The Truth About the Statues

[T]the great majority of these statues were erected long after the Civil War, and that most of them were erected either during the high-tide of lynching in the South during the beginning of the 20th Century, or during the 1950s, when mass-resistance to racial desegregation was gathering steam in the old Confederacy. (This latter phenomenon also accounts for the resurrection of the Confederate battle flag.) These were not put up as tribute to heritage or history. They were put up as reminders to African American citizens as to who really was in charge of their lives, 13th amendment or no. These were tributes to the "culture" of Jim Crow, of sharecropping, and of lynching. More people are aware of that now than were aware of it two weeks ago, and I think that's all to the good.

[...]

Over the weekend, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made the unfortunate mistake of saying that to remove the statues was to "sanitize history." This is, of course, a familiar charge, but it also is a criminally inaccurate one. These statues were put up in the first place to sanitize the history of the men who fought to maintain chattel slavery and the men who later re-established white supremacy in the old Confederacy. Removing them does not sanitize history. It fumigates it.

  Charles P Pierce

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE;