Funny. People appear to hate statues. Some churches think we actually worship statues.
We all know this is totally false.
I have been here in the Deep South for over 30 years. Never once have I had a “hankering” to loll about and think about these statues. I consider it part of the history of this place, nothing more.
I doubt if the millions of people who saunter past them give them another thought.
It’s STUFF.
STUFF doesn’t make people behave one way or another.
It would be a shame to simply erase the history we don’t like.
They don’t harm me, they don’t influence me, and I don’t study them.
It seems like people could spend their time in more PRODUCTIVE endeavors, like trying to get along. Maybe even learn from history.
Thank you, Clare! The whole ‘erasing the history we don’t like’ is the heart of the matter.
Until I had to return North due to a family crisis I
lived the happiest years of my life in Charlottesville and often passed through the park with the statue of Gen Lee either on my way to the library or to Holy Comforter church (which is downtown). People in Charlottesville weren’t all in my face over coming from “the North”, they didn’t harp on and on about "the war against Northern Aggression’ (a term I heard on these fora but never from anybody who actually was a Southerner!) And it’s not because we’re full of ‘white privilege’ or ‘Euro privilege’ or whatever; the black people I knew had long ago chosen to move beyond the past and were far more involved making life better for the people in the present, as shown by the many volunteer groups, the work of the Interfaith groups, the work of the man and woman on the street who were always ready to lend a hand to people in need, black or white or pea green.
I was talking about the matter with friends today and while obviously this is not the case with every person, the people we see and hear making the loudest noise about the hate and ‘how people would feel bad’ aren’t the people who actually are on the spot, or who have lived this themselves. It’s people who usually have absolutely no connection to the South, or to the war; who usually have no idea of history, even their own modern history, and who shout the loudest and most intolerant rants about these ‘crimes’ while treating virtually everything that passes their own ‘muster’, even if those things offend others or involve moral evils at least equal to slavery (think, ‘abortion’), as being ‘shades of gray’, "capable of many different interpretations’, ‘needing to be dealt with sensitivity’, ‘requiring tolerance and respect’ etc.
Yeah, we understand. The loud-mouthed self-appointed experts who want to wrap themselves in the mantle of noble ‘compassion for others’ when it comes to an issue that doesn’t affect
them call for utter contempt on those who do not toe their line. . .but insist that for what affects
them that we bend over backward lest we cause even the glimmer of a ‘hurt feeling’.
Double standard, anyone?
I despise racism. I also despise bullying. Too many it seems will only permit ‘one way of thinking’ and will snarl and snap and tear apart any who deviate from that thinking in the slightest.
