A lot of people think the fate of the Confederate monuments is a distraction. I don't. A central theme in this country, one that is at the heart of a deep soul sickness, has been the relationship between White and Black people.
Every single act of secession in each Confederate State cited the threat to slavery as the impetus for leaving the Union. Moreover, every Confederate State left the Union in invariable order of the proportion of Black population to White population within their state boundaries. South Carolina had the largest proportion of Black to White, and it left first. Virginia had the smallest proportion, and it left last. And the order of secession of all the states in between is correlated to the relative sizes of their Black and White peoples.
For 152 years, there has been this nonsense that the war was about states' rights. Heather Heyer died one week ago as the result of the unwillingness of some White men to let go of their privileged position in society, and the head of the Republican Party sought to change the conversation to the Memorials. Some of us on the left have been concerned, but I am not one of them.
Let's talk about memorials to racism and white supremacy dressed up in yarns about honor. The most significant event to date in this horror of a presidency is that the death of a young White woman has led to the removal of more monuments to atrocity in one week than occurred in 152 years. Let's talk about the wounds of a war that have never healed and just why it is that those wounds have yet to heal.
I do not believe it is an accident that a White supremacist has replaced the nation's first Black president, and I do not believe it's an accident that the White supremacist is batshit crazy. He may have invited us to talk about the statues as a distraction. But as is so often the case with him, I think he has actually pointed to something that requires our attention.