Empty pedestals can offer the same lessons about racism and war that the statues do.
.. The tributes showed how communities like Charlottesville and Richmond chose to remember the conflict long after the guns fell silent, and how they used the memory of Confederate leaders to impart moral lessons on future generations. And my students learned how the monuments helped establish and maintain a system of Jim Crow segregation—by defining and enforcing the city’s racial boundaries through much of the 20th century. Monument sites became classrooms where I could teach about the long and difficult history of racism in America. Taking them down seemed to represent the antithesis of my goals as a teacher... For me, the lowering of the Confederate battle flag in Columbia and elsewhere needed little justification, as it’d been embraced as a symbol of “massive resistance” during the civil-rights movement. But I still held firm to my view of the monuments... The removal of monuments to Stalin and Lenin lifted the weight of the memory of oppression, allowing the Czech people to begin to imagine a new direction for their nation... Local activists Terri Coleman and Malcolm Suber argued convincingly that they don’t need reminders of the history of racial injustice, because it is present all around them... In a May speech, he asked his constituents to look at the monuments through the eyes of a black child:Can you look into that young girl’s eyes and convince her that Robert E. Lee is there to encourage her? Do you think she will feel inspired and hopeful by that story? Do these monuments help her see a future with limitless potential? Have you ever thought that if her potential is limited, yours and mine are, too?
I cannot.