Saturday, July 11, 2015

Small Change

I’m not going to argue the cause of the War Between the States, and will accept for the purpose of this discussion that it was fought by southern racists for the sole purpose of preserving slavery. The Confederate battle flag, then, is an offensive symbol of a war fought 150 years ago to preserve slavery, and must not be displayed. But, eradicating that flag is insufficient. We also must rename schools which bear the name of persons who were on the wrong side. Military installations named after generals who fought for the losing army must be renamed. All traces of the losing side of that war must be erased from today’s society.

We used to call things like that “stepping over a dollar to pick up a dime.”

We are not discussing the rate of imprisonment of black men which is happening as we speak. We are not discussing the current rate of unemployment in the black population. We are not discussing the phenomenon of being arrested for “driving while black.”  We are not discussing, in any form, racism as it exists in our society today. It does exist, & is getting worse instead of better.

No, we are intent on eradicating symbols that remind us of racism as it existed 150 years ago, as if that was somehow going to solve anything.

We were talking about unemployment in Ferguson, MO and in Baltimore, at least it was being mentioned, but we dropped it in favor of this nonsense about the flag and then the renaming of schools and military installations.

For some reason, I keep being surprised by the public’s ability to focus on trivia while ignoring the real problems which face this nation.

No comments:

Post a Comment