Floyd family attorney worries US could repeat history after removing Confederate monuments

[Mommamia]

https://www.foxnews.com/media/floyd-att ... -monuments

The attorney for George Floyd's family says he's not so sure that rushing to remove Confederate monuments is the right thing to do. Ben Crump urged Americans to step back and take a "broad view" of the underlying issues.

"I think we have to figure out how to honor people who have done things that are beneficial to society, and if they did things that were not beneficial to society, that we can examine in the lens of having a broad view of what we believe as Americans represents the best attributes of our national identity, then we should look at that," Crump told Fox News host Neil Cavuto on Saturday.

"Whether it should be a situation where, if we keep statues up like that, we tell the history of that individual so people will know the whole story," he added.

"I'm not sure pulling the statues down is the right thing if we now don't get the lessons to understand how we can learn from those things, so we don't repeat those mistakes of the past. You know, they say history -- if not studied -- we will often repeat it."

His remarks touched on widespread concerns that removing objectionable material from the public square could effectively leave Americans unprepared to fight future injustices. In an apparent effort to prevent that, HBO has said it will resume streaming "Gone with the Wind," but only after including relevant context........

[jas]

No one is going to listen to him. They're out of control. I don't think the Democrats can bend over fast enough in just letting this all happen.

[wildflowers25]

It's far too late to try and dial back the mob mentality and unfortunately with political backing, it will only get worse.

[WellPreserved]

While I respect his opinion, I disagree with Crump for the most part. Immediately following the Civil War, statues to the confederacy were placed in cemeteries and private property. It wasn't until the height of Jim Crow and again Civil Rights movement that these statues were placed in front of court houses and in town squares. The erection of these statues was in itself an effort to "rewrite history" and they should, IMO, be removed. What should remain is a plaque indicating the true history of the statue.

As an example, in my county we have a statue to "fallen Confederate soldiers" on our courthouse lawn. Our county almost joined West Virginia in seceding from Virginia. We were a county of a few confederate soldiers, a few union soldiers, but mainly deserters who left the war to come back and tend their small farmsteads. The statue is one that was mass produced by Daughters of the Confederacy, and placed on our courthouse lawn in the 1940s as a warning to our growing number of black small farm holders. This is our county history that is not well represented by the statue but could be represented by the removal of the statue and a plaque indicating why.

I don't agree with protestors taking down these statues but I understand the decades of anger and frustration behind it. I hope that municipalities will address their statues quickly and make decisions on how they want their communities represented. I believe that most will remove the offensive statues.