Oct 18, 2019
Defenders of Confederate memorialization nowdays will not defend the Confederacy or slavery, but instead will try to defend it on other grounds such as they are defending history. They will frequently agree with those who want to take down a Confederate monument in their assessement of the historical past but only to argue against removing a Confederate monument.
We need to critically understand these tactics and need to understand it is not just a debate over history, but also a debate on what monuments do. The case example used a Republican African American defending a Confederate memorialization, but much would apply to understanding in general the arguments of the defenders of Confederate monuments.