The Lowering of Confederate Symbols: Rejecting Hate & Discrimination - Essay Sample

Introduction

Beginning with the slaying by Dylann Roof in Charleston, South Carolina of nine Black worshippers at Emmanuel African Methods, symbols of hate, discrimination, and slavery were pushed to be removed (Forest & Johnson, 2019). For instance, the Confederate flag at the top of the State Capitol in South Carolina, and the monument of Jefferson Davis (Forest & Johnson, 2019). By lowering of the Confederate battle flag in South Carolina, and somewhere else, some proponents insist that the banner did not advance bigotry comments, and it was just a symbol of the Southern culture. (Ferguson, 2015). Other Americans long impacted by the Confederate monuments that stand across the Dixie are insisting that those memorials resonate well with the flag. The opponents argue that the monument advances racial comments on White Supremacies and must be dropped done insisting that black lives matter (Staples, 2015). The Confederate statutes should not be erected in public places, since they are reminders of a period where racial violence prevailed, and it will act as an honor of those who perpetrated these bigotry acts.

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Confederate Monuments as Badges of Slavery

The Confederate statues should be removed because they brought memories of slavery, and does not honor any positive or heroic acts as the US Memorial hall for the soldiers who were killed while in the line of duty in Vietnam (Tsesis, 2020). The White Supremacist groups engaged in 2017, United the Right March in Charlottesville to plan on the erection of monuments honoring leaders and soldiers who battled hard to ensure slavery existed.

The proponents advocating the removal of the confederate monuments provide a legal framework through the Thirteenth Amendment. The Thirteenth Amendment guarantees any individual residing in the United States the right to freedom and will help in enforcing the context of removing the Monument to the Confederacy since it is a monument of segregation, and slavery (Tsesis, 2020).

Procedures in Charlottesville District Court

The city of Charlottesville decided to advance its policy of removing Confederate statues from the public places by cloaking the Robert E. Lee, and Thomas Jackson statutes (Tsesis, 2020). Covering the statutes entirely in dark black was done in remembrance of two law enforcement officers who succumbed separately in a helicopter crash while they were regulating the Unite the Right from the air. A cohort of thirteen private complainants filed suit, Payne v, City of Charlottesville with the circuit court under the section 15.2-1812 of the 1950 (Tsesis, 2020). The statute bars the eradication of memorials to the Civil War, obliquely, "The War Between the States." The litigants sought injunctive and declaratory relief for psychological harm suffered because the City ratified resolution in Feb 2017 to remove the Robert E. Lee statue (Tsesis, 2020). Finally, the trial judge also routinely ruled that no Equal Protection Clause defense was available to the City.

Harm Based Argument on Removing Confederate Monument

Timmerman (2020) explains why Confederate monuments can also wrongfully affect those completely unaware of the racist reasons why most Confederate statues were erected. In a nutshell, he tries to mean that Confederate monuments indirectly harm those who do not deserve it by creating an awful memory of how the African Americans were oppressed as slaves by the White Supremacies. Timmerman (2020) indicates that there should be a strong moral reason necessitating the removal of public confederate statutes. To better understand the extent of the harm that these statutes may indirectly affect, a historical example is provided. In the mid-1970s, disobeying social norms for shock value was part of the punk ethos. Therefore, the number of famous punk musicians who wore swastika apparel was displayed. The individuals who see punks donned in swastika in public were harmed because viewing them indirectly brought horrible memories of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and World War 11 (Timmerman, 2020).

Objections

The opponents of the removal of the Confederate monuments argue that the statutes have a historical significance among the Whites and celebrate the great aesthetic works done by the then designers (Timmerman, 2020). They argue that removing the Confederate statutes will result in a loss of historical value. Therefore, according to them maintaining the historic and aesthetic value would be important than considering the racial and horror memories it sends to the majority of current African Americans who were treated as slaves and oppressed during the Civil war (Timmerman, 2020).

Confederate Statues and the Human Rights Ideology

Under this explanation, a city that desires to remove a Confederate memorial would have to assess the historical circumstance of the monument building and ascertain whether it was done in recognition of a contemporary violation of customary international law (Bissell & Perot, 2018). This framework would analyze the modern global human rights norms, instead of those that existed at the time of the building of the monument (Bissell & Perot, 2018). Afterward, the city would decide whether to destroy it using the normal democratic processes. This approach allows for the proper vindication of the values that destroying cultural prosperity can possess. At the same juncture, it avoids the parade of horrible contemplated by renowned voices who advocate for the preservation of the Confederate memorials on the basis that there is no restricting principle to the logic of destruction.

According to these opponents, there is no stopping point, and soon all commemorations of imperfect historical figures (yields negative memories such as racism, slavery) will need to be destroyed from public places (Bissell & Perot, 2018). Recently, President Trump provided his statement, asserting "he has been brought to attention on the proposal to bring the statutes of Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson, and he was wondering if George Washington or Thomas Jefferson would be the next victims" (Bissell & Perot, 2018).

A greater approach to deciding whether to bring down or preserve the Confederate monuments would be to trust nation-states to exercise their limited right to destroy the two statutes based on legal frameworks like the Thirteenth Amendment. In recent years, some federal laws have been initiated that would alter the status of the Confederate memorials (Bissell & Perot, 2018). The current proposals, however, do not provide a legal perspective that examines this decision. During the 114th and 115th Congresses, numerous bills were introduced that would elucidate the connection between the Confederate memorials, the federal funds, and the land (Bissell & Perot, 2018). The conclusion made stated that no federal funding for the Confederate symbols Act would be allowed during the creation, maintenance, or display of any Confederate symbol.

Other more diffident suggestions have been introduced. One bill, the Honoring Real Patriots Act of 2017, and would mandate the Secretary of Defence to rename the ten military erections that are currently named for Confederate military leaders (Bissell & Perot, 2018). Another bill (H.R.3779), proposed the removal of the monument of Robert Lee, and all other statutes of those who served in the army during the Civil War because they advocated for slavery and that adversely affected African Americans directly and indirectly through psychological trauma (Bissell & Perot, 2018). In a different discussion, the United States refused to authorize huge amounts of Nazi-era art and propaganda.

Conclusion

The paper has provided an argumentative analysis of an intense discussion of whether to remove or preserve the Confederate monuments. The opponents indicated that the Confederate memorials act as instruments of racial terror that affects psychologically those who were not directly affected by the slavery acts and discriminatory acts at the Stonewall. These individuals have memories of close people like their grandfathers who were directly impacted by the brutal events of slavery and discrimination. Those who were on the side of preserving the Confederate monuments argue that the historic and aesthetic value is significant and that there is the 13th Amendment that gives them the freedom to express themselves, and the designers did so and did not directly harm so, or the statues did not have any racial messages targeting the Black community.

References

Bissell, E., & Perot, V. (2018). Monuments to the Confederacy and the Right to Destroy in Cultural-Property Law. Yale LJ, 128, 1130. https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9326&context=ylj

Ferguson, B.E. (2015). The End of History. The American Scholar.

Forest, B., & Johnson, J. (2019). Confederate monuments and the problem of forgetting. cultural geographies, 26(1), 127-131. file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/2019ForestandJohnsonculturalgeographies%20(1).pdf

Staples, B. (2015). Confederate Memorials as instruments of racial terror. The New York Times.

Timmerman, T. (2020). A Case for Removing Confederate Monuments. https://philpapers.org/archive/TIMACF.pdf

Tsesis, A. (2020). Confederate Monuments as Badges of Slavery. Kentucky Law Journal, 108(4). file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/SSRN-id3547484.pdf