Confederate Monuments
Protesters Say Monument Stands For Racism, Bigotry
I spent a lot of time growing up in the South, and I’ve seen how pride in being a Southerner gets all wrapped up in pride about the Civil War. I’m sensitive to it, and I can see the other side. Especially since our country still grapples with the tension between states’ rights versus the power of the federal (or even international) government, the values of the Confederate uprising aren’t entirely something of the past. Theres a mythos there that persists.
On the other hand…
Near my house here in northern Virginia there’s a plaque on a tree which memorializes that Yankee spies used to be hanged there. This is directly on my way when I take my family out for our weekly Sunday brunch. It’s both morbid and disturbing. As much as I sympathize with the ideals of the Civil War extending past a battle over slavery — it was also about slavery. As a “mulatto,” if I had lived at the time, I would certainly have been fighting on the side of the North, and I would also certainly have been ‘passing’ as white. And who’s to say I wouldn’t have been discovered and strung up on that tree? For that matter, whose to say that any of my white friends wouldn’t have been caught as spies and strung up on that tree. Regardless of what the real underpinnings of that war were, regardless of what it means for cultural pride, there are appropriate ways to express your culture and commemorate history and there are inappropriate ways. I’d like to think that the issue of confederate monuments would be a prime example of something that we could compromise on as a culture… but maybe I’m wrong.