In 1989, I was going to the city of Richmond, Virginia, in the United States. I ‘d understood my pals T and P considering that my time in college in Vermont and we were here in T’s hometown to assist him with a video project.
We were driving around at night in a city which had actually been the capital of the Confederate States during the Civil War. At some time, we became Monument Avenue. As we passed the equestrian statues and columns, T, an African-American, read out the roll-call of names of the Generals represented, with P, a white person from New Jersey, responding, “That guy’s got to go!”, “Take him down!”, “And him too!”. We finally stopped near a statue where both my good friends vented simultaneously, “This one! This one’s got ta go, firstly!”
This divisive symbol
The statue honored Robert E. Lee, the Commander of the Confederate Armies and the general who combated a few of the bloodiest battles of the civil war while defending the ‘ideal’ of whites to own slaves. In 1989, almost 125 years after the expected emancipation of individuals of African descent, we were looking up at the statue of a figure around whom white supremacists had developed their racist myths while continuing to discriminate grotesquely, and at every possible level, against Americans of colour.
The existence of these statues of slavery-supporting ge