Although it had once been the latest craze in civil disobedience and protest, one doesn't see much in the news of late, concerning the removal of Confederate monuments throughout the U.S. . There was a time when you couldn't go to an online news source without reading a story covering the public cries for - and against - the removals. The last one I recall coming across was a story from more than a year ago, when then Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams from Georgia was calling for the removal of the three Confederate war leaders carved on to the face of state-owned Stone Mountain.
My personal view is that it is long past time for any monument to the Confederacy to be removed from places of prominence. I see no reason to honor the likes of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis, or any of their ilk.
It's come to my attention, that there are calls being made outside the United States, to remove statues of other notable figures, who are now looked upon as less than admirable by some. A statue of Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi has been removed from Ghana's most prestigious university following complaints that he was racist against the black Africans, and over 3,000 people have signed a petition opposing a planned statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Malawi's commercial capital Blantyre.
Though Gandhi is more commonly remembered for his non-violent resistance to British colonial rule in his native India, his legacy in Africa is mixed.
One website detailing Gandhi's dark side gives the following :
"While Gandhi's time fighting for the rights of Indians in South Africa is often now mythologized as the heroic precursor to his later efforts in India, the dark side of this tale reveals that Gandhi's motivations in South Africa included his strident racism against the local black populations there."
'Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir [a slur now classified as hate speech and generally considered to be the equivalent of "nigger" in the United States] whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness,' Gandhi said during an address in Bombay in 1896.
It's more than a little bit ironic that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had noted Gandhi as a positive influence on his philosophy and non-violent approach, without knowing Gandhi's racist views toward black Africans.
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