine who was a slave and who wasn't. But then, we can go back even further and show that many of the white slave owners' ancestors, for example, would likely have been slaves in the Barbary States, or the Caliphates, or the Roman Empire, or even to their own people in pre-historic times. Everyone's ancestors have been slaves at some point in history, so your proposal quickly deflates into a purely ideological stance that ignorantly and unjustly wishes to arbitrarily privilege a certain population at the expense of another.
I never said it would end all bigotry, but I believe it is a step in the right direction. Symbols are important, and the symbol of Robert E Lee, as the head of the Confederate force in rebellion is still a potent one, it just cost some one their life.
You want me to answer what kind of reparations, and I would say whatever we can do to make sure that people are being treated fairly, even if that is somewhat to the detriment of the majority.
No, it is just, That's why we have laws like Affirmative Action, to attempt to offset past injustices.
Never said anything about money.
>:O Now you're just repeating yourself, having failed to challenge what I said or offer support for your claims. I never thought I'd see you admit defeat this soon, but I suppose I'll take it. I suggest some aloe vera for the ass spanking BC and I just gave to you.
The truth is the truth regardless of how hard you try to doge it.
The now deceased Ottoman Empire's Holocaust of Armenians is a century in the past. The time when reparations can effectively be made hasn't passed, but it is slipping away. The Jewish Holocaust remains close enough in time for reparations to continue.
Reparations for Native American genocide is even more problematic, since it was an on-going process over several centuries. Maybe 1890 can be fixed as the end of outright war against Indians--the battle of Wounded Knee in South Dakota. How many of the Indian peoples have any extant trace remaining? (Some clearly do.)
Determining the costs of slavery, genocide, or cultural extirpation, and thus the bill of reparations is practically impossible. It is larger than any sum that later, uncoerced generations will be willing to pay. None of problems of reparation undermine the injustices and great wrongs that were done. But the bad things that happened in the past can not be undone.
????????
You seem to be trolling, then.
The Revolutionary War might have been 150 years ago, but we have seen and we we continue to see racism systematic in the US, I believe the real civil war happened between 1955 and 1970. It was the legal version of the Civil War, it changed the way we do business, which for a capitalistic society means the way it will act.
As I stated symbols are important...archive the statue of Robert E. Lee to a swamp where such things belong, and not the middle of a city.
In 1961 John F. Kennedy issued the first "affirmative action executive order" and Johnson followed up later with enforcement. Past injustices were, no doubt, on the minds of policy developers, but Affirmative Action was intended to achieve present and future fairness for those who were then experiencing discrimination in the present time.
For the most part, affirmative action achieved modest success, at best. Local government employment seems to have been the area showing the most success, likely because increasing visible employment among minorities would usually be good politics for local politicians. But affirmative action is also known to be a divisive factor among workers and organized labor. That a significant portion of minority hires under affirmative action direction resulted in less competent hires is a common assumption.
Applying affirmative action to college admissions has been much more contentious. Institutions can not simultaneously follow an admissions policy based on merit and at the same time on compensatory quotas.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 enacted July 2, 1964 is a landmark civil rights and US labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. That changed things.
Beside Robert E Lee was a traitor, a turn coat...who should be abhorred as much as Benedict Arnold. Let the polliwogs in a swamp adulate to him.
(P.S. Maybe Mr. T will join them)
The Federal housing policy deprived the population in black communities of the opportunity to leverage home ownership into a substantial amount of wealth. Even if blacks were able to buy homes (as they were) various factors prevented most of them from harvesting accumulated value. Segregation prevented privately owned housing from appreciating. The Interstate Highway Program tended to steer freeways through black or poor neighborhoods. "Urban Renewal" and "slum clearance" were often euphemism for "black removal".
Blacks suffered a great deal because of these policies. Reparations can't take blacks back to a time when many suburbs were just forming, can't duplicate the long-term rise in home values between 1945 and the present, can't make up for the 2 or 3 generations whose educations were quite inferior, who had little access to employment, and were left out of the post war economic boom (which is now decidedly over). But...
A compensatory program for the people and their descendants harmed in the last 25 to 50 years of federal housing policy is possible. It won't seem like manna from heaven, because individuals will have to strive hard to take advantage of housing, education, and labor training programs with clear-cut goals, even if they are free of cost and offer great future benefits.
Who, these days, "abhors" Benedict Arnold?
