I think maybe Grant’s is not a statue worth toppling. But I also understand after decades of shrugs when people spoke of the hurt of having been demeaned by public tributes, of entering buildings, of walking past art that celebrated white supremacists, how overzealousness occurs. https://twitter.com/powellnyt/status/1274351895151329288

There was plenty of time to reckon before this moment. People who were not degraded and demeaned by public art didn’t think it that important. And now people want to control which are righteous and which are not. Statues torn down can be put back up, but the reckoning is here.

Perhaps this gives us the opportunity to stop deifying men, who like all human beings, were terribly flawed, and to instead provide an opportunity for a reckoning that does not obscure the complexities of nation built on ideals of freedom and the practice of slavery.