Thats not fair, asking me as a law professor. We must fight for the values we admire in our politics and culture. We do not erect monuments to people who performed extraordinary feats that were unquestionably evil, even if their characters included some virtuous traits. GREENE: Professor, thank you so much for your time. The stone sentinels that dot our landscape serve as artifacts of the past, providing us with a visual sign of where we may still go. ", ProCon.org. In the United States, Confederate generals were overthrown or voted out. The Revolucin Bolivariana, which took place on October 12, 2002, is made up of a number of planteamientos. The standard traditionally applied is as follows: When deciding whom to commemorate by statues, place names, monuments, holidays, currency, or coins we select individuals who performed. Here are some top contenders, Stupendous vision, energy, competence, and courage. Though they may represent history, the history that they represent is done in . We can do that. How will Mr. DeSantiss wild Disney ride end? The fact that a particular vice prevailed in a persons place and time becomes an excuse for stripping recognition from people whose lives contradict the propaganda of those in power. Then youre asking museums to do a lot of work they dont want to do and maybe shouldnt be doing. Other statues of historic figures, such as slave-owning presidents or imperialists like Christopher Columbus, promote similar oppressive and revisionist messages. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. 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 hold back the massive industrialization of America, they were trying to preserve rural agrarian civilization, according to David W. Blight, PhD, American History Professor at Yale University. Juan De Anda, Why Representation Matters Now, mediapost.com, April 21, 2020, 28. I understand the importance of remembering those who died fighting for both sides of the war. The US National Trust for Historic Preservation offers a point of contrast, having stated: 'We should always remember the past, but do not necessarily need to revere it'. Are you. Activists are campaigning for a statue of Cecil Rhodes to be removed from an Oxford college. In illuminating how vulnerable Americans have long been to ugly racial appeals, and how willfully blind we have been to racial injustice, those statues could remind us of the catastrophic consequences of not putting bigotry aside. [51], Some jurisdictions have chosen to put explanatory plaques beside Confederate monuments to teach a more complete history. Evan Andrews, How Many U.S. Presidents Owned Enslaved People?, history.com, Sep. 3, 2019, 45. I dont. But so did tens of thousands of others similarly situated. [9] And a statue of black tennis star and Civil Rights activist Arthur Ashe was tagged with white lives matter graffiti in Richmond, Virginia. They are a part of our cultural heritage. Pros. It started in the 1890s with the Worlds Columbian Exposition in Chicago. UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: When do we want it? The ornaments do not represent the history of the world; rather, they represent what the past chose to celebrate and commemorate. In the 1930s and 1940s, revolutionary and reformist forces distrusted Columbus statues because they had been erected with a clearly racist and Eurocentric spirit. Who Abraham Lincoln was. procon@eb.com, 2023 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. [42], Jefferson is the author of two of our most dear principles as a country: equality and religious freedom. During the globalBlack Lives Matterprotests in the summer of 2020, calls to take down the statues were met with citizens not only actively damaging or removing statues of Confederate figures, but targeting statues of slave-holdingFounding Fathers in general, as well as historic monuments to Abraham Lincoln and abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass. Photograph: Schalk van Zuydam/AP A similar story can be told in the southern states of the US. Rebecca Klar, Arthur Ashe Statue on Richmond's Monument Avenue Tagged with White Lives Matter Graffiti, thehill.com, June 17, 2020, 50. According to theSouthern Poverty Law Center(SPLC), 59 Confederate statues and nine markers or plaques were removed from public land in 19 US states between June 17, 2015 and July 6, 2020. Police stopped these protesters, but statues are coming down around the U.S., yanked down or removed by local governments. As goes the South, so goes the nation: Tennessees HIV cuts are a warning for marginalized populations, Florida, Oklahoma double down on the death penalty we need nationwide abolition now, Supreme Court to consider overruling Chevron doctrine, Tucker Carlson, on leaked video, derides Fox streaming service, Al Franken blasts Supreme Court: Its illegitimate, Senate rankings: Here are the 5 seats most likely to flip, Human brains show larger-than-life activity at moment of death. Citizens have the right to express themselves in ways that respect their personal beliefs by creating statues and holding controversial opinions. Residents offered replacement suggestions ranging from boxer Muhammed Ali to writer Wendell Berry. They can be kept in museums with proper historical context rather than on a plinth to be admired. They should be removed from public spaces because they serve as a reminder of the negative effects of racism and bigotry, as well as a symbol of how far we have come since the colonial era. Since the election of President Donald Trump, there has been an increased push to remove Confederate statues and monuments. 