These statues venerate people who supported the dehumanization of others.

The argument

Activists calling for the removal of controversial statues have a good reason to do so. These statues depict individuals who openly supported racist ideologies, or fought for racist institutions, and a public monument is not a neutral record of the past — it is a decision, renewed every day it stands, about whom a community chooses to honour. For example, a statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia has drawn significant backlash, because he was a commander of the Confederate Army, which fought to preserve slavery. Another prominent example is Fort Benning, a famous U.S. army post, which gets its name from Henry Benning, a Confederate general and supporter of slavery. In both cases the honour is unqualified: nothing about a statue on a plinth or a name over a gate distinguishes commemoration from approval, and the person being commemorated is remembered chiefly for the cause he served. Although these people supported treasonous, horrific institutions, they still hold a place of honor in public spaces. The objection is therefore not that the history should be forgotten but that honour is the wrong form for remembering it. A museum, an archive or a textbook can present Lee and Benning in full, including what they fought for and why it was defeated; a monument in a public square cannot, because its entire vocabulary is one of tribute. And these are public spaces — the shared property of communities that include the descendants of the people these men fought to keep enslaved, who are asked to pass beneath that tribute on their way to work. Although these are only two examples, they illustrate the basis of criticism toward controversial statues. These people supported racist institutions, and they do not deserve places of honor in our public spaces. Furthermore, it is wrong to venerate people who supported the dehumanization of others. For this reason, we should remove their statues.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Statues do not necessarily honor the individuals they depict- they simply portray them. In this way, they serve as impartial, innocuous reminders of our history. It is irrational to argue that we honor problematic figures through preserving statues of them.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] The counter disputes that the statues honour their subjects at all, holding that they depict rather than venerate and function as impartial reminders of history, so what the premise identifies as tributes to supporters of slavery and the Confederacy are on this reading records of them. [Rejecting C] If preservation is not veneration, the wrong identified in the first premise is never committed, and the counter treats the inference from keeping a statue to honouring the figure it represents as unfounded.