On CNN Cuomo Prime Time On Tuesday night documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, who became famous in 1990 with The civil War, he told the host of the show that, in his informed opinion, Confederate monuments across the country “have to go.”
This occurs the same day that President Donald Trump said he will issue an executive order that will threaten up to 10 years in prison for “anyone who destroys or destroys any monument, statue or other federal property.”
Trump also boasted of defending the statue of President Andrew Jackson of Washington DC from a “sneak attack” by activists who wanted to take him down.
But Burns had a different opinion, noting that “more than a quarter of the presidents of the United States owned other human beings,” including Jackson.
“I think we are in the midst of a huge reckoning at this time when anxieties, pains and torments of injustice are surfacing,” Burns said. “It is very important for people like me, of my complexion, to be as quiet as possible and to listen. What I know from my reading of history is that the Confederate monuments have to go. ”
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He rejected the idea that tearing down the Civil War monuments was, in effect, erasing the past,
“They are an attempt to rewrite history and essentially celebrate a false narrative about what happened during the Civil War and send the winks, the whistles of dogs, as we like to say today, through the generations of what it was all about. of a civil war, “Burns explained.” It is very interesting that we have this taking this argument because the people for whom we are responsible for the deaths of … yes. These are people responsible for the deaths of loyal American citizens. “
“It is not about heritage,” said the filmmaker. “It is about the replacement of white supremacy in the South in various periods.”
Burns today created a short video for the Washington Post on the subject.
