Garrett Epps points out in "The Atlantic" that the fight over monuments is not a fight over the past but a fight over the future.

Garrett Epps, Richmond native, has an article in The Atlantic titled, "The True History of the South Is Not Being Erases: Taking down Confederate monuments helps confront the past, no obscure it." 

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/the-true-history-of-the-south-is-not-being-erased/529818/

The article concludes

This is not a fight over history; it is a fight over the future. The neo-Confederate faith is not a heritage; it is a political program. And the proper lesson of Southern history is that this radical message—unapologetic, uncompromising, violent white supremacy—lurks in the American bloodstream like a virus, re-emerging at times when the national immune system is weak.

We may be living through an outbreak.

To survive and prosper, the South, and the nation, must renounce this pernicious creed and disarm its symbols. The bronze and marble men do no honor to the region’s true parents; they do, however, dishonor its children.

One way or another, they must yield their unearned pride of place.

For those who know my views I have always said it was a fight over the future. I have always said that it is a political program of white supremacy, and that it poisons our future.