(08-17-2017, 12:12 AM)Bullseye Wrote: Many here have tossed around the word "offended" as a way to minimize the significance of the issues/concerns of those who push for the removal of confederate statutes and artifacts from various public areas, and to lampoon us as hypersensitive "eggshell plaintiffs," to borrow a phrase from law.

However, whether deliberate or not, such glib analysis misses an important dynamic here that distinguishes the desire to remove the statue from mere insult.

Assume some 7th grader chides his classmate thusly:  "Tim is a bonehead."  Now that's certainly not a nice thing to say, but in the larger scheme of things, is typically of little import.  All kids get teased and insulted from time to time.  Yet we "eggshell" protestors who want the confederate statues removed aren't pushing for schools to be closed.  Why not?  If school yards are a place for insults to thrive, and insults lead to offense, then according to you, being averse to offense, we should be pushing for schools to close.

Tim being called a bonehead may be unfortunate and even untrue, but societal policy is not shaped around the premise that Tim is a bonehead.  Laws are not established to to reinforce that idea and ensure that Tin is treated accordingly.  Tim can easily brush off the insult and move on with life.

Not so with those on the wrong side of those depicted by the statues.  When the Confederacy was founded under the idea that "...the Negro is NOT the equal to the white man," they established laws to reinforce that idea that persisted even after the Confederacy ceased to exist as a viable political entity.  The former confederate states enacted laws that prohibited blacks to be educated, and then later prohibited blacks from attending schools with whites, leaving blacks with inferior books, supplies, buildings, etc.  These same states enacted laws that prohibited blacks from serving on juries, barred blacks from being outside their neighborhoods after sundown, from being in white residential areas except within the context of being a domestic worker, passed laws making it more difficult for blacks to vote.  They passed laws mandating which water fountains from which blacks could drink, into which doors blacks could enter or exit in a public establishment, where blacks could sit in a restaurant, movie theater or bus.  They passed laws precluding blacks from staying in hotels, getting medical treatment at hospitals, and studying at some colleges and universities  Every aspect of life for blacks was impacted by laws designed to advance the premise that "the negro is not equal to the white man," and ensure the law realizes that result. There is a residual effect of these laws and that mindset that negatively impacts blacks to this day.  This very thread is about a protest march by white supremacists who think "the negro is not equal to the white man."  Blacks were injured by those white supremacists who had that mindset.

It goes beyond mere offense for those who want those statues removed.

There is no question that slavery and racism were stains on both the human conscience and our national history.  There is no question that the external yoke of slavery and the statutory yoke of segregation had a depressive effect on the earning capacity of blacks.  There is a credible and cogent argument to be made about whether symbols that represent those ideals should be displayed or celebrated by the state. 

The challenge that I have is that this debate is not being held about the historical or contextual relevance of the confederate symbols themselves (which I personally have no affection for) it is being used as a subtext for a larger narrative that America itself is racist at its founding and that the challenges facing minorities today are as a result of institutional racism both seen and unseen.  The removal of these monuments is used as a precursor for a re-examination of the larger American ethos of limited government, individual liberty, private property and self determination. 

Institutional racism and white privilege are used as buzz words and the destruction of these statutes etc. is viewed as a strike against that.  The problem presents itself when we look at the data.  The two leading indicators of wealth in this country are the structure of the family and the age at which a child begins earning income away from the household. When you weight for the integrity of the nuclear family the achievement Gap between the races virtually disappears.  In 1960 100 years after slavery 22% of black children lived in single parent homes.  30 years later, that number had tripled.  We can have a discussion about how much slavery and segregation contributed to that 22% but we know that it had nothing to do with the tripling.  Around the same time black youth unemployment was actually lower than that of their white counterparts.  Today in some parts of the country that number is in excess of 50%.  Yet somehow nearly 100% of the attention paid to improving the conditions for black success focus on people and institutions that have been dead for 150 years instead of the effects of progressive policies in effect today.  To that end, the legitimate moral outrage that we have towards our fallings from decades past is usurped as a fig leaf for the failure of contemporary liberal policies. 

In no way am I excusing slavery or segregation.  That's an illustration that throughout history the black community itself has always demonstrated itself to have the peculiar ability to achieve, thrive and survive even in the most extreme of circumstances.  Even in the antebellum south, there were 3800 black slave owners, William Ellison was a prominent plantation owner and financial supporter of the confederacy.  The percentage of free blacks that owned slaves was roughly congruent to the percentage of whites that owned slaves. 

In summation, The confederacy lost.  It's basis was flawed and represented the worst in the basic nature of mankind.  It's legacy is both heartbreaking and eye opening.  If it is proposed that as a collective, through the democratic process, we should remove these statutes and monuments from places of prominence then i'm all for it.  But it bothers me when the reasons given, both explicit and implicit, imply that minorities are so small in both stature and character that the thought of a statue or a rally are truly strong enough to keep us from determining our own destiny.

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