Should the confederate statues be torn down?

[Lindsay]

My cousins are cheering for the destruction of the confederate statues. I feel like they should be moved to a museum or something. I was accused of glorifying slavery. What do you guys think?

[Forestluv]

I think they should be moved to museums, confederate cemeteries and battlefields. The history of slavery, the Civil War, Jim Crow laws, Civil rights etc. should be taught. Not only should the history of the confederacy be taught, the motivation of many white people to create statues honoring the confederacy should be taught. The vast majority of these statues were not built right after the civil war as an olive branch to the losing side. These statues were created decades later during specific time periods in which black people were gaining rights. The statues were built during reconstruction, Jim Crow and the civil rights eras. 

However, statues that honor men for their efforts to maintain slavery do not belong in public spaces. I don’t want my public park to have a massive statue of a man that led the fight to enslave people - no more than I would want a statue of Hitler in my public park. 

[Nak Khid]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/Emancipation_Memorial.jpg.

And some union statues 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/protesters-take-aim-at-statue-of-lincoln-with-kneeling-ex-slave-11593090836

Wall Street Journal

Lincoln Statue With Kneeling Black Man Becomes Target of Protests

Authorities gird against plan to topple Washington’s Emancipation Memorial

By 

Ted Mann

Updated June 25, 2020 10:13 pm ET

WASHINGTON—Protesters said they are planning to topple a statue of Abraham Lincoln in the capital meant to commemorate his 1863 proclamation freeing enslaved people in the rebel states at the height of the Civil War.

The Emancipation Memorial, erected in 1876 in Lincoln Park on Capitol Hill, has long drawn criticism for its paternalistic imagery of a standing President Lincoln looming over a kneeling black man and his broken shackles. The planned attempt to remove the statue, originally set for Thursday, comes as protesters across the country have taken aim at statues of slave owners, Confederate leaders and purveyors of white supremacy.

The National Park Service said Thursday in response to the threats to topple the statue that it would fence off both the Emancipation Memorial and the Mary McLeod Bethune Memorial, across Lincoln Park, to prevent them from being damaged by protesters. Areas around the statues will be closed through the end of July, and potentially longer, “to protect these resources from significant imminent threat of destruction and vandalism and the threat to public safety that may be attendant to such vandalism,” NPS said in a memo viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

There have been no public threats to the Bethune memorial, which honors the African-American educator and civil-rights activist, and was erected in 1974 across from the Emancipation Memorial.

Demonstrators who want the bronze statue gone gathered Tuesday evening in Lincoln Park to condemn its design, which they say implies that it was only Lincoln’s benevolence, and not the efforts of black people, that ended American slavery. Later, in an Instagram post, organizers said they would converge on the statue on Friday evening instead.

“As a black man, when I see that statue, I see that my freedom and liberation only lies with white people,” said Glenn Foster, 20 years old, of Montgomery County, Md., an organizer of the Tuesday rally.

 

 

Edited June 26, 2020 by Nak Khid

[Forestluv]

@Nak Khid The problem with that Lincoln statue is not Lincoln. The problem is the dis-empowered subordinate black man and white supremacy. That symbolIsm should not be honored in public spaces. Yes, it was a reality of the times and important history. For historical and educational purposes it’s fine in the context of museums, battlefields, schools and cemeteries. It should be taught, similar to how Germany teaches about Nazism. On the opposite side, the Chinese government has censored all references and access to how the government open fired on protestors in Tiananmen square. Younger people are literally ignorant of that event. Journalists have asked people their thoughts on the Tiananmen Square incident and people are like “Huh, what incident?”. They literally don’t know it occurred. That is not right. We still want to teach the history, even the ugly history. That’s really important. 

Yet statures honoring white supremacy should not be in shared public spaces. An alternative statue of Lincoln without a dis-empowered black person is more appropriate. 

[Nak Khid]

3 hours ago, Serotoninluv said:

@Nak Khid The problem with that Lincoln statue is not Lincoln. The problem is the dis-empowered subordinate black man and white supremacy.

I agree

 

Same problem here. This is the Theodore Roosevelt statue in from of the Museum of Natural History in NY.
The museum doesn't even want it, it is going to be taken down soon

 

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=Emancipation+Monument&atb=v1-1&iax=images&ia=images

[Raptorsin7]

@Serotoninluv What do you think of the slippery slope arguments about how the current sentiment regarding Confederate statues will end up with removal of something like mount Rushmore?

Confederate statues  goes hand in hand with slavery. Tough to argue in favor of the Confederate history without showing some disregard for the legacy of slavery. But isn't that also true of the founding fathers. At the end of the day the mountain glorifies slave holders and racists.

[Lyubov]

28 minutes ago, Raptorsin7 said:

@Serotoninluv What do you think of the slippery slope arguments about how the current sentiment regarding Confederate statues will end up with removal of something like mount Rushmore?

