General Discussions

[Mav]

There’d be a big opening for you in the US, LP! There’s a lot of pressure to remove Confederate statues which were erected as the Deep South sought to win the peace after losing the Civil War. And they were largely successful. They managed to make the Lost Noble Cause a foundation of the Reconstruction: the idea that, as in Gone with the Wind, the blacks were happy working on plantations for loving owners who fed, clothed and housed them until the nasty Yankees and Federal Government violently crushed their States’ rights to self-determination. The Emancipation Proclamation, they argued, destroyed the economies of their States and unleashed feckless slaves who were unprepared to live and work productively in society. They may not have been able to resuscitate slave ownership, but they were successful in driving blacks into poverty and dependency.

Confederate Statues were an obvious threat to the black community, as much as lynchings were. But of course the white population in the South has been taught that the statues celebrate the heroic defence of States’ rights against an oppressive Federal Govt. They view the Civil War with pride in the same way Australians view Gallipoli.

I guess you’d argue that the campaign to demolish those statues should not succeed. I’m sure you’d be able to come up with an argument that giving in to it would reduce tourism in the area after Good Ol’ Boys took umbrage at the statues being labelled racist. You might even be able to show that poor black workers would be the ones who bore the brunt of the loss of redneck dollars. You might then say the activists who call for the removal of those statues are the real racists. You might argue that it’s far better to keep actual racists happy; they should be able to veto any effort to do the right thing.

On the other hand, I’d argue that any product or landmark that depends on keeping racists happy isn’t worth saving.