No folks, I'm not making this up.
It almost feels like it should be an article from The Onion, doesn't it?
If people sat around in a writers room and said "ok, what's the most ridiculous idea we could come up with about these statues offending people?"
And then someone said "how about we take the guy who freed the slaves and say he's now offensive!"
Yes my friends, we are living in the twlight zone.
And as I continue to tell you over and over, the demands will never be enough.
They will continue to demand more and more and more, never being satisfied.
So take a look at the latest:
Yeah, I think he is freeing a slave, is that not right?
Is this not a statue of Lincoln freeing the chains on his wrists and then motioning for him to stand up?
Nope - not in the minds of those who find EVERYTHING offensive.
They can find racism even in the man who literally freed all the slaves.
Amazing.
From local WBUR:
Boston's mayor is considering the fate of a public statue depicting former President Abraham Lincoln standing before a freed Black man after a petition called for its removal.
The statue in the city's Park Square is a replica of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington and depicts Lincoln with one hand raised above a kneeling man with broken shackles on his wrists.
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The statue is meant to show Lincoln freeing the man from slavery, but a petition against the statue says it "instead represents us still beneath someone else."
The petition was started by Tory Bullock, a Boston man who says the statue has long led him to ask, "If he's free why is he still on his knees?" His call to remove the memorial had attracted nearly 6,000 signatures as of Saturday.
The Boston Globe reports that Mayor Marty Walsh is in favor of removing the statue and is interested in replacing it with something that recognizes equality. Walsh's office said the administration is looking into the process required to make the change.
And from Boston.com:
Aides say that Boston Mayor Marty Walsh supports the emergent calls to remove a downtown statue of former President Abraham Lincoln standing over a kneeling slave — but he’s also interested in a more creative solution.
As monuments honoring oppressive historic figures — from Christopher Columbus to Confederate generals — face renewed scrutiny amid the racial justice movement in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, more than 5,000 people have signed an online petition this week calling for the removal of the 141-year-old Emancipation memorial in Park Square, just a few hundred yards from Boston Common.
While Lincoln is perhaps best known for freeing Black slaves, the petition takes issue with the symbolism of Lincoln standing above a crouched, half-clothed Black man on his knees.
“It’s supposed to represent freedom but instead represents us still beneath someone else,” wrote Tory Bullock, a Dorchester native who launched the petition.
Emancipation memorial in Park Square. —Barry Chin / The Boston Globe
“If he’s free why is he still on his knees?” Bullock added. “No kid should have to ask themselves that question anymore.”
In a Facebook video posted Thursday, he said the statue — a copy of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C. — had been bothering him since childhood, but “never understood how messed up it was” until the most recent wave of statue removals.
Bullock, whose videos have developed a popular online following, called on Walsh to follow suit, unless the city could find a way to change the power dynamics represented. He noted that the abolitionist Frederick Douglass even criticized the original statue (which was sculpted by a Boston native) at its dedication in 1876 for putting the Black man on his knees “when a more manly attitude would have been indicative of freedom.”
“Take it down, unless we’re gonna find some artist that can, I don’t know, erect that Black man so he can stand up on his two feet and actually, you know, have his hand out, put some clothes on him, and they can be shaking hands,” Bullock said in the video Thursday.
Walsh’s office says the mayor is supportive of both solutions.
While he is in favor of removing the statue, Walsh is also interested in recommissioning the statue into one that recognizes equality, aides said. Since the statue falls under the Arts Commission, the mayor’s office is currently looking into what those processes would entail.
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