Columbus statue evokes inequality

I respond to the Tuesday Dispatch editorial “Keeping Chris at City Hall.” It was interesting to read that this publication believes we live in a time of “enlightened morality” or that because Columbus preceded Jim Crow-era racial suppression, the erection of his statue is not related to that suppression and is not immediately harmful to people of color who live in our city today, including descendants of indigenous people.

The state-sanctioned violence we see today is more covert, but its effects are widespread and it very much targets communities of color. It is dangerous to assume that our time of “enlightened morality” and “colorblind” ideology is a better version of our history. Instead of genocide, slavery and Jim Crow, we now have a system of incarceration that kills, robs, penalizes and disenfranchises communities of color while criminalizing immigration.

These are problems here, in Columbus, in 2017. The Dispatch series from March titled “Income inequality” reported that “several national studies show the Columbus area is among the most economically segregated cities in the country, with disparities that keep poor children from moving up.”

While many white people live in poverty and in poor neighborhoods in our city, it is people of color who are disproportionately affected.

It is a sanitizing of our city’s current policies around race that the statue of Columbus in front of City Hall represents. It is this danger that requires protest.

Nora Balduff Columbus