New Orleans Liberty Place Monument removed -- other Confederate monuments to follow

[PACOX]

I think that we've stretched the definition of "racism" a little bit too far.
I've seen real racist. Nazi scum, that would beat up, hurt or even kill people for being of different color than they are, or even listen to the wrong music.

Someone who makes jokes about black people is not a racist. He is an idiot at best.

Ehhh. Your examples are bit off. Just because you're not a criminal racist doesn't make you any less of a racist. I would say the overt racists are just lapdogs and lackeys for the real racists. Any smart racist since the 1950s knows to keep that shit on the down low.

Any reasonable person also knows race related jokes doesn't make you a racist. Louis CK is one of my favorite comedians today. Makes race related jokes and says "nigger" with a hard R all the time. No one thinks he is a racist.

[PassingBy]

You think the only real racism is willingness to resort to violence? Wrong. Maybe you think this way because you said you grew up in what you called a 'skinhead' neighborhood and only ever saw the more extreme type of racism. No, racism takes many different forms.

I do think that a person can say whatever they want without an angry mob with pitchforks running aroung asking to lynch them.
Unless they are resorting to violence, spreading damaging lies, or provoking violence.

E.g. the romanian tennis guy that called the future child of one of the Venus sisters "chocolate with milk".
Is that a rather unthoughtful thing to say - sure. Is it grounds for an investigation and hate campaign? I'd say no.

Stupid joke about black people is no different than a stupid joke about Italians, Russians, Irish ppl or anybody else.
And yet it is still a stupid joke.

Every Russian is a mobster, drinks vodka, and has a pet bear.
Every Irish is a racist, a drunk and loves to fight.

Imagine if Maria Sharapova has a baby with Michael Fassbender and someone says "Oh I wonder what will that baby be Guiness with Smirnoff".
Will it sprout that much outrage?

Probably not.

But than again it is just my opinion on the issue. And it is not just about the race. People should be entitled to their opinion, and have an opportunity to voice it on race, gender, religion, whatever issue that they want to have the opinion on.

[Garnier Fructis]

@PassingBy Words have social consequences. And what does any of this have to do with the issue of what constitutes racism? You just jumped straight from that topic to a general defense of unsavory words. Are we hitting a little close to home or something?

[PassingBy]

@PassingBy Words have social consequences. And what does any of this have to do with the issue of what constitutes racism? You just jumped straight from that topic to a general defense of unsavory words. Are we hitting a little close to home or something?

We did go a little bit offtopic.
However I still don't see a racist having a colored friend.

I mean a real racist. A person that hates people of other race. That considers them inferior, unworthy. That wants them killed, or put into ghettos, treated like animals.

Why would a person like that be friends with someone that he considers to be subhuman?
I can understand a racist having a colored acquaintance. Having to communicate to "them" at work, or for some kind of favors.

But being friends?

[I Push Buttons]

Any reasonable person also knows race related jokes doesn't make you a racist. Louis CK is one of my favorite comedians today. Makes race related jokes and says "nigger" with a hard R all the time. No one thinks he is a racist.

Unfortunately, businesses and such don't distinguish unreasonable people from the rest of us. And when those idiots start screeching, careers are ruined.

[Gaaz]

Precisely what I was talking about. Lincoln isn't the entirety of the Civil War. He is one person leading one side. The issue of slavery pretty directly and explicitly lead to the attempts by the southern states to secede. You don't have to take my word for it. You can just look up their declarations of secession. This of course led to the need for Lincoln to use force at all, as they had no legal right to secede and were essentially just engaging in criminal behavior en masse. So while Lincoln may not have waged a war for the sake of abolishing slavery, slavery and political conflict over slavery directly set the stage for the war and created the reason for war.

No, slavery in itself was one of many issues that caused the war. And not a major issue at that (in terms of moral justification), since owning slaves was not prohibited in the North during the conflict. You can call me cynical, but I agree with historians like Charles Beard (although his particular interpretation does have several... not holes, but assumptions in it), that behind all the rose colored proclamations of equality, libery and freedom for all, was a simple and down to earth power struggle between 2 sides:

Beard's interpretation of the Civil War was highly influential among historians and the general public from its publication in 1927 until well into the civil rights era of the late 1950s. The Beards downplayed slavery, abolitionism, and issues of morality. They ignored constitutional issues of states rights and even ignored American nationalism as the force that finally led to victory in the war. Indeed, the ferocious combat itself was passed over as merely an ephemeral event. Much more important was the calculus of class conflict. The Beards announced that the Civil War was really a "social cataclysm in which the capitalists, laborers, and farmers of the North and West drove from power in the national government the planting aristocracy of the South".

