Why Confederate Monuments and the Confederate Flag Should Be Taken Down
The narrative that Confederate monuments and the flag of the Confederacy are symbols of southern heritage, not symbols of hate and treason, is a false narrative. If you look at the dates that most of these monuments were erected, they generally appeared around the early 1900’s post Reconstruction period when southern states were aggressively enacting Jim Crow laws that laid the foundation for black voter suppression and segregation in the south. In the spirit of Jim Crow laws across the south, these monuments that glorified leaders of the Confederacy reminded African American victims of discrimination exactly where they stood in the eyes of white southerners and the place in white southern society.
After reviving the spirit of the Confederacy and subjugating the people they had once enslaved, the south then began to nurture a revisionist history of the south, that the Civil War had less to do with slavery and more to do with individual state’s rights. They went on to glorify the southern Confederate rebellion in the popular movie Gone With The Wind that painted slaves as well treated mammies that just loved their the families that enslaved them and garnered sympathy for the plight of the Confederate south.
Our nation was later captivated by the Duke boys from the Dukes of Hazard, a family of rebellious southern bootleggers that got over on the man in their Confederate flag laden roadster called the General Lee. Even then in the early 80’s, everyone was too enraptured with the Duke boys and their beautiful cousin Daisy Duke to take pause to realize how wrong this was. The south had very successfully changed the narrative about the Civil War in their revisionist history campaign that they spoon fed children for generations, even had northerners celebrating the rebellious spirit of the south that had the tenacity to rebel against the United States of America.
If one were to take a realistic view of the Confederacy and the Civil War, one would clearly see that every political military leader of the Confederacy was committing treason and actively launched a devastating military campaign against the USA in defense of continued enslavement of a race of fellow human beings. Make no mistake, the Civil War was all about slavery, not state’s rights. You can bet that if the state’s rights issues were anything but slavery, compromise would have won that day over succession and war.
Donald Trump tweeting his passionate defense erasing our nation’s history and losing “beautiful statues and monuments…Also the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!” This is sickeningly disingenuous of Trump in light of his having not hesitated to tear down two large Bas-Relief Art Deco sculptures to make way to the construction of Trump Tower (that the Metropolitan Museum begged him to donate which he declined due to cost and time). Not only could the statues be moved to museums to preserve their historical value, they can be replaced with any number of uncelebrated true American heroes that fought FOR America that hailed from the south. That would truly be a heritage and history to be proud of.