Confederate statues  goes hand in hand with slavery. Tough to argue in favor of the Confederate history without showing some disregard for the legacy of slavery. But isn't that also true of the founding fathers. At the end of the day the mountain glorifies slave holders and racists.

The US is starting to realize and come to terms with the fact that the entire foundation of the state is built upon white supremacy and genocide/enslavement of ethnic groups that aren't white Europeans. 

Knock them all down or move them to museums where they are put into an appropriate context of our times.

Do you see Germany have a bunch of Nazi statue everywhere ? Nope  

[Forestluv]

4 hours ago, Raptorsin7 said:

@Serotoninluv What do you think of the slippery slope arguments about how the current sentiment regarding Confederate statues will end up with removal of something like mount Rushmore?

Confederate statues  goes hand in hand with slavery. Tough to argue in favor of the Confederate history without showing some disregard for the legacy of slavery. But isn't that also true of the founding fathers. At the end of the day the mountain glorifies slave holders and racists.

If I was the leader of the movement, I would set up some boundaries. I would go after the stuff that is clear cut and has already been debated ad nausea. I say all the public symbols honoring those that fought for the confederacy to continue slavery are donezo. All statues, monuments, names of schools etc. This will include thousands of symbols. It would take a lot of work and and would be an enormous release valve of racial tension. Yet I would not try to remove the history. Many of those statues and monuments would be appropriate in museums, battlefields and confederate graveyards. As well, the history should be taught in schools and educational documentaries are fine too. I would replace these symbols with new symbols honoring people that contributed positively to the United States. 

The above has no room for “discussion”. Yet as we go down the slope, I say the discussion begins. For example, what about statues and symbols of founding fathers like George Washington, Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson? This is a different category than above. These men are being honored for their contribution to creating the United States, such as writing the Bill of Rights. They are being honored for worthy contributions in spite owning slaves. They are not being honored for owning slaves, trafficking slaves or fighting for slavery. As a compromise, I’d say this category is ok for honoring, as long as it honors the positive contribution. A statue of George Washington writing the Declaration of Independence is much different than a statue of Washington reprimanding slaves. As well, Mt Rushmore shows flawed presidents, yet they aren’t being honored fo their flaws. Plus Mt Rushmore is in the middle of nowhere. It’s not as prominent. How often does a regular kid pass by MT Rushmore? I would focus on the thousands of confederate symbols that people see everyday - in their parks, at their work, the street signs, their schools. In the south, one can see 10 symbols of white supremacy in an average day. I’d clean that out over the next couple years.

[Forestluv]

@Nak Khid I’m cool with honoring Teddy Roosevelt for something good he contributed, yet I’d ditch that statue for the white supremacy. If the museum doesn’t want it, I’d be fine with recycling the material or giving it to someone wealthy for their private collection.

[AtheisticNonduality]

10 hours ago, Lindsay said:

My cousins are cheering for the destruction of the confederate statues. I feel like they should be moved to a museum or something. I was accused of glorifying slavery. What do you guys think?

I say the government vandalized public property when they put up racist monuments, not the people removing them.

[Lindsay]

@AtheisticNonduality

15 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

I say the government vandalized public property when they put up racist monuments, not the people removing them.

I would have agreed with you last year. But after watching and following along with Leos videos and learning more about spiral dynamics I now don’t agree. I watched a Ken Wilbur interview that made the point that stage green is oppressing stage orange instead of integrating stage orange. And then I thought about Leo’s relative video, survival videos, and his devilry video. It just started to click in my head that nothing is good or evil as an absolute. Whether something is good or evil is relative to whom. Another example that clicked with me was would you punish a toddler for not knowing what you know? Slavery is not good or evil. It just existed. It was good relative to the white supremacist and evil relative to the slave’s survival and wellbeing. Also knowing that stage green occurred only 200 years ago. Compare that to 40,000 years ago homo sapiens were at stage purple. It took a long ass time make it to where we are now. I also don’t demonize ancient civilizations that sacrificed children to the gods. That was just their level of development. They didn’t know any better. I now understand that humans are still evolving. Our consciousness is still evolving. Probably exponentially now because of technology. I think we should preserve the history of the human experience. Move the statues to a museum or in storage. We don’t have to publicly glorify them. But we can acknowledge that they were milestones to where we are now.  I feel like I have a toe in stage yellow and the rest in stage green. 

[Yog]

I think the mob is just being juvenile, that's how mobs are, its technically impossible to get them to be sophisticated and extremely difficult to get them to be mature. Formation of a mob by default means you lose resolution and get your thinking pixelated.

What mobs are good at is at pointing towards a real problem, but their aim and methods are terrible.

