3500 Miles of Solidarity
Why The Removal Of The Implements & Symbols of Racism Is Imperative
As cities across America burn and the militarised police continue to incite riots against righteous protestors, kill innocents and attack journalists, we’re witnessing a release of frustration on both the implements and the symbols of Black suppression.
Protests; peaceful and pleading, angry and distraught, rage against the Police Order that has since it’s very inception been used to repress the freedom of those with black skin. We now see it every day in heart-rending videos of murder and assault by civilian and cop alike.
In recent days since the protests ignited by the murders of Ahmaud Aubrey, Breonna Taylor and finally George Floyd have raged in cities across America, buildings have been burned to the ground, including police stations as well as historic places enured with our slave holding past. As these frustrations play out on both implement and symbol, and as justice for those murdered seems far from coming, the wider argument against the validity of these symbols used by police and a portion of White America needs to be addressed if there is to be any closure in the, hopefully near, future.
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“It’s only a bit of cloth, it’s only a statue, it’s our history that needs to be preserved.”
These are not symbols of a proud heritage. These are symbols of oppression and if people don’t believe that then they are walking through life with their eyes closed. The overwhelming majority of these statues that are being pulled down or vandalised were not erected immediately after the Civil War. Why? In the few years of in the immediate aftermath of the war the thoughts of monuments erected to those who were recently pardoned or still awaiting pardon for treasonous acts would have been unheard of. But just as importantly, in the wake of Reconstruction the South had changed, if incrementally.
Black men could vote, could hold office, could shape their own lives and the lives of their community for the first time. The South couldn’t and didn’t erect these abominations at that time because Reconstruction had finally given voice to those who were held in bondage, those who worked from birth to death, those who were beaten, those who were raped and killed and treated like the livestock they were believed to be. Instead these statues were erected once the South had finally removed the ‘Yankee interlopers’ from their soil and enacted Jim Crow laws, allowing the white establishment to reclaim what they believed to be theirs. These statues were erected to be symbols of a glorious past and the fallen “heroes” of a cause never given up. They were erected to be a celebration of men who had their Southern future taken from them.
But most importantly, and most insidiously, they were erected to be a reminder to every person, black and white, of who was in charge.
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Every black child, from the moment of each statue’s erection, had to go through their entire lives with these white men, these men who fought so hard to keep them as slaves, staring down at them. A white man on a horse who kept your grandparents as chattel for generations. A nameless soldier who gave his life to deny a free life to others. And children still have to make these walks, every day.
Even more prevalent in every day life is the flag carried into battle by men preserving torture and human bondage. A flag that remained, flown from State capitols and from truck windows, on hats and the hoods of cars on television shows.
But let’s celebrate these men and symbols for the rest of time?
What history do we preserve with these statues? Should these men be honoured for their military service only obtained through treason or honoured for being avid believers in the deficiency of black skin, in segregation?
Should we honour the thousands and thousands of men who fought to preserve slavery and all of it’s byproducts? Why allow statues that honour the morally decrepit? If the reason to leave them is as a cautionary tale, then this a fallacy and wholly disingenuous.
Although they should be, they are not symbols of shame. They are symbols of pride. They will never be symbols of shame to those who want to and need to continually glorify them. Where are all the glorious memorials to Hitler and Rommel and Goebbels and Goering? Where in Ireland are all the beautiful statues of Oliver Cromwell?
These memorials are not here because they are not appropriate. It’s not necessary to place Hitler next to a Holocaust memorial.
Just as any number of statues honouring Confederate slave owners are not appropriate. It’s not enough to leave them with the caveat, “they weren’t the best of men.” This is not enough.
A statue of a man who was a racist is not a benign thing, it is a symbol of racism. A flag of a country created to preserve the enslavement of black men and women is not a piece of cloth, it is a symbol of racism.
It makes an incredible difference to choose to remember those who were oppressed rather than those who did the whipping. A memorial to slavery next to the slave holder is insulting to the generations of who have come after, still fighting for a full freedom never won.
Preserve history? What history do we need to preserve here? Do you think the free and righteous thinking world will ever forget the name Adolf Hitler? Do you think that America will ever forget slavery or the Civil War?
History will record those who made a difference, but what need is there to remember the little men who fought a war -who literally killed- in order to keep others enslaved? If their influence on American society was so great, so beneficial, why do their statues glorify their treason and the basest failures of their human spirit instead of the improvements they made to their nation after their pardons? Why do we allow the flag of a failed “Nation” who’s only basis for existence was to oppress the existence of others?
There is no justification for the continuance of statues or symbols honouring the Confederate spirit — because it was and is still morally bankrupt and rotten. These were not American heroes, they were traitors to their country. And every single “it wasn’t just about slavery” line that you’ll ever hear is peddling a lie. Because, ultimately, every single factor that led to the U.S. Civil War came down to the institution of slavery. It came down to one people clinging on to their “right” to preserve a society which enslaved others. They were not American heroes.
There is a question that I’m seeing a lot lately; what can I do, as a white person, to help end racism? It’s a difficult question to answer, even more so when you’re 3500 miles away from your country as it ignites and you can’t physically be there to lend your hand, body, voice. It’s an impossible question to answer.
It’s not always enough to just feel like things are wrong, to even say that things or wrong or to join in the platitudes. We must ally ourselves to something tangible. To something achievable. Fight for the active removal of racist symbolism in our society as a recognition of our past as well as an act of reconciliation.
Ban the Confederate battle flag, just as Germany banned Nazi symbolism. Remove statues glorifying Confederate soldiers from the neighbourhoods and cities where they stand as a festering reminder of the rotten concept of supremacy, either for scrap or to use as educational material in a more appropriate location.
We need to educate ourselves better. Read Norah Hannah Jones’s #1619Project which seeks to challenge, discover and educate on the perception of “What Is” a shared and incredible tangled history. Read James Baldwin, James Weldon Johnson, Toni Morrison, Langston Hughes, Audre Lorde,
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Garnette Cadogan’s “Walking While Black” — any Black author who can give us a glimpse into the Black American experience and how our institutions reinforce their everyday generational struggle.
It’s legacy plays out every single day in the injustices of the penal system, in the justice system, in practices like redlining and gerrymandering. Understanding how our systems reinforce inequality, understanding historical events such as Tulsa and the Elaine Massacre, are key to understanding why the status quo is untenable and desperately needs a change.
We must fight for not just the reformation of the Police Order, but the complete reconstitution of it by de-funding, reducing numbers, re-instituting educational qualifications for acceptance, instituting an entire re-application process and by the complete confiscation of any military grade tech or equipment designed to wage war.
We’re witnessing a white supremacist leadership engaging in exactly the kind of leadership we should expect from a white supremacist leadership. This is a chaos and a division that they hope will suit their aims. It has been a tactic long used, but maybe never so blatantly. When the country desperately needed leadership, Trump advised violence. He turned off the lights and hid and when he was called on it, he turned the military on the people to inflate his ego.
We must keep the energy of these protests; the anger, the despair, the disgust, the frustration when we vote in November. We must hold close the helplessness that we felt when we saw Ahmaud Aubrey killed in cold blood, when we read about Breonna Taylor murdered in her home, when we watched George Floyd plead that he couldn’t breath. The worst outcome is that all of this is happening for nothing.
We cannot let Black Americans down anymore, we cannot let the First Nations down anymore, we cannot let Women down anymore, we cannot let our disenfranchised and vulnerable down anymore with apathy and complacency.
Any chance America has of moving forward after this terrible, infuriating year and Presidential term must come from all of us demanding a new start. A new start that must understand and come to terms with our very flawed past.
