Thoughts on a klansman
POSTED ON AUGUST 14, 2015 BY R.J. LEHMANN
... What I can imagine is that, after decades of a culture war consisting of occasional skirmishes punctuated by long periods of stasis, for those whose perspective on Confederate pride is markedly different from my own, the massive shift in public attitudes we’ve seen in recent months and weeks is almost certainly both dizzying and stupefying. Just a decade ago, an earlier measure proposing to rename Forrest Park and remove the memorial was passed narrowly by the Memphis City Council but vetoed by Willie Herenton, the city’s first black mayor. It seemed, for a long time, that’s the way things would remain.
That’s not how things have gone, and all indications are that’s not how things will go in the near future. The flags are coming down. The memorials are being decommissioned. The rallying cry of “heritage” – for so long, given deference as a serious stance for serious people to take in serious public debates– has been, overnight, rendered laughable, a pathetic justification for an impermissible attitude.
By and large, these are developments I cheer. I think symbols matter. I think history matters. I think we as Americans are long overdue for a genuine reckoning with our past, with what it says about us today, with how it shapes the directions we may head tomorrow.
My concern is that the speed with which we are disposing of these relics does not actually permit that kind of reckoning. Confronting the past, after all, must include remembering why the memorials and the monuments were created to begin with. It was not, as some would have it, simply to honor the sons of a nation that went to war and fought for a losing cause. It was, almost universally, to perpetuate a system of continuing terrorism against American citizens, a system which conspired for more than a century after slavery to deny them basic rights to assemble, to buy property, to vote and to enjoy police protection and equal treatment under the law ...
http://www.rstreet.org/2015/08/14/thoughts-on-a-klansman/
= new reply since forum marked as read
