(1) Consistency is overrated. If we were perfectly consistent, we would not only take down statues, but we would rename Yale University (Elihu Yale was a slave trader), Brown University, Columbus Ohio, Washington State, the District of Columbia, Columbia University, and many other universities, cities, parks and streets named after people who once owned enslaved people. But we don't have to be perfectly consistent. We can change some names but choose to regard other institutions as sufficiently far removed from the source of their names that the names don't need to be changed, or we can decide that the cost of changing some names is just too high. We can stop celebrating Columbus day without having to rename everything with "Columbus" in its name. We can choose to pull down statues of Robert. E. Lee, but not Thomas Jefferson. That's not cherry-picking. That's making reasonable distinctions.
(2) Regarding counterfactuals: for nearly every atrocity in history, you can find people whose descendants were arguably better off because of it. So what? An act needs to be judged by the suffering or benefit it causes at the time, or which can reasonably be predicted to result from it. The slave trade caused unspeakable suffering at the time and for many years after. That doesn't necessarily mean that Black people today can reasonably claim harm from the legacy of slavery (I'm not arguing that either way). It just means that counterfactuals shouldn't have any place in the discussion.
Two comments:
(1) Consistency is overrated. If we were perfectly consistent, we would not only take down statues, but we would rename Yale University (Elihu Yale was a slave trader), Brown University, Columbus Ohio, Washington State, the District of Columbia, Columbia University, and many other universities, cities, parks and streets named after people who once owned enslaved people. But we don't have to be perfectly consistent. We can change some names but choose to regard other institutions as sufficiently far removed from the source of their names that the names don't need to be changed, or we can decide that the cost of changing some names is just too high. We can stop celebrating Columbus day without having to rename everything with "Columbus" in its name. We can choose to pull down statues of Robert. E. Lee, but not Thomas Jefferson. That's not cherry-picking. That's making reasonable distinctions.
(2) Regarding counterfactuals: for nearly every atrocity in history, you can find people whose descendants were arguably better off because of it. So what? An act needs to be judged by the suffering or benefit it causes at the time, or which can reasonably be predicted to result from it. The slave trade caused unspeakable suffering at the time and for many years after. That doesn't necessarily mean that Black people today can reasonably claim harm from the legacy of slavery (I'm not arguing that either way). It just means that counterfactuals shouldn't have any place in the discussion.