(Newswire.net— June 23, 2020) — The city of New York announced that it will remove the statue of the 26th President of the USA, Theodore Roosevelt, from Manhattan because of Roosevelt’s colonialist and racist attitudes. The removal of the statue is fiercely opposed by the current President Donald Trump.
The decision was made at a time when the United States, after the death of African-American George Floyd, is reconsidering the issue of racism and reopening the debate on monuments from slavery heritage.
“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,” the museum’s president, Ellen V. Futter, said the NY Times reports. “Simply put, the time has come to move it,” she said.
The bronze statue depicts the governor of the state of New York before he became the president of the USA, “Teddy” Roosevelt on horseback, with an African-American and an Indian next to him. The statue has been in front of the Museum of Natural History for 80 years.
The city of New York responded positively to the museum’s request to remove the statue, which “explicitly represents blacks and Indians as subjugated and racially inferior,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
According to the museum’s website, Teddy Roosevelt was considered a progressive protector of the environment at the beginning of the 20th century, but he also held and defended racist opinions.
“The City supports the Museum’s request,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement. “It is the right decision and the right time to remove this problematic statue,” he added.
US President Donald Trump criticized this decision, calling it “ridiculous”.
“Ridiculous, don’t do it!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
New York City Council members demanded that a statue of Thomas Jefferson be removed from City Hall.
The heated debate over the appropriateness of statues or monuments from colonial history first focused on Confederate symbols like Robert E. Lee and has now moved on to Christopher Columbus and Winston Churchill.
Last week alone, a crowd set fire to a statue of George Washington in Portland, Ore., before pulling it to the ground. In Albuquerque, protesters demand the removal of a statue of Juan de Oñate, the despotic conquistador of New Mexico.