Maybe he wasn't as craven as some would have it.
As you no doubt are aware, the Civil War was an ambiguous issue for many Americans, North and South. Traitors? Of course they (the Confederates) were. Just like deserters were during the Vietnam war who went to Canada -- I thought then, still think, they were on the right side.
TA-NEHISI COATES
You don't have to look that far to see that gerrymandering in some states is skewed to the determent of poorer, blacker neighborhoods. The FED still has to monitor bank's lending due to Red Lining. The Wells Fargo Bank paid $135 million and Bank of America $335 million to settle discrimination suits in 2011, but the damage was already done.
'Tear down that statue'
The statue was not named in the charge and has refused to comment.
The upcoming removal of the statue was the reason why the White Supremacists, KKK and others went to Charlottesville, The lady went to stand up for the statues removal, 'They' killed her.
So yes, while the statue did not fall on her, it was indirectly contributory to her death. If the statue was not there she would still be with us.
I agree, he was a traitor, who fought against our country. He should have been hanged.
Bruh.
Ok, 155 years ago.
Bruv....
A witch hunt to try to remove any historical sign of oppression and injustice is not the path to healing, better relations between diverse groups, and a more just society.
For one thing, pre-history, history and their relics/artifacts are not as cut and dried as ideologues would have us believe. Consider what Morris Berman says as reported here:
“The treatment of the South by the North,” Berman says, “was the template for the way the United States would come to treat any nation it regarded as an enemy: not merely a scorched earth policy, but also a ‘scorched soul’ policy” that it would use in Hawaii, the Philippines, Cuba, Japan, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and anywhere else it could achieve it..."
Maybe to some people a Robert E. Lee statue symbolizes slavery, racism, and centuries of oppression. Maybe to other people it symbolizes resistance to an evil empire that destroys societies and cultures wherever it goes. Fighting over removing or leaving that statue divides us and distracts us from the systemic sources of the pain of both groups, and it won't make the events of the past or their consequences go away.
I don't dispute that he made his choice, but it was the wrong choice. It was a choice based on an immoral economic system. To now treat him as a symbol, begs the question.
He was anti-slavery ironically. But a monument to him is just blatantly fucked up.
It's not up to me, the town planned to remove the statue....these thugs came in and created holy hell. I don't see any statues of Hitler up in Germany.
I'm not convinced of this. My current view is that he was faced with two evils that he had to choose between, and I don't necessarily blame him for picking one evil over the other. And I think it's childish to write off Lee's decision merely because slavery was and is immoral, fundamentally. The American Civil War (not Revolutionary War...) was an immensely complicated period in history, so passing quick judgement over people like you have done in this thread is pretty intellectually vacuous to me.
Quoting Mongrel
Why's it fucked up? We celebrate Tecumseh Sherman with dozens of statues across the country, yet I don't see anyone up in arms about that. If this debate is only about what the statue represents, then we should stop judging the person, because Lee is not the devil.
Quoting Cavacava
Are you really comparing Robert E. Lee to Hitler?
Do you see how flimsy your argument is, now?
My beef is with what it represents.
Germany does not allow statues of Hitler. They think it will not help them heal. They will not forget the what happened.
The town decided to have the statue removed. they live there, its their decision and I think it is the right one!
Put it in a swamp.
And I suppose my beef would be with racists who have attempted to make an idol out of a man who didn't share the same views. I also have beef with those who think that a statue of him means that Lee was in fact on the same level as the fat racist bums thinking he's on their side.
You need to prove to me that Hitler is a comparable example with regard to Lee. Please do so.
Also, a statue of Robert E. Lee being thought of as a hate symbol only shows the ignorance and stupidity of the people seeking "healing". The inflated race issues in the US have nothing to do with a statue of Robert E. Lee, but with the ingrained, willful ignorance of those who do not understand history or how history unfolds by the day.
Yes I have, twice. Both times were humbling experiences.
But why do you ask? If we're tearing down a statue of Robert E. Lee for foolishly being considered a symbol of slavery, oppression, and hate, then perhaps we should tear this down, too?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_Memorial_(Arlington_National_Cemetery)
Sorry, not teaching tonight.
Again, I can't go along with your idea--as expressed in your original post in this thread--that removing symbols from the environment is the path to healing and justice.
Symbols are arbitrary and therefore can mean different things to different people. What looks like a statue of a champion of racism and bigotry to you might look light a statue of a heroic freedom fighter to someone else.
