Statues were never the issue really - the real issue was when neo Nazis lined up with burning torches and the President of the USA said the people that protested against them were their moral equivalents.

Its been reported that a number of the Confederate Statues in the US don't have any historic significance but were erected in the 1960s and funded for by southern lobby groups. Many have no direct link to the areas in which they stand.

e.g. there were 4 recently taken down in Baltimore, a city which was never part of the Confederacy, and a city where over 60% of the population is identified as African-American. The suggestion is that statues were put there in later years purely there to oppressed that population.