American Studies in Scandinavia (May 2020)
Bidding Farewell to Confederate Statues: Landscape, Politics, and American History
Abstract
In 2015 there emerged a nationwide campaign to remove all Confederate memorials commemorating white supremacy of “the old South” from public parks and city centers in the United States. Given that fighting racism and fascism is not equivalent to fighting monuments, one can ask if an attack on dead slaveholders and famous American Confederate generals is worth a large-scale cleansing of the American cultural landscape. Questioning some of the rationales of the campaign is not about defending these statues. If people democratically so decide, they may well get rid of any historical memorials they find ethically offensive. This essay deals with the issue as it pertains to the American cultural landscape