If you have got solid scientific evidence that removing symbols from the environment has the powerful effects that you claim it has, then please provide it.
I suspect that what really happens is that over time symbols gradually lose any powerful meaning and are quietly removed from the environment as part of housekeeping, not as part of revolutionary change.
Everyone knows that two years after the death of Schopenhauer, the US gained its independence.
[hide]
To be clear, I have been talking about removing symbols being a tactic employed by parties from outside the communities where the symbols are located.
A local decision by local people to remove a symbol because they need to heal, because the things it is taken to represent go against their values, etc. is appropriate.
This is facile reasoning. You're just assuming that the statue represents the Confederacy, slavery, racism, and other "bad stuff." In fact, it honors a man who was himself quite honorable, despite his flaws. There would be other, more suitable structures to erect if one wished to "celebrate the Confederacy."
Unfortunately his decision to fight for the south defines him. Whatever honor he may be due will have to be offered in private.
This is enormously misleading and really just a slur. He fought for the state of Virginia based on certain political principles.
As I told Cavacacvaca, it's not that simple. Not every Confederate soldier fought for slavery, just as not every German soldier during WWII fought for the extermination of 6+million Jews. If you disagree, and do think that the German soldiers were all Nazis, were all racists and Aryan supremacists, and were fighting for genocide, explain yourself.
Except it is. Boiling down Lee and the Confederacy to a single word, "slavery," is unhistorical, unfair, and extremely lazy.
Nice dodge, or should I say, "doge."
You're not addressing my post at all, why?
Get more familiar.
(Y)
But if you aren't just kidding around... that's helpful to me. I've been seeing a lot of sexism lately. Maybe the people doing it really don't understand why it's offensive and ugly. I guess that's possible.
Nah... My Civil War phase is long passed.
Still not addressing my points.
I'm going to bed, perhaps in the morning you'll be less in shock and more able to have an argument with me, (Y)
Me too. It's been real.
Robert E Lee who is often thought of as a brilliant tactician made one significant tactical error, he joined the wrong side. (The South after the War generated a myth, which stuck. It was that the Rebel soldiers were fighting for their home, and not an economic system which relied on slavery...the "Lost Cause", which is still bandied about)
Lee's character is part of the historic myth.
He was a slave owner and wrote the following is from a letter (which is ofter misquoted) he wrote in 1856.
So slavery was bad for white people and good for black people, only God can change that.
The following from the Atlantic Magizine June 4th, 2017.
It is hardly a wonder that cities such as Charlottesville do not wish to be associated with Robert E Lee, his statue or anything else that has to do with him.
Slavery or killing people is wrong. Thinking they're ok is also wrong. What about thinking that having that opinion is not wrong? What about thinking that is not wrong? Where do we draw the line?
Lee was right to acknowledge the evil slavery was to white people, wrong to compare the suffering. For white people, the evil was a self-inflicted moral wound; for slaves, the wrong was an externally imposed moral, physical and emotional wound renewed daily.
Per and , the statue's service as a lightning rod will likely speed it's change of address.
Perhaps we should have a 'world park' where the statues of former glories of various regimes could keep each other uncomfortable company: Stalin, Hitler, Lee, Calhoun, Idi Amin, bad popes, tsarist tyrants, Saudi kings, ISIS caliphs, Mexican drug cartel thugs, backward regressive jerks like Trump, record-breaking crooks, et al. It should be located somewhere quite unpleasant: among multiple petrochemical refineries on the gulf coast of Texas, overlooking a sewage lagoon, near the ends of the landing/takeoff runways at Heathrow, permanently ruined forest land in the tropics, mosquito ridden swamps...
No, she didn't.
Quoting ?????????????
Yes, an opinion, which she hasn't backed up.
Quoting ?????????????
What the fuck??
Quoting ?????????????
No, sorry, I've provided an argument which she hasn't addressed point by point.
Hey, you got the right war this morning!
Quoting Cavacava
Tactical or moral error?
Quoting Cavacava
It's true that Confederates fought for their homes. There's nothing mythical about it.
Quoting Cavacava
This supposed myth would be a false attribution, which wouldn't represent the man himself.
Quoting Cavacava
As were half of the founding fathers. Are you going to say that they were rebels against the British Empire and fought for the wrong side, hmm?
