By Megan Brewer —
The recent white nationalist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia ended violently and became the eye opener America needed.
The event started when nationalists organized a protest against the removal of Confederate general Robert E. Lee’s statue. Violence erupted when they were met by protestors, resulting in several injuries and three deaths too many.
In the days following the tragic event the question of moving other Confederate statues has been up in the air.
What do I think? Move them.
Just as U of L removed its Confederate statue in November and Lexington voted to remove its confederate statue this year, others should follow suit.
These monuments didn’t go up for the right reasons. The Confederate statues didn’t go up directly after the Civil War but during the Jim Crow segregation era. The individuals who put the monuments up intended for them to be a symbol of white supremacy. They’re racist.
They went up to intimidate a race or show the power of another. Their sole purpose was to glorify Confederate power.
The argument has been made that relocating these monuments is erasing history, but that’s not the case.
Relocating these statues is making a statement that these stone individuals are not the people we want to be honoring. They are a part of history, but not a noble one we want to display on our city squares.
The current locations these statues are displayed at says we believe in the messages they stand for.
They didn’t go up with the intention of anyone honoring them, so they need to be displayed in museums instead.
That’s why these statues need to start coming down, their history is not honorable. Their current locations don’t show we are a nation of equality.
In an email to U of L students addressing the events in Charlottesville, Interim President Greg Postel said, “We must choose unity.”
I agree.
There’s no more room for racism in America. We have no time to praise all the wrong people.
It’s time to start finding museums for these distasteful monuments. We can’t leave them sitting there watching over us; they do not deserve such an honor.
File photo / The Louisville Cardinal
