Vandalized Statues: The Misinformation Behind the Paint
U.S. citizens’ rights to hold peaceful protests has no doubt been a huge importance in shaping America’s society. It is a tangible way for a group of people to express a social push that they find essential and needed. But what happens when a protest turns harmful and actually does the opposite work it is trying to achieve? We see examples of that happening in recent times with the defacement and destruction of national monuments and statues. Recently, protestors/rioters are participating in the hypocrisy of destroying the communities and social groups that they are claiming to be fighting for…how stupid!
While many protests of recent have carried out peacefully, there have been a few noteworthy instances of blatant hypocrisy that is founded on misinformation and false assumption. For starters, protesters/rioters are defacing national monuments that have nothing to do with the current issue at hand because they are working under the false understanding that the Civil War was fought over slavery, and by destroying these monuments they are taking a similar stand for Civil Rights. However, that is not the case, as a statue of Ulysses S. Grant was torn down and defaced in San Francisco, California and Ulysses S. Grant was ironically the individual that introduced legislation as a President that gave blacks the right to vote…AFTER helping defeat the South. Adam Serwer, a journalist who focus’ his work on America’s racism wrote, “As a general he smashed the Confederacy, and as President he crushed the Klan.” Along with the statue of Ulysses S. Grant, the entrance to the Lincoln memorial was spray painted with the words, “Y’all not tired yet?” We notoriously know Abraham Lincoln as the President that initiated the abolishment of the slave industry in America. The National Park Service for the National Mall stated in a tweet, “For generations the Mall has been our nation’s premier civic gathering space for nonviolent demonstrations, and we ask individuals to carry on that tradition.” The ultimate irony of this situation is that protestors/rioters are ruining monuments of figureheads that were on the right side of history under ignorant misassumption. How stupid is it to deface the memorial of individuals that fought for Civil Rights long before the rest of society did during a Black Lives Matter protest!
Protestors/rioters have not stopped at simple spray paint. At multiple points during the protests, stores were broken into and products were damaged. D.C.’s Georgetown was one of the places that experienced this occurrence. What is possibly the most saddening, and by far the stupidest, aspect about this is that protestors/rioters are destroying their local economy in the name of fighting for the rights of their community members. To think that harming a small business’ livelihood in the middle of an already struggling economy due to the epidemic would do anything other than provoke more misery is blatantly stupid!
All in all, even if an intention behind something is good, it can quickly turn into part of the problem if the way that it is being done is riddled with hypocrisy, nearsightedness, and stupidity. We have to remember in these times that our actions have direct consequences and we need to stop and ask, “who is this affecting?” What do you think could have been done differently? Comment below!