Lee statue Charlottesville

#buzzwords (I can’t believe I just typed that) but that’s what is has come to. Words like check your privilege, feminist, consent, safe space, gender norms and trigger warnings are what’s wrong with society today. Everybody is offended by something. It’s funny how people act now. Is it because of the existence of the internet where you can be anonymous and hide behind the screen?

It’s simple, it is fucking ridiculous! Excuse my language, wait no, I don’t care about offending you. It is ridiculous to do these things. Now you are going to say I’m racist and afraid that my white privilege is being infringed upon. Two facts, I am not racist, ask my friends, and I don’t believe I have white privilege. You can argue til you are blue in the face but those two facts remain the same. You don’t know my circumstances growing up so therefore you cannot say for certain what you dont know. How about we get back to the removal of history?

New Orleans has perhaps the highest concentration of so-called racist monuments in the country, but there have been protests all over the nation demanding that symbols of the racist past come down — from South Carolina’s protests over the Confederate flag outside its statehouse to myriad protests on college campuses over buildings named for problematic leaders.

Recently New Orleans removed four statues which they say were pro confederate. In their minds that means pro slavery. Essentially that means if you were on the wrong side of history then you need to be erased. Now, that has set a precedence around the United States where the suggestion to remove statues is okay. Imagine if we had to topple every statue or memorial of every nasty man in history across the world? We may as well censor every exhibition, or burn every book cover with Mussolini or Hitler’s face on it.

Four states have made it impossible to remove or alter their historic structures, regardless of the desires of local municipalities. After a protracted fight to take down the Confederate flag from the state’s Capitol dome in 2000, South Carolina passed the Heritage Protection Act to prohibit the removal of Confederate monuments from public property. Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee quickly followed suit. Currently there is a fight in Charlottesville, VA. The city council voted 3–2 to take away the statue of Robert E. Lee and rename Lee Park. Just to remind everyone this doesn’t come free. Charlottesville’s government-approved removal carries a price tag of $400,000 and is also mired in a court battle with the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Court cost add up. I’m not sure of the total cost of the New Orleans removal but just think they were in court for two years and removed four statues.

Now there is a Democrat running for statewide office in Virginia that is calling for the state to take down and rename monuments to the Confederacy.

Susan Platt said in a statement Thursday that if elected lieutenant governor, she would seek to lead a commission tasked with taking down Confederate statues and renaming highways and public buildings named for Confederate soldiers.

Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy and much of the Civil War was fought in Virginia.

Platt says tax dollars should not be spent celebrating a “rebellion intended to maintain slavery.” She is running against two other Democrats for the party’s nomination. The primary is June 13.

The lieutenant governor is a largely ceremonial position that oversees the state Senate, but is often used as a springboard to run for governor.

My question is are tax dollars going towards the removal of the monuments? Regardless I repeat myself and say that this is a ridiculous thing that is going on.

There are over a thousand monuments related to confederate history. Arizona wasn’t even a state, let alone part of the Confederacy, during the Civil War. Yet, it boasts three Confederate statues, the last of which was erected in 2010. There are ten military bases named after prominent civil war persons. There are a few thousand roads named after confederate affiliated persons. There are fifty plus counties named after prominent Confederate historical figures. Currently there are countless building on higher learning campuses bearing the same names that are under attack as well. How much will this cost us not just dollars but in education about our past?

Alfred L. Brophy, the Judge John J. Parker distinguished professor of law at UNC Chapel Hill, warns against the rush to rid the country of these tactile reminders of Jim Crow and the codification of white supremacy.

“My initial thought is that removing these monuments leads to forgetting,” says Brophy. “We need to be aware that people in power at that time thought it was appropriate to celebrate slavery and Jim Crow.”

Brophy believes that making these artifacts disappear allows certain people to rewrite history, whereas, keeping them in place stands as a salient reminder of the times.

Kirk von Daacke, Associate Professor and Assistant Dean Department of History at the University of Virginia, agrees that, as a society, we benefit from learning about our own past in all its complexity. Nonetheless, he believes that removing Confederate statues and memorials, often erected several decades after the Civil War is a way to reject a history of Lost Cause glorification of the Confederate cause and the history of muscular white supremacy that went hand in hand with the Lost Cause.

He also points out that many of these memorials lack context and are inscribed to glorify or deny the brutality of that period. “Rethinking the memorial landscape — whether that involves moving memorials, adding new memorials, and/or reshaping how the memorials are viewed — is a necessary step in creating a more inclusive history and more inclusive public spaces,” said von Daacke.

I’m done. Feel free to comment snowflakes. Wait that’s one of those buzzwords I forgot to mention at the top. ;)

What’s next Presidents?