In my town there is a statue of a woman who willed the money that created an endowment that allows us to have a very nice park system. Other than a small and little used park bearing her name, there is little public notice of her. It is valuable to keep her statue. Also important, her statue does not signal the second class status of any person.
Statues to Confederate soldiers have no similar value. We are not at risk of obscuring or losing the history of slavery or the Civil War. As well as being superfluous to remembering that history, these statues do signal second class status for many people, because they are not simply records of past events, but glorifications of those who fought for continued enslavement of other humans.
Pulling down statues of Columbus is also justified by these standards. We are unlikely to forget that he landed in the Americas (but as we now know, it was neither an unprecedented feat nor was it a successful achievement of his goal, so why should we care if it's remembered?), and he enslaved and slaughtered humans.
Likewise, the pulling down the statue of the genocidal King Leopold of Belgium. He should be remembered, as a warning of inhumanity but not honored.
So if you're arguing for keeping these slavery-honoring memorials, you're wrong. Your reasons are probably shallow, and for some few mendacious.
