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Should we remove statues and monuments of founding fathers?
- Thread starter Deleted member 31923
- Start date
Jefferson was probably one of the worst founders when it actually came to slavery. He spoke eloquently at times about abolishment but he also spoke to a sickening degree how profitable slave child birth was for him guaranteeing at least a 4% profit return yearly. Even before the revolution Washington had begun working on abolitionist causes but considering he lived in the Heart of Slave Country it was to not much effect.
The only slaves Jefferson freed were family of the Slave he kept as a Mistress. Jefferson is a great example of the type that says something is wrong but let the states decide and if the wrong continues its the will of the states
I visited Montecello last year and they didn't shy away from talking about Jefferson's ownership or treatment of slaves. I thought that was a good approach.
OP
OP
Just saw this. Timely.
www.realclearpolitics.com
CNN's Angela Rye: Washington, Jefferson Statues "Need To Come Down"
CNN's Angela Rye called for statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to come down Thursday on the network. "American history is not all glorious... George Washington was a slave owner. We need to call slave owners out for what they are. Whether we think they were protecting American...
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There are plenty of statues of people who didn't own slaves and plenty of them that can be built of good people
No one seriously thinks we should do this. Unlike the Confederates and Columbus the Founding Fathers actually did something positive for the country in spite of their atrocities. We can give them recognition for their positive actions while still being critical of their negative ones. You can't really say the same about a group of traitors and a mass murderer who's legacy was fabricated.
I should clarify, no one that actually has any real control over these types of decisions. A small thread on a forum of 100k people isn't a great sample size of the majority of Americans.
The only monument I'm aware of that it really makes sense to tear down is Mt Rushmore. That was built (technically it was never finished) on land taken from the natives even though we promised them they could have it. We even have a bunch of checks that the tribe refuses to take because they don't want the money, they want the land.
I'm all for showing people a more nuanced and critical look at the founders and even for some statues of civil rights leaders, but I just don't see the practicality of tearing down the Washington Monument or the Jefferson Memorial compared to statues of Columbus or Robert E Lee.
I'm all for removing statues of people like Lee, Sherman, Davis, etc. And I'm for straight up destroying the ones built by KkK/white supremacists during the birth of Jim Crowe.
But the thing is there is a line, as fuzzy as it is, where we go too far. Society is constantly evolving (normally) and I don't think it's helpful to want to always judge past figures by today's moral standards because that removes a significant amount of people eligible. Removing founding fathers, for instance, is going too far for me.
But the thing is there is a line, as fuzzy as it is, where we go too far. Society is constantly evolving (normally) and I don't think it's helpful to want to always judge past figures by today's moral standards because that removes a significant amount of people eligible. Removing founding fathers, for instance, is going too far for me.
The quotes on that are bullshit and you know it. The US is built on stolen land. That's not "problematic", it's problematic.
Dismissing the plight of North America's Indigenous peoples as though it's mere pedantry is equally as shameful as the continued history of African-American racism.
It's why the 2nd and 3rd option in the poll seem like they fit a VERY narrow difference in criteria unless you conveniently omit the Indigenous.
OK? Remove them from public spaces. Public statues are intended for contextless veneration and commemoration of the person depicted, plain and simple. It's why the ancient cultures made so many of their gods and heroes and why these ancient cultures also tore so many of them down, either due to cultural erasure from colonial conquest (see: Judeo-Christian missionaries and conquerors tearing down/destroying "Pagan" imagery) or due to changing norms within their own cultures.
A statue's existence does not and should not guarantee its permanence if it no longer represents the values that the culture holds now. I'm not an advocate for destruction per se, but I do advocate for removing them from public spaces and thus revoking the contextless veneration of the person depicted. But in the absence of governments doing so, people are gonna destroy them.
And some of them should absolutely be melted down for their base metals, because they shouldn't have existed to begin with, as with the flood of Confederacy statues that were commissioned after a major push from the Daughters of the Confederacy in the late 1800s to early 1900s, simply to build a grand imposition against black rights during the Jim Crow era.
And hey, some of them likely can stay, so long as those individuals depicted were on the right side of history. My home town has a statue of Gordie Howe. His and his wife's ashes were interred inside the base of the statue after they passed; it's essentially a gravesite now. Even if Howe suddenly came to be discovered as a bigot or a horrid man by some standard or another, THAT might be the single case where a statue might need to stay standing.
Culture changes and who or what we venerate must change with it, as it has been for countless human centuries. Simple as that. These individuals aren't going to be forgotten, the Information Age makes damn certain of it, so let's stop offering monuments of veneration without context if they no longer warrant that.
Bingo.
We could do with less worship of the founding fathers in the country, but I don't really care that much one way or the other. Well besides thinking we should start with all the statues/monuments to racist slaving traitors that have the blood of at least a few hundred thousand Americans on their collective hands first.
After that, I can't say I will shed any tears if people start pulling down the statues/monuments of the long list of terrible people in this country's history.
After that, I can't say I will shed any tears if people start pulling down the statues/monuments of the long list of terrible people in this country's history.
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John Adams is my favorite POTUS so I think he's largely safe.
This is exactly how I feel.
This is exactly how I feel.
