Op-Ed: Let’s Demolish All of Our Symbols of Treason & Racial Oppression
“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” ~ 1 Corinthians 13:11
As a Vietnam Veteran, and a White man whose distant family once owned slaves; my own position on this topic is unambiguous and not born out of any particular ideological belief or political bias. To me it is a simple matter of right or wrong. A matter of righting a historical, moral disgrace. It is a call to appropriately honor all those who faithfully served their country and performed with valor and dignity,…while refusing to inappropriately honor or commemorate those who didn’t.
It is not a “rewriting” of our history, nor born out of some partisan political desire to eradicate Southern Pride or Southern Heritage. Nothing about this should prove partisan. It is simply a long-overdue acknowledgement, that some of our ancestors were simply wrong. Not necessarily inherently evil — for their time — but morally wrong to perpetuate a system we now roundly denounce. We should not strive to extend and display the physical reminders of that immorality on down, through the generations that follow.
As a young boy, I greatly admired General Robert E. Lee. In fact, my middle name is Lee. I admired his military acumen and tactical genius against far greater Union forces, often overcoming huge materiel disadvantages while also confronting greater Northern numbers on the battlefield. In school I wrote essays lauding him as a great military leader,…albeit a battlefield commander for a vile cause — Secession and Slavery. To be sure, he was revered by his men, even those many conscripts who had no formal education, yet did their duty, unflinchingly,…but in an armed rebellion against their country, the United States of America.
Let us be clear about that history. An armed rebellion was clearly what it was. It was a taking up of lethal arms against our Constitution because of a determination — mostly by slave-holding aristocrats — to preserve America’s original sin, the institution of slavery. It was an expression of political opposition to the election of an American president they viewed as committed to eradicating that sin from our national conscience.
Some claim that the ensuing war was really all about “States’ Rights,” or the economic ruin that would befall southern states if their system of oppression and human bondage were eradicated, and some millions of uneducated Blacks set free. Uneducated only because their owners made even that illegal — for their “property” in bondage. It is an argument that has merit only with those who would blithely refuse to accept that that system was already a moral outrage elsewhere, in Europe and in a civilized world that had largely repudiated slavery as sinful, immoral, and evil. Nations that nevertheless prospered despite their ending of slavery.
Indeed, although that institution was finally, “formally” ended in America, decided by the bloodiest war in our nation’s history — before or since — the vestiges of the institutional racial oppression against Blacks (and other people of color) continued far into the 19th and 20th centuries, and has now led us to the current debate, about the tearing down of the symbols and physical honorariums to those men who fought to preserve slavery in a dozen slave-holding states, and to even expand it to new territories, as some guarantee against its eventual abolition.
“The year the Lee statue was unveiled — 1924 — was also the year Virginia passed the Racial Integrity Act, which strengthened Virginia’s ban on interracial marriage, she points out. Lynching was rampant, and statues of Confederates such as Lee “were part of an effort to remember the Lost Cause, to restore the past glory days of white Southerners,” says Szakos. “That is not what we stand for as a city.”” ~ C-Ville Weekly
It should be noted — despite delusional claims by our current history-challenged president; “…the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!” — that General Robert E. Lee, whose planned statue removal in Charlottesville has become the current catalyst in this century-old debate, held a definitive opinion against such memorials to a lost war and a lost cause:
“As regards the erection of such a monument as is contemplated,” Lee wrote in December 1866 about another proposed Confederate monument, “my conviction is, that however grateful it would be to the feelings of the South, the attempt in the present condition of the Country, would have the effect of retarding, instead of accelerating its accomplishment; [and] of continuing, if not adding to, the difficulties under which the Southern people labour.” ~ AOL News
Moreover, we should see the current debate not in terms of remembering — let alone revering — a sinful past, but in terms of what is best for the long term civility, racial equality and justice in a modern, racially inclusive society and as an example of what America claims it stands for among the nations of the world: the “Land of the Free, the Home of the Brave.”
This is not to say that we can (or should) dictate to people who still wish to live privately in the darker past of their ancestors. That is on them. But, apart from displaying such historical reminders in museums, or on Civil War battlefields where they have proper context and understanding; their public — and public supported — displays are merely an egregious ‘stick in the eye’ of the offended, which now, thankfully, also includes millions of Whites (North & South) who have moved on to a place of healing and racial inclusion.
Watch the following, chilling video — posted to Facebook — by a UVA student, horrified at witnessing the events as they began to unfold in Charlottesville, the Friday night before the tragic murderous assault that left Heather Heyer dying in the street, and two state troopers — flying a helicopter — dead in the aftermath…
Millions of our fellow citizens who are direct descendants of those who suffered theft of their labor; rape and other grievous bodily injury; familial separation; and even death — at the hands of White slave owners — should now be free of more than just their personal liberty. They should be free of the constant reminders of their past heritage — of their forbears’ slavery and servitude, something they must now encounter daily, whenever they pass a Confederate statue or monument maintained by their tax dollars in our city parks or in front of our courthouses dedicated to dispensing colorblind justice!
As to the false equivalency argument, about Washington and Jefferson being slaveholders themselves; the statuary and other memorials to them (and our other Founding Fathers) does not commemorate their status as slave owners, nor as being military commanders who fought against the very Union they helped create — it is just that; a false equivalence.
And finally, as the military commanders of our Joint Chiefs of Staff have so eloquently stated, as regards the undeniably related and often painful discussions on race and inclusion; we should also give voice to renaming all those military installations still named for Confederate generals. So that all those brave servicemen and women of color do not have to serve on bases, nor walk daily among statues dedicated to 19th century men — erected by 20th century men who would deny them the peace and equality of their other freedoms, if not actual freedom itself.
ADDENDUM: I am adding this link to my original Op-Ed. I had read this commentary on Facebook, but it had no attribution as to authorship, so I omitted any excerpts or references to it. It speaks volumes as to the angst of someone who was raised in this Southern culture of White Supremacy.
