When Trump talking about “taking away history” and “taking away culture” in regards to the Confederate monuments, he doesn’t actually gives a shit about history or culture. He’s striking fear into his base and appealing to their racist anxieties that we are browning up (and in their mind, ruining) America.Â
Do you think Trump gives a shit about history books in schools rewriting history to omit references to slavery AND downplaying the accomplishments of Black Americans? Do you think he gives a shit about politicians who try to ban (and in some cases succeed) the learning of Latino and Native history in schools? Do you think he gives a shit about the history that’s lost when indigenous land is bulldozed over? Do you think he gives a shit about the continuing loss of indigenous languages, religions, cultures, and people due to colonization?Â
Do you think he gives one second of a thought on Black and brown history? Hell no. His words are explicit. He’s appealing to a very certain base here and there’s a reason why it’s the same language we here from the Richard Spencers and the David Dukes of the world.Â
I don’t know what kind of school you went to (considering you’re antifa, probably not any school) but slavery and the civil Rights movement were taught HEAVILY to us to make sure that we, as Americans, never forgot.
Taking down and destroying monuments is destroying pieces of history and our American culture. Not to mention destroying property is a dick move anyways.
“Taught heavily.“Â
Give me a break. Schools all over the country have been giving a whitewashed history of slavery. Textbooks, especially in the South, are often in the news and criticized specifically because they try to erase the reality of slavery – some even avoiding the word all together. And let’s not even go down the path of the ways the Civil War is taught in some states vs. others.
Also, taking down monuments that honor the slave owners and the people on the goddamn losing side is not how you remember history. Taking down a statue of some racist dickwad isn’t going to deny your opportunity of learning about that racist dickwad. Read historical books, journals, and other writings. Look on the goddamn internet. Visit a fucking museum (and if you’re really passionate about these statues then that’s where they should fucking go). Statues should be honoring the victims of this time, not the oppressors.Â
Think of any recent tragedy in America. Let’s say 9/11. Would you want to see a monument dedicated to the perpetrators of the attack or would you want one dedicated to the victims? Isn’t that part of our history? What’s the big deal if we put up a statue for the 19 hijackers? How else would we remember the event? Why don’t we have a memorial for Timothy McVeigh? Isn’t the Oklahoma City Bombing part of our history?
There’s a difference between terrible incidents like those two and an era of slavery.
What about the statues of the good people? They were torn down as well, Robert E. Lee was a good damn man.
So… how exactly would it be better to dedicate monuments to the oppressors then? Like, you’ve literally explained nothing.Â
Also, Robert E. Lee can suck an entire row of assholes.
“Robert E. Lee was a good damn man.”
If this is what they’re teaching you over at your school, I honestly can’t say I’ve missed a lot by not going. It clearly wasn’t much of an education at all was it.
– Mod A
Antifas are, no doubt, completely aware of this, which is why they’re being viciously sarcastic, but for followers who aren’t:
In the South, especially, although plenty of rural and very white areas all over the US get this, it’s often taught that the civil war was barely about slavery, or the common misdirection that it was about states’s rights. Whether or not the states were allowed to become independent if they disagreed with the whole, mostly.
The problem with reducing history to this argument is that now you’re having a discussion about a war, where slavery was a central fucking issue, without ever talking about slavery. I mean, the state right in question was whether or not slave states were eventually going to have to give up their trade, and when they seceded, it was explicitly BECAUSE they wanted to keep their slaves. That’s not an exaggeration: every single state in the Confederacy specifically mentioned slavery and/or white supremacy as a reason for secession.
And there were a lot of talks about economic differences, too, but the economic fucking difference was that the South relied HEAVILY on free labor.
So there are a lot of things pushed around in classrooms like, “Well, not ALL slave owners beat their slaves! Many of them treated their slaves very well! Practically like family!” a sentiment which horrifyingly implies that it’s okay to be dehumanizing as long as the slaves stay within acceptable behavior and poor, kind masters don’t beat them. I mean, that’s definitely not even bringing up the issue of consent, because sometimes “treated them like family” means “marrying,” at least in a classroom of teenagers who have to take abstinence only education and can only hear of sex in euphemistic terms. In real life and college classrooms, everyone just uses the word “rape” for scenarios where one person can’t say no.
I’ve seen one, I think, news article EVER about a school buying a textbook that had a chapter echoing “states’ rights” and “kind slave masters” myths, and the school was (natch) immediately reprimanded and had to buy better books. But to assume that just because schools know better than putting things like “most slave owners are kind” and “well, the war wasn’t really about race at all” in textbooks, means that they don’t still teach these things in classrooms is fucking ignorant.
The South likes to teach these things because it’s nicer than thinking “my ancestors did that.” It’s nicer than thinking that human beings on a large scale are capable of atrocities like slavery. You’ll notice a lot of history denial and conspiracy theories follow this vein, because it’s easier to believe a few shadowy assholes are inventing or exaggerating atrocities than to believe half of a country was more interested in their pockets than in the barest semblance of human fucking empathy.
And one of the ways the South has consistently managed to delude themselves into “well, it wasn’t ALL like that, I mean, some people were racist sure, that was just how it was, but the movement was about FREEDOM” is by picking a historical figure and venerating him as a hero. Robert E. Lee was a brilliant strategist and a devout Christian, and years of propaganda and taking his words out of context convinced many people that he was actually an abolitionist and a ~*kind and honorable*~ man, because a kind and honorable man could surely never lead a war in favor of an atrocity like slavery.
The motherfucker OWNED SLAVES. He wasn’t fucking good. Just because he was clever in war skirmishes doesn’t mean he’s a good fucking person. He absolutely was a completely unrepentant white supremacist. There are entire branches of civil war study dedicated to how the fuck people thinking he’s a good person led to the clusterfuck of misinformation surrounding the civil war today.
He wasn’t even one of the “well, he didn’t beat his slaves” guys you hear about. He absolutely beat the shit out of slaves, personally, and he broke up every family he owned, by selling off their loved ones to different plantations, which was a level of fucked up that even some other slave owners side-eyed.
Lee abducted free black Americans during the war for the express purpose of enslaving them, and massacred black union soldiers who tried to surrender.
In summary: it’s very likely that whatever high school coach taught your history class was a misinformed fucking moron, never trust the American public school system, always try to educate yourself, and Robert E. Lee can suck an entire row of assholes.
L.J.'s Obsessions 