Take down Confederate symbols.
Get daily actions in your inbox. Subscribe Now ›
Hello all!
Thank you so much for your kind notes re: yesterday's difficult piece. I appreciate it. And I'm glad so many of you are committed to taking an unflinching look at our past and present.
Thank you to everyone that has contributed one-time or monthly to make this possible. If you haven't already, you can make a contribution via PayPal, Patreon or Venmo (@nicoleacardoza).
– Nicole
TAKE ACTION
1. See if your U.S. state has any Confederacy symbols on this map. If so, contact your state representatives to remove. Some states even have petitions in place for you to sign.
2. If you're from outside the U.S., use this lesson to discover how racist symbols are still pervasive in your country.
Please note: today's email is not encouraging you to personally deface public or private property :)
GET EDUCATED
Tear every statue down.
Let's start with the basics: there's a lot of monuments and symbols (like a flag) that honor the Confederacy, an unrecognized republic of seven states that seceded from the United States during the American War. And right now, protestors are taking them down.
Although there have been consistent and ongoing pressure by local communities to remove these statues for decades, this conversation got significant attention five years ago, nearly to the date (June 17), when Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white supremacist, walked into Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina during Bible study and opened fire, killing nine Black people. There's a lot more to this story and its relevance to current events, but for brevity's sake, I encourage you to read this NPR article that reflects on its impact five years later.
Investigations of Dylann Roof illuminated (among many racist and harmful things) his fervor for the Confederacy, and his dedication to uphold it, which began a larger rally to remove Confederate flags and statues from public display. At this time, the Confederate flag was still flying high in front of the South Carolina state capitol (until activist Bree Newsome scaled the pole and took it down herself).
These conversations were amplified in 2017, when a right-wing rally in Charlottesville, VA to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee turned deadly. James Alex Fields Jr. drove his car into supporters of the statue removal, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 28 others. Read more here >
Before we go any further let's get one thing crystal clear: the Civil War was about slavery. Many people will argue otherwise – that it was about the economy, or state rights – but those concerns were all rooted in their relationship to enslaved people. Southern states were worried about the economic impact of slavery being abolished, with so much capital already defined by the ownership of people, the labor they provided, and the burden of integrating those people as actual citizens upon their freedom. Also, as the United States started to expand to new lands, and some of those lands were settled as free states where slavery was illegal, those pro-slavery saw the value of those lands decrease from the offset. States wanted state rights for slavery. So I don't care how anyone tries to justify it – this was about slavery. Here's a few places you can read more.
So the Civil War happened, the Confederacy lost, and the end of that war marks the end of slavery as we know it in America (known as Juneteenth, which we will discuss in tomorrow's newsletter). But there wasn't a happily ever after ending here, obviously. The Reconstruction era began, and, as we discussed in yesterday's newsletter, people, particularly in the South weren't all that happy about the new freedoms of African-American people. Raising the Confederate flag and honoring Confederate soldiers was an act of rebellion in the face of changing times. Which is why even a bumper sticker of a Confederate flag says much more than others may want to admit: a declaration of support for states that believed, at minimum, that slavery is economically justified.
And since there's people around today using these symbols to justify and accelerate violence and harm, it's long overdue for them to come down. As of 2019 the Southern Poverty Law Center found 1,747 Confederate monuments, place names and other symbols. Aljazeera has a map of 771 statues across the country. What's wild to consider is that, despite the fact that the Confederacy lasted for five years, most of these symbols were established in the 60 years following the war. In fact, at least 32 Confederacy monuments were dedicated or re-dedicated since 2000, well after I was born! So how have we spent lifetimes commemorating a five-year period of our history? Are these statements of an event in history, or how we see the future?
Many people, including Trump, believe that the statues should stay, citing that it erases the character of the brave people that fought for our country. Some also believe taking them down may make it easier for us to forget. You can read some of the nuances around taking down the statues in this article. But it's not hard to understand why so many protestors are toppling them now, perhaps as a long overdue performance of dismantling the systems that have oppressed Black people for far too long.
We can pretend that the debate over Confederate symbols is about preserving or erasing history, but really, it’s about our values. It’s about whether we care more about statues standing than people falling. Because we know, through statistics, video evidence and story after story, that the people who are most hurt by those symbols of hatred are falling at disproportionate rates across the country.
― Theresa Vargas for this article in the Washington Post
Let's remember that the Confederacy lasted for five years. Five years! So many things in American history have lasted longer than five years. Countless humorous articles and memes have been written about this, but I particularly like this list from Buzzfeed back in 2015.
Here's my list of things that have lasted longer than the Confederacy:
246 years (and counting): Slavery in America
The first enslaved African people were brought to America in 1619 and was "abolished" at the end of the Civil War in 1865 – although you can argue there's plenty of systems in place that still enslave African America people to today's time.339 years: Laws prohibiting anti-racial marriage
Laws prohibiting interracial marriage were first established in 1661, and Alabama was the last to abolish in 2000.5 years: "Justice" for Eric Garner
Eric Garner was murdered by a NYPD police officer who put him in a chokehold in 2014. It took over five years for the NYPD to terminate that police officer, and for a grand jury to decide he will not be indicted with any federal charges. I use justice in quotations because, to me, justice would be Eric Garner not being dead in the first place – and nothing will come close to that.131 years: The time it took for Quaker to change the Aunt Jemima branding
I'm probably going to do a whole newsletter on this topic, so if you're curious, read this article to understand how racist and harmful this type of branding is.
PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT
Thank you for all your financial contributions! If you haven't already, consider making a monthly donation to this work. These funds will help me operationalize this work for greatest impact.
Subscribe on Patreon | Give one-time on PayPal | Venmo @nicoleacardoza