Meh, I don't agree with them, but I understand why they feel strongly about it. The statues were an attempt to whitewash the civil war; of course people, especially non-white Americans, are going to feel very strongly about it.

I guess the way I see it though, is that the statues are technically part of America's civil war history. No, they weren't put up during the Confederacy, but they were intentionally built to affect the way people saw the civil war. Afaik that kinda technically makes them a part of civil war history.

Does that mean they're worth preserving?

Tbh, I don't really know, I'm not a historian so I ultimately don't know how useful they'd be for studying and teaching about the civil war and reconstruction era. I'm concerned about losing parts of human history, but if expert historians believe the statues wouldn't have any use for research or education, then I guess there's not really any reason to not crush or melt them down.

Another side of it is that it's a lot harder to downplay their significance or claim them as hoaxes when the original article still exists. That doesn't mean people won't try to do it anyway (I mean, Holocaust denialism seems in vogue among the far right wing right now), but it makes it easier to rub their faces in their stupidity when you can point to a physical mass of statues as opposed to a photo gallery or a plaque (I can already imagine people trying to claim that the pictures were AI generated or that the media was making a bigger deal about it than it actually is).

I've also already seen some people who seem to think that if the statues are removed, then the problem magically disappears and America isn't racist anymore. That's gross and makes me uncomfortable. America has a very racist, bigoted history. Don't try to whitewash American history like that.