For All Y’All
Who Say Removing Confederate Statues Is a Far Left Plot to Destroy America
The problem is
what the Confederate statues represent. They have a language. They whisper
stories of lies and torment, greed and cruelty hidden behind the facade of
justice. I heard their stories and had a visceral reaction as a child. Back
then, we made an annual pilgrimage down south from up north to visit kinfolk.
My father was a
Yankee and my mother a Southerner. I have the whole Civil War running right
through my veins. My momma's people in South Carolina were as kind and sweet
and lovin' as ever they could be. My father's people had retired to North Carolina,
so we'd visit them, too. They were more traveled, having lived outside the
country and such over in Belgium. They played golf. My momma's people played
horseshoes, or more likely sat on the back porch for a smoke and some of Aunt
Neva's pound cake.
Thing of it is,
my momma's people were white but they had done sharecroppin' side alongside
black folks. In fact, one of her ancestors long ago had helped a black man get
into politics. In recent memory, Bethany Baptist Church in Bishopville, South Carolina,
was going to renovate and remove the upstairs balcony of the church. My kinfolk
lobbied to preserve it for history. The balcony was where the enslaved attended church
back in the day.
Should that
balcony be torn down? Were not the footsteps of slaves on those plank floors sacred?
It is not to glorify slavery, but to honor those who suffered that one can walk
up those same stairs into the stifling heat. Imagine what it must have felt
like to be enslaved looking down on the free white congregation below. Imagine as the
floors creak beneath your feet and hear their gospel sorrow.
Howsoever, preserving
idols to the Confederacy raises different issues. They are not testimonies to
the sorrow of the South. They proclaim a longing for what never should have
been. To me as a child, it was as clear as the heinous signs that read “Whites
Only” over the public water fountain. I recoiled when I saw Confederate
statues. They made my stomach go in knots. I thought of my black friends. I
thought about Lincoln.
I thought about
all the suffering. The sadness of people dying. But the hallelujah feeling that
the cruelty of slavery was over was not let go into the air on account of those
Confederate statues. They said, “Now you shush up or you’re gonna get a
whoopin’.”
Only a crazy
world holds up those who kill to enforce racism. Those statues made my skin
crawl right over my stomach all in knots. They made me not trust grownups at
all. I heard justifications like “states’ rights.” Even as a child I knew there
were no rights unless all my brothers and sisters had the same rights.
Instead of
legislators and generals of the grey, there should be statues to those who
served the Underground Railroad, civil rights, agriculture, the arts, letters
and sciences, images of people of all backgrounds and ethnicities. We need to
change the conversation from condoning oppression to celebrating humanity.
The iconography of our collective victory resides within the intrinsic, inalienable and infinitely precious value of each person. We need to elevate the true heroes and heroines of
history and those who embody the hopes and noblest ideals of freedom, community
and ingenuity for the sake of the history we have yet to build.
Nice, France
21 August 2017
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