Confederate monuments represent homage to a group of people who disobeyed the rule of law and attempted to break the nation. Furthermore, confederate belief in the institution of slavery triggers deep pain in the generations of citizens who are descendants of slaves, of who understand how immoral slaver is. Let's rid our nation of these historically manipulative icons of what America is not, and shall never be again.
How Confederate Monuments transmit enduring pain
What should replace Confederate Monuments? This article offers some thoughts.
In a Times Op-Ed, David Blight — a historian who wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Frederick Douglass — argues that the issue needs leadership. He calls on Joe Biden to create a task force of historians and others that would link localities with artists and resources, study how other countries have (or have not) confronted their own dark pasts, and propose ways to memorialize history beyond statues.
Other recent suggestions include:
Honor “people who have significantly helped move this country forward,” as the historian Keisha Blain told Fast Company last month. She suggests statues of Harriet Tubman and Fannie Lou Hamer, the Black voting-rights activist.
Memorialize the victims of state violence. In Louisville, Ky., some residents have suggested a monument to Breonna Taylor, a Black woman fatally shot by police earlier this year, and David McAtee, who was shot when police and National Guardsmen confronted curfew violators, Salon’s Ashlie Stevens reports.
Choose patriots. Brent Staples of The Times’s editorial board has argued for renaming military bases after the Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, who ordered land set aside for formerly enslaved families, and the Civil War surgeon Dr. Mary Walker.
This short video adds some depth / perspective on this. https://youtu.be/4e1AL7ZETAk