There's a Reason Opinions About Confederate Statues Have Changed So Quickly (Kofler/Cagle)

[eppur_se_muova]

What you think about removing Confederate statues has less to do with your opinions about race and more with how you perceive the motivation behind removing them in the first place.

Jim Penniman-Morin, who majored in military history at West Point before serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, grew up seeing Robert E. Lee as a hero. Now, the ex-Army officer sees Confederal markers, such as military bases named after Confederate leaders, as disrespectful to the troops.

“It’s cruel to send an African-American teenager off to war from a base named for a person celebrated because of their disdain for racial equality,” he said. “No amount of nostalgia is worth causing a young soldier to feel unwelcome because of their skin color.”

Spurred by Charlottesville’s plans to remove a statue of Lee, the bloody Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in August 2017 caused cities and schools all over the country to take a fresh look at whether Confederate history required public monuments. At the time, Americans leaned towards keeping them up, with 52% in favor of letting statues of Confederate leaders remain standing, twice as many as favored taking them down.

Now, many Americans, like Morin, have changed their minds after seeing George Floyd’s killing because the protests are not just one city at a time – it’s in almost all of them all at once. We all have access to the video of George Floyd’s killing as well as hundreds of incidents of police brutality. And now only 44% of us support keeping Confederate monuments against a growing 32% who want to take ’em down. To see a net 14% swing in only three years on a subject that ended more than a century and half ago is, well, monumental.
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more: https://www.cagle.com/lilly-kofler/2020/06/theres-a-reason-opinions-about-confederate-statues-have-changed-so-quickly

[Cirque du So-What]

1. So, the Charlottesville nazis screwed themselves

I’m not advocating any more nazi rallies. It’s gratifying, however, that their histrionics resulted in raising public awareness and positive action.