End glorification of the Confederacy

No less an authority than Dr. Martin Luther King, when speaking about the future of civil rights in 1957 told his audience, “Many of the southerners who oppose integration believe with utter devoutness that what they do is best for themselves, their families, and their nation.” His next statement however, made it clear that “... the opponents of desegregation are fighting a losing battle. The Old South is gone, never to return again. Yes, the Old South is a lost cause.” Yet decades later, here we are, still reeling from the terrible resolutions of a Civil War fought 160 years ago.

Were 1861 attitudes toward Black Americans genuinely progressive in the northern states? Hardly, but it’s fair to say they were at least lurching in the right direction, away from our original sin of slavery. Maybe even one day toward an all-inclusive and just society. But then came war, fought against traitors and insurrectionists who knew damn well that they were fighting to protect and preserve slavery, enshrine white supremacy and legalize racism. And when the traitors lost, instead of its leaders being prosecuted and its racist institutions ripped out at the roots, the dehumanizing “glorious cause” they defended was allowed to fester, sustaining an infection Americans still suffer from.

Black Americans remained marginalized as an appeasement to the South. The losers were allowed to perpetuate Jim Crow laws and create the Klu Klux Klan. And because America didn’t have the post-war national conversation on race that should have happened when the winners held the moral high ground, it became easy for politicians, judges, newspaper editors and ultimately everyday people to accept both overt and casual racism as normal.

So today, Black Americans have every right to be enraged. The national conversation over injustice, policing, racial inequality and so much more has to start now, and ending the glorification of the Confederacy is a pretty good a place to start. Confederate battle flags have no place in society. They’re tools of intimidation, symbolize hate and the only “heritage” they represent is slavery. Public monuments to traitors and military bases named for soldiers who fought against the United States absolutely should be changed. “But what about,” whine the sad misguided bigots, “losing our history?”

Well, history should never be vaporized, otherwise how do we learn from it? Take Stone Mountain Park in Georgia, the 20th century re-birthplace of the Klan, with its holy Confederate trinity of traitors carved directly into the rock. It’s both the biggest state tourist attraction and lighting rod for anyone who says Confederate monuments must go. But to blast the monument out of the mountain would be grotesquely Taliban-esque, and the opportunity to genuinely teach people about their history would be gone. Instead, let’s focus on actual history, and repurpose Stone Mountain like Auschwitz in Poland.

In 1947, instead of demolishing the most notorious Nazi death camp, Poland protected Auschwitz and converted it into a museum to bear witness to the truth and tragic heritage of the Nazis. To become a place where people could learn about history, no matter how hard that truth was or how uncomfortable it made people.

Now in 2020, while all of America is finally paying attention to the egregious insults to Black Americans, let’s lose the Confederate statues, monuments, battle flags and military base names. But let’s take Stone Mountain, currently a Dixie Disney-like shrine to a lost repulsive cause which continues to have repercussions to this day, and convert it into a place of truth and learning about slavery and the Black American experience. Where people would come not for the hokey laser show, but for the real history lessons so many racist loudmouths feel is important. Make Stone Mountain the American Auschwitz. No longer a place of misguided celebrations of intolerance, cruelty and disunity, but reestablished as a place of reflection and understanding.

Because moving America forward as a unified, just society will require coming to grips with the good, bad and often ugly of all of our actual history. And yes, the steps we take from here will be uncomfortable, but do we want to be comfortable or do we want to grow? Because we can’t do both.