Though I’m pretty quick to point out America’s faults, I’m not very good at telling America what to do. America and I imagine very different futures. Still, I find the recent toppling of statues in America to be a good sign. It makes for, perhaps, a teachable moment. For whatever it’s worth, I think America’s task isn’t to take down the statues of famous American racists. That’d be about all of them and I don’t think America has the will to act so decisively and consistently. Perhaps America’s task is rather to take down all the statues and rename all the structures that have come to stand iconically (or perhaps “anti-iconically”) for racism. And so, there’s no great need to take down the statues to Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln or Woodrow Wilson. But it would be good for America’s soul if somebody would take down all the statues to Nathan Bedford Forrest and Andrew Jackson. As for the Edmund Pettus Bridge, I think the public would do well to keep that name, since it has become the name of a bridge and a heritage that were swallowed up in victory by the march on Selma on Bloody Sunday in 1965.