A statue of Christopher Columbus, which was removed from Providence, Rhode Island, following heavy criticism and vandalism three years ago, has re-emerged in a nearby town.
www.foxnews.com
they are still going after statues again. native american's are just at ludicrous as blacks. native americans killed way more of themselves then anyone killed them. they were enemies of each other going back years and years before the land was discovered and killed way more of each other then any white white man ever did. this is just crazy. stop trying to change our history.
History is not to like or dislike. History is. History is to learn from. History teaches what has worked well in the past and what has not.
For example, honest history teaches us that American slavery began in a world in which most cultures allowed or condoned or practiced some form of slavery. As the world cultures changed and outgrew that primitive mentality, so did America.
It was was not Americans who went onto Africa's gold coast to capture hapless tribal people. It was other tribal people. It was not Americans who purchased those slaves and hauled them to the new world. It was mostly the British, French, Spaniards, Portuguese and Dutch. Slavery was well established on the American continents, mostly by British citizens, long before the United States of America were established. In fact the Founders stopped the import of more slaves and ensured that American territories that became states would not be slaved states. That was about the best they could do in the culture of their time.
Slavery cannot be condoned or defended in any way in a 21st Century sense of morality though it still exists in a few more primitive cultures around the world. Slavery is cruel, unconscionable, indefensible though there were American slaves who were treated very well and lived good lives. That part of the history should not be ignored any more than the awful parts of history.
To judge people of the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th etc. centuries by the same standards or morals and ethics we embrace in our modern culture is to do a great disservice not only to those people but to history itself. It must be judged through their eyes, in their time, in their experience.
To deny that those descended from slaves in America now enjoy more liberty, opportunity, prosperity, choices, options than they likely would if they had been born in Africa is to deny a reality of our history.
Monuments/historical markers of people who did some bad things should not negate any good done by those same people or vice versa. They represent our history, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And they should be used to teach and inform of the good, the bad, and the ugly, not torn down out of some self-righteous moralism that focuses on one aspect only of our shared history.
