Confederate monuments offend, but there is something much worse in Alabama

[yallerdawg]

Source: al.com, by Joseph Goodman

In New Orleans, they are finally removing statues of Confederate leaders in public places. In Montgomery, they send students to public schools named after those same white supremacists.

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Children, most of them black, walk past a statue of Robert E. Lee every day at Robert E. Lee High School in Montgomery. Across town, another predominately black student body attends Jefferson Davis High School. In 2017, in Alabama, there are public high schools named after men who thought people with darker skin than themselves were subhuman and needed to be slaves forever.





Removing the names of Confederate leaders from public schools is the correct and moral thing to do, and of that there is no doubt. Public statues and memorials commemorating soldiers who fought or died in the Civil War are offensive to many people, but schools named after leaders who believed people of color were inferior, and then sent thousands to their deaths to protect the immoral institution of slavery, are just downright malevolent and wicked.

On Wednesday, with the eloquent and powerful words of New Orleans' mayor still making national headlines, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed into law a bill protecting the state's Confederate statues and memorials. They cannot be removed.

It's a ridiculous law to score political points and nothing more. Ivey even added an amendment to the bill protecting the names of schools. Let's be clear, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis should be stripped from any public school in the state that bears their names.

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Some people, like present-day elected officials in Alabama, choose proudly to be on the wrong side of history. Then some elected officials, when judged by history, are treasonous war criminals. For example: Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America. That the name of Jefferson Davis remains on a high school more than 150 years after the Civil War doesn't remind us of anything other than how grinding institutional racism has held back a state.

Much, much more at: http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2017/05/confederate_monuments_offend_b.html#incart_river_home_pop