Although I have always loved learning about history — and possibly because of this fact — I have never been a fan of statues. Even as a child, I thought they were odd totems to the past, lacking any substantive information that would allow those gazing upon them to make much sense of what they represented.
As I got older, I liked them even less. As a Southerner, I came to view statues as tributes to horrible people who fought to maintain an evil system of human bondage — ego-soothing security blankets for racist losers who produced them not to honor history but to fabricate it. Because in the South, that’s mostly what they were. And still are.
But even statues of those far less objectionable have often struck me as more unhelpful than not. The Lincoln Memorial? To be sure, it’s a wonder of artistic design, representing someone worthy of the accolade. Here is a man we rightly honor for his actions to preserve the Union and crush the Confederate terrorists who sought to destroy it. But here too is a man who admitted that if he could have preserved the Union without emancipating a single enslaved person, he would have done that. Here is a man who said he would have supported sending Black folks back to Africa had it been practicable to do so.
