As South Carolina legislators begin debate on the removal of the Confederate flag from the state capitol, other states across the country are moving to remove the hated (at least by virtually all blacks) symbol from license plates, and, indeed, the dean of Washington National Cathedral is calling for the removal of stained glass windows that depict the Confederate battle flag in the historic church.
But some think we should go further: institutions across the country are questioning if they should remove the names of the traitors who broke away from the Union over slavery to form the Confederate States of America from public parks, buildings, roads, bridges — and even to relegate statuary honoring these “heroes of the South” to the dustbin of history.
In Charleston, the board that governs the Citadel, the state’s 173-year-old military academy, voted 9-3 to remove the Confederate Naval Jack from the campus chapel, saying that a Citadel graduate and the relatives of six employees were killed in the attack on the church, and in Tennessee, political leaders from both parties said a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and an early Ku Klux Klan leader, should be moved out of the Statehouse. Additionally, in Mississippi (of all places), the state’s House speaker, Philip Gunn, a Republican, called for taking a Confederate battle cross off the upper corner of his state’s flag, the only remaining state banner to display the emblem. Indeed, the Civil War might finally be over.
However, I’m ambivalent in regards to the wholesale rush to obliterate our horrible history. Perhaps some remnants of our sordid past should remain in place as a constant reminder of our ugly past.
But my real fear is that by removing these shameful stains from the fabric of our historic consciousness, some will feel atonement has been made to a race of people that suffered so under the lash of oppression. But nothing could be further from the truth. As long as the systemic racism spawned by the hundreds of years of the owning of one group of people by another still infects the body politic and keeps too many members of the black race in abject poverty, removing symbols is just that: Symbolism.
If, by erasing the names and symbols that represented southern white privilege and dominance, we would right the wrongs done to blacks over the centuries, I’d be wholeheartedly in favor of such measures. But it won’t, and I, for one, don’t want to let America off so easily.
We can only atone for the past and right the centuries of wrongs done to blacks by finally engaging in a meaningful national dialogue on reparations. Yes, the dreaded “R” word.
And by “reparations” I don’t mean that a check should be cut to any black that can prove their ancestors were slaves. Indeed, if that were to happen, a lot of folks would simply run out and buy big screen TVs or a new Cadillac, depending on how large the check happened to be.
What I’m talking about is America finally making the requisite financial investment in schools, housing and the repair of the shredded social safety net, something that would lift families out of generational poverty. And if some poor white kids — as well as their families — also benefited from such an uplifting effort, then so much the better.
However, the fact that the bust of Forrest might soon be moved out of sight in the Tennessee Statehouse argues strongly for the nascent efforts across the country to finally stop honoring other traitors, racists, rogues and renegades.
So, go ahead America, obliterate all of these symbols of our national shame from buildings, streets, parks and any other public spaces. But don’t — for one minute — think that by doing so the debt owed to blacks in this country will have been paid.
It will not.
[Photo by John Carrel]From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.