I'm Tired of Honoring Foreign Governments

Fuck Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and FUCK the Confederacy and tiki torches.

Last year, I took a guided tour of Destrehan Plantation in Louisiana. All of the employees were white, there was a wax statue of a black slave in the kitchen/dining area and the slave quarters were not a part of the standard guided tour, which mostly detailed the religious practice of the family (Catholic), their struggles with cholera and use of bed pans. Discussion of slavery wasn't really a part of the tour either, except to note that the wax figure represents Marguerite, who ran the house and took care of the children and had "incredible work ethic." She had two children of her own, but she was "separated from them" when they were sold to another plantation. A tourist from the Midwest asked the guide if Marguerite ever got her children back and the guide said no and quickly changed the subject. If you are American, how are you so ignorant as to even ask that question? Destrehan Plantation was the site of the second largest slave rebellion to take place in the Southern U.S. and you can do a self-guided tour of the slave quarters with some pictures documenting the rebellion and learn about how many massuhs were slaughtered before the rebellion was quashed. This is a fucking problem.

Let's put this in context - ever heard of the Armenian genocide? Armenian interest groups have been lobbying all over the world for decades to push governments into calling the Turkish attack on its Armenian citizens during WWI a genocide and a Holocaust - something the Turkish government vehemently denies and lobbies governments and rights groups to NOT call a genocide. Lobbyists have gone so far as to lobby for denial of the genocide criminalized - as in, if you deny that it's a genocide, you are breaking the law. Here in the U.S., Presidents and State Governors have grappled with this Armenian genocide issue and come under pressure to acknowledge the genocide in spite of Turkey's resistance to the label - almost a hundred years later. Meanwhile, in America, anyone can say and teach any old thing they want about slavery - like that some slaves were loyal and liked it, it wasn't that bad, slaves had work ethic - and denial of the most basic horrors that slavery entailed. SOME even pretend that once slavery ended, so did all of the issues associated with slavery for Black America.

You want to compare slavery to the Holocaust of Germany? You cannot fly a Nazi flag in Germany and there are monuments everywhere to commemorate the horrors faced by millions. Museums worldwide abound with artifacts to commemorate what was lost and what abuses and horrors were committed. Slavery gets no such treatment in the U.S. where entire generations lost their families, personal histories, were brutalized and dismembered and lived in fear for another 150 years of being lynched, burned, or drowned if they made eye contact with the wrong person in the wrong town.

This whole changing history and historical pride nonsense is dumb and totally out of control. Monuments to traitors that seceded from the Union, specifically citing slavery as a top reason in many of their secession documents, should be torn the f-- down. Saying that it is "deleting" American history is crap, because those monuments have already deleted a large swathe of important history - like the reality of the role of slavery in the Civil War and the reality of institutional racism and its continuing oppression. Don't give me that economy nonsense - SLAVES WERE THE ECONOMY AND THE SOUTH WENT TO WAR OVER SLAVES. Where are the monuments honoring Mary Bowser - a Union Spy and former slave who secretly learned to read and write and spied on Jefferson Davis? She deserves a monument and an honored place in history. We need a nationally recognized and historically appropriate curriculum about slavery, Juneteenth, Jim Crow and Civil Rights. Ignorance has become incredibly dangerous.

Nazi and KKK protestors in Charlottesville, VA do not deserve free speech protection because free speech is not free license. When you are inciting violence, you are not free to use the first amendment as cover. White supremacists have been murdering people in this country for more than 200 years - it's part of their philosophy to devalue any human life that doesn't meet their ideals - how the fuck is that protected speech? They are not peaceful and their message is not peaceful and if you are worried about blue lives then speak the fuck up because two police officers died working at a rally of white supremacists yesterday.