There are growing calls to dismantle statues that represent confederate heroes as well as former slave owners and figures who had a history of racism. Joe Biden says leave them up.
The government has a “responsibility to protect” statues of Christopher Columbus, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, former vice president and presidential candidate Biden said during a recent press conference, Newsweek reported.
All three “did harm to Black people and other people of color in this country,” Monique Judge wrote for The Root.
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. The 1492 Spanish voyage of Christopher Columbus helped introduce violence and disease to North America that killed 90 percent of the indigenous population — nearly 55 million people — according to a 2019 study.
“Taking down, toppling the Christopher Columbus statue or the George Washington statue, I think that is something that the government has an opportunity and a responsibility to protect from happening,” Biden said.
Biden aimed at making a distinction between American figures who owned slaves and those who did not.
“I think there is a distinction between…reminders and remembrances of history, and recovering from history,” Biden said, citing former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu. Landrieu said in 2017, “There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it.”
Biden argued hard for a nuanced approach.
“The idea of comparing whether or not George Washington owned slaves or Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and somebody who was in rebellion, committing treason, and running trying to take down the Union to keep slavery – I think there is a distinction there,” Biden said.
Biden claimed that history, even if racist, should be preserved.
“The idea of bringing down all those Confederate monuments to Confederate soldiers and generals who strongly supported secession and maintaining slavery and going to war to do it, I think those statues belong in museums, they don’t belong in public places,” he continued.
“I think with regard to those statues and monuments, like the Jefferson Memorial, there’s an obligation that the government protect those monuments because they’re different. That’s a remembrance, it’s not dealing with revering somebody who had that view. They had much broader views. They may have had things in their past that were now and then distasteful, but that’s a judgment.”
Biden’s remarks came as protesters are demanding such statues and monuments be removed. Some that have not been removed by local governments have been topped and defaced by protesters.
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 73: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin makes the case for why this is a multi-factor rebellion vs. just protests about George Floyd. He discusses the Democratic Party’s sneaky relationship with the police in cities and states under Dem control, and why Joe Biden is a cop and the Steve Jobs of mass incarceration.
Protesters tried to bring down a statue of former President Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square across from the White House. Jackson was a target of protesters because he was a slave owner and because of of his brutal treatment of Native Americans during his presidency, The Hill reported.
In light of protesters toppling statues, President Trump recently signed an executive order aimed at protecting federal monuments and statues from vandalism.
