Racist Monuments and Place Names

June 26, 2020

Activists topple the statue of Father Junipero Serra in El Pueblo de Los Angeles in Olvera Street.ISSI's Center for Research on Native American Issues affiliated faculty member Beth Piatote was quoted in two articles about the current fight to topple racist monuments and change racist place names:

“People aren’t taking things so much as a given part of the landscape anymore, and they’re imagining what places would feel like without this assertion of power, this asserting of dominance over certain people." - in the Los Angeles Times 

“This is a time when people are attuned to thinking about not just these overt acts of racism — things that we can easily name — but the way in which racial structures and racism shapes our everyday environment." - in the Sacramento Bee