Just a metaphor:
Having your browser history on, by no means means you glorify it.
And if you delete it, it doesn't mean it never existed.
And if you delete it, it doesn't mean you will not repeat it.
In a way, your browser history is a monument of your bad habits at first, and of your good at second.

[Roy]

Whether or not you agree with the methods, these kinds of things represent the literal growth and maturity of society. Think big picture instead of taking it so personally.

They are pointing out the barbarities of past society, another 200 years from now they will do the same for us.

It is the cycle of progress and evolution. 

[Nak Khid]

23 hours ago, Serotoninluv said:

 

The above has no room for “discussion”. Yet as we go down the slope, I say the discussion begins. For example, what about statues and symbols of founding fathers like George Washington, Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson? 

Thomas Jefferson owned more than 700 African-American slaves throughout his adult life.

 To our reproach it must be said, that though for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the races of black and of red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history. I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind. It is not against experience to suppose that different species of the same genus, or varieties of the same species, may possess different qualifications
--- Thomas Jefferson "Query XIV". Notes on Virginia.

[Lyubov]

On 6/26/2020 at 2:41 PM, Nak Khid said:

I actually just found out that this statue was erected using the money of freed slaves. It has a much more positive history than others but I think with the current climate it probably belongs in a museum. 

[Nak Khid]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8462613/Barriers-set-Abraham-Lincolns-emancipation-memorial-Washington-DC.html

Barriers are erected around the Emancipation Memorial 

The Emancipation Memorial was funded by newly freed slaves, but they had no voice in the process of creating the monument,

This early small demonstration version by Ball was purchased by Edward Francis Searles; it is now located in the atrium of the Town Hall of Methuen, Massachusetts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Memorial

________________________________________________________________________

 

If you are not standing you are not free 

[Forestluv]

13 hours ago, Nak Khid said:

Thomas Jefferson owned more than 700 African-American slaves throughout his adult life.

 To our reproach it must be said, that though for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the races of black and of red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history. I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind. It is not against experience to suppose that different species of the same genus, or varieties of the same species, may possess different qualifications
--- Thomas Jefferson "Query XIV". Notes on Virginia.

This is the area in which I think the current “discussion” should be. Imo, men like Robert E. Lee are outside the discussion area, yet men like TJ are still within it. TJ is being honored for his contributions to America (Such as writing the bull of rights), not for owning slaves. He is being honored in spite of owning slaves. This is very different than honoring a man for his efforts to perpetuate slavery. 

There will be examples of some men, like Thomas Jefferson, that were mixed bags that we will need to sort out. However, men like Robert E. Lee are not mixed bands, they are clear-cut. There are thousands of clear-cut symbols of white supremacy. Focusing on the mixed-bag examples is a distraction and can allow for the status quo to continue. Whenever white supremicists lose some ground, they go to the slippery slope argument to distract. They’ve been doing this for years and years. It slows down progress. It is a sneaky “All Statues Matter” framing to conflate clear-cut white supremicist statues with grey area white supremicist statues.

[Epikur]

It's all about chain reaction. The US is a social construct. If you take away the pillars and try to replace it you make a bet. 

You want more justice? You might want to get rid of the US. It is an empire. You have to destroy the US basically. So envision that. How do you think it will look if there is no US anymore? If it looks good go for it.

Edited June 30, 2020 by Epikur

[Forestluv]

14 minutes ago, Epikur said:

It's all about chain reaction. The US is a social construct. If you take away the pillars and try to replace it you make a bet. 

You’ve got it backwards. The confederacy lost the war. They are the losers. 

Yes, the country was originally built on slavery. Yet to maintain a “pillar” of slavery is absolutely absurd. 

The stronger pillars of America are democracy, unity, equality, The Bill of Rights and Civil Rights. Slavery and white supremacy are toxins eat away at those pillars. 

Here are some pillars. Slavery and white supremacy are not listed.

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights/what-does-it-say

[Epikur]

11 minutes ago, Serotoninluv said:

You’ve got it backwards. The confederacy lost the war. They are the losers. 

Yes, the country was originally built on slavery. Yet to maintain a “pillar” of slavery is absolutely absurd. 

The stronger pillars of America are democracy, unity, equality, The Bill of Rights and Civil Rights. Slavery and white supremacy are toxins eat away at those pillars. 

Here are some pillars. Slavery and white supremacy are not listed.

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights/what-does-it-say

Yes you have the founding docs and than you have reality I guess. What do you prefere?

The US is founded by taking land from others. The legitimation was because we are are stronger, because god wants it, because we have a superior culture because we don't care anyway. 

Later Europe was on fire. So the US got the job of world police some would say biggest warlord. It's a matter of perception I guess but probably some would bet without the US we would have more chaos in the world. Hard to find out.

Bottom line big part of the US is about because we can. Of course you have also what you pointed at with democracy of the founding fatheres (mostly from britain?)