Not content with tearing down Confederate monuments, statues commemorating the Founding Fathers, or even monuments to Ulysses S. Grant (San Francisco) and Abraham Lincoln (Boston), the woke left is now turning its attention to a “problematic” statue of Theodore Roosevelt outside The American Museum of Natural History in New York City. This time, it’s not college-aged protesters hauling down the statue with ropes and chains but the museum itself that has decided to remove the monument.
“The American Museum of Natural History has asked to remove the Theodore Roosevelt statue because it explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior,” Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Sunday. “It is the right decision and the right time to remove this problematic statue.”
Critics of the statue have been careful to separate the statue itself, which depicts Roosevelt atop a horse with a Native American and an African standing next to him, from the former president. The museum has actually announced that they will rename their Biodiversity wing after Roosevelt in commemoration of his work in the area of natural conservation.
Even so, the museum’s president, Ellen Futter, told The New York Times that it is time for the monument to come down.
“Over the last few weeks, our museum community has been profoundly moved by the ever-widening movement for racial justice that has emerged after the killing of George Floyd,” she said. “We have watched as the attention of the world and the country has increasingly turned to statues as powerful and hurtful symbols of systemic racism. Simply put, the time has come to move it.”
The former president’s descendants even came out in support of the move.
“The composition of the equestrian statue does not reflect Theodore Roosevelt’s legacy,” Theodore Roosevelt IV said. “It is time to move the statue and move forward.”
But not everyone was convinced by this obvious pandering move.
“Teddy Roosevelt was the first president to invite African-Americans to dine at the White House,” tweeted Ann Coulter.
“Teddy Roosevelt had nothing to do with slavery. But Yale is still named after a SLAVE TRADER,” she said in a follow-up.
DeAnna Lorraine, a former congressional candidate against Nancy Pelosi, said, “The Communist’s rewriting of our history continues…”
NY State Assemblymember Nicole Maliotakis wrote: “First, they go after our Nation’s Founding Fathers—Washington and Jefferson—in City Hall. Now TR??!! This is insanity and it has to stop now.”
But how can it stop now when there are still a few racist people out there somewhere? How can it stop when there are still Americans who have yet to pledge allegiance to Antifa and kneel before Black Lives Matter?
There’s just so much more important work to do.
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