World News

[CosmykTheDolfyn]

Controversial removal of Confederate monuments starts in New Orleans

*sigh*

The Confederate States of America, and everything which it entailed, is a portion of the nation's history. A sad part, yes, but part of it nonetheless. Removing these monuments is, in some ways, censoring the history of the US, a part of the US so significant that the Americans held a civil war over it.

"B-but those confederates were a bunch of white supremacists, just like the Nazis!!"

Funny you brought that up because it's a great example. There are still concentration camps up that you can go and visit for yourself so you can see where the atrocities happened. It's a piece of history and taking it down isn't the right thing to do.

I find the comparison between the Nazi camps and these monuments an interesting one.

The concentration camps are still there are as a warning to others.  You can see the damage that was caused.
These monuments did not give warning to future generations, but instead were placed to actively PRAISE these confederate fighters.  Most notably, one was meant to praise the accomplishments of the Crescent City White League, a paramillitary group whose sole purpose was to prevent black voting rights and operated very closely to the KKK.

IF these monuments had been a sign of the damage that such groups did, or maybe even a list of names of they people they killed, it WOULD be a great display and warning to future generations.  However, if you were to put up a monument to Hitler listing his accomplishments but not mentioning the concentration camps, it would actually be a hindrance to history and not serve as a warning.  That is exactly what these monuments did, solely state "good things" done by these highly flawed groups without mentioning the pain they also caused, meaning it was not actually even displaying history correctly.

Yes, the troubled part of the history of The United States needs to be brought up and remembered.  It does not need to be done in a celebratory manner that these monuments were made in so as to lose the benefits it might bring to future generations.

(Also, seriously, watch the video of the people that were protesting the taking down of the statue, and they were yelling at a black woman to go ask her "tribal leaders in Africa" what they thought about the monument.  They were yelling this to a woman who has lived in the US her whole life, and her family has been in the US for generations.  I would rather not want to be on the side of such blatant racism.)