Gary Shapiro's The Meaning Of Our Confederate

Recently there has been news about people heavily wanting Confederate statutes to be taken down due to their relation with slavery. While many have their own views on the matter, one in particular stands out. The view of preserving them in a way that’ll keep both sides happy and to preserve the history behind them. This “contextualized” view, as discussed in Gary Shapiro’s “The Meaning of Our Confederate ‘Monuments’” I believe should not only be applied to the Confederate statutes but other monuments and memorials as well. Memorials being made in order to remember an event or person, while a monument is made in order to honor an event or person(Shapiro). While it is in fact very reasonable to want to take these statutes down due to evil background, they are still a part of history. Instead, we should follow the “contextualized” view and add context to all monuments and memorials as their meanings change throughout time.

Some might be asking at this point, “Why should monuments and memorials with evil background be preserved, despite the fact they’re a part of history?” The simple answer being, they are remainders to protect us from repeating the past.

A prime example is shown in Mark Connelly’s “Memorials and Monuments” where it discusses briefly how “Totalitarian powers also used memorials as reminders and imparters of a certain ideology”. Now Imagine what these memorials would represent to a society that has overcome these “Totalitarian powers”, symbols of oppression I would imagine. However, they are necessary reminders of oppression that not only tell the struggle of the society in question, but also helps them learn from their

mistakes.
So, while the confederate statues were built, as described in James Baugess’s"Memorials, C.S.A.", “Partly out of need for vindication, and partly out of desire to honor the thinning ranks of the Rebel soldiers...” they’ve become the remainder of a time when the nation was in a war with itself. That will help us overcome future discriminations through more peaceful attempts.
Now you may be asking the flip side, “Why should change monuments and memorials that have a good message change?” Well of course, they aren’t going to be changed too much as “...how little they have changed in design and function over...”(Cull) time. However, they do require some change, or rather context. As I previously mentioned before, we should add context to all monuments and memorials as their meanings change throughout time. This should be done with adding information panels or smaller statues that represent other significant events during that time period. Now it not only focuses just on the event or person it was being built for, but also the surrounding events. Preserving the past more than it had been previously, which shows the good and bad parts of the time period.
While these Confederate statutes may always be looked down as evil and eventually be taken down. We should, no matter the outcome, learn from this and move on with it in mind. We should always try to fix our mistakes and improve ourselves. Monuments and memorials are great examples of mankind doing this. Doing what we should do to improve and better the world around us. We, the human race, is constantly changing and so are monuments and memorials. So, while we may not be able to keep the confederate statues to remind us of our history maybe we can replace them with ones that can, like statues of union soldiers.