Biggest Monument to Racism in the US Coming Down

[notaterran]

Taking down Confederate monuments has become a major focus of anti-racism activists in the US in recent years. In 2020, more than 160 Confederate symbols were renamed or removed from public spaces, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

"Virginia's largest monument to the Confederate insurrection will come down this week," Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said in a statement. "This is an important step in showing who we are and what we value as a commonwealth."

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Obviously the "very fine people" will be angry about this but any step in this direction is welcome. Better late than never.

[EGO_Aut]

I do not know, for me it looks more to hide the civil war under a false flag.

[clakclak]

I do not know, for me it looks more to hide the civil war under a false flag.

Nobody is hiding anything. It is a statue that fell out of favour and is thus being removed. Happens a lot actually. Here in Germany we still talk about the second world war even though there are no more Hitler statues around, however there are quite a few statues of Sophie Scholl these days. A statue in itself does not provide you with any historical knowladge. You can investigate why it was set up (or removed) to gain an inside into the mindset of whoever put it up or tore it down at a certain point. The historical meaning of a statue does not lie within it's concrete form, but with the abstract way society negotiates it's meaning and assigns it a value. The value assigned to works of art like statues always changes over time along with society changing it's values.

In this specific case it seems to me as if the statue is being torn down precisely because people are talking about the civil war and it's implications more these days and with a higher degree of multiperspectivity.

[Chips]

I do not know, for me it looks more to hide the civil war under a false flag.

Why/how?

[EGO_Aut]

There is sure to be a reason when a statue is erected on someone.
I'm sure the "Robert E. Lee" statues were not erected because he was a racist, but for another reason, maybe as a military honor?

The US Civil War was certainly a bad time, but I think it is wrong to suppress and ban everything.
I understand and agree to ban the flag and other racist symbols for public.

[Vertigo 7]

Except that Lee's own letters he wrote to his wife clearly shows he believed in superiority of whites and the inferiority of blacks. Furthermore, he also explicitly said he didn't want any statues of himself.

History of the civil war, albeit white-washed, is still being taught in school. While I'm quite sure there are many among the GOP that don't want the total truth told, history has not yet been banned from being taught. We're not quite Poland over here.

[Cpt.Jericho]

To be honest, I don't understand why statues in Lees honour were even erected in the first place. History hardly ever favours losers.

[Vertigo 7]

That's an easy answer. Most were erected during the early to mid 1900's and again in the 1960's when blacks were gaining constitutional rights. The KKK, Daughters of the Confederacy, and other white nationalist movements were doing all they could to intimidate blacks.

[notaterran]

I'm sure the "Robert E. Lee" statues were not erected because he was a racist, but for another reason, maybe as a military honor?

White supremacists wanted to make a statement. Lee was a racist, and the Confederacy in general stood for the institution of slavery. Alexander Stephens -vice president of the Confederacy- left no doubt as to what their principles were. When speaking of their government, he described it in this way:

[...] its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. [Applause.] This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

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The Constitution of the Confederate States makes it abundantly clear that the institution of slavery is protected. It's shameful that so many Republicans want to protect those monuments under the excuse of "heritage".

[EGO_Aut]

Ok, then it is a shame that for so many decades nothing was done.

[Vertigo 7]

It's shameful that so many Republicans want to protect those monuments under the excuse of "heritage".

It's beyond shameful, it's absurd. The confederacy was around for a whopping 5 years. What heritage was created from a failed rebellion and a war they started? Big Bang Theory was on TV for 10 years, you don't see people rushing out to build statues of Sheldon and claim that as their heritage.

Where's the sympathy for the heritage of the natives that lived here long before some white dudes came over here and called dibs and slaughtered the natives to near extinction? Where's the sympathy for the heritage of the families that were brought over here from the slave trade and made victims of white oppression?

[Golden_Gonads]

Where's the sympathy for the heritage of the natives that lived here long before some white dudes came over here and called dibs and slaughtered the natives to near extinction? Where's the sympathy for the heritage of the families that were brought over here from the slave trade and made victims of white oppression?

Where's your sympathy for the people that lived wherever you live before they were taken over by whoever? For the folks that were kicked out before that? For the caveman forced out of his cave by someone with a bigger club?

War was the driving force behind civilisation for millennia.

[BaronVerde]

War was the driving force behind civilisation for millennia.

