Statues and the deflection of racial and religious oppression and hatred

Somehow the conversation about Nazis has devolved into an argument about keeping Confederate statues so we don't forget the past. It's turned into a debate on the renunciation of those statues and their place in American history.

Literal Nazis were there in Charlottesville.
The KKK was there in Charlottesville.
Lots of, for lack of a better term I'll call, generic white supremacists, were there in Charlottesville. These are the folks spouting off the line that they were just there to protest the imminent removal of the homage to Robert E. Lee. A traitor to the United States of America.

For today's post, I'm going to step away from the issue of permitting Nazis to march in the streets giving the Hitler salute and carrying Nazi flags. On goddamned American soil.

I'm going to step away from the issue of permitting the KKK to carry torches and emboldening them enough to go unhooded.

I'm going to step away from those "generic white supremacists" who now claim their life is ruined because they just took part in a little itty bitty Nazi protest where someone was murdered and several more injured, and 2 police officers lost their lives.

I'm going to step away from our asshat of a president who defended these "very fine people".

Let's talk about the statue. The one of Robert E. Lee. And the thousands of statues just like it across America. In hundreds of cities, we have statues up commemorating and honoring the losing side of a treasonous war.

Kids grow up across America looking at these statues. The ones dedicated to and honoring men who fought a war because they wanted the right to own Black people. To whip them, to hang them, to humiliate them, to rape them, to deny them autonomy, to sit lazily back and count the money they made off the backs of these men and women and children. Men and women and children brought to our country against their will. Stolen from their homes in (predominantly) Africa.

Those same kids grow up and attend protests and yell at the descendants of these men and women and children who literally built this country's economy and who are systemically and institutionally pushed out of participating fully in it. They yell to go back where they came from as if their descendants voluntarily emigrated here. They yell derogatory terms like "nigger" and "Boy" in an attempt to dehumanize and emasculate them.

Side note. Yes. I wrote out the word nigger instead of using the politically correct "n****r". Because it's an ugly word. And when using it to show the ugliness of those who yell it at other human beings, it makes sense to not whitewash the term. To show its ugliness. End side note.

They yell at Jews to leave, to die. Invoking centuries-old stereotypes of Jews.

They yell at women to know their place, to go make a sandwich, to get back to birthing babies and ironing their shirts.

So they protest the removal of those statues. Which were not erected at the end of the war, but instead at a future time when it was once again, time to remind the black man of his place in society. To whip up hatred and anger in order to keep an entire race of human beings systematically oppressed. During the women's suffrage movement in the 1910s and 20s. During the Civil Rights movement in the 60s. Whenever social progress was being made, it became time to add another statue to remind folks of their place in society and whip up sentiment against them.

Now imagine the alternate universe. What would these Nazis, these KKK, and these "generic" white supremacists be using as their sword to die on if instead of erecting statues to racist traitors to America, we erected statues of more worthy people.

Imagine if kids grew up visiting their local park and saw statues honoring Civil War era heroes like Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass and Robert Smalls and Sojourner Truth alongside Lincoln and Grant.

Imagine if kids grew up visiting statues of great feminist leaders like Susan B Anthony or Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Margaret Sanger, Bell Hooks, or Shirley Chisolm.

Imagine if kids grew up with statues honoring the great American soldiers who helped to liberate the death camps. Imagine if those statues depicted them opening the gates and showed the Jews and other oppressed people who were being held prisoners behind those gates.

Imagine if we had statues honoring Americans like Louis Brandeis, Elie Wiesel, Gertrude Elion and Jonas Salk, and yes, Emma Lazarus all across the country.

Imagine if we had statues in our streets honoring great Black Americans like Thurgood Marshall and Maya Angelou, Benjamin Davis Sr., Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, Katherine Johnson, and Ida B. Wells.

Imagine if our kids grew up going to museums and seeing photos and relics of the Civil War instead of large statues honoring them in the streets. These museums would educate the kids and their parents about the cause of the Civil War. Preservation of slavery. And that it was defeated. And rightly defeated.

Imagine what all that might achieve in combating racism, misogyny, antisemitism and Holocaust denial.

Imagine if that's what was standing in Charlottesville and that's what kids grew up visiting, instead of holdovers from a time when racial, religious, and gender oppression was the norm.

THAT's the America I want to live in.