(1) If you refer to the issue of white supremacy, it has by no means lain dormant.  Ask 7 year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones.  Oops, you can't.  She was shot in the head while asleep on her grandmother's couch.  The Detroit cop who did it while showing-off for a "reality" TV show walked.  White folks shrugged their shoulders in indifference.  But for God's sake DON'T shoot a lion!

(2) Airbrushing war-criminals out of public space could perhaps be seen as "touch-up" for previously airbrushing them as "heroes".  A mere gesture, perhaps, but then Saddam's statue was pulled down, too (and the outraged Iraqi pulling on the rope said VERY impolite things about his sister while doing so--would probably have been 'bleeped'-out on Arab-language TV).

(3)  Funny how "understanding" only goes one way in white American culture--we're supposed to understand the perpetrators of atrocity, and forget about its victims.  In the words of "Firefly" villain Jubal Early, "Does that seem right to you?"