I'll repeat what I said in another post on this topic.
You seem to be missing two rather vital elements to the question of “why remove Confederate symbols from public places?” These two elements are time and persistence.
If we were to borrow HG Wells’ time machine and go back to the Rome of 2,000 years ago and travel along the Via dei Fori Imperiali, we would see a huge statue of Julius Caesar. To the eyes of Roman slaves and the conquered people of the Roman Empire, that statue would no doubt cause some discomfort, if not outright fear. Go to that same spot today (the statue is still there) and time has removed that discomfort and fear because the context of the statue has changed. What we now see is a remnant of a lost civilization. What’s been lost with that civilization is the narrative that the statue represents.
But time alone is not what makes that statue acceptable today. If the Roman Empire had persisted throughout these 2,000 years and there was still slavery and conquest, that statue would still have the same effect on those who are being subjugated by that empire.
Slavery may have gone from America but, it took a civil war to get rid of it. And the Confederate states were the ones who fought to keep it. Furthermore, black people in America still suffer from institutionalised racism and bigotry. In other words, the narrative of those Confederate symbols still persists. If that were not the case, why do white supremacists still use the Confederate flag?