The driving force of humankinds (questionable) success and us filling so many niches is our extraordinary ability to cooperate and communicate, division of work and passing on of knowledge, between generations and over distances. War only causes destruction and suffering and sets back societies and civilisations to earlier states or even wipes them out. War is also a failure of morale and the will to find intelligent solutions that serve many.

Btw., humans have nver lived in caves. They have had stays under abris and rock shelters, but the remains we find are highly biased and selected in the presevation process, called taphonomy. They have undergone changes through the millennia, or are remains of cultural places (cave painting sites for instance). Most of the numberless open air sites where humans have been during the millions of years are long gone by erosion and weathering, that's why we only find rockshelters these days. But compared tpo the time and number they are very few. As a general rule, what stays under open air is gone in no time. Caves and rock shelters, specifically those in limestone, just offer exceptional conditions for preservation of bones. Suffice to say that with modern methods we also find open air sites, but these are really rare because of the mentioned difficulties and hard to excavate because of the lack of money and manpower.

We're looking down onto almost 3 million years, different species, and a large part of the world. Fact is, there are no clear signs yet of intraspecies violence from prehistoric times until ~12.000 years ago, when humans started to settle (this is discussed, sometimes infleunced by our own cultural bias).

[Vertigo 7]

Where's the sympathy for the heritage of the natives that lived here long before some white dudes came over here and called dibs and slaughtered the natives to near extinction? Where's the sympathy for the heritage of the families that were brought over here from the slave trade and made victims of white oppression?

Where's your sympathy for the people that lived wherever you live before they were taken over by whoever? For the folks that were kicked out before that? For the caveman forced out of his cave by someone with a bigger club?

War was the driving force behind civilisation for millennia.

Cute, but there's no evidence that anyone lived in north America before the natives did.

You may think war is the driving force, but it's clearly personal greed, and almost always bolstered by a sense of entitlement. Karens weren't born into the world just last year, ya know.

[clakclak]

Here is a video of the statue actually beeing removed.

[Golden_Gonads]

Cute, but there's no evidence that anyone lived in north America before the natives did.

You may think war is the driving force, but it's clearly personal greed, and almost always bolstered by a sense of entitlement. Karens weren't born into the world just last year, ya know.

The point I was trying to make was that every scrap of land has been fought over and changed hands numerous times in the distant past.

The native tribes in the America's fought one another just as readily as Europeans did.

[BaronVerde]

The native tribes in the America's fought one another just as readily as Europeans did.

On wikipedia I'd say [citation needed], specifically for the wording and generalisation. Intertribal 'wars' may have been the case at the time when the Europeans arrived, contemporary to the late medieval/rennaissance period, and the centuries before. Not too much is known about Paleoamericans between the arrival of humans ~17000 years ago (discussed) and Columbus. Though central Americans had quarrels pre-Columbian too, but even there we're talking about 2000 BC and later. In the old world, organized war starts with the invention of metals in the bronze age. That's just ~5000 years ago, 200 generations ... a wink of an eye if I may say so.

~17000 years of human occupation in the Americas cannot compare to the 3 million years of human evolution in the rest of the world. Am as sorry as possible, but America plays no role in the evolution of humans, and shouldn't be put as a generalisation for human behaviour.

Anyway past violence is not an excuse not to change things. We're intelligent enough to judge on our own, removing a symbol of intolerance is a step in the right direction, though many of those are left.

This was just an opinion, *hough*

[mr.WHO]

Watch these two YT videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOmjnioNulo

In short American and Australian natives never stood a chance simply due to nature (no proper farm/workhorse animals) - the fun fact is that simply by the whim of some stupid Chinese Emperor (that scraped the imperial fleet and pull China into isolationism), America wasn't colonized by China first a century or two earlier.

[notaterran]

Predictably, Trump is supporting Lee and complaining about the removal of the statue. Also predictably, most Republicans are staying silent on this topic.

“He should be remembered as perhaps the greatest unifying force after the war was over, ardent in his resolve to bring the North and South together through many means of reconciliation and imploring his soldiers to do their duty in becoming good citizens of this Country,” Trump added.

Link

Yep, never mind that Lee decided to attack the United States and was a White supremacist. Let's gloss over that.

[Vertigo 7]

typical revisionist history. But then again, the orange one is the same guy that thought we took control of airports from British forces during the American Revolution. Clearly, the guy knows all about history.