'For too long, they have generated harm': the fight to remove offensive monuments in New Yor
This summer, a series of Confederate monuments were torn down in Maryland, North Carolina, Florida, Texas and Louisiana after the death of a civil rights activist at a far-right protest in Charlottesville. It looks like New York City might be next.
In a city with more than 800 public monuments, four in particular have irked artists and academics, who have signed a public petition. The 500 signatories are advocating for the removal of monuments of Christopher Columbus, James Marion Sims, Theodore Roosevelt and one adjoined honouring Philippe Pétain and Pierre Laval.
“For too long, they have generated harm and offense as expressions of white supremacy,” reads the petition, in a city which “preaches tolerance and equity”.
To the signatories, the Roosevelt monument, which shows the 26th American president with a Native American chief and an African man, glorifies racial hierarchies. “Roosevelt is a very salient symbol for us of white supremacy and it’s often cited as the most hated monument in New York City,” said Andrew Ross, an activist and culture professor at New York University. “It has no place outside of the museum.”
Ross first drafted the petition alongside other members of Decolonize This Place, which organized the Anti-Columbus Day Tours at the American Museum of Natural History.
New York’s Columbus statue, located at Columbus Circle in Manhattan, has come under fire for representing genocide. The statue, however, was a gift from the Italian American community, some of whom adopt Columbus as an icon. To Phil Folgia, counsel for the Italian American legal defense and higher education fund, the removal of the statue would be “an outrage to our community”.
The 70ft-tall column topped by a statue of Christopher Columbus at Columbus Circle in Manhattan. Photograph: Cameron Bloch/AP
Not all Italian Americans feel that way. Tom Angotti, an American Italian professor at Hunter College believes “the genocide of Christopher Columbus should not be revered”, adding that: “We ought to honour instead the Italian immigrants who faced discrimination and fought for economic and racial equality – people like Vito Marcantonio, once a congressman from New York City.”
To Roberto Borrero, a Taíno person who works for the International Indian Treaty Council, he explains: “Italians have many other role models to look up to, so their pride should not supersede my people’s tragedy.”
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