gcomeau wrote:
I suggest anyone who does not take offense at them still being up is the problem here.
I'm Russian so I'm not obliged to take offense by your statues anyway.
Baiscally the only pretense that you actually could imagine to the statues is that they -
Those staues of long dead generals were almost all raised either in and around the 1900s to 1920s when the south was going crazy with Jim Crow laws... or in and around the 1960s when the South was throwing a giant tantrum over the Civil Rights act.
- so, I take that anything actually build in former Confederacy states during 1900-1920s could be considered "racist political statements".
Towns, railroads, briges...
They were *intended* to be an insult to black people.
They were intended to be part of national heritage, that your ansestors consider worth saving fifty years ago. Seriously, you have your chances in 1865! You could convict Jefferson Davis & all Confederacy leaders as traitors and hung them as common criminals, put Lee & all surrendered Confederacy generals in chains for the rest of his life, took every ounce of wealth plantation owners have and gave it to former slaves. You could literally exterminate any remaining part of Confederacy "glory" and "heritage", stomp them into the mud, and
nobody then would say anything against it.
Your ancestors for some convoluted reasons decide to go other way. They may be mistaken, but this mistake now is part of your history, and you could not remedy it by taking rather stupid actions by now just because some stupid mens took offense of some statues, placed long past the events.