We talk about confederate monuments as if they aren’t symbols of anxiety, racism, and a legacy of hate.

I shouldn’t have to say it. It’s pretty evident. But we’re at a time in which truths are intentionally obscured. And this is one of those statements which is both literally and metaphorically true. Confederate monuments and statues aren’t people.

Statues don’t breathe, eat, or smell when they haven’t bathed. They aren’t offended by your middle finger or have hearts warmed by a vociferous defense. They are just things.

And that should be enough for us to pack them away and place them in the Goodwill boxes next to the shirt which never really fit and those ties you haven’t worn in years. Doing a little regular tidying up of the place is in order, and given our breathtaking history of putting up Confederate monuments, long over due.

Confederate monuments aren’t people, no matter your attachment. Their feelings don’t matter.

Of course, your feelings do. And you may quite like that monument to slavery and the time a people went to war with their own government. You might worry about losing history if we lose our monuments. But if we can’t get rid of Nazis, I’m pretty sure we’re in no danger of forgetting our country’s bloodiest war.

That may be your view. But it also shouldn’t surprise you that all these precious monuments came up during Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement. They came up, not to memorialize heroism, but to enforce white supremacy. That’s the heritage we’re talking about protecting.

Confederate Monuments aren’t people

We’re talking about this now because we’re in the midst of another such time. A time where white nationalists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, fascists, and pro-confederacy groups have made a great big public display. You could ignore them as they grew online, because that’s online.

This freaked people out.

But it isn’t anything new. It’s what happens when racism is used for political gain.

And these statues, once again, are the symbol, a monument to racism. They are the beacon of white supremacy and the search light for racism. And people have fought against them for a century.

We’re talking about it because once again, racism is being used to destroy the country and our rebellious nature can’t resist it’s call. To defend treason and memorialize the Lost Cause. To worship states’ rights through the prism of white supremacy and authoritarian leadership. Both were present then as now.

Confederate Monuments aren’t people

Lee, Jackson, Davis were no heroes and their statues aren’t people. These statues aren’t the generals and the politicians who attacked their own country. They are objects which rust and crumble into dust. The people are long dead. The slavery they sought to defend is gone. But their violent racism is alive and thrives.

It thrived in the lynchings and redlining and the sharecropping and poll taxes and all the ways these “fine people” sought to punish people for their freedom. The preachers defended, the klan rallied, the towns came out and watched the murders.

And that’s when they put up memorials to people who wanted to own other people.

Then when all people won the right to vote, Jim Crow was destroyed, and our schools integrated, they came back again. Like roaches, racism won’t die and Confederate monuments are its calling card. That’s when more monuments went up to stem the tide with this thing they kept calling “heritage”.

No one could ever explain what one’s heritage had to do with a statue, anyway.

Is this a statue of your great-great-great-great-great grandfather? Or is heritage just a euphemism for racism? Because that’s why it’s sitting there. That statue is no more about your heritage than my son’s Hot Wheels are about mine.

Confederate Monuments aren’t people

These Confederate statues are monuments to racism. And that’s why we’re talking about them again.

It’s why they’re being removed all over the country, from New Orleans to Baltimore. Because we aren’t tolerating racism anymore.

And it’s why racists are rising up to defend them.

This isn’t a slippery slope of all the morally ambiguous people who have built this country. It’s about us. Our racism. These monuments to our racism continue to punish the descendants of slaves some men fought to keep as property.

They keep speaking an alternative reality and false history. A speculative fiction memorializing the beauty of a time when white people owned black people they bought from other white people. And everyone was happy; there was no collusion or threat. Just explain away the commonplace violence and rape. No need. A quaint, sanitized history, whitewashed of all its grim inhumanity.

It isn’t heritage. It isn’t history. History lives in our skin and blood and bones. It thrives in our minds and the stories we tell our children.

Confederate Monuments aren’t people

People are the victims of violence and floods. They are also victims of the New Jim Crow: mass incarceration.

People live on streets named for other people who wanted to own people like them. Who wanted to pretend it was all economic or about rights. Just not theirs.

Or pretend this is about relieving anxiety. Just not theirs.

And people walk past monuments to racism to drop their kids off at schools memorializing racism and go to public buildings honoring racism. They give their address, speaking that street named to honor racism.

For a century, people have fought to strip these memorials to racism, speaking of their experience. But those voices are easy to ignore. They’re only the victims. They’re asking for change and we all know how we feel about change.

We put up monuments to prove how much we hate change.

These statues aren’t people. And if we value people, we’ll bring an end to memorializing racism. We’ll take down the statues and rename our streets, parks, and buildings.

And we’ll teach our children history rather than the myth (peppered with bothsidesism) while showing them what we really think of racism by taking its beacons to the curb.