| 00Xander00 said: I'm from England, UK where there is a similar issue. Due to the racist police brutality (in certain parts of America) which caused the death of George floyd, there was a statue of slave trader recently here in England that was removed (and also protests in London happened which targeted other statues). This has caused waves of discussion and debate about other public UK statues with deviant histories. I believe the best solution is to put these statues in a museum where they can have a context. The environment has the ability to change the context of art, eg; a slave trader standing outside in the sun next to legendary figures such as Royal dynasties, Mother Theresa and Churchill. This would make the context of the statue seam as if the country is meriting the slave trader. Whereas in a museum the statues can have a more controlled historical context eg: there could have a sign next to it for tourists and school kids to read which would describe the guy as a bad and heinous guy and what he did that is infamously wrong to modern society; therefore why the statue of him is on display. Although, I'm not from America, so I may seam ignorant due to not considering any differences in our countries' issues, including the American Civil War and the mentality (therefore culture) of some 'historians' in the South of US. |
There should also be context as to the circumstances under which the statues themselves were created. Most were created decades after the war and many were commissioned by the Daughters of the Confederacy. They were created partly to whitewash the Civil War and paint the false narrative of a noble “Lost Cause” where the Confederates were fighting against tyranny, and partly to make sure Blacks “knew their place.“ So removing them from public spaces is not “destroying history,” as the “history” these statues represent was fraudulent to begin with.
