shadowsdarknes
Member
Seriously. It was the United States vs. Secessionist Traitors.
It gets so exhausting.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
New Orleans Can Remove Confederate Statues, Federal Appeals Court Says
- Thread starter NH Apache
- Start date
- Status
Seriously. It was the United States vs. Secessionist Traitors.
It gets so exhausting.
The Artisan
Member
no matter what the confederate flag means specifically to any one person, it was born out of 19th century racism and anyone trying to use that flag as tradition is bearing that history/celebrating it
Rebelling against your government isn't necessarily an immoral act. The United States of America is founded on that after all.
Slavery is the issue.
Let's not destroy things. Put it in a museum or archive. The issue with the statue is not that it exists, but it is displayed in a way that suggests some really problematic things. The statue as it is celebrates the Confederates. Moving it into a museum can contextualize it in a way that is useful.
Music, art, and food are some of the main components of culture. You are very ignorant of the city if you place New Orleans outside of the top three in the country for those components. He was a musician, he was referring to culture. A city of less than 400,000 people has driven much of the culture of this country, with the main component being music.
Outside of that, New Orleans is a blue haven surrounded by red. Pot is not illegal (city ordinance is a ticket), Open carry is observed as disturbing the peace, Sexuality and gender as you mentioned has looong been a leading light for the rest of the country, and the city has been a blend of cultures and people since 1718 (actually well before, but that's the official foundation year). There are many other contributing factors that are outside the scope of this thread and I will happily continue in PM if you like.
But don't play like New Orleans is only progressive as compared to BR and Lafayette because that comparison is absurd.
Agreed, but these monuments in question were built in 1884 (Lee) and 1908 (Davis).
You're dancing around the issue here. He didn't just say New Orleans is an important cultural city. I wouldn't deny that, though I certainly wouldn't put it as a top three city in any of those categories. Part of what he said was that New Orleans was "the most progressive... cultural [?] city". You aren't addressing that, which is the whole thing I'm taking issue with.
What I was getting at is that New Orleans is really not particularly progressive for a major city, and in my experience most of the people that are really dedicated to this idea of New Orleans exceptionalism are only seeing it through the light of its hinterlands.
New Orleans has particularly deep seated Racial, Class based, and even Gendered issues. New Orleans's culture is also by far the least progressive of a major city that I have experienced on economic issues. In my experience people living in New Orleans are more likely to play these down than people from any other major US city. This is a problem.
DontBeThatGuy
Member
Confederate statues will start popping up on every racist lawn now.
darkhunger
Member
It's pretty contradictory how the guy celebrates Andrew Jackson in a statement about race, of all things. How many (native) Americans was that dude responsible for killing?
Fine Ham Abounds
Member
Yeah, as a lifelong resident I have to say, for every 1 thing we do better than the rest of the country there's 2 or 3 we're just as insufferable about. Food, music, sexuality, yeah, there's little argument. Race? Politics? We're an odd mess.
And yes, we are still a melting pot for sure, but keep in mind that ironically we've never been the same since the end of segregation. The Old New Orleans that created Jazz was a town where people were segregated but culturally adjacent. Black and white kids played together all the time, they just never went to school together. But if we were truly so different from the rest of the South, you wouldn't have seen the mass exodus of whites running to the suburbs as soon as their kids would have to go to school with blacks. As a result of legacy societal racism, this meant most of the money left mid city and it became a checkerboard with islands of ghettos and poverty containing the majority of the black population. Now we may still be different culturally than anywhere else but venture a mile out of town and it's just another southern city surrounded by milquetoast Red suburbs that could be anywhere else below the 40th parallel. The overlapping structure we had for almost 200 years is what came to define us, and that's been replaced with the same kind of structure you see in so many other cities, a structure that is a direct result of not being anywhere near as progressive as we claim to be.
A casual glance at article comments on NOLA.com will give you a fantastic view of the kind of baby boomers with nothing better to do we have around here and what they actually think. You can smell the Old Metairie and Northshore stank all over them. I grew up here before Katrina where you were technically if not culturally a minority as a white person. I felt lucky to go to a public school and grow up around lots of kids from different races and cultures. It gave me a progressive view of this city that I too still think of as baseline. But I also got to see the disgusting bullshit people passed around shamelessly in email chains at the time about how great it was that Katrina flushed the poor blacks over to Houston. And now subsequently, parts of mid city have become gentrified largely because of this diaspora by white yankees who think the're the ones who brought culture here. Once again, the city's changed at the expense of those already marginalized who were so responsible for making the culture what it was in the first place.
