It's much easier to tear down monuments to dead white supremacists than it is to confront the live, systemic white supremacism that still structures American life.

It also needs to be said that the Confederate monuments had another reason for existence besides supposedly commemorating "heroes" of the Civil War; they are icons of the political and social order of the Jim Crow post-Civil War South.  In other words, those statues commemorate the birth of white supremacism as a living principle of American life, a principle that still shapes our society.  Taking down those monuments will not negate this principle, especially when you consider how frequently the GOP has appealed to it since 1964.

With all that said, the monuments still need to come down.  Their continued existence poses a threat to public safety. Charlottesville shows how  dire this threat actually is.