Why Black Folks Need Confederate Monuments

Some may or may not know that one of my favorite books of all time is 1984 written by George Orwell. To be honest, since about ten years of age, I’ve must have read this book more than 20 times. Each time I read it I come away with something new. To refresh your memory, the main character in the book is a man named Winston Smith. Smith works in the Records Department in the Ministry of Truth, where his job is to rewrite history per the desires of the Party that runs the totalitarian government of Oceania. Specifically, he revises old writings, politically inconvenient facts and history to advance the propaganda interests of the Oceania government.  One tool Orwell invents for this purpose was the memory hole.

In 1984, Orwell describes a memory hole is an opening in a wall connected to a tube that is connected to an incinerator. It is employed to destroy any inconvenient or embarrassing fact on historical records that is no longer considered useful for politics. In addition, using the memory hole made it easier for the government to get people to engage in “duckspeak” (speaking without thinking), obviate “oldthink” (thoughts, beliefs or ideas enthused by past events, memories and history in the times before the revolution) and to encourage “blackwhite” (getting folks to believe that 2 + 2 is 5, or that white is black and black is white and to forget that one has ever believed anything different.

Over the past few years, a movement in the African American community has been afloat to remove all historical confederate reminders of the period in which the United States was engaged in a Civil War (1861-1865) and this scares me.  Not because I support the confederacy or do not support the confederacy, but because I support history and learning and pedagogy.  Removing these symbols will do nothing for black folk and make things a lot worse in my view.  First, this is just cosmetic, it will not mean nothing, since when do you get your feeling hurt by looking at a flag or a statue of a many you don’t know historically anything about? Robert E. Lee owned slaves sure, and he ran a plantation before the war, but he historically is no different than Thomas Jefferson or George Washington from this perspective.  Are you upset with the state of Virginia too? Will it be next? After all Virginia was named after the person who introduced slavery to America. Half of the folk so offended likely couldn’t tell you when the civil war was fought without the assistance of google nor have read any book about it or any other American wars for that fact.

I fear that without these historical reminders, being as lazy as we are with respect to reading and our penchant to watch TV more than we read, we will have forgot about this tragic and painful part of U.S. History and sleep walk back into a similar predicament in future generations. It isn’t like we discuss history with our children anyway especially with this most recent generation.  This is one reason why Marcus Garvey wrote “A people without the knowledge of their history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.”

Our incessant focus on memory holing history is idiotic and ridiculous.  Why is it that we put more time into complaining about statues and flags than our kids killing each other on the streets of Chicago, Baltimore, New Orleans or Memphis every day? Why do we spend more energy on superficial actions when we can go around to any government public school and find more than half of the kids not proficient in ANY subject on grade level? Now these are worth attention, but nope, not sexy or dramatic enough (Deray trained yawl hypocrites well).  I’m not offended or traumatized by any statute or flag.  Why are we as black folk offended and traumatized by historical fact? Will removing them take the historical record away? Will it make more black folk richer? Will less of us live in poverty? Will we start more business? Will it lower STI rates in our community? NOPE – NOT ONE BIT. Because this is misdirected and misguided energy aimed at something that has no tangible impact on any black person in America unless you a puzzy with a soft as wet toilet paper mentally.

It seems as this fake synthetic outrage is becoming a contagious pandemic.  Baltimore City Council has voted to remove four Confederate monuments in the city. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus want to remove all Confederate statues from the Capitol. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), told the Hill that “Confederate memorabilia have no place in this country and especially not in the United States Capitol. These images symbolize a time of racial discrimination and segregation that continues to haunt this country and many African-Americans who still to this day face racism and bigotry.”  Can’t make this up, so now black folks are afraid of ghost and haunted by images and symbols? Even more comedic is that magically, by removing these images and symbols, the past “time of racial discrimination and segregation” will either be forgotten or vaporize and end. Simple ain’t it? Talk about historical revisionism and make-believe.

Bishop James Dukes, pastor of Liberation Christian Center, in Chicago is calling for the removal of a statue of statue George Washington and his and President Andrew Jackson’s name removed from Washington and Jackson parks respectively, because they owned slaves. I suspect cats will be going after all confederate cemeteries and even the Confederate monuments in Gettysburg National Military Park (although Park and State officials say they will never be removed)

What will be next, removing all members of the confederacy or former slave owners from history books? Removing said history books from the libraries’? Preventing people from even writing books on the confederacy or slavery because “these images symbolize a time of racial discrimination and segregation that continues to haunt this country and many African-Americans who still to this day face racism and bigotry?” Will John C. Calhoun, a former vice president and staunch supporter of slavery be next? What about the Dallas Cowboy football team whose blue star is from the Bonnie Blue Flag (a banner of the Confederate States of America at the start of the American Civil War in 1861).  Since many of us black folks do not read as much as previous generations, these two may be safe for as they say “to hide something from a nigg@, put it in a book.”

Yes, one day our kids will not know anything about US history, slavery, the civil war or the deeds of many, good or bad, for the fear of as then Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake noted in signs that confederate monuments were just “part of a propaganda campaign” to “perpetuate the beliefs of white supremacy. “Again, although I am a black man, I will likely be called a racist piece of uninformed white trash, or worse – described as not being woke - for not supporting non-substantive cosmetic actions under the guise of African American self-determination and empowerment. But like the Taliban who destroyed the historical largest standing Buddha’s, in the world in Bamiyan, who had been standing since the century. In Afghanistan, or ISIS, who destroyed the Temple of Baalshamin at the Syrian site of Palmyra because they found the offensive to Allah, similar suggestions about confederate monuments are equally claims of bull shit.

You do not have to agree with me but this is how I see it.  If you do not believe me, just try to take down Auschwitz, Dachau or Buchenwald: Jews will never let it happen because they do not want ANYONE to forget about what happened to them so it will never happen again.  Not us. They write and make documentaries incessantly on every aspect of the Holocaust and you will see at least one every day or weekly on TV around the world.  Whether is on the Kristallnacht or the  Nuremberg Laws or the Jews of Poland or the Jews of Lithuania or the human experimentation they tolerated, they telling their story. Not US.  Instead we get mad and formulate #Noconfederate because we too lazy to write and make our own and/or tell our own historical reality. Like I said. try to take down Auschwitz, Dachau or Buchenwald: Jews will never let it happen because they do not want ANYONE to forget about what happened to them so it will never happen again.  Not us.