“Heritage”? No, White Supremacy
A graphic published by the Southern Poverty Law Center is telling – it documents when Confederate monuments were built around the country. Interestingly, there are two spikes in the placement of monuments; the Jim Crow era and the civil rights era. Confederate named schools were especially popular during the time of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. One can draw only one conclusion here – these monuments were erected to “honor our heritage”, they were erected in a fleeting attempt to hang on to a by gone era where whites held dominion over African Americans. Have a look (click the little one to get the big one):
the time line figures. It seems that it takes awhile after some earth shaking event like a war to see this happen. I went to kindergarten at a school that featured a enormous cannon on the lawn. It was planted there about 10 years after the First World War. I had been told what it was and I always thought it it was a really dumb looking thing. As a result I am not that drawn to commemorative statues. We have other more important things to do with our time and energy, both physically and spiritually.
1Look at all the little suburbs around TX that were founded in 1954 after Brown vs. board of education. These people couldn’t have their kids go to a school with black kids so they formed their own little incorporated area and school district.
2Confederate monuments being erected in 2010????? SMDH!
3The real reason so many confederate memorials were erected around 1910 – just as Jim Crow laws were getting well established – and then again during the heyday of the Civil Rights Movement, was to serve as a constant reminder to black people of their social status – and subtly remind them to not attempt to rise above it.
The real reason we are hearing so much controversy regarding their removal today is not because of “history,” as their defenders keep insisting. There is not a single public monument in the United States today to the man who had a greater effect than any other on the course of history in the U.S. (with the possible exception of FDR) in the course of the 20th Century. I speak, of course, of Adolf Hitler. In spite of his influence on history, we don’t raise monuments to him, and we shouldn’t raise monuments to the leaders of the confederate treason for PRECISELY THE SAME REASON – what they did was despicable, and why they did it was even more despicable.
To fail to acknowledge that is to fail to appreciate why we raise public monuments in the first place – to celebrate persons whose achievements and/or character are worth celebrating and emulating – to serve as an example to teach to your children as they walk with you in our public spaces.
4And then there’s the “states’ rights” argument. Look at the statements made by each state legislature that voted to secede: it was about states’ rights to have and spread slavery.
Yes, many of the people on the monuments were brave in battle. So were a lot of Nazi soldiers, but Germany does not have monuments to them because their cause was anathema to all decent people and subsequent generations of Germans do not want to praise them.
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