The chaos in Charlottesville has raised questions about Confederate monuments.
Some have advocated for the statues to come down via democratic means, while others have skirted the law and resorted to vandalism and property destruction.
NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley, no stranger to controversy, weighed in on the issue with his usual bluntness.
From Fox News:
Basketball superstar Charles Barkley called pushing for the removal of Confederate statues “wasted energy.”
“I’m not going to waste my time screaming at a neo-Nazi who’s gonna hate me no matter what,” the NBA Hall of Famer told WRBC-TV in Birmingham, Alabama.
“I’m 54 years old,” Barkley said. “I’ve never thought about those statues a day in my life. I think if you ask most black people, to be honest, they ain’t thought a day in their life about those stupid statues.”
Barkley has not minced words when pointing out what he sees as his black community’s problems, such as last year when he spoke about violence against cops.
“The cops have made some mistakes. Black people have made some mistakes,” Barkley said. “That don’t give us the right to riot and shoot cops. We need the cops, especially in the black community. We as black people, we’ve got to do better.”
The sports legend said the black community must worry about education, economic opportunity, and “stop killing each other.”
“You know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna keep doing great things,” Barkley concluded. “I’m gonna keep trying to make a difference — No. 1, in the black community, ’cause I’m black — but I’m also gonna try to do good things in the world.”
Rick Karle on Twitter
ConfederateStatues A unique take from #CharlesBarkley https://t.co/l9Dz43sLp3
Barkley is empirically correct. Two weeks ago, hardly anyone cared about Confederate statues. Now it’s all the media wants to talk about.
CNN even aired a graphic of Confederate monument locations, a veritable treasure map for radicals with sledgehammers and too much time on their hands.
If people want the monuments to come down, they should vote for it locally.
Although, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice believes they should stay up:
“I am a firm believer in ‘keep your history before you’ and so I don’t actually want to rename things that were named for slave owners…I want us to have to look at those names and recognize what they did and to be able to tell our kids what they did, and for them to have a sense of their own history. When you start wiping out your history, sanitizing your history to make you feel better, it’s a bad thing.”
The hubbub over monuments will likely continue until the mainstream media finds something else to obsess over.