Eliana Grajales
My title says it all. Why? The first question I asked myself while reading these articles on confederate statues was “why is it so easy for some people to defend these pieces of art used to spread violent rhetoric but when it comes to street art/graffiti it’s difficult to even label it as a valid art medium and sometimes considered vandalism?” Don’t get me wrong, graffiti can be used to spread harmful messages and it’s absolutely no where near a perfect form of art, but the fact that it’s easy for someone to say that graffiti is a violation of property and argue to keep statues of men who represent white supremacy up is truly mind boggling to me.
Something I also found particularly interesting in the article “Confederate Statues Were Built To Further A ‘White Supremacist Future'” is once the public started to rightfully become outraged with these statues the Mayor of Baltimore then decided to take them down without anyone noticing. This to me reads as someone only trying to reverse their wrongs because they were caught and not actually because they genuinely felt what they did were bad. Not to say that the Mayor of Baltimore erected these statues up but he actively stayed complicit and kept them up even though they were a symbol of hate.
