I agree with regards to private companies banning racist symbols, but the top comment was talking about anti hate-speech _laws_, which seem like a departure from my understanding of the first amendment. If a law against displaying the Confederate battle flag can be justified without a change to the constitution, then it really does become a slippery slope when determining what other unpopular expressions the first amendment fails to protect.

What do you think of the counterargument about statues? A few years ago, the idea that removing Confederate statues might lead to removing statues of founding fathers was considered an absurd slippery slope argument; a few days ago, the New York Times published an opinion piece arguing that statues of George Washington should be torn down. How can we be confident that this isn't a step down that same slope?

The NYT opinion page is hardly a barometer of broad public consensus— see the recent scandal of the Tom Cotton "send in the military" piece.

I'm not sure I follow. Opinion polls at the time showed that a significant majority of the public wanted the military sent in.

Most of the coverage I saw was people horrified at the constitutional implications of the military being turned on US citizens, on US soil, by order of the president.

I mean, there just aren't any constitutional implications - it happened in 1992 with no lasting repercussions.

There are constitutional implications to the use of the Insurrection Act against largely peaceful demonstrations, like the ones in DC at the time it was invoked.

The First Amendment does not protect riots, but it does protect protests outside the White House.

source?

Statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and even Lincoln have already been attacked by the mob. Mount Rushmore is now a symbol of white supremacy. The Emancipation Memorial, paid for by former slaves, is also considered racist now. Boston is going to remove it. The slippery slope has turned into a slide with no end in sight.

https://www.boston25news.com/news/local/boston-art-commissio...

From your own link:

> But Blacks weren’t part of the design process, and the memorial’s central visual takeaway — a Black man kneeling before his white savior — has had people cringing for years.

They paid for it, but didn't get to have input on how it'd look. Seems like the precise sort of thing folks are upset about.

Rushmore was a treaty violation from the very beginning, and Native Americans occupied it as far back as 1971 in protest.

Reminds me of when Trump a while ago (before the recent George Floyd stuff) was commenting on statues being torn down, and commented something like, "next they'll go for George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, where does it end?" John Oliver did a bit on it answering "Somewhere. It ends somewhere," implying that he was an idiot, that it was a stupid comment, and everybody laughed. Now we're here and it has actually happened in reality. It's even gone further. Roosevelt. Lincoln?? We even have prominent BLM figures saying the western portrayal of Christ is systemic racism and must be erased.

Since then I've come to see the answer "it ends somewhere" as completely void of any value or meaning, and mostly just a justification for mindless erasure. It's not a smart zinger, it's empty.

FWIW the founding fathers did not want to be idolized and probably would not like the idea of Rushmore. I'm not sure I see why its outrageous to think that people want to remove statues honoring pieces of history they think ought not be honored. On the face of it, nothing is owed to the past and society does evolve. I don't feel particularly strong on preserving or removing imagery of George Washington from public art. But the gut wrenching feeling of those who feel its spitting on their heritage, well, they're gonna have to learn to cope with the awareness that a country is defined by its people, not its history. For ages 18 and under, whites are no longer the majority in the US (or very very close last time I checked). The aspects of heritage that the country chooses to celebrate are going to change over time.

This is the gist of democracy. You don't get bonus points for historical relevance. You may not agree with the angry mobs of protestors, but the same change is happening in formal government, albeit slower.

History is important because it lets us see ourselves in the arc of time and be more cognizant of how and why we arrived at the present moment. When we idolize figures who we believe did good things, we project a guide line from the past into the future for ourselves to follow. When we erase history, we lose this guidance and direction. It's no mistake that the mob is responsible for the destruction, because a lack of guidance leads to mob-like behavior. Just as fatherless children are more likely to find guidance from their peers and in the streets, with a statistically worse fate as a result.

You could say then that these specific idols are not good idols because of the realities of their actions in the past. But there are other perspectives [0] that should be considered before taking that as a foregone conclusion - a conclusion mostly adopted from peers and not study.

