WASHINGTON — Public anger over the police killing of George Floyd is unearthing difficult questions in the United States, Canada and around the world about statues, monuments and other permanent tributes to historical figures whose legacies include oppression, racism and cruelty.
Pelosi wrote a letter this week urging the bipartisan committee responsible for the statues to do away with 11 of them, singling out in particular Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens — the president and vice-president of the Confederate States of America, both of whom were slave-owners who were charged with treason after the Civil War.
Protesters, lashing out across America following Floyd’s death on May 25, have made their feelings crystal clear.People gathered at the Jefferson Davis monument in Richmond, VA. on Thursday morning after the statue was pulled down the night before. Watch: A statue of Christopher Columbus in Boston was beheaded and then removed. Story continues below.The current groundswell of broad support for the Black Lives Matter movement isn’t just in response to Floyd’s death, but also other recent jarring inflection points in America’s shared racial history, said Jeremy Mayer, a public policy professor at Virginia’s George Mason University.
“Once we lose the emotional reverence for symbols, powerful institutions can turn on a dime and go, ‘You know what, no more. That’s it,’” Mayer said. “I mean, NASCAR gave up the Confederate flag.”A worker rests after the statue of slave owner Robert Milligan was taken down in London. That same year, Langevin Block in Ottawa — the longtime home of the Prime Minister’s Office, named for Hector-Louis Langevin, another notorious residential-school champion — was unceremoniously stripped of that moniker. Calls are also growing for Toronto to rename Dundas Street, named for Henry Dundas, a British politician who delayed abolishing the Atlantic slave trade.
What about statues of racists that hated Indians?
Yes! I've been thinking about this since grade 4. I'm almost fifty-four!
Notice the majority of protesters are 20 something. These hoods have no idea of the historical significance of the figures from the past. Before they go about tearing down history, they need to educate themselves also about the criminals they are protesting for.
So now your comparing MacDonald to the nazi's?
No
he who forgets history is prone to repeat it..... or something like that.
money should be extracted from every police department in the old south to finance the construction of a museum of crimes against humanity. that museum should be the final resting place for all of those statues and the confederate flags, nazi stuff kkk parafernelia ...
And what good will that do? Will it change history? What is history anyways? There’s good and there’s bad. That’s the historical truth. No? ChristopherColumbus
Columbus? Sure. It was always sort of weird that Americans had his statue up in the first place. MacDonald? No. MacDonald’s contributions outweigh his sins.
Yes. Put em in a museum called “Monsters of History”
Outside of a few historians, did many even know who Dundas was? Sir John A was a belligerent, drunk prone to backroom deals, but he wasn't responsible for residential schools, that was McKenzie. Sir John was a man of his time, most held some version of his beliefs.
Canada Latest News, Canada Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: CTVNews - 🏆 1. / 99 Read more »
Source: CTVNews - 🏆 1. / 99 Read more »
Source: globeandmail - 🏆 5. / 92 Read more »