Ta-Nehisi Coates, one of the best writers in our country, made this astute observation just a few weeks ago. It is something to think about as we grapple with understanding the sad events in Charlottesville.
“Nazi Germany was also defeated. But while its surviving leadership was put on trial before the world, not one author of the Confederacy was convicted of treason. Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop was hanged at Nuremberg. Confederate General John B. Gordon became a senator. Germany has spent the decades since World War II in national penance for Nazi crimes. America spent the decades after the Civil War transforming Confederate crimes into virtues. It is illegal to fly the Nazi flag in Germany. The Confederate flag is enmeshed in the state flag of Mississippi.”
The travesty of the violence in Charlottesville is graver than the fact that a woman was murdered by a Nazi sympathizer and many others were injured as he drove his car through a crowd. It goes far beyond the fact that white supremacists were displaying the torches and the Nazi salute with its accompanying baggage.
The fact that African Americans endured torture, murder and enslavement in the American South for so long, and the fact that the Confederate army was fighting for its continued enslavement (masked in the euphemism of states’ rights) and yet the statue of the Confederate general has continued to stand in Charlottesville until this day, begs the question, “Why?”
The good people of Charlottesville wanted that statue removed. The fact that a large group of out-of-state, white-supremacists calling themselves “patriots” descended on Charlottesville to protest its removal, speaks volumes about the state of racism in our country today.
Stephanie Lobrot, Park City