[0] https://bit.ly/2NN8Wbv

> When we erase history, we lose this guidance and direction.

The AHA has specifically put out a statement[0] about monuments. The prime quote:

> To remove a monument, or to change the name of a school or street, is not to erase history, but rather to alter or call attention to a previous interpretation of history.

Thucydides, arguably the very first historian ever, criticized statues and monuments as poor representations of history. It is important to understand the difference between history and historical memory. Monuments are not pedagogy tools. Actual professional historians do not see them as relevant for teaching us about the people they represent.

[0] https://www.historians.org/news-and-advocacy/aha-advocacy/ah...

Historians are record-keepers of history, they are not arbiters of ethics, spirituality, and guidance. Statues of people are not meant to teach us about those people per se, but rather hold to us an example of exceptional attributes of those people that should be considered timeless so that we can follow them into the future. The determination of relevance in this context is not something that should be ceded to historians in any capacity other than to simply confirm or reject that the specific attribute that we appreciate in a figure is based on a historical accuracy. Did Lincoln free the slaves? Yes. Did Washington help lead a revolution? Yes. These are easy questions. The distinction between history and historical memory is not lost; based on an accurate history, we can highlight good attributes use them to reinforce timeless principles that we'd like to continue to carry through time.

> History is important because it lets us see ourselves in the arc of time and be more cognizant of how and why we arrived at the present moment.

I think that framing minimizes the extent to which we can and do choose how we portray history in order to choose how we see ourselves.

Choice is certainly a factor and I don't think it needs to be minimized. If we choose well and isolate and elevate symbols of positive and productive principles, we create better guidance for ourselves and for future generations.

Part of doing this well is being able to isolate properly, identifying what made historical figures exceptional, and being able to forgive sins which are considered sinful now, but were common behavior in the past. If you can't do that, you can't preserve people as symbols of principles at all, because the morality of the moment is not guaranteed to be held forever.

That's great. And the growing shift of culture suggests that slave owners are not emblematic of people who did good things, so we should remove them from the public display. The intent is not to erase history, it is to signal changing values.

My response to that is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23717398

So the statues belong in museums and history textbooks, not the public square:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/06/19/destroying...

It feels tired to still be repeating this when so many others have said it, but Germany is capable of learning about Hitler and Nazism without the monuments glorifying it; Americans can learn about Robert E. Lee without the whitewashed monuments everywhere. And anyway, there was none of this clutching of pearls about history-erasure when the Saddam Hussein statue was toppled in Baghdad in 2003.

I think you're still taking as a foregone conclusion that (all of) the statues represent bad men with evil ideas, and that's what I'm disagreeing with.

Then it's a good thing people aren't toppling statues randomly.

I mean all of the statues that are in fact being toppled.

The Lincoln statue is kind of a special case, and it's obvious why from looking at it:

https://www.wcvb.com/article/boston-art-commission-unanimous...

As far as the others, clearly there is an Overton shift happening here, and that will embolden some advocates to make more extreme demands. Is that bad? Probably not, but I think most statues of Washington are likely safe for at least another generation or two, and if they get moved from the public square into museums at that later point, well, that's something the future will have decided on.

If the absolute worst case scenario you can imagine is that we no longer have any huge chunks of metal in the shape of people displayed on public property, then your slippery slope argument isn't very compelling.

It isn't, see my comment on history below.

> figures saying the western portrayal of Christ is systemic racism

You mean the ones where he's shown as west-european white? I suppose we could bother thinking about why he looks like that in those portrayals when he definitely wouldn't have in real life.

One reason is that people might feel closer to something that they think superficially resembles themselves. This is part of the reason why diversity is important, according to so many people right now. Not just because groups have more perspectives, but because the people in the minority feel more comfortable when the minority is not so small.

