Are you saying we should hate the South forever because of slavery?
What about Italy? Should we hate Italy because the ancient Romans had slaves? Should there be no statues of Julius Caesar because he was a despot who owned slaves?
How far back do you go in your time machine to clean up history?
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"filmboards is a bold experiment in free speech and anarchy"
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Oh….see, I am firmly Gen X, is this a Millenial thing? The white southerners get a participation trophy in the Civil War in the form of statues? I get it. Nobody loses this way!

He's important historically to Virginians. Lee was also a hero of the Mexican-American War. The South has always been tarnished with the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. But the point of elevating historical figures like Robert E Lee is to show that we do not denigrate the South over the Civil War. There are other great things about the South. I think that's what Lee represents to them.
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"filmboards is a bold experiment in free speech and anarchy"
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Historical personages also become symbols. Tubman and Douglass are symbols of abolitionism and the fight for freedom. Jefferson is a symbol of the Enlightenment, the American Revolution, and the quest for universal rights. And Lee?

But my point is that I respect Tubman and view her as a great woman, despite the fact that because of her 19th century Christian values she believed I was a disgusting sinner.
I revere Jefferson as the author of the Bill of Rights which guarantees my personal freedom even today. I'm not too knowledgeable on Lee. I just know that being slaveholders in a time when it was as standard a practice as torture of homosexuals, is not a reason to discount their greatness as historical figures.
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"filmboards is a bold experiment in free speech and anarchy"
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Jefferson thought slavery an evil too - didn't stop him from buying, working, and owning slaves, nor did it stop Lee. Here's an article for you:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/the-myth-of-the-kindly-general-lee/529038/
I definitely take your point about Douglass and Tubman, though I don't think homophobia was their big legacy, while defending slavery was Lee's. But if there is a big statue of Tubman near you, which I sincerely doubt, but if there is, have at her!

I did a bit of googling on Lee. He believed slavery was evil.
Lee wrote this:
"In this enlightened age, there are few, I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any country,"
Of course he was hypocritical. But as I've argued, like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, he was entwined in the establishment of his time.
Don't you acknowledge that Harriet Tubman, the great abolitionist, would have said I will burn in hell for being queer? My point is that you can't judge these people's greatness as human beings or importance by current moral standards.
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"filmboards is a bold experiment in free speech and anarchy"
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No, but look at it this way - you put up a statue of a person in a park or plaza to commemorate them, to praise them, if you will. That's the whole idea of putting someone 'up on a pedestal'.
That's why your idea of putting a statue of Genghis Khan, as cool as that sounds, may not fly outside of Mongolia. Khan is a world-historical person, no doubt, but there's a lot of countries that may not look on him over-fondly.
So when we put up somebody's statue it's not a hstory lesson in stone or a complex and subtle message about an event, it's a society saying 'this guy was important, and what he did and what he represented is important'.
That's why your comparison with the Founding Father slaveoners is actually very apt. Those are complicated and ambiguous figures that still, though, did clearly positive things for society or the country.
A Rebel General…yeah, personally, I am not so sure. And all he represents is the Confederacy.

The white power structure is obviously caving in. Virginia is not as conservative as most the South. But it's still a state which usually votes Republican. They're not exactly wild-eyed progressives.
I understand African-American distaste for men like Robert E Lee. But again, they're not putting it in historical perspective. Lee was probably more liberal on race issues than George Washington. Again, we need to judge these men by the standards of their own times, not ours.
I would wager that Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman would have reviled me for being queer. So? Should I tear down their statues?
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"filmboards is a bold experiment in free speech and anarchy"
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Is it coming from the 'bourgeois' as you say or is it coming from the local African-American citizens?

Genghis Khan was a genocidal maniac who killed far more people than Hitler. So? We can still dispassionately observe him through the lens of history. Khan certainly deserves a statue though. Few men had such an impact on history.
This is all such bourgeois feel good self-righteous nonsense - the tearing down of Robert E Lee's statue.
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"filmboards is a bold experiment in free speech and anarchy"
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We can't hold the great people of the past to today's standards. Julius Caesar owned slaves and was a dictator. I'm quite sure George Washington was a raging homophobe. Lol. So? Should we tear down any reference to them as great men?
It's quite provincial and quaint to hold everyone who ever lived to 2020 standards of virtue.
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"filmboards is a bold experiment in free speech and anarchy"
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You can teach children about this country’s awful history without having statues of people who fought against this country. Statues should only be erected to commemorate and memorialize people whose achievements shaped this country for the better. A general for a rebel force whose sole purpose was to fight to keep slavery is no hero, even if he was personally not in favor of slavery.
I live. I die. I live again.

before COVID? I went to a museum about 2 weeks before it all went south (no pun intended). but I have kids, museums are good for kids these days, they have focussed on making them more fun and interactive

Well said, Leopold.
MAGA! FAFO! Schrodinger's Cat walks into a bar, and doesn't. Dumbocraps: evil people who celebrate murder.

Lol. I can just see driving by a big ol' statue of Goebbels in Paris or Heydrich in Prague.
I will tell you a little story. In the early 2000s for a few years I had to visit the UN in Vienna every 6 months or so (tough gig). There was a huge picture of former Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, an Austrian and a former Nazi military officer, in the lobby. I had to traipse by that picture of that goddamn Nazi every morning, and i began to loathe it, and I am not even Jewish. It was not 'history' that had the Austrians and the UN keep his gigantic photo up at the front - it was a choice. There were and are many alternatives that could have greeted visitors and staff every day.

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so if the Nazis had put up statues to themselves all over Europe you would have been cool with just leaving them there?

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what does 'history for history's sake' mean? that it is didactic?

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They were initially put there for that reason. We can repurpose them.
Just like the movie DEMOLITION MAN, everything in that futuristic society that's found distasteful gets hidden from view and locked away and people don't see it.
When's the last time you went to a museum?
Regardless of where it is, the message remains; We use the opportunity to teach our children, and so forth, about the atrocities of our history. We don't rewrite it so our kids grow up unaware of names or visuals.
Do we always just remove things that make us uncomfortable, and lock them away? Or do we become stronger by learning how to deal with them and teach our kids just what the truth is behind them?
I'm not a fan of revisionism.
"Your emotional state is not my responsibility." – Warren Smith

why not just put the statues in a museum, then?
besides, those statues are not about reminding people about the horrors of slavery or the Civil War. they were sculpted and placed in parks and plazas to celebrate the cause.