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You can intimidate black people and honor the Confederacy in one fell swoop, though.
Sure, the Daughters of the Confederacy put in some statues. Why does an organization like that even exist?
The Confederate Army lost. The Confederate States were re-integrated into the Union. Honoring the men who served in the Army as individuals is fine. Honoring the Army is essentially saying their goal (keeping slaves) was good.
It was not.
That wasn't their goal though no one fought the civil war over slavery.
The best formulation is the states seceded over the preservation of slavery and the war was fought over secession
A lot of this is about lost cause attitude and not a desire to intimidate blacks but cast or re-cast the confederate army in a positive light
You could say it was about the veterans and the obligation to honor war dead
You could say it was about taking pride post reconstruction and the human desire to not see themselves negatively
You could say it was about emergent jim crow attitudes
Truth is it was probably all of these and other reasons
Ultimately I don't see these as monuments to racism but lost cause monuments and trying to make statements about the south retaining virtue and integrity through that terrible war
The sad truth southerners do have to own up to is if you're raised under lost cause slavery is seen as an after thought or inconvenience but on the other side its fundamental wrong to act like anyone in the civil war fought to preserve slavery. In many ways we are looking back with our modern eyes and making judgments.
To me the biggest loss would be to lose this historical complexity and nuance but on the other hand public spaces are for modern people and not ghosts and should conform to our standards which is why these relics belong in memorial grounds
The problem is, the lost cause movement has eliminated any historical complexity. I was born in 1970 and grew up here. In Wake County public schools I was taught that most of the slave owners were good people and didn't mistreat their slaves and that most slaves were happy. That the civil wars was exclusively about states rights, not mentioning that the specific right they were fighting over was to keep a race of people as captives or that many writings of confederates from the time contradict this. The textbooks we used didn't have the classic picture of how they crammed people into the slave ships. I didn't see that until I was in my 20s. The civil war was talked about as "the war of northern aggression" and if they would have just left us alone everything would be fine.
So, unless the monuments are going to have a big plaque put on every one of them with equal billing, describing the evils of slavery, what the war was really about, why and when the monuments were erected, there's no way for there to be historical complexity and nuance.
Lincoln thought blacks were of an inferior mental quality
Washington owned slaves
I don't cherry pick the historical record to find people saying stuff against common sensibilities and try to argue that taints everything done
Everyone posting here and reading this if your grandparents and back were white the were very likely homophobic or racist in different capacities. I'm not judging your family but observing the sad truth these immoral values were normalized in society. Should we all repudiate our history because they thought something considered wrong today?
Plenty were wrong, but ultimately did the right thing.
That's the point. They evolved in their thinking over time.
This Confederate pride tends to be highest in people whose opinions never really evolved. Hanging onto it allows them to believe that letting go of racism isn't something they need to do because some "great men" thought it was totally fine and if they'd only won, things would be better somehow.
The South never has seen the widespread prosperity that many places in the North has seen. People are bitter over it. Hanging onto this Confederate Pride thing is a way for them to think that one day, they'll be better than those people from the North who ruined their prospects at prosperity.
It's very damaging.
The South is not going to "rise again" in the way these people think.
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Correlation does not equal causation it's obvious Jim Crow supporters like the confederacy but that doesn't mean every monument is tainted nor has malicious intent
Sure correlation doesn't mean causation but good grief, do we need a history lesson about how absolutely and unabashedly RACIST American society was during that time? And you think that played absolutely no role in the erection of many (not all, which I said previously) Confederate monuments 100 years ago? Good God people...this is almost as worse as being in denial about the Holocaust.
Quote:
Look at southern flags in the 60s everyone had some form of the stars and bars in it
Plenty were wrong, but ultimately did the right thing.
That's the point. They evolved in their thinking over time.
This Confederate pride tends to be highest in people whose opinions never really evolved. Hanging onto it allows them to believe that letting go of racism isn't something they need to do because some "great men" thought it was totally fine and if they'd only won, things would be better somehow.
The South never has seen the widespread prosperity that many places in the North has seen. People are bitter over it. Hanging onto this Confederate Pride thing is a way for them to think that one day, they'll be better than those people from the North who ruined their prospects at prosperity.
It's very damaging.
The South is not going to "rise again" in the way these people think.
Actually the sun belt is beating the rust belt so you know
I understand why you believe that, but I always believed they were erected in the early 1900's because so many veterans were aging out and dying during this period. These monuments started going up to honor those veterans. I have a personal connection to these memorials, but I'm fine with removing them because this is best thing to do. They don't need to be destroyed though. They need to be handled with respect, and moved to a museum. Just wondering, are there Civil War memorials to honor Union vets?
I think so, and that's fine. They won.
I do think that some of those statues were put up to honor dying Confederate veterans, but in doing so, people did NOT think about the impact it would have on black citizens to see people who wanted to keep them enslaved honored in the public square.
So, maybe some weren't put there specifically to intimidate black people, but the end result was the same.
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I think people need to stop being so sensitive about stupid things. It's amazing people have time to protest and cause damage like this. Go to your job, spend time with your family, donate your time to a charitable cause. Life is so short and people spend their time with useless garbage. You want to make the world better? Spend your time at an animal shelter. Do a fund raiser to buy teachers school supplies. Foster a child. I hope they these people are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Make them clean every statue with a tooth brush in this state.
You used the word "memorial." Does Germany have government-sponsored Nazi memorials, monuments?
They do (German War Memorials). There are memorials to the soldiers who fought and gave their life when their government asked them to. The Nazi's were legally elected and many men who fought for Nazi Germany were not members of the Nazi party, but doing what they thought was right at the time. As usual, it's the politicians who make the decisions that the common man is forced to live with.
Context in history is everything. Who should topple the FDR statues because he forced Japanese-Americans into camps during WW2? Where does it stop? If you dig into almost anyone's past, you'll find out their sainthood is questionable.
The answers are not in forcing compliance with a certain viewpoint, but changing hearts and minds. What makes the second option so difficult is that it takes more than 10 minutes. The problem with trying to force the issue is that people dig in their heels when you attack them for what they believe. We all do it, it's a very human reaction.
Your Facebook rant may make you feel better, but you're not changing the minds of people on the opposite side. To change people in a lasting way, you need to let them decide that your view is the right one - and that doesn't happen by shouting, chanting, shaming or violence - although the 24-hour cable news sure likes it.
Actually the sun belt is beating the rust belt so you know
Here we are
The Sun Belt includes the West and doesn't include all of the South, and the Rust Belt isn't inclusive of all of the North so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.
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