In the recent debate over removing statues of Confederate generals, some perspective may help. In Berlin, you can hardly walk a block without seeing a memorial to Jewish families who used to live nearby before they were forcibly removed and sent to concentration camps. Germany wants its citizens to remember a very dark time in their past so it will never be repeated.
Contrast German attitudes toward their history with our attitudes to our own. We have hundreds if not thousands of monuments, streets, buildings, military bases and whatnot memorializing traitors (they took up arms against the United States, did they not?). But until very recently, not one memorial existed in the entire country to remind us of the over 4,000 documented lynchings of blacks by whites from 1879 to 1973. Why is that?
The United States has never come to terms with its racist history. Consequently, we as a nation continue to struggle over it. I ask you – is it better to bury a horrible past or to remember it?
Mark Love
Falmouth
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