Why are statues of abolitionists being torn down as well?

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Historical and people of very significant historical events. That's why statues of the evil as much as the saintly should never be ripped down......unless the latter becoming some sort of weird shrine which I never see happen anyway.

What about personal statues? Those are not events.

Statues are not history (I suggest a book). Nor do they, there again by your admission, explain any history or historical context.

So the Iraqi people shouldn't have tore down the statues to Saddam? Why should they be obliged to keep the eyesores standing?

Removing the Jim Crow era statues is a way of reclaiming those spaces. They were raised to celebrate heroes of white supremacy, removing them shows that ideology is defeated.

People cause historical events though.

Statues are history.

I would have put that statue in a museum.

There's lots of them, they don't all need preserved.

Further some of them can be melted down and used to make more reasonable public displays to remember the history. Instead of a tribute to Saddam, a tribute to his victims. Instead of celebrating Confederate generals, celebrate local civil rights icons. Hell, mention where the materials were sourced if you want to remember the entire history but don't try to pretend that a memorial to Nathaniel Bedford Forrest raised in a black majority community by the Daughters of Confederate Veterans was ever intended as anything but antagonism.

Well now we're getting somewhere. We've gone from statues being used to celebrate people, to statues being used as memorials to not all statues of Saddam needing to be preserved (implying at least some are worthy of keeping for historical value).

I personally find the one of the statues of Nathaniel Bedford Forrest stupid as hell too so perhaps that one should be turned into a local laughing stock? It brings me on to my next point. If the statues are of such bad people, why are they not looked at as relics from the past with some element of disgust but left alone? Why not drop off birthday cards calling the person represented by the statue a dick head every year if people dislike that person so much?

Sure, people are involved in historic events, but they are not the event.

How are statues history? What did a statue do? And by your own admission, you have never learnt from a statue.

But why are you defending the symbols of white supremacy. You are really defending those symbols should be kept?

Someone who causes the even it just as important as the event itself.

Are you implying that statues are not history? Then in that case why rip them down for previous historical acts that the people they represent committed? Statues are always a record of the person and what they done. Should someone so please, they can always read about them after seeing a statue.

If that person who's a symbol of white supremacy has done something of historical importance then yes.

Statues are not historical records. I have seen the statue of Sir Issac Newton. It only had his name. It gives no indication of anything historical. Same for Winston Churchill and Cecil Rhodes. However, books are a different matter. I even learn about people that have no statue. Historical figures should have books written about them. They do not need statues.

If a statue was placed to symbolize white supremacy because the society supported white supremacy, but later that society changes and denounces white supremacy, they are not allowed to take down those symbols? Why are you so against a society from removing symbols of white supremacy?

You seem to be missing the point, people are entitled to remove eyesores that serve only to antagonize the community.

I'm struggling to think of anyone's history that doesn't contain racism and horrendous crimes against others. This is strangely focussed on one particular set of people don't you think?



No.



Not necessarily for condemning historical racist practices. I'm referring specifically to the attempt to deny certain historical figures the right of context, it's part of a much larger campaign to rewrite white history as nothing more than a series of war crimes against everyone else, who are totally innocent. It's been going on a lot longer than just this statue thing.

Are they actually waging war? Yes, though the vast majority don't know it and are just following the crowd.



Probably. Whatever utopian vision they want to believe in, history suggests their future safety and prosperity usually depends on the safety and prosperity of their kin relative to other kin groups. Actively working against it is working against themselves.



It very much was back in the tribal days. It's still a fair indicator today, though less so.



Alas, human societies can only be built on people, not reason or logic. Politics can capture and direct the ethnic impulse, but they do not create it and propaganda cannot erase it.



A state with a multi-ethnic makeup is a fancy way of saying "(mini-)empire" and is doomed to the fate of all empires - low level strife, civil war, dissolution and everything in between. Many empires have tried to implement a form of civic nationalism - that common identity, it has yet to prevent the destruction of any of them. As I've said to you before, blood identities are stronger.



Yes, but...
Obviously positive action to create ethnostates is indeed damaging to the empire, but what if the empire is doomed regardless. The choice may not be whether separatism, but whither separatism can be civilised, we all know what the uncivilised version looks like.

So, because racism is common, the racial problems the dominate group that has systemically encoded in society should not be addressed? We should not work at the large social issue in society first, but look at all of them regardless of their significance, and address them all at once? Strangle logic.

But at least we agree that taking down symbols of white supremacy is the prerogative of our society.

Last edited by Jiheisho on 22 May 2021, 8:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't believe that historically states always coalesced along ethnic or kin lines. That's certainly not the story of western Europe, or central or eastern Europe, or western Asia, or south Asia, or central Asia. Many Amerind societies were happy to assimilate black and/or white fugitives they encountered.

There's moments where coalescing along those lines appears to be the case and there's moments those lines are reset. The boundaries between Welsh/Britons, Anglos and Danes within England started to erode after the Norman Conquest. The boundaries between Normans and English eroded later. Many European states have histories of assimilating differing ethic groups, sometimes many times over. They dress funny or they talk funny or they look funny has never been a defining trait that prevents peoples from realizing common interests.

Depends what you mean by "sufficiently dissimilar." Humans do have a tendency to split up into gangs that fight with each other over scarce resources. (By "gang" here, I mean any group of people organized to force its will on others; the gang could be anything from a street gang to a national government.) But what characteristic defines the gang can vary widely. Could be race, could be religion, could be language, could be ideology, could be something as superficial as clothing style or color, or the length of one's hair.

One way to counteract the ganging-up tendency, at least on a local level, is extreme heterogeneity. For example, I think autistic people are best off living in highly multicultural neighborhoods with immigrants from all over the world and no one dominant ethnic group. In such a neighborhood, you don't have to worry too much about "fitting in," because there is nothing to fit in to, beyond basic courtesy.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 22 May 2021, 9:34 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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