13.8K Followers. It would be odd for me to condone other people doing something I would not do. A year after the United States had a diplomatic confrontation with Venezuela, Washington had a diplomatic confrontation with Caracas, and Venezuela had a diplomatic confrontation with Washington. Brian Palmer and Seth Freed Wessler, The Costs of the Confederacy, smithsonianmag.com, Dec 2018, 5. Mississippis secession declaration states, Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery the greatest material interest of the world. [14] [17]. Take away anything that smacks of the sort of imperialist legacy which clearly that statue embodies. In Valencia, a retirar a la Rplica del Imperio has been arranged. The Shepherd monument would not have been returned to the National Park Service if it did not provide interpretive signs and returned it to its rightful owner. They can be offensive and hurtful to certain groups of people. The ceremony was whites only, and featured children forming a Confederate flag and singing Dixie.. The definition of a statue includes a work of art that represents something as well. SINHA: Well, I think it is important not to go from one extreme to the other. The Confederate statues have no redeeming qualities to them, but other statues certainly do. It is unfortunate that they are considered public art works rather than memorializing them. Cicero was a great orator, an outstanding lawyer, a spokesman for balanced government, and the single person most responsible for transmitting the Greek philosophical tradition to Western Europe. Aishvarya Kavi, Activists Push for Removal of Statue of Freed Slave Kneeling Before Lincoln, nytimes.com, June 27, 2020, 20. Despite its relatively small price tag, it is still worth considering, especially when compared to the total cost of the Civil War and its aftermath. Stephen E. Ambrose, Founding Fathers and Slaveholders, smithsonianmag.com, Nov. 2002, 43. During the 1970s, a reformulated version of the Tariff Act of 1930 was enacted, which allowed the venezolano to dispensa a Cristbal Col*n. This reaccin is made up of two components: the poblacin fluctu and the condena a la indiferencia. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Monuments of Hope, Memorials to a Poisoned Past, britannica.com, May 25, 2018, 23. They represent the establishments value system at any given time, regardless of the circumstances. Adolph Hitler gets none, although he was kind to dogs. For many years people have been arguing whether certain controversial monuments, such as statues, should be destroyed or removed. There are at least two reasons for not permitting contemporaneous vices to disqualify historical figures from favorable commemoration. Note: Responses have been edited for length and clarity. In response to a question posed by The Daily Mail, the Queen Mothers statue in Trafalgar Square should be chosen. Defunding the humanities, cutting history classes and departments. And there was a real concern about assimilating these immigrants into you can call it Americanization, but what it really was was an assimilation into white, Protestant culture. GAZETTE: What do you say to those who argue that the removal of such statues in prominent public settings dishonors the memory of those who died fighting for the Confederacy? GAZETTE: In the past, people have suggested the monuments should stay, but that additional plaques or other information should be incorporated to add context. SINHA: Exactly. Common faults are, by definition, common. And I think most Civil War historians have been against Confederate statues - if not removal, at least with contextualization. For proof, just look at the 1911 dedication of a Jefferson Davis statue in New Orleans. These battles have a strong historical context, as they were influenced by a very Venezuelan tradition: Bolivarian political historicism. Eventually, police descended on the. A 2018 report from the Southern Poverty Law Center found there are more than 1,700 monuments to the Confederacy still in public spaces. Q: How do we decide what stays and what goes? The statues were built to honor and enforce white supremacist views, and the intent or damaging effect have not been erased by time. I think the difference that George Floyd's murder has made and that's been a bit heartening for me is that ordinary American citizens have finally realized what these statues symbolize and how they have been a standing affront for African Americans and their quest for equal citizenship in this country because Black Americans have always been against it. One claim for not removing certain statues of people who have committed egregious acts is that we should not treat people of another time as if they were second-rate citizens. GORDON-REED: This moment feels different because theres been a great awakening in the country about police-on-citizen violence. Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. Should we not honor the contributions of Washington, Jefferson, and Grant to the United States because they owned slaves, as did many men of their standing at the time, even though they struggled with the institution? Heres a List., nytimes.com, Aug. 28, 2017, 6. 