This is an opinion column.
Confederate reminders come down. In the center of Birmingham, in defiance of would-be state overseers. Down. Block by enormous block.
Confederate reminders come down. The statue of Robert E. Lee himself, toppled by protesters in front of the mostly black high school named for him in Montgomery. A general in his time, he is a symbol of oppression in this one.
Stone and metal symbols are painted in Mobile and elsewhere, marked and marred. They are targets across the country at a time when black people have again had enough, at a time, perhaps, when enough white people recognize the incongruity to stand alongside them.
Symbols come down. It is time. It is long past time. These were, for the most part, erected as a way to assuage white guilt, to pander to white ego, to rewrite white history to make slavery and the war to preserve it seem just a little less repugnant.
They were erected to justify a world in which people of color can be treated differently, less important, less protected, less equal.
Symbols came down, on the day white Alabama still celebrates as Jefferson Davis’ birthday. They fell, on a day police collided with protesters across the country, as the president called on states to “dominate” crowds, as he threatened to send in the military against American citizens,, as violence escalated across the U.S., by both police and protesters.
Symbols topple, and America is still in turmoil. Symbols crumble, but realities remain stark.
For this is a country with a huge wealth gap, wealth that provides few black families the financial safety net many whites enjoy. It is a country of haves and have nots, and in Alabama the have nots have even less.
This is a state that is 27 percent black, but black people have almost no economic footing. They own less than 3 percent of companies with paid employees, according to the most recent Census calculation of such things. They are more often shot by police, and by others, more likely imprisoned, more likely unhealthy, more likely turned away from jobs and doctors and opportunities, more likely educated in poor schools, to drop out, to have a stroke, to be infected and killed by COVID-19, to die and to leave nothing.
These weights are heavy, and leave people and families in hard places, with violence and danger and dangerous hopelessness.
Falling symbols are an important starting point, but that is all they are. If we are to get beyond this, if America is to deal with its inequities with more than tear gas and batons and funerals, we must address the inequalities in health care and income, education, and treatment by police.
It is overwhelming. It is gargantuan. For it is a monument to white supremacy built by 400 years of ill intent.
It seems so impossible, so immovable. You can’t take a crane and rip it down, as Birmingham did to its downtown monument to the Confederacy. It will take decades or more, and effort, and compassion, and dialogue, and a moral commitment by those in authority to stop using white supremacy, subtly or otherwise, as a political tool. And that may be the hardest thing of all.
I will always believe we are stronger when we offer hope than when we impose fear.
I will always believe, though it sounds naïve, we are stronger together. Even now, when it seems for all the world we’d rather pull ourselves apart.
Monuments have come down, symbols of oppression and a Lost Cause. For it to mean anything, America must begin to take hammers to the mighty barriers that have stood in the way of equality for too long.
John Archibald, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is a columnist for AL.com. His column appears in The Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register, Birmingham Magazine and AL.com. Write him at jarchibald@al.com.
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June 03, 2020 at 07:02PM
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Confederate symbols come down; What about bigger ones? - AL.com
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