Quoting Cavacava
If you say that the following letter is misquoted and you don't even bother to cite where you get the "properly" quoted letter from it's hard for me to take you seriously.
Quoting Cavacava
Aaaaaaaaaaand he didn't say that at all. Taken out of context, firstly, he nevertheless writes that for both the whites and the blacks, slavery is evil. Being a greater evil for either of them doesn't make it good. Also, he, in the quote you provide, explicitely suggests that it will be abolished. And if you read more of Lee, you would find that he is in favor of the abolition of slavery, but only in the right way. What that right way looks like? Certainly not what many in the North wanted, which would have solved nothing and only spiraled the Southern economy into shambles.
Quoting Cavacava
A magazine, >:O
And of course it tiredly brings up familial separation as the only dig on Lee's character, without even discussing why families were often separated in the first place.
Quoting Cavacava
Sure, if people aren't properly educating themselves and take the truth to come from magazines.
I've recently read this book, which has been a great read. It certainly puts the Southern dilemma into a cogent perspective. http://www.ugapress.org/index.php/books/pharsalia
This is an example of how it works, actually. Agustino is sexist. If he had his way, people like me would be disenfranchised and peripheralized. The people who moderate this forum know that, but they don't care. Every time I see his posts, it just sinks in deeper and deeper with me: the moderators of this forum are just as sexist as he is. They have to be. Why else would they leave his nasty comments up?
Same thing with the statue of Lee. The message it sends to both whites and blacks is counter to what We the People have declared we are and will be.
But as I mentioned to you in PM.. if you make it about personality, you're right. Humanity is a bunch of flawed rascals.
Indeed. So where are your arguments?
I don't recall ever reading anything blatantly sexist from Agustino. And most of the mods dislike Agustino I think, so I'm unsure why you think they're on his side?
Quoting Mongrel
So what We the People stand for is tearing down things that we are offended by and don't like. mmk. Reminds me of ISIS, actually...
And take my posts out of context? No, I think not. I don't think you have anything productive to say, so I'm unsure why you're even responding to me.
The Atlantic Magazine was established in 1857, it is a well regarded moderate publication. The letter and information I referenced were taken from it.
The Lost Cause myth based on the work of historian'David Blight writes in his 2001 book Race and Reunion,
https://www.buzzfeed.com/adamserwer/why-were-finally-taking-down-confederate-flags?utm_term=.cck3zzZk#.ajwpddVZ
Lee said what I quoted ....here is the letter read it for yourself. http://fair-use.org/robert-e-lee/letter-to-his-wife-on-slavery.
The forced separation of families was tragic. You can't white wash the calamity of slavery with false truths, that was tried and it failed.
Put the statue in a swamp.
No, Americans go overboard celebrating the offensive. That's actually partly why we like Trump, I think.
"...our forefathers founded upon this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."
Lee put himself on the wrong side of history.
I'm not a fan of Blight. He has always ignored the fundamental problems that emancipating the slaves all in one fell swoop had on Southern society, and would have had if it was done before any Civil war, as if freedom from being labeled a "slave" made every African American life infinitely better, more economically secure, and more socially accepted. If there is a myth to be understood here it is the abolition of slavery changed very little for African Americans. They worked the same fields as before, for the same plantation owners as before, lived in the same, shoddy housing as before, and made so little money that moving on and out of their situation remained as unlikely as when they were slaves making no money at all. Blight also conveniently ignores the immediate need for labor in the postwar Southern economy which had lost significant numbers of male laborers, was in widespread bankruptcy, and didn't have the capital to function as Northern agribusiness did.
Quoting Cavacava
:’(
Quoting Cavacava
I don't disagree that it was tragic, nor am I white-washing (how potentially racist of you, lol) the issue.
When this was written men only included white landowners.
Quoting Mongrel
I don't feel the need to judge his moral fiber. He's merely on one side of history, and that's all.
I was quoting the Gettysburg Address, Popeye.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
That's cool. You shouldn't have a problem with the removal of the statue, then.
I know. When that was written men only included white landowners, lol.
Quoting Mongrel
It's there so it stays. There's no good reason to remove it.
What what? I'm failing to see your point here, I thought the part you quoted here was rather cleverly pointed out. Is the "what the fuck" an amazed or shocked kind?
Quite brainless and stupid, actually, which I don't like.