I remember some years ago about a situation regarding a movie. I forget the exact details, but it was something like a Filipino movie about an American disaster, like 9/11. The movie was based on a historically inaccurate story of a Filipino man or family involved in the circumstances, when in reality there had been none. I don't know whether or not the Filipino person was a replacement for a white person's real story.

But as someone much closer to the original circumstances, my perspective is not that I or my community's history has been replaced or been removed due to "racism." It is rather very touching that this foreign community felt close enough and impacted enough by the story to envision themselves inside it, taking part in it. To me, it was an expression of closeness and understanding, not appropriation or racism.

Plus it seems strange to me that in a story where people walk on water and talk to burning bushes and kill gays, that the most offensive or historically inaccurate thing is that some people have envisioned the main character as being similar to them.

> One reason is that people might feel closer to something that they think superficially resembles themselves.

I agree! And then they proceeded to spread that image throughout the world (commonly via imperial colonialism) as "god looks like me, not you". That closely aligns with the concept of systemic racism.

> Plus it seems strange to me that ...the most offensive or historically inaccurate thing is...

"Most" is a strawman. We don't need to start assigning gold/silver/bronze medals to badness in order to recognize that it's bad and work to change it.

If imperial colonialism is responsible for bringing the idea of Jesus to new areas to begin with, then it's not replacing something. I don't understand what's "systemic racism" about that?

You skipped the meat of my comment, which is about closeness and understanding.

Criticism of celebrating deeply flawed men with deeply flawed ideals is not, in any way, erasure. We all know about Nazism and the Holocaust despite the lack of statues of Hitler. Christians somehow know about Satan even though he’s got no statues celebrating his greatness.

I dunno, people pretend that they know about what these historical figures were thinking but I feel like nobody's read a book about it, they're all just learning from their assumptive misinformed peers and that there isn't necessarily an interest in the history.

Thomas Sowell, a black man, had some interesting historical perspectives on these figures in Black Rednecks and White Liberals, which is worth a read. This is just a small excerpt from a google search, and in itself can't directly address everything people are trying to erase, but it's a starter for listening to more and broadening your perspective:

https://www.aei.org/*/thomas-sowell-on-slavery-and-this-fact...

It's important to remember that the majority of these statues were not created after the civil war in order to remember them, but during the Jim Crow era in order to intimidate black people. The intent was never to teach history.

I don't know the history of that so I can't argue it. If you could link to some education on it, I'd like to read about it.

I would imagine that it's possible in some circumstances for this to be true for some, mostly confederate figures. I'm really skeptical that that's true for figures like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln.

I don't have any resources to link, sorry.

The weird-power-dynamic-Lincoln statue with the freed black man aside, I generally agree on statutes of the founding fathers. I doubt a statue of Washington was erected in honor of his support for slavery.

In the greater context of what is happening in America right now, tearing down statues of Washington isn't necessarily about Washington himself. Instead, it is about challenging the idea that our historical figures (and America itself) are infallible.

If I may paint a picture, put yourself in the shoes of a black man in America in 2020. You see thousands of videos of police brutality, blatant racism, and disregard from those in power. A significant portion of the representatives in this country refuse to outright state that racism is still a problem in this country, but you see it with your very eyes every day.

However, you see these statues symbolizing this "ideal" version of America, where everyone is equal, which never actually existed. Further, when people challenge the existence of these statues (and by proxy, that non-existent "ideal") in the face of all of this inequity, they are defended orders of magnitude more intensely than the rights of actual-flesh-and-blood people. It's hard to look at a statue of General Lee, or even Washington, and see anything but a symbol of the fact that America at large cares more about the "appearance" of equality and equity than actually granting it to the people. If the people who defending these statues so vigorously also defended the civil rights of their fellow Americans with the same energy, I don't think we would see as much of a struggle over this.

