State senator sponsors bill to move Confederate monuments (MO)

[struggle4progress]

Author: Sam Clancy
Published: 3/1/2018 3:55:32 AM
Updated: 10:22 PM CST February 28, 2018

... Democrat Jamilah Nasheed wants to move state-owned Confederate monuments to a historical site in the state. Senate Bill 584 would do just that and ban any state agencies from selling or displaying the Confederate Flag for anything other than for educational purposes.

"The Confederate Flag is a symbol of oppression," Sen. Nasheed said in a press release. "The state shouldn’t display it unless it’s for educational purposes out of respect for those who fought and died to keep this country together" ...

http://www.ksdk.com/article/news/local/state-senator-sponsors-bill-to-move-confederate-monuments/63-524327578

[Freelancer]

1. Statues of Confederate leaders and generals should remain on display...

Not up on plinths and pillars, though, where people are forced to look up to see them. They should be ten feet below ground level, where people can look down at them, lean over the railings, and spit.

I say leave the more generic statues to the bravery of Confederate soldiers alone, though. They honor an abstract quality and not an individual.

[Princess Turandot]

2. During Jim Crow, those abstract Confederate soldiers were very often placed at the local COURTHOUSE.

It was a message to African-Americans that the lofty words of the US Constitution still applied only to whites, no matter what the federal government and the newer amendments said. In fact, most of those generic statues weren't even erected until at least 40 years after the end of the Civil War, just in time for the second iteration of the Ku Klux Klan. And during the Civil Rights era beginning in the 60's, many of those Confederate monuments were rededicated.

No black citizen should have to walk through a public square and see a monument praising those who wanted them to remain enslaved. It's their home too.

They can move them to the nearest Confederate cemetery if they wish (of which there are many).

[arthritisR_US]

3. +1000!

[Freelancer]

4. I live in Illinois, and have to see confederate flags all over. Absolutely disgusting!

I had 3 ancestors that died in the war to take that flag down, and another that lingered on for 25 years, dragging himself around with no legs on a cart. Assholes on my street are flying that flag today, and driving around with it in their back window. I doubt it represents the same to them as it does me. All the same, I don't deserve this shit.

Would I like to rip it down and burn their "rebel flag?" Yes I would. Will I? No. Because doing so would start something in my neighborhood that just isn't worth it. Same with the Confederate soldier statues. Do they irritate people that don't deserve to be? You bet. Would the backlash to taking them down be just awful? Oh yeah.

It's one of many rational transactions we live with.