Are you talking about eligibility to vote? Lincoln was elected in 1860 if that helps you. Might want to read a history of your own country... I'm just sayin'
[insert disagreement]
Maybe. I wouldn't judge it so harshly. But radical.
All men were not equal or equally free at that point, so I don't know what you're saying.
Everyone you disagree with? Ok, add the people in this thread while you're at it.
It's a goal. A founding principle.
But there's hardly such a thing as representing something objectively. The statue does not represent slavery, but there are people who interpret it to represent that. At how many people do you draw the line? Is one offended person enough to tear it down? Dozens? Five thousands? A million?
How does anybody not know that?
That is why we need something more objective. That is why I asked twice, where do you draw the line? First, when I asked whether thinking that thinking that thinking that thinking that doing something morally wrong is morally wrong, and second time when I asked how many people who interpret that statue as offending are needed.
If you don't care one way or the other, then why not just let the people who do care deal with it?
Unfortunately to you, I do care. As I have said, to me the statue represents freedom of speech and tolerance.
1) Opinion noted, but believe it or not, we don't read every @Agustino post (at least I don't) and rely on members to a degree to flag offensive posts. That or a PM is the most direct way of getting something dealt with.
2) Please use the feedback forum if you want to continue this. This discussion is not about Agustino and any more from anyone about him here will be deleted.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
-Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Your ally is David Duke. Are you ok with that?
You'd probably point out that your example is an opinion while mine is a necessary action, but I can rephrase that as "staying alive is worth the trouble of breathing". Your argument is a gross fallacy. Association fallacy, to be exact.
Some of the white supremacists (e.g., the Ku Klux Klan) also have a thing about Catholics who, in the United States, are mostly white. White racists tend to come out of Protestant communities. That tendency isn't a factor of Protestant theology, it's more a function of ethnicity and the geography of religion.
Most Catholics I meet have no idea how deep seated anti-Catholic sentiment once was and still is in some places. I knew a New Jersey Italian girl who was mystified that her future in-laws wouldn't come to the wedding if it was held in a Catholic Church.
As predicted.
Are we going to remove all of their statues and rename all the roads, bridges and buildings?
By all accounts Robert E. Lee was an honorable man and it seems his major fault was losing the war and the fact that some factions of bigots, Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists have made him their hero of sorts. The Civil War is part of our history, it basically made us a nation. Before the War people thought of themselves as Virginians or Ohioans first and as citizens of the USA second. Lee felt duty bound to follow his native state of Virginia. The issue of secession of the states was settled by the war. There were men who fought and died on both sides and both sides have the right to honor their history and their sacrifice. The war was initially not about slavery as any good history student will tell you it was about preserving the union.
Hi Prothero.
Take a look at this article.
I was familiar with that article in the Atlantic before I wrote the post. I guess the point is, close scrutiny of almost any historical figure will reveal their weaknesses as well as their strengths. Biographies in early decades generally glossed over the faults but modern historians and biographies try to show these individuals in their true complexity.
Roosevelt turned away Jewish Immigrants before and during the war, and interned Asian-Americans during the war. Should we then tear down all the monuments on the mall and rename all the streets, bridges and buildings?
Jefferson's star has been in decline due to his relationship with Sally Hemmings and his treatment of her children and family.
What about the civil war battlefields and the monuments there?
Once one starts this process of revisionist history where does it stop.
The civil war (war between the states) was about much more than slavery. The southerners who fought in the war for the most part were not wealthy or slaveholders. They thought they were fighting for their state and their rights. In fact the issue of federalism and states rights are still with us today but at least the right of secession issue has been settled (except maybe in Texas).
Lincoln clearly stated has purpose in the war was not to free the slaves but to preserve the union.
It is ignorance of history to see these monuments and these individuals as emblematic of nothing but slavery. Tearing down the monuments will not erase the historical stain of slavery nor solve the problems of residual racism and segregation which are still with us today. We should not even try to erase the history of the civil war, rather we should learn the lessons it teaches.
Well then how could you have said "By all accounts..." ?
But don't you see that approximately 15% of our population is black, many descendants of slaves who were treated immorally and were continually mistreated even after the war and many claim are still being mistreated by the majority. The cities/states where these monuments and other symbols are located have every right to remove them from their daily lives. Let these mementos be archived put them in a swamp, the desert or wherever.
In my "ignorance", I believe that this monument, the Confederate Flag, and the other mementos, materially mock Lincoln's words.
