South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott denounced those tearing down statues across the country, arguing that it’s not the way to “make progress” in the United States.
“In America, we may have flaws,” Scott said on Fox News this week. “We may have challenges, but we get it together, and we come together to overcome those challenges. And that’s why I think, oftentimes, preserving the history, as ugly as it may have been, can be a sign and a symbol of how good it can be. And if we want to do something, why don’t you put up a statue to Booker T. Washington? Why don’t you have a conversation about Washington Carver? These would be positive steps. Tearing down the history for the sake of anarchy is not how we make progress in this country. It never has been, and it never will be because we are the United States of America.”
Scott expressed willingness to listen to protesters who have been calling for the renaming of military bases named after Confederate soldiers, many of which were named as a conciliatory measure following the conclusion of the war.
“I think we could have a robust debate about how to deal with the renaming of some military bases,” the South Carolina Republican said. “There’s some things that we can have a serious debate about. But this desire to purge all of history because it was ugly or negative really does not serve the American people well. I go right back to the Selma bridge, which is actually called the Edmund Pettus Bridge, because we preserved the reality of how vicious people can be by keeping it named the Pettus Bridge. That’s why it was so important to see President Obama and President Bush standing together in unity underneath that bridge to reinforce the fact that in America, all things are possible.”
Statues have been toppled and defaced across the country following the death of George Floyd on May 25 as part of a movement that was initially targeting Confederate figures. The movement has moved on to other figures unrelated to slavery, and in some cases, individuals who were anti-slavery, including in Wisconsin on Tuesday night with the statue of anti-slavery activist Hans Christian Heg.
Statue of Hans Christian Heg, an anti-slavery activist and American Civil War soldier, was beheaded in Madison, Wis. and thrown in the lake. The Forward statue was also toppled. #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/kx0OTbcMyR
— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) June 24, 2020
