Monuments: An Argument To Tear Down Any and All
Confederate monuments are being torn down across America. I’m pretty jubilant about it. Let them crash down. I never understood people’s reverence around the Confederacy and its leftovers.
I grew up learning the sanitized version of American history, the one presented in public school education, where America is great, the end. Slavery and the massacre of Native Americans were either mere footnotes or awful mistakes that America learned from and vowed not to commit again. We were the country that had never lost a war. We were the country that overcame racism and bigotry. What I should have been learning was that we were the country that centered the vision of the white male colonialist and all other visions were excluded. Now here we are, looking at our monuments, not with new eyes, but with eyes that have always been here, just excluded from years of myth-making and begging to create something new.
Monuments are a symbol of what American leaders, ethically, morally, even financially prioritize. Monuments are created by the victors, the leaders, and the oppressors. Think statues of Christopher Columbus. Think Mount Rushmore. Monuments speak to our myths, the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we want to believe about ourselves. For example, our country is so great, let us blast their faces into a Lakota spiritual site. We think they…
