A statue of former President Theodore Roosevelt was removed from outside a major New York City museum on Wednesday after officials decided the way it was structured is racist. The statue, created by James Earle Fraser, was placed in 1940 just outside the American Museum of Natural History in the Upper West Side neighborhood of Manhattan. It shows Roosevelt astride a horse with a Native American man and an African-American man on each side of him. Officials said the composition of the statue was racist and voted last year to remove it. “The Statue has long been controversial because of the hierarchical composition that places one figure on horseback and the others walking alongside, and many of us find its depictions of the Native American and African figures and their placement in the monument racist,” staffers at the museum said in a memorandum requesting the removal, prompting a unanimous vote by …