The Racist Theodore Roosevelt Statue Is Coming Down
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Last night, I walked by the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and noticed the statue of Theodore Roosevelt was surrounded by police barriers, with several NYPD vans parked in the vicinity. It seems the city wanted to protect the statue, whose celebration of racism and colonialism has sparked protest and demands it come down. But those taxpayer dollars will be wasted no more: on Sunday, the museum announced they’d be removing the statue.
The New York Times reports that it was the museum’s decision to remove the statue, which has sat at its main entrance for the last 80 years; the city agreed it was time to take it down. Though the statue intends to honor Roosevelt—New York’s former governor, a U.S. President, and a famed naturalist whose father was one of the museum’s founders—it also depicts colonialism, as evidenced by the stereotypical Native American man and African man who flank the horseback-riding white man at its center. In 2017, activists splashed blood-red paint on its base, noting that the statue “is bloody at its very foundation.” And with reignited nationwide conversations about and removals of statues depicting Confederate generals, slaveholders, and genocidal explorers, the museum decided it was time to revisit Roosevelt.