My first argument is that monuments can never be neutral, they always mean or represent something. The word monument itself derives from the Latin word monere, meaning to remind and instruct. In terms of the Confederate monuments, they are making a political statement about the Confederacy in Civil War. Even though it was the side that lost, the ideologies that the Confederacy stood for have been carried through into modern day southern America, and this has been represented in the monuments that honour the dead Confederate soldiers and leaders. This means that the public space they are in is no longer public, it is claimed by the belief or viewpoint that the monument represents. To be public means to concern the people as a whole, to be seen …show more content…
Monuments are built as a way of memorialising the dead, or to honour a movement or belief through a physical figure. They are built by the people who believe that what that person fought for was important enough to cast in stone forever. This creates many social issues as it is suggesting that the monument represents a collective memory. Collective memory is “a reconstruction of the past that adapts the image of ancient facts to the beliefs and spiritual needs of the present” (Halbwachs and Coser, 1992). If we apply this definition to the case study of Confederate monuments, the reconstruction would be the monuments themselves and the way they have been positioned, placed, and memorialised is how one has adapted them to reflect how they want the facts of the past to be relevant to beliefs of the present. When a social group (in this case, Confederate supporters) want to maintain a communal identity, they rely on facts of the past and individual memories of the event in question to support their beliefs. Over time these may become distorted, however the bond created by a group of people sharing memories of the same event makes for a tight knit community that remembers an event in the same way. The reason why the Confederate monuments were built in the way that they were is …show more content…
The Confederacy has been infamous for having ties to white supremacy throughout history and has had its flag used as a symbol of hate in racial based terrorism and hate groups. Organisations such as the Klu Klux Klan and various neo-Nazi groups brandish the Confederate flag at rallies and protests, and recognise it as a symbol to justify their opinions and violent actions against African Americans as well as other minority groups in America. Because of this it can be argued that the monuments that memorialise the Confederacy claim ownership over the land through ideologies of racism and white supremacy, thus making that space a place to recognise and remember leaders of the Confederacy that fought for the perpetuation of slavery. While those who oppose the removals claim that the monuments represent the ‘Lost Cause’ of the Confederacy (the idea that the real reason the south seceded from the North was because they were losing the right to their ‘southern way of life’), those who want them taken down argue that even having ties to race-based hate groups means that the space they are in, to them, is claimed by the fight to oppress African Americans and keep them as a subordinate