And yes, we are still a melting pot for sure, but keep in mind that ironically we've never been the same since the end of segregation. The Old New Orleans that created Jazz was a town where people were segregated but culturally adjacent. Black and white kids played together all the time, they just never went to school together. But if we were truly so different from the rest of the South, you wouldn't have seen the mass exodus of whites running to the suburbs as soon as their kids would have to go to school with blacks. As a result of legacy societal racism, this meant most of the money left mid city and it became a checkerboard with islands of ghettos and poverty containing the majority of the black population. Now we may still be different culturally than anywhere else but venture a mile out of town and it's just another southern city surrounded by milquetoast Red suburbs that could be anywhere else below the 40th parallel. The overlapping structure we had for almost 200 years is what came to define us, and that's been replaced with the same kind of structure you see in so many other cities, a structure that is a direct result of not being anywhere near as progressive as we claim to be.
A casual glance at article comments on NOLA.com will give you a fantastic view of the kind of baby boomers with nothing better to do we have around here and what they actually think. You can smell the Old Metairie and Northshore stank all over them. I grew up here before Katrina where you were technically if not culturally a minority as a white person. I felt lucky to go to a public school and grow up around lots of kids from different races and cultures. It gave me a progressive view of this city that I too still think of as baseline. But I also got to see the disgusting bullshit people passed around shamelessly in email chains at the time about how great it was that Katrina flushed the poor blacks over to Houston. And now subsequently, parts of mid city have become gentrified largely because of this diaspora by white yankees who think the're the ones who brought culture here. Once again, the city's changed at the expense of those already marginalized who were so responsible for making the culture what it was in the first place.
allenpergallon
Member
This is where I was when the statue business first came up, and a part of me still sees it this way. I personally always less associated them with the actual figures (and their actions) they were modeled after and more so how ingrained they've become to this city's identity as landmarks. For some reason the idea of a museum never crossed my mind for this issue, and I think it's probably the best option should we move forward with removing them. They're undeniably important to the city to debatable degrees and should be preserved in some fashion, but the fact is the reality of the history behind those figures isn't something that should be revered.
I'd really like to see what some replacement options are though.
theignoramus
Member
Everyone of those Confederate leaders should've been hung at high noon with forced attendance from southern civilians.
I'm sure your 21st century armchair policy making is quite useful and based on a solid understanding of the time.
The goal was integration. Reconstruction more or less failed, but this would have made it far far worse.
terrdactycalsrock
Member
Oh, I totally agree. I'm not trying to excuses these people, or justify their behavior. I just think that its the accurate answer.
theignoramus
Member
Worse for who? Not the Blacks who were dragged out of their homes at night, whipped or lynched by the Klan for having the audacity to own a firearm, go to a voting poll, or operate a successful Black business. So worse for who exactly? The White supremacists who supported Jim Crow for 90 years? The White supremacists who lynched Black WW1 vets for being uppity niggers? The White supremacists who rioted over a Black person swimming at a "Whites only" beach or eating at a "Whites only" lunch counter?
Im supposed to give a motherfuck about their feelings and sensitivities?
edit: and Why did "Reconstruction more or less" fail?
Precisely because these disgusting Confederates were permitted to reconstitute their old social order, but instead of slavery, it was Jim Crow, mass incarceration of Blacks and forced prison labor.
Robert E Lee get fucked.
what's baffling about it? A largish portion of our country personally identifies with the treasonous losers and claim that one day they will win the re-match.
They didn't lose the Civil War, it was a stalemate.
what's baffling about it? A largish portion of our country personally identifies with the treasonous losers and claim that one day they will win the re-match.
They didn't lose the Civil War, it was a stalemate.
JordanN
Banned
Confederates attacked the USA first in a war that killed 700,000 Americans.
Years later, they get monuments built after them.
Melt that crap to the ground.
Years later, they get monuments built after them.
Melt that crap to the ground.
slave-owners and those defending them were beyond hope & should have been treated as such
No it would have made it worse for Blacks in the south because it would have made the bullshit that's till going on today with White people in the south even worse. The South already has something of a martyr culture. What you're suggesting would have kicked it up several degrees.
You might have noticed I called reconstruction a failure. That isn't because it failed the white southerners; it's because it failed the black ones. All what you're suggesting would have done is made southern whites feel further valorized. Counterfactuals are hard, but I fail to see one where that would have somehow made things better for black people instead of worse.
What exactly would executing them have accomplished besides making White southerners even more likely to retaliate?
Let's move away from the anachronism and actually look at what people were saying and thinking at the time. Reconstruction could have worked. Ultimately it didn't, but the US had no way of knowing that. What they realized is that making martyrs out of the Confederate leaders wasn't exactly going to help their chances.
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
What other countries have monuments to their loser traitors strewn about?
NOLA_Gaffer
Banned
Surprised they're not trying to get Andrew Jackson removed as well actually. Why stop with just Lee & Davis?
Advocatus Diaboli
Member
It's okay to have a reasonable debate about the relative merits of someone like Robert E. Lee without publicly celebrating him. He's a very nuanced and historically compelling figure for which there's no black or white answer, really.
But public statues are meant for reverence.
He deserves careful study, not veneration. Put the statues in a history museum.
But public statues are meant for reverence.
He deserves careful study, not veneration. Put the statues in a history museum.
