Month: June 2020

Stop pretending that tearing down statues that glorify traitors and slavers is “erasing history.” History is held in books and museums, and there’s no danger of losing information about The Civil War. Thousands of meticulously researched volumes have been written on it, and doubtless thousands more will follow. It’s far past the time when white Americans find the backbone to admit that those statues and monuments you have fetishized WERE your attempt to erase history, by creating the false narrative that the Confederacy was formed to preserve anything other than slavery.

The Confederacy was created by rich white people who were mad that they would no longer have a slave race at their disposal, so they convinced their constituents to turn traitor against their country. And they lost. They were beaten so badly they surrendered unconditionally. THAT is the truth you want swept under the rug. That you backed the losing team. And if you’re still clinging to the preposterous lie that there was some noble and civilized form of slavery that black people were a willing party to, it’s time you accept that you have lost as well. The statues didn’t erase history. Like your war, they failed, utterly.

The scars of centuries of slavery run far too deep for your façade of fictional Southern gentility to cover. The South was a collection of poor white people duped into fighting for rich white people who wanted to continue buying, selling, brutalizing, and murdering other human beings without consequence. Fools. Suckers. Poor people conned into fighting for rich people so the rich would not have to pay white people a fair wage for hard labor. That’s why slavery existed. That is the totality of what The Confederacy was. That truth was never forgotten. It will never be forgotten. And all your bemoaning and hand wringing in the pretense of preserving history is exactly what those statues are: lies. Lies designed with one end in mind, and that is to allow the continuation of a way of life that permits you to see and treat black people as disposable. And if that truth is too harsh for you, or leaves too bitter a taste in your mouth for you to accept, then, like those statues, it’s time for you to go. And, just like those statues, you can either allow yourself to be removed, or you can be bound in ropes and toppled. I, for one, sincerely hope you choose the latter.

I make no pretense of gentility. Sometimes obsolete things need to be publicly and violently smashed to the ground.