We’ve seen a few monuments come down this week.
My question is simple: What improvements will African Americans see after they don’t have to see monuments honoring General Robert F. Lee, General Stonewall Jackson or anyone else from the Old South in their communities?
My quick answer is not much. In other words, our African American communities have issues that will not be resolved by replacing monuments.
David Goldman wrote a very interesting post this week about the state of the African American man, as well as a bit of history about the confederate soldier.
To say the obvious, the confederate soldier is dead and remains a topic for historians. As the article points out, 28% of Southern military age men were killed in the Civil War. That is almost 1 of 3 men! That’s a lot of southern heritage! This is why the issue is so important to southern families.
On the other hand, today’s African American male is here and desperately in need of help, as Mr. Goldman points out:
We are left with a suppurating, unhealed national wound. Black America is in jeopardy. For every 100 black women of marrying age there are only 81 men: the rest are dead or in jail. Seventy-three percent of African-American children are born out of marriage.Although universities admit blacks and whites in roughly equal proportions, only 40% of black men graduate within six years of matriculation. Agony over these circumstances motivates the witch-hunt against imagined “micro-aggression,” as I wrote two years ago.The “micro-aggression” theory does not explain why African-American women (who presumably are doubly oppressed for being both black and female) have a much higher college graduation rate (50% as opposed to 40%) than black men.
So what do we do now?
We can continue to bring down monuments and divide the country. Again, we repeat that most Americans do not want these monuments removed. They see them as history not racism.
We could get the state out of the monument business, as Mr. Goldman recommends. In other words, sell these monuments to private enterprises. They can display them in private parks or areas. It may be a reasonable compromise but then future generations will be denied the story of these men.
Or, we can get over all of this and worry about the real problems that African American communities are facing, specially the ones run by Democrats. These communities desperately need better schools and jobs so that African American men can enjoy a better future.
Last but not least, maybe we should remove the Democrats running these communities!
P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.
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