Mr. President Tear Down These Statue

Dear Mr. President;

Much furor has mounted and persisted over the tearing down of statues. All of these statues are venerated by somebody, somewhere. I personally believe that many of these should have been torn down long ago. It is impossible to convince everyone of the rationale of tearing down one statute versus another. Suffice it to say, there are some statues that no one in this country that should be removed and actually should have never been put in place. If you tear down these statues, Mr. President, you will literally be remembered as a great leader. Here is my list of things that must go now! These definitions are from sources I found online. It makes it easy for me to understand it this way.

1) Redlining In the United States, redlining is the systematic denial of various services by federal government agencies, local governments as well as the private sector either directly or through the selective raising of prices. Neighborhoods with high proportion of minority residents are more likely to be redlined than other neighborhoods with similar household incomes, housing age and type, and other determinants of risk, but different racial composition. While the best known examples of redlining have involved denial of financial services such as banking or health care (see also Race and health) or even supermarkets have been denied to residents. In the case of retail businesses like supermarkets, purposely locating stores impractically far away from targeted residents results in a redlining effect.

2) Gerrymandering is a practice intended to establish an unfair political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries, which is most commonly used in first-past-the-post electoral systems. Two principal tactics are used in gerrymandering: “cracking” (i.e. diluting the voting power of the opposing party’s supporters across many districts) and “packing” (concentrating the opposing party’s voting power in one district to reduce their voting power in other districts). A third tactic, shown in the top-left diagram in the graphic, is homogenization of all districts (essentially a form of cracking where the majority party uses its superior numbers to guarantee the minority party never attains a majority in any district)

3) Racial Profiling is the act of suspecting or targeting a person on the basis of assumed characteristics or behavior of a racial or ethnic group, rather than on individual suspicion.Racial profiling, however, is not limited only to an individual’s ethnicity or race, but can also be based on the individual’s religion, or national origin. In European countries, the term “ethnic profiling” is also used instead of racial profiling.

If you could be instrumental in demanding these statutes be removed, the others won’t really matter. In fact, I believe the furor would diminish as people come to understand that we can’t erase history, but we don’t have to continue to live in the evil shadow it casts over our present by these intangible yet palpable statues.

To paraphrase President Ronald Reagan
“Mr. President, tear down these statues.

Sincerely,

Michael Johnson