On April 9, 1865, in Virginia, about an hour and a half
south of Charlottesville, Robert E. Lee surrendered. Lee was a traitor who
violated his oath to the US Constitution and led other traitorous soldiers
against the forces of the United States. On June 2, 1865, Edmund Kirby Smith,
who also broke faith with his country in violation of oaths he took as an
officer in the US Army, surrendered the last of the Confederate armies, and the
US Civil War ended. White Nationalism lost. Their attempt to create a white
nation failed. And then, because it was politically expedient, and because the
United States has a long and difficult past in regards racial harmony, they and
their ancestors were allowed to act as though that were not the case. They were
allowed to erect statues to traitors who violated their oaths, and who lost the
war they fought as a result of those treasonous actions. They were allowed to
fly a treasonous flag which symbolized treason and support for racially based
slavery. They were allowed to perpetuate their ideas of racial superiority, and
the de facto institution of slavery, because the Democrats, and then the
Republicans, needed their votes.
100 years later, in 1965, they lost again. No one needed
their votes that much anymore. Their repression of a significant percentage of
the Southern population, in terms of social interaction, access to public
services, and, significantly, voting rights could no longer be ignored. Dr.
King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee, and their allies had made it very very hard to ignore
that repression. And so an overwhelmingly white government said, in essence, “Wait
a minute. They LOST the war in 1865. Why are we letting them pretend
otherwise?” and took some very small steps towards addressing that pretense.
52 years after that, people in the United States have started
to say, “Hey, didn’t they LOSE that war? Why do we have statues of loser
traitors who violated their oath to the US Constitution in our public spaces?
Why is the losing flag of a treasonous movement devoted to the preservation of
racial slavery flying over our public buildings? Shouldn’t we do something
about that?” And, for a wonder, government officials in control of those public
spaces and buildings are starting to agree, and act accordingly.
What happened in Charlottesville, and what is probably going
to continue happening across the South for a little while, I’m very sorry to
say – those are the actions of a group of people who have been allowed to
pretend that they won, when, in reality, they did not. For 152 years, they
(their ancestors and themselves) have been able to say, sometimes out loud, and
sometimes quietly to themselves, “the history books say we lost, but when I go
into my public places, I see Robert E. Lee, and Edmund Smith, and all of the
other leaders of our briefly glorious white nationalist movement immortalized
in statues. I see the symbol of that movement flying over my government
buildings. And so I know that, even if people say otherwise, we actually won
that war.” Well, they didn’t. And now, as the statues are removed, and the flags
come down, and their entire ideology is repudiated, now they are responding. This
is not the response of people who are winning – this is the response of people
who are losing, and are finally being forced to come to terms with it. Dr. King
said that people in power never give up that power without a fight, and make no
mistake, the ability to dictate who we memorialize and how we remember events
is a pretty potent power. But they’ve lost. They lost in 1865, they lost in
1945, they lost in 1965, and they’re still losing now – torches and Nazi
salutes are the actions of losers. They want us to think they aren’t covering
their faces now because they’ve won – but really, it’s because they think they
have nothing left to lose. Our job now is to show them they are wrong. They
should be prosecuted as terrorists, but if not that, they should lose socially.
They marched with their faces uncovered; they should lose jobs, social
standing, the right to be served in restaurants.
Additionally, here’s a link to a list of links to a series
of Charlottesville charities which are congruent with civil rights/social
justice beliefs, and antithetical to the ideology of neo-Nazis, white
nationalists and racists. https://medium.com/@SaraJBenincasa/what-to-do-about-charlottesville-dfc7d6636d56
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