Robert Y. George: Remove Confederate statue

Regarding the July 1 column “As a testament to mercy, take it down”: Let me enthusiastically give three cheers to J. Peder Zane’s appeal to take down the Confederate monument (statue) on a tall stone pedestal at the corner of Hillsborough and Salisbury streets in Raleigh.

My wife and I came with our 1-year old son to the United States as immigrants just like the parents of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. In 1965, I accepted a job as a research oceanographer at Duke University, and we moved from Seattle to Beaufort like the parents of Gov. Pat McCrory, arriving in North Carolina about the same time.

I am an Indian-American but I, like Gov. Bobby Jindal, do not like hyphens. I simply prefer to call myself an American.

When I came to North Carolina in the mid-1960s, it was the old South. Now we live in North Carolina, the new South. I wish to see the statue of a Confederate soldier near the North Carolina Capitol removed and swiftly replaced by a statue in honor of William Friday who lived triumphantly as a person symbolizing North Carolina people.

This story was originally published July 11, 2015 at 2:00 PM with the headline "Robert Y. George: Remove Confederate statue."