The Beards were especially interested in the postwar era, as the industrialists of the Northeast and the farmers of the West cashed in on their great victory over the southern aristocracy. Hofstadter paraphrases the Beards as arguing that in victory:

the Northern capitalists were able to impose their economic program, quickly passing a series of measures on tariffs, banking, homesteads, and immigration that guaranteed the success of their plans for economic development. Solicitude for the Freedman had little to do with northern policies. The Fourteenth Amendment, which gave the Negro his citizenship, Beard found significant primarily as a result of a conspiracy of a few legislative draftsman friendly to corporations to use the supposed elevation of the blacks as a cover for a fundamental law giving strong protection to business corporations against regulation by state government.

Dealing with the Reconstruction era and the Gilded Age, disciples of Beard such as Howard Beale and C. Vann Woodward focused on greed and economic causation and emphasized the centrality of corruption. They argued that the rhetoric of equal rights was a smokescreen hiding their true motivation, which was promoting the interests of industrialists in the Northeast.

I find purely down to earth and "skin" interests much more convincing than any attempts to a moral high ground. Current US policies toward Saudi Arabia seem to agree with that.
It is also interesting to know that Lincoln was not even present on voting ballots that were distributed on the South. The war started only 38 days after his inauguration speech.

[Grimbold21]

You guys would have a stroke if you attended one of masters' classes where the subject is exactly this: contested monument spaces

[Templar 331]

I can see not wanting to glorify a dark part of history and a monument is just that, glorification. Removing these monuments isn't the same as rewriting history.

[Independent voter]

A lot of white Southerners are proud of their ancestor's participation in the Civil War. It was a well fought war and if great-great-great grandad fought in it, I can see people being proud of that.

But the Civil War was about slavery and in a place like New Orleans where there are a lot of black people, they aren't going to appreciate a monument to slavery, that's how they see the monument.

I know there will be some who say it wasn't about slavery, that it was economic. The economic issues between the North and South could've been worked out in Congress like they are today. Congess couldn't work out slavery, it had to end so slavery was a sticking point.

[Machismo]

The act of tearing down statues and memorials is almost as old as the tradition of putting them up. Personally, I would prefer that they stay up, and people be informed of the actual history involved. I think we should be reminded of the shitty nature of humanity, and what those memorials represent. Yes, the Confederacy was a terrible cause, one laden with racism, and the belief that some humans are property. Sadly, far too many people forget.

I do understand why such things get torn down, people want to move on. Memorials to Lenin, statues of Stalin, and odes to Hitler... I doubt many would be too upset with their removal. When we took down Saddam Hussein, people cheered quite loudly when his statues and murals were destroyed.

[Allybeboba]

https://news.vice.com/story/death-th...in-new-orleans

According to this article (different one) "The administration said that the removals will be paid for by an anonymous donor." but there is no source for that.

Activists have been fighting to take them down for decades. That is decades worth of lawyers and court fees.

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1. Those slave owners generally didn't get statues for being slave owners.
2. There are many people who still want to tear them down.
3. The seceding states made it pretty clear they were seceding over slavery. "States rights" as it appears in their various declarations of secession specifically referred to their rights to force the other states that didn't care for slavery to uphold the institution.

We still have "state's rights".
Nevertheless, seceding from the union is an illegal act.

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You guys would have a stroke if you attended one of masters' classes where the subject is exactly this: contested monument spaces

They wouldn't have instant access to the internet for their answers.

[Soulwell]

Ehhh. Your examples are bit off. Just because you're not a criminal racist doesn't make you any less of a racist. I would say the overt racists are just lapdogs and lackeys for the real racists. Any smart racist since the 1950s knows to keep that shit on the down low.

Any reasonable person also knows race related jokes doesn't make you a racist. Louis CK is one of my favorite comedians today. Makes race related jokes and says "nigger" with a hard R all the time. No one thinks he is a racist.

I love when people bring up racism and think only white people can be racist. I was born and raised in this city being born in a awful area and having divorced parents. Some would call me a "wigger" but it isn't a choice is who and what I grew up with. Going off of the basis of both and just generally living here, black people are 12x more racist than any other race I've ever seen.

A lot of white Southerners are proud of their ancestor's participation in the Civil War. It was a well fought war and if great-great-great grandad fought in it, I can see people being proud of that.

