Sunday, August 20, 2017

Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy -- Note for a discussion, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United."


A very informative, detailed report
(from a "liberal" perspective) with
 graphs and maps; from the lengthy report:

[T]he Southern Poverty Law Center launched an effort
to catalog and map Confederate place names and
other symbols in public spaces, both in the South
and across the nation. This study, while far from
comprehensive, identified a total of 1,503.*

These include:

• 718 monuments and statues, nearly 300 of which
are in Georgia, Virginia or North Carolina;
• 109 public schools named for Robert E. Lee,
Jefferson Davis or other Confederate icons;
• 80 counties and cities named for Confederates;
• 9 official Confederate holidays in six states; and
• 10 U.S. military bases named for Confederates.

Critics may say removing a flag or monument,
renaming a military base or school, or ending a state
holiday is tantamount to “erasing history.” In fact,
across the country, Confederate flag supporters have
held more than 350 rallies since the Charleston attack.

But the argument that the Confederate flag
and other displays represent “heritage, not hate”
ignores the near-universal heritage of African
Americans whose ancestors were enslaved by the
millions in the South. It trivializes their pain, their
history and their concerns about racism — whether
it’s the racism of the past or that of today.

And it conceals the true history of the Confederate
States of America and the seven decades of Jim
Crow segregation and oppression that followed the
Reconstruction era.

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