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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJames Comey: Take down the Confederate statues now
By James Comey February 7 at 5:25 PM
James Comey is a former director of the FBI and a former deputy attorney general.
White people designed blackface to keep black people down, to intimidate, mock and stereotype. It began during the 19th century and wasnt about white people honoring the talent of black people by dressing up to look like them. It was about mocking them and depicting them as lazy, stupid and less than fully human. It was a tool of oppression. As a college kid in Virginia during the 1980s, I knew that and so did my classmates. But a whole lot of white people seem to not know that history or understand why blackface is so offensive, whether its practiced by a college student or a new doctor. The turmoil in Virginia where I have lived most of my adult life, including nine years in Richmond may do some good if it reminds white people that a river of oppression runs through U.S. history, deep and wide, down to today.
But the reporters hurrying to the state capital to cover this important story about a poorly understood tool of white oppression are literally rushing past much larger and more powerful symbols of that oppression symbols born of a similar desire to keep black people down. There is no doubt that Virginias leaders need to be held accountable for their personal history, but every Virginia leader is responsible for the racist symbols that still loom over our lives.
The Confederate statues of Richmonds Monument Avenue werent erected to honor the service of brave warriors. Those soldiers had been dead for decades before the statues went up. No, the statues were put up by white people, beginning in the 1890s, to remind black people that, despite all that nonsense of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, as well as the so-called Reconstruction, we are back, and you are back down. The towering likenesses of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson werent put up to celebrate history or heritage; they were put up as a message: The 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution arent going to help you black folks because the South has risen from that humiliation. Jim Crow a name rooted in blackface mockery is king.
If you doubt that well-documented history if you are tempted to buy the heritage, not hate rhetoric ask yourself this question: Where are the statues of James Longstreet? Remember: Longstreet was Lees most trusted general, his second-in-command, his Old War Horse. Longstreet was a brave and talented warrior for the Confederacy from beginning to end. But there arent any Longstreet statues in Richmond and there werent any at all until 1998, at Gettysburg. Thats because his service to the United States continued after the Civil War, and he did something inconsistent with the purpose of the statues, and of blackface: He treated African Americans as citizens of the United States. Longstreet agreed to serve his reunified country, joined Lincolns Republican Party and helped Grant protect the rights of newly freed black Americans.
more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/blackface-is-a-tool-of-white-oppression-there-are-many-moer-towering-over-us/2019/02/07/4ea303b6-2b11-11e9-984d-9b8fba003e81_story.html?
Not sure what else needs to be said
Brawndo
(535 posts)so that future generations learn of the folly of the Confederacy, not in honorific spots like public squares.
Goodheart
(5,327 posts)I say TAKE THEM DOWN. The monument to Jefferson Davis is especially tacky, although I must say the Lee, Stuart, and Jackson monuments are quite impressive (if only for the beautiful horses).
In the five years I've been walking up and down Monument Avenue I've seen at most four or five people pause to take pictures of any of those giant monuments, so I'd say their value to Richmond as a tourist attraction is non-existent.
I lived very close to Lee Circle in New Orleans, too, before they took Lee's statue down there.... so maybe good taste and civic fairness will be following me.