Throughout our history, racial division has pervaded society, and the notion of equality is one that Americans have claimed to value but failed to embody. Clashes between those who seek to remove statues honoring figures who represent an unjust past, and those who wish to maintain them as a matter of tradition or historical record, have played out across the country this week. These divisions simmering at the surface, erupting into full view, reveal a level of entrenched racism that make clear the challenges ahead in realizing true racial equity. While the natural reaction is to avoid or turn away from conflict, don’t look away. This is a difficult time for all of us, as confronting the truth often is. But it is a necessary first step toward building a more perfect union. —Mindy Finn

One has to be discerning to be sure—not all slave-owners were completely beyond redemption, such as George Washington, James Madison, and some of the other Founders. While they were living contradictions to the very prose and words they used to break free of British tyranny, their words at least were guideposts to equal protection for all of God's human creatures.

All people are created equal, as the founders wrote. However, all ideas are not. The idea to preserve slavery by seceding from the Union was not only a bad idea, it was an evil one in direct contradiction to the Founders' declaration a century earlier. And while Washington did indeed own slaves, he began to waver post-Revolution and granted emancipation to slaves under his control upon his death. He seemed to understand the contradiction and hypocrisy of slave-ownership post-Revolution, and his private notes allegedly show a dispensation to free slaves but a concern over the Union's fragility even back then. No excuse for slavery for sure, but there is some reason to believe Washington knew slavery was wrong and set up the Union to eventually abolish it. Let's remember that slavery was an institution started by the Barbary pirates and other groups in Northern Africa and was therefore a worldwide economic institution preserved by racist nonsense.

That is where the split starts for not preserving Confederate monuments. Most Confederates were not only pro-slavery because of the economics, they were downright racists and eugenicists. The really believed Americans of African ancestry were inferior humans. To preserve the "stainless banner" or Confederate flag and other monuments of the Confederacy is akin to preserving monuments of Nazi Germany. Therefore, it can't stop there, unlike what some write. We must eliminate the "mother's milk" of racist teachings and replace it with the notion set forth in the Declaration of Independence.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Every behavior, teaching, and utterance of our leaders, officials, teachers, and editorials should be measured against that standard and principle. —Ken G., Colorado