Respectfully, without a place to read about the intimidation tactic of statues, I'm not sure that I put much weight in it. An alternative explanation on the timing could for example be that people in the majority in those communities sensed that the tides of public opinion were shifting, and they felt a strong desire to reach backward and preserve the past that they had fought for, which they felt like they were now losing. This seems more likely just psychologically to me, with the primary element being about a sense of independence and not really about slavery specifically.

As for blacks in America today, it's complicated to discuss and I'm not sure I have the wherewithal to go down all the paths. I think to some degree your picture is based on the news and what is visible, rather than what we know people actually think. Does BLM/the mob speak for all blacks? Are there any who dissent, on either the history, today's context, the solutions, or all three? Yes, definitely. And if opinions vary, should we not attempt to understand whether or not there is a right or wrong, and proceed according to rightness? If it is not about right or wrong, but the perception of offense, what does that mean? If a symbol stands for something good, and one person out of a million falsely perceives it to be a hate symbol, is that sufficient for a teardown? What if it were 10% or 50%? Is it just a matter of threshold? Do we even know the percentages today for what's happening before we let the mob do its thing?

I think a lot of people are smart enough to know that there is a difference between representing "an ideal version of America," and specific ideals that individuals represented. Washington for example largely representing the fight for independence; Roosevelt standing for social justice; Lincoln for freedom and equality - not American utopia.

When considering people as symbols it is important to isolate what they did that made them stand out from their time, from their common beliefs or actions that were the same as everyone else. Without doing that, we expose symbols to the injustice of being judged by modern moral standards, and sacrifice the good that we isolated. Like it or not, the acceptance of slavery was not exceptional in Washington's time. The ability and bravery to lead a revolution certainly were exceptional. The exceptional is what we isolate and create a symbol from.

It is of course possible to have been exceptionally cruel within the time of American slavery, which would be a reason to not symbolize someone. But that isn't the case for these figures and in fact Washington eventually came to flip his perspective on slavery in his lifetime.

The morality of the past is fixed and the morality of the future is in perpetual development, meaning that if we continue to take the same approach that's happening now, all symbols will eventually be lost in time, because with an unbound future we will likely run the gamut of what is considered right and what is considered wrong in any given "now." By keeping this up, we deprive ourselves of a story and a guideline of history to help us project our own future. We sacrifice timeless positive principles to shifting moral discoveries. We leave our children with less guidance.

Can't put in any more - you get the last word!

> I think a lot of people are smart enough to know that there is a difference between representing "an ideal version of America," and specific ideals that individuals represented. Washington for example largely representing the fight for independence; Roosevelt standing for social justice; Lincoln for freedom and equality - not American utopia.

There are mainstream politicians and political commentators who explicitly say that racism used to be a big problem in the United States but that it simply does not exist any more. I suspect it's a very common belief.

> Respectfully, without a place to read about the intimidation tactic of statues, I'm not sure that I put much weight in it.

Five seconds of googling yielded several results from when this was last discussed in a major way, in 2017:

NPR piece includes a chart of dates for confederacy iconography: https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544266880/confederate-statues...

HuffPo piece says it was never about "history and culture": https://www.huffpost.com/entry/confederate-monuments-history...

Vox talks a bit about the process:

"But the story of the monuments is even stranger than many people realize. Few if any of the monuments went through any of the approval procedures that we now commonly apply to public art. Typically, groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), which claimed to represent local community sentiment (whether they did or did not), funded, erected, and dedicated the monuments. As a consequence, contemporaries, especially African Americans, who objected to the erection of monuments had no realistic opportunity to voice their opposition."

See: https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/8/18/16165160/confeder...

And then some newer pieces:

https://www.history.com/news/how-the-u-s-got-so-many-confede...

https://www.wral.com/confederate-monuments-were-meant-to-int...

It's not about statues, but the Wikipedia article about the modern display of the Confederate Flag seems to offer a decent summary of its usage beginning in the 1950s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_display_of_the_Confeder...