A Solution to the Confederate-Monument Problem
Destroying the statues won’t erase the past. Why not let them deteriorate in a public space instead?
Updated at 9:45 p.m. ET on June 8, 2020.
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam announced his intention to his state’s most prominent statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, which has presided regally over Richmond since 1890. On the subject of whether to topple a statue of Lee, my opinion is predictable. I grew up partly in the American South, but in a mixed-race Canadian-immigrant family to whom racist white southerners knew better than to proselytize. I therefore grew up baffled and bemused by the existence of Lee veneration, which made about as. Of course the statues should come down.
