I like the people who wanna get rid of all the fucked people’s statues, but say, “Let’s leave the horses. Those horses didn’t choose to be ridden by fucked up people who don’t deserve having statues. The horses are all pretty. Remove the riders, leave the horses.”
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IIUC this article echoes some of what you’re talking about.
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The New York Times ran an interesting article recently about the fate of all these racist statues. I hadn’t really considered their disposition in any detail, but I guess I just assumed they were melted down or otherwise destroyed. Nope, most are simply in storage for future generations to deal with.
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There is a non-trivial difference between tearing down a statue that is celebrating an individual because of their racist actions (i.e. the Confederacy) and a statue that celebrates the other accomplishments of an individual who would doubtlessly be considered a racist in 2020.
For example, Lincoln’s views on race, while progressive for the mid-19th Century, would be incredibly regressive by today’s standards. But the Lincoln Memorial doesn’t celebrate him for his old-fashioned views on race, it celebrates him for preserving the Union and for moving the nation in the right direction on freedom.
So the statue of Roosevelt with the two supplicant POCs was definitely racist, but the statue in the lobby with Teddy decked out in his outdoorsman duds ready to go pursue his Naturalist studies doesn’t strike me as inherently offensive. YMMV, I guess.
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Interesting side note: while Roosevelt’s views on race were typical or even progressive by the standards of his day, Roosevelt’s horse was such a notorious bigot that the rest of the Rough Riders refused to even share a stable with the creature.
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We could dump them all in Yucca Mountain and not even have to change the slogan:
This place is a message… and part of a system of messages… pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
This place is not a place of honor…no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here.
What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
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So it’s going to be demoTed?
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But what if it leaks?
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And even a statue of such a person that explicitly celebrates the good things they did regarding race can still be racist:
Although this is a difficult one- the pose is definitely bad, but whether it should be removed is tricky given that it was apparently paid for entirely by donations from emancipated citizens.
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Another example is the Angel of the Resurrection statue at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30th_Street_Station#/media/File:Angel_of_the_Resurrection.jpg
Seems to me like the call should be left to the literal or spiritual descendants of those emancipated citizens to decide how best to deal with it. If a majority of Black people in 2020 don’t like the statue of a former slave kneeling at Lincoln’s feet then it’s time to let the thing go.
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Having read a few biographies of Teddy Roosevelt myself, I am astonished that people want to remove his statue, just because it seems racist, but people see what they want to see.
I would suggest replacing it with one, that I believe to be in sync with the museum, based on this photo of Theodore alongside Colonel Rondon (descendent of European and three Brazilian Indian Nations) in “explorer“ attire, during their exploration of the river of Doubt in 1914.
It is. People of color are not there to be ornaments for white people… on top of that, he didn’t have the best record on race. He was most certainly not a supporter of ending the system of segregation being built during his presidency, was a strong supporter of eugenics “racial hygiene” policies, and said shit like this:
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T. Roosevelt was a complex character.
On the other hand he invited Booker T. Washington for dinner at the White House and I quote “ Roosevelt, while governor of New York, had frequently had black guests to dinner and sometimes invited them to sleep over.“ Lusane, Clarence (23 January 2013). The Black History of the White House . City Lights Publishers. p. 251. ISBN 9780872866119.
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Yes. Racism was an aspect of that character. The statue that’s being removed draws attention to that aspect, and not in an intentional and ant-racist manner. It’s a relic of a time when white supremacy was the norm, and as much as conservatives would like to preserve such relics their time is over.
TR accomplished a lot of positive things that should be memorialised. Would that American conservatives devoted as much outrage to the decades-long GOP assault on the anti-monopoly regulation or national park funding that TR pioneered as they do to the removal of a racist memorial to him.
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I wonder if the bronze ones could be melted down for scrap and the stone ones crushed for earthworks. Though I do like the idea of an American Fallen Monument Park where they can be presented by trained historians along with the context for their removal.
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I think he means handcuffing them to a pipe in the basement, putting the keys inside them, and leaving a few hacksaws nearby.
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No one said other wise. He still was deeply problematic with regards to race.
And Radley Balko is correct there…
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