Virginia Removes Statue of Robert E. Lee From the State Capitol
By: Joe Duncan
Tags: United States, Racism, Politics, News, Equality

Politics | Equality

Virginia Removes Statue of Robert E. Lee From the State Capitol

A few hours ago, Governor Ralph Northam announced that the State of Virginia was removing a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from the state’s Capitol Building. The long overdue move came seemingly out of nowhere in a news cycle that’s been dominated by Trump election denial, the former National Security Advisor and now-convicted-felon Michael Flynn talking about a military coup, and other post-election antics that have left Americans fearful about the state of their own Republic.

The Governor tweeted photos of the removal of the statue on Twitter and the results were shocking. I’m sure I speak for many in America when I say this is an entirely welcome change of pace, another step in a long line of steps to make America a much more inclusive place.

In July of this year, Nascar banned the Confederate flag from flying entirely, another huge step in the right direction. The Mississippi Battle Flag shouldn’t be flying anywhere in the United States, because we all know it’s the flag of a failed secessionist movement who tried to establish a white nationalist state, rather than to give up the institution of slavery, that dark and enduring legacy that haunts America’s every breath as she persists into the future and tries so hard to both remember and forget.

But beyond this news, there are faces, countless faces of African Americans who’ve had to endure staring up at a general who fought so hard to have their ancestors enslaved, whenever they would conduct business on the official government property of the State.

The move wasn’t without backlash, of course. Many were outraged on Twitter, offering up bogus claims about the erasure of history that nobody in their right minds should take seriously. I know the Holocaust happened because I read about it in books as a child, not because I’ve actually been to Auschwitz.

There is only one reason for these monuments, flags, and other memorabilia that stands as a reminder of the sorely failed white ethnostate, and that reason is to terrorize the Black descendants of those once enslaved. I can’t think of any other reason monuments such as these need to be on display than to intimidate others and fly the banner of racism.

Earlier this year, activists had defaced a monument of Robert E. Lee and toppled four other confederate monuments in the wake of George Floyd, as protests swept the country and calls for racial equality ignited a firestorm of activity from political activists nationwide. Ralph Northam has also committed $11 million in the state’s budget to reimagine the area, replacing the long-standing confederate monuments with things much more tasteful.

Serious questions still loom about how we bridge the divide within our nation and begin to heal. On the one hand, you don’t compromise with racists. On the other hand, what do you do with the racists lurking in your society that would like to see these kinds of monuments up for whatever reason, supposing you won’t compromise with them? There is no easy answer other than persuasion. Persuasion must be the tool that we win the racists over to the side of common sense and human decency.

America is a place where the battles we fight are often battles of ideas, rather than violent clashes. Whatever path we may trudge, it would behoove us to continue mending the wrongs of our past, carving out the hallow shells of empty words that once guided us through the dark times of slavery, Jim Crow, and into the era of the Prison Industrial Complex, and into a new era of peace, prosperity, and racial harmony.