Racial tensions are rising across the country as heated debates regarding whether historical events and figures should be publicly displayed or erased.

This most notably occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a statue of Robert E. Lee, a general of the Confederate Army during the Civil War, was being protested to be taken down. Many African Americans as well as other races wanted the statue to be removed, while (mainly) white supremacists wanted the statue to remain because of its historical value to them.

I believe that the issue isn’t present in the statue itself, but with what the statue and it’s context implies and how it affects our society today. To some people the statue is the physical embodiment of hate and discrimination. You see, the statue doesn’t cause any harm, and it isn’t even an eyesore, but the fact that it represents the southern United States at a time when slavery existed and most people saw blacks as property, it raises an issue.

I think it is time to consider that instead of trying to literally erase our history in a Joseph Stalin-like fashion, we should all study and learn from our past. A similar situation is occurring here at home.

On the east side, there is an elementary school named, “Robert E. Lee” and many El Paso natives view it as a symbol of racism. The school board is receiving multiple complaints from people who are asking to change the names of these places. However; this begs the question, “To what end?” If we really stop and think about it for a second, changing the names of these places or removing statues of people from the past will accomplish little to nothing, it will only satisfy those people. This is eerily reminiscent to the saying, “Out of sight, out of mind.”

Sweeping America’s history under the rug and trying to forget it about is redundant. It is time we all acknowledge the elephant in the room and realize that for a period of time in our past that molded our future, many people were racist, owned slaves, and considered to blacks as property and refereed to as derogatory terms. But simply because these streets and elementary schools are named after Robert E. Lee doesn’t by any means support racism or segregation. It is only to be taken at face value, a name.

I am not implying that I want confederate flags to be strung from every rooftop and presented next to the American flag during the pledge just for a good ol’ history lesson, I just think that removing every bit of physical evidence from that time period wouldn’t accomplish nearly as much as we hope it would. Just because you don’t look at it does not mean it’s not there. That history is still everywhere online, on television documentaries, in the books our children are reading for school, it is set in stone and it will be for ages to come and we need to get over it.

I’ll be the very first person to admit that I would look at someone differently if they supported confederate beliefs or had a flag somewhere in their home, but what I am going to do about it? Take it down or burn it? You could destroy every individual piece of memorabilia from those people, and that wouldn’t do a single thing to change their knowledge or beliefs. Racism, or any belief in general, is not a known behavior. It is taught and learned. We are all born knowing how to breath and how to cry, not how to hate others because their skin tone is a couple shades darker than ours.