Exactly. They shouldn't have statues as it overshadows the blood on their hands. Can't believe this is even a debate. They were slave owners, sexist, racist, etc. I don't buy the "product of the time" argument as I'm pretty sure slaves and Indigenous people they killed didn't just view their actions as a product of their time and normal. It was inhuman then and is inhuman now.
I'm perfectly fine with taking down confederate statues, plaques and renaming buildings and then putting them in museums in each state. It makes sense to have museums dedicated to showing our history.
But tearing down all of the Founding Father's statues and everything about them is asinine. You can't do that without literally erasing the context of the United States history from 1776 (or hell 1500s) through the 1960s and the Civil Rights Act.
If the Founders had argued to abolish slavery at the founding we'd have never won our independence and rallied against the British because they would have never come to an agreement in the first place. That topic was brought up among many of the founders at the time and they let slavery continue knowing how horrible it was (some of them anyway).
I'd be fine with putting context on their memorials with more in depth history on their slave ownings and what that meant for them.
I do agree with replacing the confederate statues with statues of whomever the local municipality wants. Not just move them but put something in their place. Countless people to choose from black, white or otherwise.
But tearing down all of the Founding Father's statues and everything about them is asinine. You can't do that without literally erasing the context of the United States history from 1776 (or hell 1500s) through the 1960s and the Civil Rights Act.
If the Founders had argued to abolish slavery at the founding we'd have never won our independence and rallied against the British because they would have never come to an agreement in the first place. That topic was brought up among many of the founders at the time and they let slavery continue knowing how horrible it was (some of them anyway).
I'd be fine with putting context on their memorials with more in depth history on their slave ownings and what that meant for them.
I do agree with replacing the confederate statues with statues of whomever the local municipality wants. Not just move them but put something in their place. Countless people to choose from black, white or otherwise.
Sure you can. We live in the Information Age, their story will live on forever and ever. You're acting like these things are America's horcruxes or something.
The statue is not a medium meant to contain context; it is, by its nature, an act of commemoration and veneration. It's why you see very few statues that depict historic atrocities (though in the modern age, it is more than I thought or most would imagine), you can't venerate that and most find commemoration of those events deeply unsettling.
There's an... odd amount of people basically saying "yes, they owned slaves, but-" in this thread.
The problem is when to stop, we should also tear down all the Roman monuments in Europe? They were also slavers.
Confederate statues can fuck off tho, it's like here in Spain with so many streets called after generals of the last dictator.
Confederate statues can fuck off tho, it's like here in Spain with so many streets called after generals of the last dictator.
This would be fine anyway because it's on stolen land.
And I don't mean stolen in the sense that all of America was stolen from the indigenous peoples. I mean that America specifically signed a treaty with the Lakota in the 1860s that gave them sovereignty over the Black Hills in perpetuity and then 10 years later were like "lol sike" and started drilling into the side of the mountain.
It's never going to happen, or maybe not in the next hundred years, but yes we absolutely should. We have to demythologize the founding of America and the place of these men in it first. But that would require a self awareness and a turning away from nationalism that I don't think is expectable. Perhaps in an era beyond nation states where we teach history as it should be taught (ie not ridiculous national mythologies of exceptionalism).
Oh, and while at it, as some others have pointed out.
This fucking thing:
Blow it up.
Give the land back to the natives.
Same with this fucking ugly Confederate ass thing:
Grind the whole mountain down. It's tainted.
This fucking thing:
Blow it up.
Give the land back to the natives.
Same with this fucking ugly Confederate ass thing:
Grind the whole mountain down. It's tainted.
So what y'all are saying is we should also blow up nearly everything in Rome? History be damned.
Ancient Romans who turned to Judeo-Christian religion and the upheaval of the Middle Ages beat you to it. What you see in the modern age is mostly just what they missed getting a chance to dismantle themselves.
We're also so far removed from ancient Roman history that their utility as public veneration has been grossly eroded, they've become a mere oddity and fascination and lose so much of their cultural relevance beyond evidence of the longevity of human civilization. You can become so far removed from the subject that you can't venerate it anymore. Unless you're a white supremacist with false notions of antiquity using them as symbols of white supremacy and longevity. But they'd try to appropriate literally anything.
But even beyond that terrible false equivalence, would you be against careful removal of certain publicly-displayed works to end public veneration? This preserves the history in the very narrow definition of preserving the art for the sake of the artist (because it's not like the actual history of the person will go anywhere any time soon) while ending public veneration.
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Might as well, to be honest eventually we could be tearing down statues of anyone who ate meat or operated an internal combustion engine
perhaps we shouldn't put up statues to people at all. People are fallible.
perhaps we shouldn't put up statues to people at all. People are fallible.
We gonna equate human atrocity with omnivorous diets and carbon emissions? Do you think that's a smart idea?
If they do I won't be mad. But it seems a bit performative in a way. Like I don't care too much about Mt. Rushmore and whatever as long as they fix the cesspool that is the police in this country
Oh, and while at it, as some others have pointed out.
This fucking thing:
Blow it up.
Give the land back to the natives.
Same with this fucking ugly Confederate ass thing:
Grind the whole mountain down. It's tainted.
Wow, the Mount Rushmore carvings are much newer than I thought they were. Less than 100 years oldd.
There is that good ol moderate nihilism.
It's harrrrrd to think about how or why things should be different so nothing should matter and no one should have statues. Please.