Off the top of my head France has Vercingetorix statues all over the place. England had its period of celebrating Boadicea, and there is a statue of Oliver Cromwell in Westminster. Wales has plenty of statues of Owain Glyndŵr. Ireland has statues of Wolfe Tone. Lots of countries have statues dedicated to 1848.
The real question here should be what country has monuments dedicated to those who fought wars to hold a large part of that country in a particularly horrible form of slavery.
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
I think you took some liberties with "loser traitor" but ok
eh, i suppose it's all relative for some
CertifiedFP
Member
There's a saying for these kinds of scenarios that I'm particularly fond of.
"More meat for the grinder"
Which ones in particular? Maybe Vercingtorix and Boadicea who I suppose one could argue were not traitors so much as leaders of resistance to occupation. The rest are quite clearly traitors whose causes failed.
Cultural defeats are often more powerful symbols than victories. Trauma is perhaps the most powerful emotion in building a communal sentiment.
I'm not quite sure what you are getting at? We'd execute more of them? That would just lead to further problems, in addition to the fact that you ignored the retaliation itself.
Some sort of reconciliation was going to be necessary. It's extremely difficult to rule over a territory where the majority of people don't want you there.
theignoramus
Member
This is a lie. The US knew exactly what it was doing when it pulled federal troops out of the South and it knew exactly the ramifications it would have on Black Americans.
As to your other points, you underestimate how effective state sanctioned might has been at breaking people's spirit, willpower and resolve. The South needed a wholesale denazification, with every monument and individual representative of their movement treated like an infectious disease to be purged from the body.
Reconstruction had already failed by that point. I meant in the immediate aftermath of the war.
You seem to underestimate how much state sanctioned attempts to break a people's spirit, willpower, and resolve not only can fail but also engender further resistance. This is especially true in the 19th century.
Perversely racism actually made the south particularly able to resist due to a collapsing of class.
I'm not an Americanist so I might be wrong, but I assume there were no confederate monuments during reconstruction. Those would have come after. I obviously agree we should take those down.
Racism is the United State's greatest single issue. There are no easy solutions.
theignoramus
Member
You keep saying this over and over, but the facts dont even support this assertion at all. The terror and violence carried out by Confederates after the war was never solved by negotiation or reconciliation, it was curbed by force from the federal government which allowed unprecedented levels of participation by Black voters in local elections.
Throwing the racist vigilantes in jail (or shooting them) was working.
I think keeping troops in the area as a deterrent was indeed useful. Executing the leaders would not have been.
It was doing something. Obviously the state needed to try and curb that. But going out of their way to try and cause more by executing confederate leaders in a theatrical way wouldn't seem to in line with that goal.
Maybe I should restate what I was getting at there. I wasn't sure of what he was suggesting. I think he meant it would be good to get more southerners to rise up that way they could be killed, but that doesn't seem to make much sense as a strategy. When people are rising up you obviously have to do something, that doesn't mean you should be going out of your way to kick the hive. Defending black people should have been a moral imperative, in effect it of course wasn't and one can certainly hold the government accountable for that. But as a result it was worth whatever backlash it would cause. Executing captive leaders was not, and would have exacerbated the situation for seemingly little gain.
ideally, the goal wouldn't have been to "cause more;" it would have been to stamp out confederate hardliners (à la the nuremberg trials)
no, that's jackson square -- this is lee circle
they look the same but the traffic circle is smaller
Yep. President Grant was all about using the Military to ensure stuff was getting done. Its sad really. Grant enacted some extremely proactive steps to ensure Black voters could vote and were relatively safe. After Grant things pretty much imploded again and some of the very things Grant was enforcing would not get enforced again until Eisenhower.
US has a bad habit of taking steps forward in progress then shooting itself in the foot and walking back more steps backwards then it took forward causing a never-ending battle to actually move forward
theignoramus
Member
Grant is a pretty complicated historical figure thats for sure. As far as American presidential rankings go, his legacy will probably improve with the passage of time, just on the basis of his efforts to uphold the Civil Rights of all US citizens. Morally, he's a much better man than more celebrated Presidents like Woodrow Wilson or Ronald Reagan.
TAJ
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Nothing a drill and some dynamite couldn't solve.
makingmusic476
Member
I'll be glad to finally see them go. I just hope they're replaced with something worthwhile.
Fun fact, a very significant portion of confederate monuments in the country (at least the stuff built during the centennial) weren't even put in place because of the usual dumb excuse of "muh heritage." Rather, reading into the deliberations that led to these monuments getting built reveal that a lot of communities just put them up to try and command public space/awareness to curb the public space available to black communities to memorialize things.
Because of course it was always about racism.
Because of course it was always about racism.
theignoramus
Member
I'll echo that other poster saying the Confederates didnt really lose the war. They were able to reconfigure and reconstitute their racial caste system for a generation afterward.
That explains why it looked reasonably familiar, then!
- Status
Similar threads
- Locked