The legacy of the Civil War is still visibly present in America today, less than 200 years later. Many Confederate monuments are still dominant in the South, including statues of Jefferson Davis, the former president of the Confederacy. Removing these statues has been a controversial measure and has provoked a lot of debate, throughout the US.
Should these statues be removed or not?
One argument is that they are necessary in order to move forward in achieving racial equality. Others believe that these monuments should remain in order for people to reconcile with the past and/or to promote cultural heritage.
I think an important step the United States has pretty much skipped after the Civil War is reparations to the Black community. Only now they are starting to build a monument for slaves, and removing statues of confederate figures is another integral part of the long overdue reparations. People are still able to hang confederate flags and portraits of Jefferson Davis in their houses to continue promoting their "cultural heritage", as is allowed by the first amendment.
How do you believe reparations to the black community would best be went about? Paying recognition and homage to the atrocity that was slavery definitely is important, and I'd like to see more of it through the vehicles of architecture, art, and film. Do you believe that there should also be political and economic reparations?
Here's an update: http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/335283-alabama-moves-to-protect-confederate-monuments
I think one of the most important steps we should take is bettering our education system, and while yes, we all know slavery existed in the United States, there are still many schools out there who don't truly teach the atrocities of that occurred during the period. There are school districts that ban the word "slavery" with excuses that it has a negative connotation around it, and whether or not that is the true reasoning (I personally doubt it), censoring that word also erases knowledge of what happened. And of course it has a negative connotation, it was slavery, but hiding the issue doesn't solve it. This also happens with books like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn being banned from teaching curriculums. They justify it by saying it contains racial slurs, but the books are not condoning the language, they are revealing the bigotry and ignorance behind the offensive terms. Instead, these schools give a textbook and generic explanation of what happened, with some schools even romanticizing the era.
And on what the Senator said on removing the statue being political correct-- removing the statue is not about being politically correct, but about moving forward to show the Black community that they are equally respected members of society. And on what he says here: “Where does it end? Are all parts of American history subject to purging, until every Ivy League professor is satisfied and the American story has been re-written as nothing but a complete fraud and a betrayal of our founding values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?” No one is asking America to rewrite its history by removing that statue, we're asking America to stop romanticizing it. If it's the integrity of history that he's worried about, then maybe he should start campaigning to end these bans and forms of censorship that do the true harm of hiding the country's past.