Readers React: Don’t sandblast away Stone Mountain’s Confederate face

To the editor: Public officials in the modern South are, in my view, correct in removing the Confederate battle flag and other racist symbols from the public space. But sandblasting the “largest bas relief sculpture in the world” — as some are suggesting for the carving of three Confederate icons in Stone Mountain, Ga. — would be quite another matter. (“Should the Confederate carving on Georgia’s Stone Mountain stay up as a reminder of history?,” July 31)

Adding Martin Luther King Jr., Jimmy Carter and others in the future would be a better approach than effectively erasing what’s been there for decades.

How would sandblasting those sculptures differ from what the Taliban did to the ancient Buddha sculptures of Bamyan, Afghanistan? The Taliban’s motive was to remove from the present reminders of a past they found offensive, and for this, they were rightfully condemned.

Richard Merel, Hermosa Beach

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