In this country, black monuments are defaced all of the time. Nothing new.
Americans need to read more US History. “The Indispensable Man” by James Flexner is excellent on George Washington as a start.
Can you cite specific examples, @camathmom? I would not have guessed that there were that many statutes to black leaders, much less that they are “defaced all the time”, but if you have data, I am interested
@roycroftmom This immediately came to mind.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/new-bulletproof-memorial-emmett-till-replaces-vandalized-sign-mississippi-n1069201
That is a lot, you are right. And today we add the Douglass statue too. It is all so sad.
The really sad thing is that monuments and statues were erected to honor people who fought and killed their fellow countrymen in order to preserve slavery and in most cases, to remind Black citizens that they were still considered lesser beings even after slavery was legally abolished. We’re going through this now because most of the powers that be refused to face this fact.
Right. The Confederate statues should have been an easy call. And if that had been recognized earlier, maybe we wouldn’t be slippery sloping about more complex cases now.
Red herring, Whataboutism, and Slippery Slope fallacies. Besides, I fail to see why “womanizer” is something that should make a difference, unless somebody were a puritan who is obsessed with the sex lives of other people. Perhaps if they were sexual predators, that would be something else.
Nonetheless:
Only 57 women have ever served in the Senate
Only 325 have served in the House of Representatives
Only 4 Supreme Court Justices have been Women
I fail to see how these statistics “disprove” anything I said. Just because women have also been oppressed does not, somehow, negate the fact that Black and Latinos have also been oppressed.
Again, Whataboutism, Red Herring, and Slippery Slope fallacies.
perhaps misogynistic would have been a better word to use than womanizer for the PP. And that list is pretty much endless among our male leaders…
Sex lives of others? So womanizing is just… Flirting? Natural instincts? Lamest excuses. You can’t see how treating women as objects could be damaging to equality?! Sigh.
Slipping down the slope from Confederates to slave owners and slave traders like Elihu Yale.
MWolf is correct in his/her/their word usage.
“womanizer” definition:
a man who often has temporary sexual relationships with women or tries to get women to have sex with him:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/womanizer
- snaps fingers* c'mon guys, we were doing so well! stay focused!!We made it to page 5!
Are monuments a good thing? Are monuments and memorials different, with different rules?
Who or what should get one?
Who decides to remove them? How does that work? DOES it work?
What would be better/more equitable/more empathetic?
“The necessary counterpart of dismantling racist monuments is the elevation of the histories and symbols often omitted from public space — of Black and Indigenous people, as well as immigrants, women, and queer people. This is a mammoth undertaking. As Ken Lum describes in his essay, “Memorializing Philadelphia as a Place of Crisis and Boundless Hope,” it was not until 2017 that civil rights activist Octavius V. Catto became the first African American honored with a monument in city limits, even though African Americans comprise over 40% of Philadelphia’s population. This occurred 316 years after the city of Philadelphia was formally established. Lum also astutely notes that only two monuments in Philadelphia are of women: Joan of Arc and Bostonian Quaker Mary Dyer, neither Philadelphians and both white.”
https://hyperallergic.com/574833/monument-lab-book-philadelphia/
I prefer architectural type monuments like the St. Louis Arch or natural scapes with trees and flowers. The Princess Diana memorial in London is a flowing stone river. No statue of her at all. It is lovely.
I think future statues and memorials will be better thought out as we move forward.
I believe statues honoring confederate leadership are not American symbols and can go. Especially considering what they represent to many.
Let’s separate this group and not conflate with other monuments. By mixing the two it becomes a false choice.
The colonial era and historic political figures outside of confederate figures, all have both good and bad with the accompanying flaws of all humans.
We need to get a bit more consensus around these and it is becoming a bit of free for all.
I don’t believe it is proper or just for a vocal minority to speak for all. Not in the USA. All protestors have the right o free assembly and free speech.
That’s not the same thing as carte blanche.
Personally I want to think about it some more and let the passions cool.
The protestors can protest. They don’t get the final say.
Tearing things down and destroying things is the final say.
It’s not how it works. Each city should have a referendum on these and see what happens.
I was heartened by an open letter penned by 100 academics and artists today. Not that I am in lockstep with them in many areas at all. Many like Noam Chomsky are certainly leading progressive academics and thought it would have weight informing the statue question from a progressive standpoint.
I am not agreeing with their characterization of anyone. Just agree with the current atmosphere being toxic. Ripping down things you don’t like can take very unexpected and dark turns. Counter to what these young people are trying to achieve. They lack the experience or history lessons to grasp it in the moment.
Here is the heart of the open letter that is germane to this thread.
“The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted,” the letter explains. “While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.”
One late edit. I am not in lockstep in all areas. “Not many” is an overstatement and I tend to see things issue by issue. FWIW. Don’t want to offend anyone and prefer peaceful conversations and consensus if possible.