Quote:
Originally Posted by lozen
Ok if we are going to dismantle racist monuments which I am all for. Lets demolish every Catholic church and remove all photos of white Jesus.
The catholics have been racist against natives, Molested Kids, discriminated against woman and the bible endorses slavery
Presumably people understand that on a scale between "Statue of Osama Bin Laden on the White House Lawn" and "Depiction of the Babylonian King Meli-Shipak II in the wing of a museum", there is an understandable difference in how we should respond to them.
So, once we accept that there is a scale, I don't see a huge issue with accepting the removal of monuments to people who fought to keep citizens' grandparents enslaved. My country had traitors when we got invaded by Nazi Germany in WW2, traitors who (among other things) organized mass murder of Jews. They also tortured members of my family, in the hunt for members of military resistance groups. If there had been a statue of them in a public square, count me in for some civil disobedience and a complete lack of sympathy for anyone who wanted to keep them.
If anything I'd say these protests you have had against these statues have been admirably civil. The anger and frustration these monuments must have caused through the generations they have been standing in public spaces has to be considerable. I think all you need to understand that is a little bit of empathy.
Other than that, it's wise to not look at history through a lens of "villains and heroes". History tends to celebrate those who got to write the history books. On the rational level, there are probably better things to fight than statues - but symbols are a powerful thing.