The Confederacy - Erasing History

JC29856 said:

mcgruff10 said:

jeffbr said:

Why would cities put up statues of losing, treasonous, traitors anyway? I'm not from the South, and have no family in the South, so the concept is completely foreign to me. A hostile group took up arms against my country and got their asses kicked, and yet they still are allowed to memorialize their heroes in public places? Stick them in a private museum where others can go see them if they'd like, but honor them in town squares and city centers? Nope. I'm content to have them relegated to history books and Hollywood movies.

I'm telling you, it's the only time in history that the losers were able to put up statues and fly their battle flag lol.  I seriously can't think of another example.
When I lived in spain I don't recall seeing any statues of the moors.

How about this one??

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

mcgruff10 said:

jeffbr said:

Why would cities put up statues of losing, treasonous, traitors anyway? I'm not from the South, and have no family in the South, so the concept is completely foreign to me. A hostile group took up arms against my country and got their asses kicked, and yet they still are allowed to memorialize their heroes in public places? Stick them in a private museum where others can go see them if they'd like, but honor them in town squares and city centers? Nope. I'm content to have them relegated to history books and Hollywood movies.

I'm telling you, it's the only time in history that the losers were able to put up statues and fly their battle flag lol.  I seriously can't think of another example.
When I lived in spain I don't recall seeing any statues of the moors.

Go Beavers said:

tempo_n_groove said:

Go Beavers said:

tempo_n_groove said:

JC29856 said:

CM189191 said:

mcgruff10 said:

I thought this was really good:  https://sports.yahoo.com/charlottesville-native-chris-long-discusses-city-wont-stick-sports-203627846.html
“If you say ‘It’s history and shouldn’t be destroyed,’ then put it in a museum where they can educate people about how far we’ve come, and the dangers of white supremacy and the Confederacy,” Long said. “Don’t put it in a public place, where people who might be offended by it have to walk by it every day.”

Driving through New Orleans there is a highway that cuts through a large cemetery.  On one side of the road is the black cemetery, and white on the other side.  The white side is spacious with giant beautiful maintained monuments, where the black side is run down and crowded.  I imagined what it must be like to commute to work and see that everyday as a black person living in a segregated city where the whites have giant spacious homes, and black neighborhoods are rundown and crowded.  That cemetery will serve as a more appropriate monument to our history than any statue of some loser confederate general will.

Good post for sure. It got me thinking (collective cringe)
So all this fuss over confederate statues, what is the message of tearing down these statues (or protest against the removal of )? That we wont tolerate/accept memorializing slavery? Im not an expert on the KKK or white supremacy groups, the ones that wanted to protest the removal of the statue in Charlottesville, do they advocate a return to slave ownership? Your post got me thinking about the black and white of war. That statue that was torn down is more of a war memorial than a symbol of slavery(or even hate). Do the protestors on either side think war is black and white? Any civil war historians in here? Was the civil war simply about the black and white issue of slavery? Were the confederates the only side in the wrong? Take it a step further are any wars black and white? Were the wars in Iraq/Afghan simply about avenging 911? Which side was in the wrong in those wars?
Some of the answers may be found in history books hence the reason why I recommend to read a few. Imagine the line between the North and the South, like the road thru the segregated cemeteries, where literally neighbors were forced by allegiance to take arms and kill each other.
Here's an idea tear down every offending statue but first educate yourself on its history and why it's there and try not to get caught up in the bastardization of it from some ideological fringe group.

I did bring up the Stalin statue in Seattle but no one has touched that topic yet.

We're also not in Russia. That's a key factor. 

We aren't in Charlottesville either yet we are still having a conversation.

That's still part of the US, I think. Since trump got elected, I'm in some bizzarro world where people draw parallels and equivilancies that are such an extreme reach in some attempt to make a point about hypocrisy (or something). 

CM189191 said:

A timeline of the genesis of the Confederate sites shows two notable spikes. One comes around the turn of the 20th century, just after Plessy v. Ferguson, and just as many Southern states were establishing repressive race laws. The second runs from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s—the peak of the civil-rights movement. In other words, the erection of Confederate monuments has been a way to perform cultural resistance to black equality.