Statues & remembering the past

Here in Memphis about %80 of the population would like to get rid of the confederate statues, but we are hampered by lawsuits by people who don't even live here.
Do we want to whitewash history, hell no. We want the world to know what a disaster the confederacy was for the south, we want the world to know about the horrors of slavery, but we don't want statues that were meant to intimidate glorifying the confederacy.
Glorifying the confederacy is whitewashing history.

Catcher10 wrote: So why not lets blow up Mt Rushmore, create new paper money with nobody's picture, bulldoze all the monuments in DC as well the memorials including the Vietnam Memorial since all those military people don't meet your standards plus all the police and firefighter memorials all over the country since I'm sure some of those people don't meet your standards either.

BaldFriede wrote: Subconsciously everyone is a racist; it is simply the cerebellum reacting to anything that is "different". What our consciousness, or our cerebral cortex, makes of this is what defines us as racists or not.

Guldbamsen wrote: If we’re going by specific statues pertaining to the Jim Crow era then sure I’d be all for moving some of those to more considerate places, like fx a park or a museum with the additional information printed somewhere that they indeed were moved from somewhere else. It’s all in the small details though.

That's a question of personal taste, Steve. People of my generation were brought up to hate this particular architectural style because of its associations with Fascism, but in more recent years the style has been reevaluated. The whole neighbourhood where this building stands (its nickname is "Square Colosseum") was cutting-edge at the time it was built. BTW, the Federal Reserve building in DC is an example of the same Rationalist style.

Raff wrote: That's a question of personal taste, Steve. People of my generation were brought up to hate this particular architectural style because of its associations with Fascism, but in more recent years the style has been reevaluated. The whole neighbourhood where this building stands (its nickname is "Square Colosseum") was cutting-edge at the time it was built. BTW, the Federal Reserve building in DC is an example of the same Rationalist style.

True raff, it is about personal taste, but do you like it? be honest, now.

Edited by SteveG - June 23 2020 at 04:29

Speaking of, when I visited the Guggenheim Museum back in '14, the theme at the time was in fact Futurism.  It was a new experience for us as we did not know a whole art form had evolved during Mussolini's reign.  Lucky nobody in SM remembered to rant about how oppressive it was to be reminded of Mussolini.  I mean, people know that Taj Mahal was built on the blood, sweat and tears of slave labour, right?  So were the Pyramids.  We've to draw a line somewhere, this can't descend into absurdity. Commemorating a PERSON whose legacy was centrally negative (and not merely incidentally like Washington, Lincoln or Gandhi) is one thing and probably needs to end, but if we start critiquing art forms themselves?

Raff wrote: Not particularly, no. However, I would never advocate the destruction of this building or other buildings associated with the Mussolini era. Statues are a completely different matter, because they have no other purpose than being tributes to someone, and in many cases (such as the Confederate statues in much of the US South, including Virginia, where I live) have no artistic value whatsoever.

Forget about all this talk about statues, I'm just glad that native Italians like you still have good taste!

Icarium wrote: People are still driving Wolksvagen beetle oblivios to the final draft in the design conpetition between Hitler and Ferdinand Porche went to Hitler.

And I still like to listen to Michael Jackson despite his misdeeds, but none of that has anything to do with how statues are used for propaganda.
This has nothing to do with being 'politically correct', at least not to me. It has everything to do with people white washing history with their statues that lie about history.

SteveG wrote: Easy Money wrote: Icarium wrote: People are still driving Wolksvagen beetle oblivios to the final draft in the design conpetition between Hitler and Ferdinand Porche went to Hitler. And I still like to listen to Michael Jackson despite his misdeeds, but none of that has anything to do with how statues are used for propaganda. This has nothing to do with being 'politically correct', at least not to me. It has everything to do with people white washing history with their statues that lie about history. What are pro Confederate flag Southerners lying about with their Confederate war statues and memorials? They love their Jim Crow history and are not trying to white wash anything.

Maybe my choice of words was incorrect.
Look at it this way. A very large majority of people in Memphis do not think the confederacy should be glorified or given tribute.
We want to keep the history as it really was, the biggest disaster that ever happened to the south and the US, but no glorification. No heroic statues.
Its easy to think of some statues that would be more honest and real and better represent what the confederacy was really about.

Why did the Polish people remove statues that pay tribute to Stalin or Hitler. All of that is part of their history too. Do they want to erase or change the history, not at all. They don't want to change or erase anything, but they want to choose who they pay tribute to.
Talk about white washing history, %50 of southerners were opposed to the civil war, but they don't get a statue.
EDIT: If a southern individual or group wants to pay tribute to the confederacy, they are welcome to do that in their own way, statues and everything on their property, not tax funded public property.

Edited by Easy Money - June 23 2020 at 09:42