Statues are powerful symbols. But their real value lies in their power as portals, as conveyors of grand narratives and malicious myths that are passed on from generation to generation. Howard Zinn describes this power through the figure of Christopher Columbus: "To emphasize the heroism of Columbus and his successors as navigators and discoverers, and to deemphasize their genocide, is not a technical necessity but an ideological choice. It serves—unwittingly—to justify what was done." The past is built into the very core of those statues, reinforced by their clay and metal surfaces that stand, individually and ubiquitously, across and even beyond the nation.

Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamopho…, loc. 1164