Quote:
Originally Posted by Bay Kid
(Post 2001319)
Monument Avenue in Richmond, VA. will never be the same. They have removed the statue. They don't even know the history of Gen. Lee.
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I am from Richmond.
All of the tearing down of the city is one of the reasons I left recently. No, not a big reason, but just another check on the Pro/Con list of reasons to leave.
I get that the monuments are symbols with different meanings to the different types of people that live in the city. If I were black, it would remind me of just how troubled my existence may have been 150 years ago, and continuing to present.
Had we decided as a city to address things and let everyone make a case, it is possible that the monuments could have been respectfully moved to a more appropriate place (such as a national civil war battlefield). Yet, we didn't have those discussions and we had a summer of rage where every manner of illegal activity was allowed to flourish in Richmond. The monuments were defaced. A feel good moment for some, and an insult to others. Civility was on vacation and a line was drawn -- My Tribe or Your Tribe.
Richmond is famous for its past and it cannot escape it. Unlike Charleston and New Orleans and others, Richmond is unable to celebrate the very bad and the good -- hold it up to the truth of the past. The original White House of the Confederacy was in Richmond. The "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" speech by Patrick Henry from a hundred years earlier is only blocks away. Edgar Allen Poe had a home another block or two away. Mr. Bojangles was a Richmonder. Arthur Ashe was born in Richmond. The QB from the Seahawks, Russel Wilson, is a Richmonder -- my friend coached him in high school -- he said he was a better baseball player than he was at football -- imagine that.
Richmond even had an opportunity to host the national slave museum and somehow it decided against it. Richmond was one of the top locations in America for the importation of human labor (slaves). It would have been fitting to have the National Slave Museum adjacent to the White House of the Confederacy on grand Church Hill. Richmond could have capitalized on its past and gave context to those bronze and granite statues. Context that might be hard to accept by some, and ever-so needed for others.
Instead, like so many urban areas, the city erupted into an unrecognizable orgy of ropes, chains, spray paint, broken windows, and fires. Buses burned in the street, buildings set ablaze, shops looted. The summer was long and hot, covid was raging, and social justice flames fanned hotter. Interesting to note, the vast majority of the faces of the agitators were pale, not brown or black.
I drove downtown weeks later and it looked like something from a picture of a war zone.
I realized that it wasn't a place for me any more. Richmond cannot celebrate its history, it can only tear it down. The thing is, it all still happened.