Charlottesville’s Lee statue melted down, transformed into ‘racial diversity’ monument

That statue was melted down and that metal will now be repurposed by the Boston firm Model of Architecture Serving Society to create something the Washington Post is calling a "monument to racial diversity." This is the same firm that created "The Embrace" which was meant to symbolize Coretta Scott and Martin Luther King Jr. but instead looks incredibly lewd from many angles.

The same firm that brought that atrocity to life will be creating a monument to a concept as vague as "racial diversity." They were chosen after a design competition that lasted months and will work with Oakland sculptor Dana King. Neither the firm nor the artist are from Charlottesville. "The project asks a question that extends well beyond Virginia," reports Architect magazine, "after a society dismantles a symbol of injustice, what should take its place?" The firm's winning idea was to turn the metal into an African tree. They call the thing "Rooted" and it's unclear why they're planting an African tree in Charlottesville instead of something that is more representative of American "racial diversity."

"To transform the very material of a monument is to acknowledge that history cannot be erased, but it can be reimagined," the firm's Jha D. Amazi said of the project. "We are honored to contribute to a future shaped not by inherited symbols, but by shared values and collective imagination." The baobab tree her firm proposes is revered in Africa as the Tree of Life for its ability to hold water and survive drought. It is a symbol of endurance and resilience. So for Amazi, inherited symbols are fine so long as they are not inherited from America's history.

Executive director Andrea Douglas of the Swords Into Plowshares project, which is working on the project, said "The people of Charlottesville are going to create something that then will be gifted into that civic space, which right away is antithetical to how those Confederate monuments were placed." She calls the statue "a space of remembrance and also a space of reckoning."

Which means of course that the new statue will not be a monument to "racial diversity" but will be another cudgel used to bash white people for their race and the sins of their ancestors, whether those Charlottesville white ancestors were slave owners or not. "Diversity" doesn't mean diversity, instead it means elevate one race over another, elevate the perceived victim group over the perceived oppressor group.

Meanwhile, the reason the Lee statue was put up in the first place was to give the defeated Confederates some feeling that their losing fight did not mean they were worthless human beings unfit to be part of the United States. Perhaps the time and need for that has passed, in 2017 the City Council voted to remove it as part of the racial reckoning of the time. Before it could be removed, it was draped with a black tarp to hide it from view. A past that leftists keep demanding Americans confront was apparently too horrific for public view.

They also voted to remove a statue of General Stonewall Jackson. That statue was dismembered by artist Kara Walker and put on display in a Los Angeles gallery under the title "Unmanned Drone." The statue of Jackson had been a gift to Charlottesville in 1921 and now it sits desecrated, a testament to the erasure of American history that does not serve the interests of progressive ideology.

This new sculpture, an African Baobab tree, called "Rooted," does nothing, however, to heal wounds and only serves to remind white people that they are evil due to crimes they never committed and that black people are persecuted for hardships they never experienced.

This originally appeared in Libby Emmons' newsletter. Subscribe here.