Over the years there have been requests to put David Beckham, Bill Morris, Mary Seacole, Benny Hill and Paul Gascoigne up there. Phil Davis, “George Washington Monument in Druid Hill Park Spray-Painted with ‘Destroy Racists,’ Anti-Police Sentiment,” baltimoresun.com, June 21, 2020, 11. The story starts in the mid-19th century, when the designers of Trafalgar Square decided that there would be one huge column for Horatio Nelson and four smaller plinths for statues surrounding it. During the global Black Lives Matter protests 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-holding Founding Fathers in general, as well as historic monuments to Abraham Lincoln and abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass. None of these figures were particularly known for riding horses either. Other statues of historic figures, such as slave-owning presidents or imperialists like Christopher Columbus, promote similar oppressive and revisionist messages. Proper citation depends on your preferred or required style manual. In the US, violent protests in Charlottesville were sparked by a decision to remove from a park a statue of Robert E. Lee, a Confederate general in the American Civil War, because of the. Livingstone, whom I did not know, asked me if I would be on the committee, which I joined in 2002. We should be able to discuss these historical figures and discuss what we admire about them and what we don't admire so much. The movement spread to other universities in South Africa and has now arrived in Oxford, where Oriel College is under pressure to take down a statue marking Rhodes's large financial contribution. Should Statues Of Historic Figures With Complicated Pasts Be ... - NPR According to the Southern 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. Managing Editor Amanda Holpuch, Ed Pilkington, and Oliver Laughland, “Charleston Shooting: Confederate Flag at Heart of Growing Political Storm,” theguardian.com, June 20, 2015, 4. As such they represent the value system of the establishment at any given time that is then projected into the forever. for a state's having a duty to remove a public statue of that person. One of the focal points, in many countries, was statues. I think the difference that Floyd's murder has made is that most American citizens are finally realizing what they represent. It can also do far more to raise awareness of history. [41]. What could possibly go wrong? I place great value on those who fought for equality and inclusion and against bigotry and privilege. Our understanding of the past shifts. This brings me to my final point. Accuracy and availability may vary. “It’s not a person,” he explained. So yes, take down the slave traders, imperial conquerors, colonial murderers, warmongers and genocidal exploiters. "I do also take the point that if you look at many of the people celebrated in statues, they have been responsible for death and destruction," says Dresser. Colston, an official in the Royal African Company, which reportedly sold as many as 100,000 west Africans into slavery, died in 1721. Taney's bust was replaced with one of Thurgood Marshall. To give a fuller account of the range of experiences, voices, hues and ideologies that have made us what we are. But rioting and vandalism are the wrong way to go about it. Q: Why is the removal of statues such a fraught topic? Here’s a List.,” nytimes.com, Aug. 28, 2017, 6. But the only time I was ever caught in the tabloids’ crosshairs was not because of my denunciations of capitalism or racism, but because of a statue – or to be more precise, the absence of one. For many years people have been arguing whether certain controversial monuments, such as statues, should be destroyed or removed. Take away these men who seem to be inferior to Roosevelt, but leave him. [48] Or should those also be destroyed? Mount Vernon, “Slavery,” mountvernon.org (accessed July 7, 2020), 40. Nor is anyone seeking historical closure via the removal of a statue. The income and wealth disparities in that part of the world did not come about by bad luck or hard work. GREENE: But is there an argument that removing these statues could help further the fight for racial equality in our country? Are you. Q: What can you tell us about America’s history with monuments and memorials? ProCon/Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. Revere or Remove? The Battle Over Statues, Heritage and History What you got in the interim before that happened was a kind of a battle over community values. They’re models of civic behavior that we should all strive to. My sense of self-worth is not contingent on seeing those who represent my viewpoints, history and moral compass forced on the broader public. The SPLC reported at least 160 monuments were removed in 2020 after George Floyd’s death, more than the prior four years combined At last count, about 704 Confederate monuments remained on public land. Countless more examples . One of the greatest distractions when it comes to removing statues is the argument that to remove a statue is to erase history; that to change something about a statue is to tamper with history. See also Marsalis's moving (2017) article on why New Orleans should remove their Robert E. Lee statue. They harbored cultural bias. This time also coincided with the creation of many Confederate monuments, though they were coming from a different set of concerns. Before Parks, there was a 15-year-old girl named Claudette Colvin. Monuments of people – statuary – I think come out of a tradition of imitation. Haunting images of deadly India train crash in 2002, Jason Derulo makes 'unsexy' investment in car wash. How is my country doing tackling climate change? All rights reserved. Trump's argument that the removal of Confederate statues is a slippery slope to changing history has recharged the perennial debate about America's tormented racial legacy. Pros: 1.The statues misrepresent history, and