But the Civil War was about slavery and in a place like New Orleans where there are a lot of black people, they aren't going to appreciate a monument to slavery, that's how they see the monument.

I know there will be some who say it wasn't about slavery, that it was economic. The economic issues between the North and South could've been worked out in Congress like they are today. Congess couldn't work out slavery, it had to end so slavery was a sticking point.

The people that live here aren't the ones with the problems. It's the sjw trash everywhere else.

[Daelak]

Gotta love the "diversity" argument. Diversity today means whoever has the louder voice gets to tell everyone else how diverse society is when certain things they dislike are removed from sight.

There is no upside by having secessionist paraphernalia on public grounds. They started the civil war because they were cornered, unable to expand their slave empire . Unfortunately the ideology still resides in US conservatism, you can see it in their language and their hatred of federal authority bestowed by the constitution.

[satimy]

The civil war never happened

[Daelak]

Many Southern people see the confederacy as a symbol of defiance against big government and against the Imperialism the North showed at the time. True enough the rich landowners of the condederacy fought for slavery as a model but they fought for a bit more than that, and every single confederate soldier was not fighting just for slavery.

And I think people need to stop whitewashing the civil war with big brushes like that, It was a civil war with many heroes and villains on both sides. Stop trying to rewrite history.

Don't worry, your toxic idolation of the civil war still exists in the modern conservative movement.

[Themius]

It's really rich considering the majority of black slave owners lived in louisiana. What a way to downplay that part of history.

The percent of black slave owners are in the very low single digits... shall we judge everyone in the country for instance by what a few corrupt bankers do? Would that make sense to you? If not, perhaps try to say something that makes sense.

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Also what's the problem with removing confederate monuments?

It's like being "hey now leave that hitler statue alone, it's history!"

[petej0]

There is a difference between remembering history/ historical figures than what literally is a shrine to General "stonewall" Jackson at the Confederacy museum. When I visited it there were grown men there weeping, bowing, kneeling... that's not "remembering" an historical figure. And clearly they do not view them as historical figures to learn what NOT to do, instead they revere and idealize these people, who are un-American at best.

Jacksons leadership style was of legend. Up there with the Patton, when he died it was a great blow to the morale of the southern soldiers. Lee was a strategist wonder, he was the reason Lincoln went through more Generals then George Steinbrenner went through managers. Lee was against slavery and secession. Lee was also asked by Lincoln to lead the Union forces, and only declined because Lee felt it was his personal duty and honor to defend his home state if attacked.

Some Confederate soldiers only fought to defend their lands against what they viewed were aggressors and invaders. Most were against fighting the rich mans war (kinda like it is today). It was "A rich mans war and a poor mans fight". In the South you could only get an exemption from fighting if you owned more the 20 slaves, or you if you paid someone to take your place. So you had a fighting force of non-slave owners, most who were against slavery to begin with, fighting the North who came onto their lands.

Go anywhere in the south and you will find streets, towns, cities, parks, squares, military bases all named after Confederate soldiers and commanders. Will you rename all these as well? I think it is a great opportunity to learn about who these people were and what made them important. You look back on these people with disdain, as evil slave owners fighting to keep an evil practice in place. I look back and take their views into context and didnt find that all of them were evil.

[Daelak]

What a joke. The civil war is the darkest time in our history. We should never forget it. Ripping down these monuments, I don't care who think they don't belong there, is an act of stupidity. They are a grim reminder of what happens when you let ideologies and agendas tear a country apart.

Yeah, they should be museums, but fortunately for you, US conservatism holds the ideology the confederacy was fighting for in high regard.

[BreakerOfWills]

YOu can remember the hideous history of the slave owning south without having monuments to the people that fought to keep human beings enslaved. I dont know anywhere else that has monuments to the people that committed the atrocities and tries to argue that it's about remembering the bad shit they did.

I dont see a bunch of nazi monuments in germany with people arguing "if we tore down this beautifully crafted hitler statue people might forget the holocaust" what? what kind of insane mental gymnastics is required to even make that argument. Tear the fuckers down, put up statues to people that ran the underground railroad, or that fought against the horrifying evil of slavery, bam, problem solved.

[Daelak]

You know, it's less about the removal of the monument, and the methodology that pisses me off. Heavily armored, sniper supported, mask wearing thugs tearing down history is what some tinpot dictator desperate to hold their crumbling power does, not what happens in America.

Sorry, America doesn't look fondly on racist and secessionist leaders of the confederacy.