Confederate monuments. Imagine there’s a country, and in some parts of it, racial slavery was practiced and was essential to that country’s economy.
Then, 11 states in that country decided to break away and form their own country.
As a result, they formed a military, and a civil war began. As a result, almost three-quarters of a million people died.
A war that was fought over slavery. If you read the ordinance of secession in the states that broke away, they mentioned protecting racial slavery.
But after that war, some people still believed in white supremacy.
They believed that white people had special privileges and benefits.
They believed they had a right to fight for white supremacy, which allowed them to start building monuments across the country.
Building monuments and statues continued in the country for almost a century, and every one of those monuments was about one thing.
What they called the Lost Cause.
Confederate Monuments: Owning Human Beings
What they called a cause that was willing to fight to protect what they called states rights. But it was states’ rights to protect owning human beings.
Those monuments were all about one thing: white supremacy.
Racial slavery is about taking human beings who were not even part of a race and defining them as a race.
As a result, the people who had the power to define those human beings as a race and enslave them they themselves became a race.
And that white status was legally protected by law.
That’s the reason we had to fight a war over it. And here we are today, still debating whether or not Confederate monuments are acceptable.
They’re monuments to the losing side that believed in white supremacy.
Confederate Monuments: Why Were Those Monuments?
The next time you discuss, disagree, or even argue about Confederate monuments, don’t forget the question that’s rarely asked.
Why were those monuments, those statues of Confederate soldiers, generals, and Confederate politicians, erected in the first place?
Now, of course, you first have to get over the argument about why the Civil War was fought in the first place.
People will say something like the Civil War wasn’t fought over slavery. It was fought over protecting states’ rights.
Remember then, each of those 11 states, South Carolina, Texas, Florida, and the other eight that followed, created a document called the Ordinances of Secession.
In those documents, they gave their reasons. Their explanation for leaving the United States of America.
Every single one of those documents is clear. They were protecting the right to own fellow human beings.
They were protecting the institution of slavery.
The Reason Those Monuments Were Erected
The answer is simple: in some cases, a hundred years after the Civil War ended, those monuments were a statement defending white supremacy.
After the Civil War ended, we had 80 years in this country called Jim Crow—a period of legalized racial segregation and discrimination backed by the 1896 Plessy versus Ferguson decision.
An 80-year period where racial violence was widespread. Where segregation, discrimination, and housing, where segregation and discrimination in public schools were widespread.
We understand it took a civil rights movement to undo and get us on the right track to creating a country where all human beings were created equally with dignity and respect.
So, every time one of those monuments was erected, it was a statement defending white supremacy.
Racial slavery was white supremacy.
Because taking people who are not part of a race and defining them as a race, and then the people doing the defining become a race called white, with the privileges and benefits of whiteness. That’s white supremacy.
And that’s what those monuments represent.