glorify people who perpetuated slavery, attempted secession from United States, and lost the Civil War. Valerie Strauss, “Christopher Columbus: 3 Things You Think He Did That He Didn’t,” washingtonpost.com, Oct. 14, 2013, 22. He donated significant amounts of money with the express desire that he be remembered for 4,000 years. Should Statues Be Removed and Destroyed? | Guest Contributor - Patheos The Pros and Cons of Pulling Down Statues… - Medium 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. We should let 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], 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. "Do we start taking them all down?". Pros And Cons Of The Removal Of Confederate Statues | Bartleby Sophia A. Nelson, “Opinion: Don't Take Down Confederate Monuments. [26] A monument to the victims of slavery has also been suggested. Having been a black leftwing Guardian columnist for more than two decades, I understood that I would be regarded as fair game for the kind of moral panics that might make headlines in rightwing tabloids. Jasmine Aguilera, “Confederate Statues Are Being Removed amid Protests over George Floyd's Death. Should Statues Be Removed Pros And Cons - Stay informed with breaking news, in-depth analysis and community coverage. To take the example of Colston in Bristol, the current positive plaque on his statue could be replaced by one that made clear that he was involved in the slave trade. [4], Monuments are ultimately about which values we want to honor and put on public display. The American civil war ended in 1865. Should Washington and Jefferson monuments come down? - BBC News Tue 1 Jun 2021 01.00 EDT Last modified on Fri 23 Jul 2021 07.00 EDT H aving been a black leftwing Guardian columnist for more than two decades, I understood that I would be regarded as fair game. As such, it represented a sanitised, partial and selective version of history, based less in fact than toxic nostalgia and melancholia. A statue is just a historical artifact and nothing more. The statue was defaced, there was a lot of graffiti that dealt with defunding the police, and there are some incredibly powerful images that were taken during that time, some of which are going into the new time capsule. We see this in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol. We’re trying to let the government know we’re not going to wait any longer for our freedom to happen.” [19] Celebrations of Columbus have long been criticized due to his colonization and genocide of Indigenous people, as well as the false narrative that he discovered America when he never set foot on North America. 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. “Most monuments I'm aware of attest to conquered people and lands, including my people.”, The Robert E. Lee monument, erected several decades after the Civil War to commemorate the Confederate general, was recently removed following more than a year of protests for racial justice. John Daniel Davidson, “Why We Should Keep The Confederate Monuments Right Where They Are,” thefederalist.com, Aug. 18, 2017, 37. How easily and wilfully the main actors can be relegated to faceless extras. Worlds collided. Why build a street for losers?… Psychologically, it’s perpetuating a system. Let us not put up the people we ostensibly cherish so that they can be forgotten and ignored. Richard Allen Greene, “King Leopold II Statues Are Being Removed in Belgium. The trouble is that his intention was that he would be remembered fondly. To make sure that public art is rooted in the lives of the whole public, not just a part of it, and that we all might see ourselves in the figures that are represented. 2. Explain your answer with examples and reasoning. 23 December 2015 Jonathan Hutchinson/Flickr Rhodes's statue stands on the building named after him at Oriel College, Oxford By Finlo Rohrer BBC News. Here, too, a formalized process by which communities debate and discuss the merits of a statue would help: Giving people the space to weigh the pros and cons would combat the simplistic view that . Parks was a great woman, whose refusal to give up her seat for a white woman on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama challenged local segregation laws and sparked the civil rights movement. On the French island of Martinique, the statue of Joséphine de Beauharnais, who was born to a wealthy colonial family on the island and later became Napoleon’s first wife and empress, was torn down by a crowd using clubs and ropes. Also removed from the monument’s base was a 133-year-old copper time capsule containing artifacts and ephemera related to the Confederacy. I think works like these serve the important function of public memorialisation, and many have the added benefit of being beautiful. So to me, if statues are performing this work of showing us what we most value as a society, once our values change, no, we shouldn’t keep them. Let’s argue about the facts, let’s put them down on paper – or on a marker – and have a conversation about them.” [24], Geoff Palmer, Scotland’s first black professor, who disagrees with taking down the statues, warned against being distracted by the simple, concrete action of taking down statues: “We don’t want to leave this so that people looking back in 50 years will say: you know, they took the statues down, why didn’t they do something about racism?” [53]. But for many other statues the argument is far less clear-cut. [14] [55], In June 2021, the US House of Representatives voted to remove all confederate statues and bust of Roger B. Taney (the US Supreme Court Chief Justice who wrote the Dred Scott decision) from the US Capitol’s Statuary Hall. Monuments to controversial historical figures should remain Gary Younge is a professor of sociology at the University of Manchester and a Type Media Fellow. Two years before Martin Luther King’s death, a poll showed that the majority of Americans viewed him