Why Glorify Insurrectionist Secessionists That Launched a War That Killed More Than 600,000 Soldiers? We Need to Honor Abolitionists and Blacks Who Fought for Freedom.
June 12th 2020
Dismantle White Supremacy on General Lee Statue in Richmond VA, Photos curtesy of Richmond DSA (Backbone Campaign)
By James Rogers Bush
Removing all vestiges of the Confederacy is not destroying culture or history as some argue. It is the removal of objects and names that honor those things that should not be honored. In Germany, the Germans do not honor Hitler and the Nazis with statues or monuments. And we should not honor the Confederacy by maintaining public reminders of that misguided cause.
Confederate statues, flags, and names were constructed and maintained by mostly southern racists who did not want to accept losing the civil war or the emancipation of black people. Many white people, from both north and south, allowed it, either because they had no choice, or because they saw it as a way to pacify neo-confederates, or because they were racists themselves.
Whatever the reason, it has always been a white thing to portray those who wore the blue and the grey as brothers at heart; brothers who had a serious disagreement that led to a civil war, but who were ultimately all Americans, to be mutually respected and honored for fighting for what they believed. But for damned good reason, it has never been a black thing, and it is time to understand, respect, and honor that.
Thousands of black soldiers fought for their freedom in the civil war, and every other war, and they still haven't fully won it. They and all African Americans since have never had, nor will they ever have a reason to honor the southern cause or to feel brotherly towards those who once enslaved them, continued a form of slavery under Jim Crow, and, in many ways, still abuse them to this day.
It is time for all of us, especially white people, to fully honor those who suffered the most from slavery, have the most to gain by continuing to fight for their freedom, and who now have the most reason to want the final removal of all vestiges of the things that remind them of the suffering they endured, and still endure, at the hands of some white people.
Many white people who understand this are finally joining black people in the cities and on the streets of America. And they are all calling for a cleansing; a spiritual and social cleansing to wash away the last vestiges of the original sin of slavery and renew the promise of freedom that should be the birthright of all Americans, regardless of race, national origin, or place in history.
It is time to place and keep the history of the Confederacy where it belongs: in the history books and museums, where it can be remembered and studied, not as a heritage to be proud of, but as a belief system, based on slavery and racism, that caused Americans to fight a bloody civil war that almost destroyed our nation.