If city councils and private institutions had had the power to remove Confederate statues at the beginning of this year, there would have been a lot fewer Confederate statues available to be torn down this month.
If you deny people legal and institutional channels to make decisions about what to do with the Confederate statues that previous generations of racists planted in their communities, don't be surprised when they turn to extralegal, extrainstitutional means.
Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee all have laws intended to thwart local communities' attempts to use legal processes to remove Confederate statutes. Virginia did too, until three months ago.
Most of these state Confederate statue laws were passed in the last two decades. So they didn't just have the EFFECT of thwarting community efforts to remove the statutes through legal channels, they were put in place to thwart efforts that were already in motion.
So don't wring your hands and say "why didn't these people contact their local officials," @BillKristol. Because they did, and your allies in the GOP made sure that their letters and their votes and their petitions could have no effect.
And since I've got people in my mentions saying that the folks who want the statutes down should have worked to change STATE law, because democracy—which is very much not what @BillKristol said, but whatever—let's talk about that.
The current wave of statue protests was set off in large part by the toppling of the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Birmingham, Alabama, a Jim Crow–era (1905!) monument to pro-slavery Alabamians who took arms against the US government in defense of slavery.
Alabama's Confederate statue protection law was passed just five years ago, in direct response to efforts in Birmingham to have the Monument removed legally, efforts that were then picking up steam.
Birmingham is a 70% Black city. Alabama is a 70% white state. Why should white people who don't live in Birmingham get to tell black people who do that they have to have a monument honoring slavery in one of their city's parks, whether they like it or not?
If the government of the state of Alabama wanted to move the Confederate monument to a town that wanted it, or to a state park, they could have. They chose not to. Why? Because keeping the statue was never their goal. Keeping it in BIRMINGHAM was the goal.
Democracy isn't the principle here. History isn't the principle here. White supremacy is the principle here.