OK, then, forget the argument that it is immoral....that these mementos still offend a significant section of our population... that they blatantly blaspheme Lincoln's words.
It "ends" with the people who have to live and work in their presence. If these people don't want these mementos, then they ought to have the right to have them removed. If this is still a country of the people, by the people for the people, and they voted to remove the statue, then it ought to be removed.. In the same manner as the State of Georgia recently stopped flying the Confederate Flag on its statehouse. I don't believe there is logical or moral argument or any other rational argument that over rules their collective of choice of how they wish to live, what they want to see everyday.
That's why these statues are coming down in many Southern States.
Note I have not said that these statues necessary need to be destroyed (although I think it would be preferential) but rather archived, as someone suggested...as in a museum or equivalent. Where maybe they could be understood in their proper context, but I am not even sure of that.
That's crap, and you have said nothing, the funny thing is that I think you realize this. The United States is a representational form of government. To now use that form of rule as defective is worst than Trump's attempt to portrait his conviction as truth.
Just so you can see the extent of the problem. I am done now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monuments_and_memorials_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America
But the statutes are clearly not the problem. I doubt anyone is inspired to violence or hatred by them; I suspect they find that inspiration elsewhere. So remove them by all means, but the question to be considered, I think, is what their removal would accomplish and what the consequences of their removal would be.
There is the Acropolis in Greece and the Forum in Rome, both have been around a long time, statues and all. The Greeks and the Romans both had slaves, BTW.
I just think seeing any/all confederate monuments as just a symbol of slavery is historically incorrect and starting this kind of revisionist history trend is likely to cause more problems than it solves.
Indeed, but there was not a racial element to the ancients' slavery.
Quoting prothero
I guess so. In terms of a spectrum of acceptability, perhaps Lee is towards the more acceptable end - though "more" acceptable does not necessarily mean "acceptable" of course..
I do worry about Jefferson, Washington, Jackson, Roosevelt and many others if we begin this sort of project.
To be fair to Lee, from my understanding, by the time he arrived at Gettysburg, a good portion of his forces were engaged in fighting and retreating at that point was not really in the cards. Of course, these points are taken away for deciding to attack the middle of the enemy forces over open ground. With Antietam, again, I don't think you could disengage the enemy that easily and regroup like you could in more modern wars. At best, Lee would have to retreat and give the control over to the Union forces as to where the battle should take place.
Quoting Cavacava
Process matters.
As far as I know, very few people in Minneapolis associate Lake Calhoun with John C., slavery, states' rights, or anything else. It is still called Lake Calhoun, but "Bde Maka Ska" -- the Sioux name --has been added to signs. Bde Maka Ska means White Earth Lake, but other tribes (driven out by the later arriving Sioux) called it Loon Lake.
I find the process quite problematic. The request for a name change was made by an on-line petition by about 1000 people. 1000 on-line signatures, 400,000 citizens. The Park Board decided to go ahead and change the name after Yale changed a building name. "The changes are part of a national trend away from place names that honor racist or otherwise fraught figures." according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
"Racist or fraught figures." Now that's a very wide opening for dubious decisions.
We have minorities that are offended by Halloween, some offended by Christmas. I've been corrected so many times for saying "Merry Christmas", I switched to "happy holidays" which offended others. The safest thing seems to be say nothing at all. I little off subject but still on the subject of the excesses of Political Correctness, and the "fraught" notion of microagressions.
I don't think so either, but they moved remarkable swiftly GIVEN the enormous logistical problems of supply both armies had to cope with. Just think about horses; there were about 4 or 5 soldiers per horse. 40,000 soldiers, 10,000 horses. Feeding and taking care of both two and four legged armies was a planning nightmare, but they did it. The rank and file didn't ride; it just took that many horses to move guns and equipment, supplies, ammunition, feed, horseshoes, etc. and to remove the human wounded. There were long wagon trains between depots and battle fields, moving continuously.
Debatable. Different sorts of people were judged to be more or less fitting for certain work based upon their background. Just as black Africans were thought to be good laborers by American plantation owners, so did many of the ancient societies. I mean, just look at Egypt's history if you want to see some real class stratification based on what we now call racial stratification.
https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/24588/
Some students at the University of Missouri have called on administrators to remove a statue of founding father Thomas Jefferson, suggesting in a petition and during a recent protest that the campus sculpture is offensive, oppressive, and celebrates a “racist rapist.
http://thehayride.com/2017/05/take-em-nola-demands-removal-andrew-jacksons-statue
Yesterday, Take ‘Em Down NOLA held a rally at the site of the old Jefferson Davis monument. They demanded the removal of still more monuments and the names of streets to be changed. Among the monuments they demanded removed is Andrew Jackson’s monument in Jackson Square.