unfavourably. Arguments For And Against Removing Confederate Statues - Ranker Across the US, Confederate generals fell, were toppled or voted down. The Avalon Project, “A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.,” avalon.law.yale.edu (accessed July 8, 2020), 17. Whatever values they represent are the preserve of the establishment. For me the issue starts with the very purpose of a statue. A petition in Tennessee gained 22,736 signatures (and counting as of July 8, 2020) to replace all Confederate statues in the state, including the statue of Confederate Army General and KKK Grand Wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest that stands in the state’s capitol building, with statues of Dolly Parton. In recent months, I have been part of a team at the University of Manchester’s Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (Code) studying the impact of the Black Lives Matter movement on statues and memorials in Britain, the US, South Africa, Martinique and Belgium. From Cecil Rhodes to Rosa Parks, let’s get rid of them all. Their statues pay homage to hate, not heritage. So in both South Africa and Britain we have been saddled with these monuments to Rhodes. Confederate Monuments Pros And Cons 587 Words | 3 Pages The American Civil War was a moment in history that everyone would like to forget. Where is their statue? According to a YouGov poll last year, only one in 20 Dutch, one in seven French, one in 5 Brits and one in four Belgians and Italians believe their former empire is something to be ashamed of. 4. Luckily for me, it turned out that, if there was a gap between anyone and the ordinary people of the country on this issue, then the Daily Mail was on the wrong side of it. [4], As Karen Cox, PhD, Historian of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, concludes, “The state is giving the stamp of approval to these Lost Cause ideas, and the money is a symbol of that approval. There are a slew of figures in London from the same period - all involved in some way in slavery - whose statues are still standing. In short, it attempts to set our understanding of what has happened in stone, beyond interpretation, investigation or critique. Photo courtesy of Getty Images/iStockphoto, (480) 965-9657 Let us fight to embed the values of those we admire in our politics and our culture. BBC, “Confederate and Columbus Statues Toppled by US Protesters,” bbc.com, June 11, 2020, 21. I survived the air raids on Cologne as a teenager.". They were created by design. [32] [33], Of the calls to take down Confederate monuments, President Donald Trump stated, “This cruel campaign of censorship and exclusion violates everything we hold dear as Americans. Students at the University of Missouri also asked for a statue of Thomas Jefferson - third president of the US - to be taken down as he was a "racist rapist". They managed to put statues on three of the plinths before running out of money, leaving the fourth one bare. [27] [28] Statues celebrating the diversity of the country could help remedy symbolic annihilation of black Americans, women, and other groups. David Greene talks to Manisha Sinha, professor of American history at the University of Connecticut, about the recent toppling of non-Confederate statues like those of George Washington. [14] [17]. One letter writer to the Daily Telegraph argued: "The trouble⦠is that almost every person of that era held opinions that were commonplace at the time but are at odds with modern thinking. Power, and the wealth that comes with it, has many parents. A more honest appraisal of why the removal of these particular statues rankles with so many is that they do not actually want to engage with the history they represent. Legal scholar and historian puts the push to remove Confederate statues in context. I once interviewed the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, who confessed that his greatest fear was “that we are all suffering from amnesia”. The one such statue to remain - that of Marcus Aurelius - was spared the furnace only because it was wrongly thought to depict the Christian Emperor Constantine. Ashlie D. Stevens, “As Confederate Monuments Come down, What Should Replace Them?,” salon.com, June 17, 2020, 27. We’re only 120 years in, but his wish may well be granted. Half of the monuments contested over the past year were erected between 1889 and 1919. Firstly, this strikes me as a very good argument for not erecting statues at all, since there is no guarantee that any consensus will persist. The slippery slope goes further, allowing anyone to destroy any statue they disagree with. The questions that some of these monuments raise – of racial inequality, white supremacy, imperialism, colonialism and slavery – are still very much with us. Monticello, “Jefferson's Attitudes toward Slavery,” monticello.org (accessed July 7, 2020), 41. While the debate whether Confederate statues should be taken down has been gaining momentum for years, the issue gained widespread attention after the June 17, 2015, mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. In this article, I draw on UN principles of transitional justice to address this question. Activism forces a reckoning with what our values are. Evacuations under way as water gushes through damaged Ukrainian dam, Prince Harry: Tabloids hacked my voicemails when I was at Eton, Inside the Taliban's drug war - opium poppy crops slashed. It’s a different use of the space, one that recognizes the damage done by colonialism and that values self-representation of people of color and Indigenous people that have previously been excluded from such spaces. pro-Russian protesters rushed to protect statues at risk of being torn down, a row is rumbling on in Bristol over the commemoration of Edward Colston, intense controversy over whether the statue should be removed, Singapore to hold final horse race after 180 years, Ukraine troops advance on eastern front, Kyiv