Keeping facts of history as we bust monument myths

Friday, June 26, 2020 0:01

By DOUGLAS KIEREINI

People playing basketball near the Robert E. Lee statue at a park in Richmond, Virginia.

In the USA, many monuments have been brought down by local authorities and protestors, especially those that celebrate Confederate leaders during the American Civil War.

A statue of Confederate commander Robert E. Lee is being brought down in Richmond, Virginia, while the city fathers have proposed an ordinance to remove four Confederate monuments on Monument Avenue.

These monuments aimed to “pay homage to a slave-owning society and to serve as blunt assertions weof dominance over black Americans” Contrary to the claim that today’s objections are merely the product of political correctness, they were actively opposed at the time, often by black Americans, as instruments of white power.

Confederate monuments have become targets because they are powerful expressions of the brutal practices that led to George Floyd’s murder; they are the artworks that gild the system”.