Take ‘Em Down NOLA’ president Malcolm Suber called for streets such as General Ogden and Jefferson Davis Parkway to be renamed and the monument to President Andrew Jackson, though unassociated with the Confederacy, to come down.
Andrew Jackson, who saved New Orleans in 1815 from British rule, is even more complex than the Confederate monuments. While he was a brilliant general and a former U.S. President, Jackson was a slave owner and he conducted what would be called today genocide against Native Americans. It is for those very reasons why Andrew Jackson is going to be replaced by Harriet Tubman on the $20. That is a move I support, by the way.
http://www.dailywire.com/news/19741/leftist-activists-demand-new-york-museum-take-down-michael-qazvini
On Monday, more than 200 SJW zealots held a protest inside the American Museum of Natural History in New York City to take down the supposedly “racist” statue of former President Theodore Roosevelt. The protest’s organizers, NYC Stands with Standing Rock and Decolonize This Place, also called for Columbus Day to be renamed Indigenous People’s Day.
In reparation for your hideous racist behavior, we demand that everyone in the western hemisphere submit to a 500 year regime of Scandinavian Design, Danish Modern, and FinnStyle and everyone learn Norwegian. That'll teach you to lie about history! (And you can jolly well learn to love lutefisk too.)
Italians have better food. I'll take baccala (at least its not treated with lye, my stomach just rolled), you can keep your lutefisk, and the cream herring too. Give me a lasagna, spaghetti with meatballs, pasta, pizza, tomatoes mozzarella, the best wine & women in the world!...just fuhgettaboutit, the Italian got the credit because Italians have the best food in the world and the biggest mouths.
Most Americans are beneficiaries of the Aboriginal American genocide. Every house, factory, farm, bank, apartment building, sidewalk, store, freeway, oil well, mine, or mill is located on expropriated land. The wealth of America was extracted from and produced on the land of the displaced or exterminated American Indian.
Slavery was visited upon Africans, and slaves were worked primarily on plantations, but not exclusively, and not exclusively in future Confederate states. Southern states, southern planters, southern importers or exporters, southern manufacturers, southern slave markets -- just about the entire southern economy -- depended on capital under the control of New York banks (primarily). Northern firms conducted much of the trade in southern goods. Slaves and plantations were insured by northern companies. Much of the slave trade was conducted by companies in Connecticut or Rhode Island.
The wealth northern businesses accumulated from the south benefitted wealthy families, institutions, and northern states. Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, for example, benefitted from the slave trade. Just one among numerous beneficiaries.
The northern business establishment that benefitted from slavery also benefitted from the civil war, and benefitted from reconstruction. When you control so much money, it is difficult to not benefit from just about anything.
Many family histories of Americans include branches of antebellum southerners, slave owners, slaves, army soldiers who fought against the American Indians in the genocidal wars, and so on and so forth. Immigrants who came here in the early 20th century? They were, in many cases, egregiously sexist and racist, to boot -- even if they themselves were oppressed people.
And white people? The bulk of white people shipped over to the colonies were white trash the English wanted to get rid of. For the most part, the early white trash remained below the mean level of accomplishment. They stayed working class. Waves of white riff raff came to the United States to find a better life than they could get in Norway, Italy, Germany, Ireland, Russia, the Balkan and Baltic states, etc. 99% of them did not become part of the rich 1%, or even the better off top 10%. They stayed working class. The American Ruling Class has never respected the white working class much more than it has respected any other part of the American demographic.
I was just thinking about it, and I realized that in the case of Antietam, Lee probably could have ran away and gotten away with it, given that the opposing commander was George McClellan, a man so cautious that Lee probably could have spent three months vacation while McClellan pondered whether Lee's retreat was a feint or not.
OK. But it was all so long ago and part of expired civilizations that those ancient monuments have a different feel to them. Also, Confederate statuary and other officially located symbols sprang up despite the fact the Confederacy lost. History is supposed to be written by the victors and all that...The cause thrived on despite "defeat" and so there is an extra motive to put that particular aberration to rights.