Well, last time we gave it to just the white people, and they used it to send a message to black people. Your opinions and even your lives don’t matter.
Disagree. If it were so, I would not have been dragged to museums and historical landmarks, with public art, as part of my schooling. History taught in schools, K-12 anyway, is the product of a very few people who decided what is taught and what is on standardized tests. A handful of texts serve schools throughout the country. What TX and CA buy pretty much sets the standard. So, if an individual without the government megaphone wants to have his say regarding history, art is a pretty good highly personal way to do it. It is a method of providing an alternative view point and inspiring a discussion outside that approved by a few people that just happen to hold the power.
I haven’t kept up with all of the arguments on either side. My position now that I’ve actually moved past the hagiography and Lee bobbleheads and done the work on understanding the history, my own internal moral compass says these things are wrong.
I don't know really. Maybe I talked myself out of my support for moving them at all. If they are to be moved, it is not by a mob. Maybe a vote. It is "public" art.
You make my point. There is value in some of these by virtue of the fact they remind people how they got there. That is the history we are talking about. Some of it was deplorable. If we protect people from that, they will soon forget how bad it was, and white people will be the first. I don't think we need to encourage the white majority to forget what Jim Crow was.
A lot of the statues would still be there either way. A lot of people died and there’s nothing wrong with remembering them.
I'd differentiate between art museums and what governments put up in public spaces. And a historic landmark is also different from a statue. The 20th Maine monument at Little Round Top isn't necessary to someone's understanding of the topography of the landmark that is the Gettysburg battlefield.
I’m guessing you don’t have any black friends, and if you do you’ve probably never had a really deep and honest conversation about their experiences. You probably also didn’t see the O-6 who was fired for live streaming his racist rants-a man who has been signing FITREPS, ranking JOs and deciding fates and orders etc.
I’m honestly curious if you think your average 18 year old black man has the same opportunity as your average white 18 year old?
YES! The is THE question. When the opportunities presented to young black people are actually limited...and they are...why aren’t we asking this question? There is an undercurrent to these protests that appears to have little to do with the genuine impacts of racism, it is all about something else. I believe most of the racism found in the system is no longer personal, it is legacy stuff left over from older times. But try, just try, to say you want to rewrite the oh-sacred Civil Rights Act of 1964 that causes so many of the issues we face today. For those who live in a simply binary world, I am not recommending we simply dump the Act, rather a new one be written. Why are building a bulwark of new laws on a bulwark of rather bad old laws?
That is some monumentally sad stuff.
Too many screen doors on that boat! It is sad and he might try to pretty it up, but in the world of hyper-reactive social media I would just turn my stuff off and hide until the next idiot opens their mouth. I am certain there is one out there.
