Nice piece, and several good points. Being that many who have never experienced racial discrimination find racial arguments difficult to understand, I wonder if we are not better off focusing on another aspect of Confederate monuments: their glorification of men who were traitors to their country. I agree that there is an alternative myth being spun about the Civil War — the myth that this was a “war between states” or a “war about state’s rights.” No, no, no! This was not a case of states taking-up arms against one another, but instead about a group of states turning against the United States. This was treason, and patriotic Americans do not celebrate treason.
America was born as and continues to be a nation yet to fulfill the promise of its founding. While the declaration of independence states “that all men are created equal,” the Constitution of the United States makes clear that my ancestors were only equal to 3/5th of other persons. One could look on this contradiction and conclude that America has never been and therefore never will be a nation of equal peoples. I choose to take a different view.
America did not then, and does not now belong to those who seek to oppress or discriminate against others. America is the ideal of equality — even if that ideal has yet to be realized. Thus, those who advocate for equal rights, acceptance, and tolerance are true patriots and American heroes. Likewise, those who seek to discriminate against and oppress others based on immutable characteristics are traitors to our great nation.
It is all right there, in the founding documents, we need only to read them to see that those who call themselves Nazis, fascists, or white nationalist are not true Americans, but interlopers seeking to rewrite not only our history, but the bedrock promise of America. True Americans know that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
