Current Events > Empty Pedestals do a better job of teaching our history, than the Statues..

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https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/why-i-changed-my-mind-about-confederate-monuments/537396/

Excerpt:

Why I Changed My Mind About Confederate Monuments
Empty pedestals can offer the same lessons about racism and war that the statues do.

Utilizing Confederate monuments in my classes offered students a window into the history of the war, but more importantly, it introduced them to the difficult distinction between history and memory. The tributes showed how communities like Charlottesville and Richmond chose to remember the conflict long after the guns fell silent, and how they used the memory of Confederate leaders to impart moral lessons on future generations. And my students learned how the monuments helped establish and maintain a system of Jim Crow segregation—by defining and enforcing the city’s racial boundaries through much of the 20th century. Monument sites became classrooms where I could teach about the long and difficult history of racism in America. Taking them down seemed to represent the antithesis of my goals as a teacher.

But the fallout following the horrific 2015 murders of nine churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina’s Emanuel A.M.E. Church proved to be a critical turning point in my thinking. After photographs of the shooter, Dylann Roof, posing with Confederate battle flags were published, calls rang out to remove both the banners and rebel monuments from public spaces. For me, the lowering of the Confederate battle flag in Columbia and elsewhere needed little justification, as it’d been embraced as a symbol of “massive resistance” during the civil-rights movement. But I still held firm to my view of the monuments.

That summer, I traveled for the first time to Prague, in the former Soviet-bloc country of Czechoslovakia. I noticed almost immediately the concrete foundations and empty pedestals where monuments to communist leaders once stood. Some statues had been relocated to museums, while others were destroyed; skate boarders and sunbathers had since claimed their spot.

The experience forced me to reconsider my position on the markers back home. I imagined stepping back in time to convince the residents of Prague that the monuments helped them face their past, or gave teachers an important tool with which to engage their students. This proved to be a futile exercise. Regardless of their destination, the monuments were exactly where they needed to be as determined by the community members themselves.

After all, the people of Prague were not trying to erase their history or turn away from the lessons it might offer. They had lived this past and it would remain with them. The removal of monuments to Stalin and Lenin lifted the weight of the memory of oppression, allowing the Czech people to begin to imagine a new direction for their nation. They understood “that history can’t be a sword to justify injustice or a shield against progress,” as Barack Obama explained in his eulogy for the Charleston victims.

In the time since that visit, I have listened much more closely to the concerns of those who live in the shadows of Confederate statues, who see their removal as the next step in achieving a more equitable society. Nowhere have these voices been more passionate and forceful than in New Orleans, where workers this spring took down four Confederate and Reconstruction monuments. Local activists Terri Coleman and Malcolm Suber argued convincingly that they don’t need reminders of the history of racial injustice, because it is present all around them. The city’s mayor, Mitch Landrieu, has spoken about the need to acknowledge the damage these figures continue to do.

Please read the rest of the articled linked..
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Yawn
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The statues don't even teach "history". People view them as a celebration of those people. Is that really teaching the true history of the events? It's kinda like say people 500 years from now finding a Kim Jong statue buried in NK with no knowledge of NK. They'll think he was an amazing man lol.

I'm against statues but that article is nothing but fucking indulgence lol
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*nods*
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lydiaquayle posted...

Please read

lmfao

TheVipaGTS posted...

The statues don't even teach "history". People view them as a celebration of those people. Is that really teaching the true history of the events? It's kinda like say people 500 years from now finding a Kim Jong statue buried in NK with no knowledge of NK. They'll think he was an amazing man lol.

Exactly. And most of the statues don't even include a placard to say who they were or what they did. Meanwhile history books spell it out.
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TheVipaGTS posted...

The statues don't even teach "history". People view them as a celebration of those people.

This is a massive generalization. Dedications and memorials are not always for celebration, that's like saying a holocaust museum celebrates genocide.

TheVipaGTS posted...

It's kinda like say people 500 years from now finding a Kim Jong statue buried in NK with no knowledge of NK. They'll think he was an amazing man lol.

Unlikely.
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SageHarpuia posted...

This is a massive generalization. Dedications and memorials are not always for celebration, that's like saying a holocaust museum celebrates genocide.

No, but a Himmler or Goebbels statue would seem to.
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Yeah. Those statues taught me racism was good. After theyre torn down itll teach me and everone else racism is wrong.
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LordMarshal posted...

Yeah. Those statues taught me racism was good. After theyre torn down itll teach me and everone else racism is wrong.

Some idiots are more impressionable than others.
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SageHarpuia posted...

TheVipaGTS posted...

The statues don't even teach "history". People view them as a celebration of those people.

This is a massive generalization. Dedications and memorials are not always for celebration, that's like saying a holocaust museum celebrates genocide.

TheVipaGTS posted...

It's kinda like say people 500 years from now finding a Kim Jong statue buried in NK with no knowledge of NK. They'll think he was an amazing man lol.

Unlikely.

They're for praise or to honor people. An honor is still a positive thing even if the event that caused it was terrible. If you feel like confederacy soldiers should be honored that's a different discussion. It's not about "history". Hell a lot of those statues were put up in opposition of things like the civil rights movmement. If that's the "history" you feel we should be giving public attention to then so be it I guess. I think they're fine in museums and text books. Their history isn't being erased.

And why is that unlikely? They have no knowledge of NK or their dictators and find propaganda in favor of them. How will they know the truth of their "history" only comes from the statues and plaques?

SageHarpuia posted...

This is a massive generalization. Dedications and memorials are not always for celebration, that's like saying a holocaust museum celebrates genocide.

I don't recall any holocaust museums erecting new, towering statues in honor of Hitler or Goebbels.
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gunplagirl posted...

And most of the statues don't even include a placard to say who they were or what they did.

Perhaps that is what's needed: leave the statues where they are, but put a placard on them:

This asshole fought to keep people enslaved.

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well it makes nazis sad when people tear them down so down they should go