As the Valient Poll reflects, 39 percent of Generation Y said they thought the statues should be removed, 30 percent said no, 20 percent were unsure and 11 percent had no opinion. Meanwhile, 56 percent of baby boomers said they were opposed to the removal, along with 60 percent of people 72-years-old and older.
As for the breakdown within the various ethnic groups, it should come as no surprise that more than half of Blacks are in favor of the removal, compared to just 30 percent of whites. What I did find rather shocking was the fact that 56 percent of Native Americans said they were not in favor of their removal. That was even higher than the 49 percent of whites who said they against it.
As a veteran journalist, I am often skeptical of many surveys because I always question whether they truly represent the MAJORITY of public opinion. In this case, only 1000 people were surveyed online. That certainly does not reflect the over 300 million people in the U.S. and if you only have 10 blacks taking the survey, only 6 would have to say they oppose the statue removals to make it reflect over 50 percent.
I am a baby boomer who grew up in the Midwestern part of the United States so I never gave much thought to the whites in the South and their continued loyalty to the Confederacy. But having lived here for more than 30 now, I have become very politically aware of the fear and hatred some Blacks feel towards the confederate flag and the statues of their so-called fallen heroes who did their best to divide the nation by seceding from the Union over the issue of slavery.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are 1297 confederate statutes in the top 10 states of Virginia, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee and Florida. Meanwhile, Oregon, Nebraska, Utah, Wyoming, North Dakota and Minnesota are the ONLY states that don't have any at all.
I really didn't have an opinion about the confederate statues until I saw the events of a Unite the Right play out in Charlottesville on August 12, 2017 that ended with the tragic death of a young woman named Heather Heyer. While I truly believe everyone should celebrate their heritage, I also believe the neo-nazis and white supremacists have turned their misguided, warped sense of pride into a very divisive racial issue. Perhaps Washington should consider a Museum for the Confederacy but they do not deserve to be publicly displayed as an example of great leaders who fought and died for the DEMOCRACY of this nation.
Do you see anybody in Germany protesting for the right to erect neo-nazi statues in Germany?
