Case built to protect Confederate monument vandalized twice (NC)

[struggle4progress]

By Associated Press
Posted Aug. 28, 2015 at 12:25 PM
Updated at 12:26 PM

CHARLOTTE — Mecklenburg County .. has built a wooden frame over the 1929 granite pillar .. and installed a transparent Plexiglas container around it ...

The county has spent up to $750 to clean and restore the monument twice. A county spokesman says safeguarding the monument cost $1,600.

http://www.jdnews.com/article/20150828/NEWS/150828837

[SwankyXomb]

1. At this point

It would probably be cheaper to dynamite it.

[Generic Other]

2. This makes me want to help

deface shameful monuments that is.

[hunter]

3. Here's a link to photo and better article:

The monument’s inscription hails Confederate soldiers for “preserving the Anglo-Saxon civilization of the South.”

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/inside-county-government/article32575260.html

What a sad, pathetic bunch of wannabes. You know most of them ended up in the Americas as refugees of the English Land Clearances, as scorned younger siblings even by the Church, or fleeing just two steps ahead of the English hangman.

"We're Anglo Saxon! Almost royalty in fact!"

Yeah, right.



It's one blessing of my own family heritage that so many hated Anglo Saxon Protestants, wanted nothing to do with them, and told their stories, although a few scoundrels had at times pretended to be "not Irish" or "not Catholic," or both, among even less well regarded ethnicities in 18th and 19th century white affluent America. That's sometimes how they ended up in the American Western Wilderness. They were hiding from anyone who knew their origins.

I'm thinking the inscription on the face of the stone ought to be sawed off and buried in the basement of a museum somewhere, and the stone itself put to good use, perhaps carved into decorative pillars for a dog park, a place for the distribution of dog "pee mail."

[struggle4progress]

5. Thanks for the link!

[Supersedeas]

9. the picture is not prettier -- but at least their priorities are exposed

[countryjake]

4. "They Preserved the Anglo-Saxon Civilization of the South"...

blatant racism, Jim Crow master-mentality, in all its glory, right there!

That sickening sentiment should be destroyed or marked with another much bigger historical plaque as an example of the continuing oppression of Blacks in North Carolina evident during the early 20th Century.

[struggle4progress]

6. Of course, Elizabeth I had freed the last serfs in her realm before any slaves came to the New World

And in America, it was not the old practice of the Isles, with serfs hereditarily bound to the land, that appeared governing slavery, but rather a variant of chattel-law, in which slaves were a form of movable personal property, with children of an enslaved woman becoming the chattel of her owner

[countryjake]

7. That quote on the monument reminds me of white power groups' claims...

that WASPs are the dominant race of the world who need to have their realm restored and protected, at all costs. Hateful white supremacists now, not 100 years ago. They're all probably damn proud of that nasty chunk of rock sitting there.

[struggle4progress]

8. Of course, it is "white-power" language: in the ante-bellum slave-holding regions,

slave-holders lived in constant fear of slave uprisings and continually reinforced their own power by a variety of tactics, including military preparedness, divide-and-conquer techniques, enforced ignorance, and outright brutality. Slaves were denied basic education, their assembly was limited, and they were subject to constant scrutiny for signs of being "uppity." The ruling class needed rationalizations for the social structure and constructed self-serving ideologies to obscure the realities of the system: so there were sentimental views of the happy plantation, mythical histories, and pseudo-scientific sociological theories about lazy simple-minded uneducable slaves being lifted from miserable African savagery by the generosity of their owners, who were slowly teaching them the good values of self-discipline and hard work

The military defeat of the Confederacy didn't overturn the ideological apparatus: it remained as a system of ideas that could be exploited after the war as a way to politically unify ex-confederates unhappy during the reconstruction era with "bottom rail on top now." So confederate bush-wackers roamed the countryside, lynching unionists and blacks to the general approval of white supremacists, who continued to propagandize the laziness and simple-mindedness of uneducable former slaves and their children, all tottering on the verge of a reversion to savagery. As the former southern ruling class regained enough power to end reconstruction, it also set to re-create the black lumpen-proletariat that once served as the basis of the slave system -- but now in the form of an impoverished group controlled by terrorism and serving as the source of convict labor, leased by local government to local industry as chain-gangs. So the self-serving ideologies began to contrast the proud white past with lazy savage black criminality. Glorifying white heritage was inseparable from jim crow politics