Opponents of statues are angry, not hateful

Dear Editor:

In his June 25, 2020 letter, “Removing statues won’t change American history,” writer Gene Gruner describes people who advocate for such removals as harboring hatred for our country. Far from hatred, their protest is calling on the country to live up to the ideals enshrined in its founding documents.

“Anger” is a more apt term, born of frustration over the years of pain and suffering Black people have endured from whites unable to accept their forefathers’ twisted sense of human decency for economic gain. What a different world it would be if white society had admitted to the immorality of slavery en masse with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and treated the newly freed slaves with dignity and respect.

Gruner cites Jews resisting the demolition of concentration camps to document the Holocaust as an example of why we should save monuments. But Jews were joined by many Germans and Eastern Europeans so horrified by the sins of their fathers and mothers that they wanted to establish a record of the atrocities so their cultures would never fall victim to such depravity again.

A more equivalent memorial are the postcards printed to commemorate the hangings of innocent Blacks in the Jim Crow South, filled with smiling white folks clustered around dangling corpses. The messages on the reverse sides, written to family, friends and neighbors, will leave readers with a far clearer understanding of just what part of our nation’s story the Black Lives Matter movement is seeking to transform.

Geoffrey Miller Town of Ulster