says, FBI agent who spied for Russia found dead in prison, Apple unveils $3,499 mixed reality headset. Many spurious arguments have been made about these actions, and I will come to them in a minute. Yes, remove Columbus, Leopold II, Colston and Rhodes. Leader of the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters Julius Malema said: "It is through collapsing of these types of symbols that the white minority will begin to appreciate that there's nothing superior about them.". Advocates of removing statutes of controversial figures suggest that these monuments represent individuals whose actions and legacies should not be celebrated or memorialised. [6] [7] [8] [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 land in 19 US states between June 17, 2015 and July 6, 2020. A: There’s certainly a school of thought that says so, that maybe they could be taken out of civic spaces and put into a museum where they can be recontextualized. The line is subjective, difficult to draw, and easy to reinterpret, leaving no memorial protected. To put up a statue you must own the land on which it stands and have the authority and means to do so. That had nothing to do with me. 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. Jack Jenkins, “How the Charleston Shooting Is Linked to the Confederate Flag, According to A South Carolinian,” thinkprogress.org, June 19, 2015, 3. “Who next?” they ask, clutching their pearls and pointing to Churchill. By Melissa De Witte As people across the United States confront the nation's legacy of slavery and systemic racism, monuments and memorials honoring the Confederacy have become political flashpoints, with some demanding their removal as symbols of racial oppression and others warning of an attempt to "erase" history and heritage. Let us subject them to the critiques they deserve, which may convert them from inert models of their former selves to the complex, and often flawed, people that they were. Oliver Cromwell is credited by many with being a key figure in the development of Western democracy. Caleb Parke, “From George Washington to Ulysses S. Grant: Statues, Monuments Vandalized Extend beyond Confederates amid Black Lives Matter Protests,” foxnews.com, June 22, 2020, 13. 17, 2020, 42. Removing Confederate Monuments - 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory ... emma.greguska@asu.edu. Beyond building monuments to honor black Americans, monuments could employ and elevate living black artists, such as Kehinde Wiley, whose 2019 “Rumors of War” statue depicts a black man on horseback in a pose reminiscent of statues of Robert E. Lee. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. “It’s a system of power that is always deciding in the name of humanity who deserves to be remembered and who deserves to be forgotten … We are much more than we are told. n Britain, we seem to have a peculiar fixation with statues, as we seek to petrify historical discourse, lather it in cement, hoist it high and insist on it as a permanent statement of fact, culture, truth and tradition that can never be questioned, touched, removed or recast. Note: Responses have been edited for length and clarity. But he was also a key philanthropist in the city - which was a major hub for the wider trade around slavery - and is remembered with a statue and an annual day of celebration. The problem with statues is that stone or bronze is meant to last forever, but reputations crumble much more easily. The ones who want to keep them up are generally the ones who would prefer we didn’t study what these people actually did. When is it right to remove a statue? Hannah Natanson, “There’s a New Way to Deal with Confederate Monuments: Signs That Explain Their Racist History,” washingtonpost.com, Sep. 22, 2019, 53. Harris was criticised for having masterminded saturation bombing of areas of Germany that cost large numbers of civilian lives. There are statues being targeted of people like Ulysses S. Grant, of people like President George Washington, who were not involved in the Confederacy. Aishvarya Kavi, “Activists Push for Removal of Statue of Freed Slave Kneeling Before Lincoln,” nytimes.com, June 27, 2020, 20. While the statues of Rhodes may be disappearing from South Africa, the giant Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria has remained and - despite its background of Afrikaner nationalism being associated with the later rise of apartheid - been tolerated as a slice of history and an opportunity to discuss the wrongs as well as the rights of bygone eras. Washington owned over 300, Jefferson over 600, and Grant worked on his wife’s family plantation and inherited one slave upon his father-in-law’s death. Never to be moved, removed, adapted or engaged with beyond popular reverence. The 1992 unveiling of a statue of Arthur "Bomber" Harris, head of the RAF's Bomber Command in World War Two, created a wave of protest, culminating in sustained vandalism. For if the erection of a statue is a fact of history, then removing it is no less so. The reason for that was a movement called City Beautiful. Linda Lopata, “If Susan B. Anthony Was Racist,” susanb.org (accessed July 7, 2020), 47. Rhodes's statue stands on the building named after him at Oriel College, Oxford, Students at the University of Cape Town celebrate the removal of Cecil Rhodes's statue in April, Jefferson Davis's statue was removed from the University of Texas-Austin in August 2015, The controversial statue of Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris in central London, Oliver Cromwell's statue outside Parliament was put up with private money, The Voortrekker monument in Pretoria, South Africa. GREENE: You said something interesting. Scottie Andrew and Anna Sturla, “A Statue of Frederick Douglass Was Toppled over the Fourth of July Weekend, the Anniversary of His Famous Speech,” cnn.com, July 6, 2020, 10. 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