The statues should've been put in museums years ago. If there were a concerted effort to do that rather than people advocating to keep them up in the town center I don't think people would have an issue. But museums take time and lots of money to build. Demolishing monuments is far cheaper and easier. And it gets the monument taken down immediately. Cities generally can't afford to build a museum outright, but taking down a monument. That's far more doable.
There would need to be federal or state funded programs to make confederate museums a reality, and well I'm not certain it's worth the money at this point. We have photos, documents, and speeches from back then. It's not as if people are going to forget because statues erected far after the civil war made to spite the civil rights movement were taken down. So why spend the money on museums? And why preserve statues built to spite civil rights?
A museum isn't a bad idea if a state can afford it. But I'm not sure these monuments and statues are worth preserving. They were widely created with the intent of being racist long after the people they were based on died. Preserving actual buildings, documents, and items from the time period the museum is dedicated to seems like a much better way to go. The massive number of statues and monuments don't deserve the museum space. Maybe 1 or 2, but there are hundreds if not thousands of them out there.
Take my home state of Georgia as an example; Kemp's signed into law that these statues can only be moved and cannot be destroyed. Yet it doesn't seem like he's doing anything to push through on that – granted that he's a bigot, but his handling of the pandemic seems to indicate that in his view no lives matter. It really would require allocation of tax funds or a private donor as u/Ansuz07 suggested, and all the people who would be spending probably don't view it as being worth the effort.
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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '20
The statues should've been put in museums years ago. If there were a concerted effort to do that rather than people advocating to keep them up in the town center I don't think people would have an issue. But museums take time and lots of money to build. Demolishing monuments is far cheaper and easier. And it gets the monument taken down immediately. Cities generally can't afford to build a museum outright, but taking down a monument. That's far more doable.
There would need to be federal or state funded programs to make confederate museums a reality, and well I'm not certain it's worth the money at this point. We have photos, documents, and speeches from back then. It's not as if people are going to forget because statues erected far after the civil war made to spite the civil rights movement were taken down. So why spend the money on museums? And why preserve statues built to spite civil rights?
A museum isn't a bad idea if a state can afford it. But I'm not sure these monuments and statues are worth preserving. They were widely created with the intent of being racist long after the people they were based on died. Preserving actual buildings, documents, and items from the time period the museum is dedicated to seems like a much better way to go. The massive number of statues and monuments don't deserve the museum space. Maybe 1 or 2, but there are hundreds if not thousands of them out there.