Leaving them wouldn't have provided any education until recent events created an opportunity to change that. You shouldn't be ashamed of that history you should want be use it to educate about how man's inherrent inhumanity to man proliferates when unchecked. Hiding those lessons away does not do that. If people of any oolour knew the context of why we left the statues up we would be developing a better educated and hopefully more tolerant society. Renove the statues and the lessons will be lost to dusty corner of a museum that you and me ould never have visited abyway but at least you would be free if the hysteria of white shame.
If you interviewed everybody in Bristol last week and asked them of they idolised Colston your tally would have been 0.
The German example is education, not having no statues.