Here’s another very aware and courageous Black man who realizes what has been - and is BEING - done to him. (I especially appreciate his discussion on the fact that Civics, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights - our History itself! - are no longer being taught in public schools):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPd1p_IZE38
You know all of us have a device in our pocket that allows us to watch educational videos or podcasts on any subject. Watching all these statues coming down seems like a wasted opportunity. Imagine a world where you can go to any monument of any kind, scan a QR code or a web link, and view a list of videos and podcasts from scores of different people and viewpoints on the subject matter, history, controversy, construction, design/art, and anything else someone wants to discuss. Sort of the way museums rent out headphones so you can do a self-guided tour.
Eradicating history and historic monuments because they offend a small but vocal faction feels, well, sort of ‘Talibanish’ to me. It’s an opportunity lost. And probably lost forever. And that’s why some want them torn down, they don’t want other viewpoints to be expressed.
Two people can definitely view the same object in diametrically opposed ways. I saw them threaten to tear down the statue of Lincoln because it depicts a freed slave on his knees. I can empathize with someone who might see that freed slave bowed under Lincoln’s hand as some kind of negative symbolism. But that would never have occurred to me if someone didn’t mention it. I saw it as a symbol of gratitude and hope. I didn’t see a man bending down, rather, saw him as being able to lift himself up! Nothing inherently wrong with either view; though clearly the artists and the freed slaves who paid to commission that statue saw it their own way, and differently from the way the people who want to tear it down now see it.