4. Perhaps that is precisely why the standard is flouted by those who want to politicize everything. This equates to 1.57 jobs, $76,000 in wages and $14,101 in tax revenues for every 1,000 tons of material recycled. Both Washington and Jefferson were critical to the formation of the country and to the shaping of it in its early years. Explore the Southern Poverty Law Centers Whose Heritage: Public Symbols of the Confederacy resource, which promotes the removal of confederate statues. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., PhD, Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, notes that enduringly charged symbols of the former Confederacy [add] to our fears that, instead of embracing the promise of democracy in a diverse society, some want to return us to a far more restrictive time, when freedom was circumscribed by race. [22], We cant get to learning from our history if we keep accepting that racism should be celebrated in American history, according to Khalil Gibran Muhammad, PhD, Professor of History, Race and Public Policy at Harvard University [1]. Poli Sci prof (IR) at U. Illinois. The standard traditionally applied is as follows: When deciding whom to commemorate by statues, place names, monuments, holidays, currency, or coins we select individuals who performed extraordinary feats that, on balance, made the world a better place. There is no path to a peaceful and prosperous country without challenging and rejecting that as a basis for our society. The shooter was said to have glorified the Confederate South, posing in Facebook photos with the Battle Flag of the Northern Virginia Army (also known now as the Confederate flag, though it never represented the Confederate States) and touring historical Confederate locations before the shooting. [56], When 11 Southern states seceded from the Union in 1861, they were very clear that the reason was the impending abolition of slavery. Many of the men with whom George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Ulysses S. Grant were associated at the time were slaves. An 1884 Confederate monument to General Robert E. Lee is removed from Lee Circle in New Orleans, Louisiana, on May 19, 2017. Those are the real threats to history. I grew up seeing hundreds of small stone and bronze markers along our desert roads telling us about the great white Americans who passed through or discovered the great West or our mighty Colorado River, said Diaz, whowas born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California. As for museums, people I know who work in museums tear their hair out about this suggestion, that somehow, were going to ship all these Confederate monuments off to the lucky museum that has to find a place to put them. The Straka is spelled with a T. Monument in Madrid, Spain. The interpretations have been contradictory, and the results are presented in the form of commentaries. A statue of George Washington in Caracas, Venezuela, was damaged during an attack by a bomb in 2008. GORDON-REED: Ha! Politics plays a role in answering close questions. As a student at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, Arizona State University English Professor Natalie Diaz remembers seeing the Robert E. Lee monument every time her basketball team traveled to play the University of Richmond Spiders. Amanda Holpuch, Ed Pilkington, and Oliver Laughland, Charleston Shooting: Confederate Flag at Heart of Growing Political Storm, theguardian.com, June 20, 2015, 4. According to media reports, at least 11 statues were severely damaged or destroyed during the true civil rebellion in 2017. GORDON-REED: Plaques can work in some situations. And that is, in fact, a very imperialist vision. SINHA: I've been against it all along. Tension over statues has arisen within the recent Black Lives Matter protests. Erecting statues to the lost heroes of the Lost Cause was part of the campaign to revise history. [4], Monuments are ultimately about which values we want to honor and put on public display. No one puts a monument up to Washington or Jefferson to promote slavery. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. Confederate statues were the focus of protests in Richmond, Virginia, last summer. Admittedly, the traditional consensus is not an infallible guide to deciding whom to commemorate. While he hoped the next 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, freed the one slave he owned in 1859, supported black enlisted Army men, led the Union Army in the Civil War to abolish slavery, and was endorsed by Frederick Douglass for president. The Virginia statues still stood amid the protests following the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, though they were tagged with graffiti. The statues in major British cities are being reviewed. The victors, the thousands of soldiers black and white in the armed forces of the United States, died to protect this country. I dont think theres any value there. GREENE: You said something interesting. What does that say to black citizens of the state, or other citizens, or to younger generations? [4], Of about 5,193 public statues of people in the United States, only 394 are of women, and far fewer are of black Americans or other people of color. The plaques can not only detail the history of slavery and the Civil War, but also the white segregationist history that promoted the building of such statues to promote the revisionist Lost Cause history. Michelangelos David is not only a statue of a man, but also a statue of God. Theyre models of civic behavior that we should all strive to. Those who disagree with the beliefs upheld by the statues should work to understand the history these monuments represent, rather than trying to simply remove them and the history from sight. What are your thoughts on a separate museum for such statues? For example, The cost to remove all the monuments and statues in New Orleans could cost $600,000. Valerie Strauss, Christopher Columbus: 3 Things You Think He Did That He Didnt, washingtonpost.com, Oct. 14, 2013, 22. A copy of the Statue of Liberty was damaged in Valencia, so it was removed from the citys streets. Statues of Washington or Grant, et cetera are begging for historical contextualization. Sophia A. Nelson, Opinion: Don't Take Down Confederate Monuments. The idea is, this is a statue of a civil leader, and they are someone whose virtue or deeds were meant to emulate as citizens. This was before he became president or even commanded the Union Army. Here's What to Know, time.com, June 24, 2020, 2. What do you think of that idea? There are valid arguments on both sides, and there is no easy answer. The SPLC reported at least 160 monuments were removed in 2020 after George Floyds death, more than the prior four years combined At last count, about 704 Confederate monuments remained on public land. Confederate monuments can find an appropriate home in museums and cemeteries. Answer: We have to distinguish what kind of monuments were talking about. Taking them down is to censor, whitewash, and potentially forget that history. To the best of our knowledge, no resistance is shown in 1895 in the Neapolitan pieza de mrmol; all hecha pedazos must be resisted. What did the Civil War mean for both the Union and the Confederacy? They teach us, and it depends on us whether we practice what we learn. There are statues being targeted of people like Ulysses S. Grant, of people like President George Washington, who were not involved in the Confederacy. BBC, Confederate and Columbus Statues Toppled by US Protesters, bbc.com, June 11, 2020, 21. What do you think? We see this in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol. Thats a lot of money for one city to pay for, and that money could be used for more important things. Greta Anderson, When Free Speech and Racist Speech Collide, insidehighered.com, June 23, 2020, 36. A statue of Josphine de Beauharnais, who married Napoleon and became his first wife, was ripped down in Martinique. Go toProCon.orgto learn more. They often depict political leaders, but more often military leaders. It was an event that forced segregationists to come down rather than a single persons actions. To access extended pro and con arguments, sources, discussion questions, and ways to take action on the issue of whether historic statues should be taken down in the United States, go to ProCon.org. Hannah Natanson, Theres a New Way to Deal with Confederate Monuments: Signs That Explain Their Racist History, washingtonpost.com, Sep. 22, 2019, 53. Natalie Huet, Sir Geoff Palmer, Dont Take down Statues - Take down Racism, euronews.com, June 11, 2020, 54. At the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth, a significant portion of anti-imperialist and Bolivarian thinking was based on those ideas. The First Amendment protects everyones speech, not just the speech approved by the majority. The Mdia Exterior de Chvez highlights how the country responds to its problems: through its actions, the country seeks to advance human rights, including the rights of foreigners, as a result of the decreto de 1817. Hecho comn is a part of the Venezuelan Revolution that ended with Hugo Chvezs election as President of the Republic of Venezuela (Y). Becky Little, How the Cult of Robert E. Lee Was Born, history.com, Aug. 14, 2017, 18. FHA loans have more relaxed credit score requirements than traditional mortgages. A: Thats such a complex issue. It is not acceptable to state that statues represent history if they do not represent the roles and responsibilities they serve. The removal of Confederate statues is a painful reminder of the countrys racist past and present. In a 5-4 vote, the court rejected the Trump administration's push to end an Obama-era program that gives nearly 700,000 Dreamers the ability to work in the United States and avoid deportation. Debate around the removal of memorials and monuments that honor people and ideas whose messages and causes are considered offensive to certain marginalized groups has been a hot-button issue of late in the national conversation. Despite Nicole Douglas' team-leading 14th goal of the season, the Sun Devil soccer team was unable to claim its first Pac-12 victory of the season after falling to the Oregon State Beavers, 2-1 on Thursday night. Jason Hanna and Ralph Ellis, "Charlottesville Removes Two Confederate Statues as Onlookers Cheer," cnn.com, July 10, 2021, 55. Interview was edited for clarity and space. They didnt like having black classmates because they had racist hearts. https://www.britannica.com/story/pro-and-con-historic-statue-removal-in-the-united-states, According to theSouthern Poverty Law Center. You said that moving to statues like George Washington and the Founding Fathers is going from one extreme to another extreme.
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