20181208.0430

On 4 December 2018, the editors of the San Antonio Express-News published "Confederate Plaque Should Come Down" in the online version of the newspaper. After articulating the thesis contained in the title, the piece offers history of the Children of the Confederacy Creed plaque installed in the Texas Capitol and lays out the case of its fundamental inaccuracy before noting legal authority for its removal. The piece goes on to note the context of the plaque's installation and calls for appropriate reinforcement of that context. It is not to erase history, per the editors, but to present it as accurately as possible--without venerating something that is, in essence, execrable.
The piece is not wrong. The plaque is factually inaccurate, reflecting warping ideas in response to civil rights movements that were long overdue; it should not be presented in a position that affords it ethos and what the editors rightly note is endorsement (not necessarily tacit) by the weight of the Lone Star State. It is also a monument to treason--because the Confederacy was treasonous, a fact which seems lost on the so-called patriots who decry kneeling at the "Star-Spangled Banner" while waving a flag that (supposedly) flew over the enemies of that banner and the republic for which it stands--and so should not be enshrined in a place of honor by a component part of that republic. And it and what it stands for, both the fact of the Confederacy inaccurately reported and the still-racist views that surrounded its installation, should be kept in mind--in a museum, where fuller context and accurate information can be provided for it; what has been done wrongly should be remembered that it not be repeated.
There will, of course, be some who will clamor against it, who fetishize the idea that the Civil War was not about slavery (it was, as the written words of the secessionist traitors themselves make clear) and that their own family histories of participation in it and in the organizations that spring from it are not tainted by that basis of action. And there will be others who recognize that the history of the United States itself is built upon the oppression and enslavement of peoples and treason--for what else was the Revolutionary War but treason against a duly constituted (by the standards of the time) government?--so that it makes sense for rebellious acts to be lauded. There will be still others who, recognizing the ongoing memorialization of the failures of Valley Forge, among others, point to the insistence upon loss for validation and will understand the continued emphasis on treasonous secessionist history (while pointing out the many ironies associated with those emphasizing it). And there will be some, meaning well but less informed than they ought to be, who will insist that "you can't change history" and that "history has to be remembered."
History is mutable; it is not what was, only what is written about it. It can be changed--and should be, as more and better information comes to light.
Nobody is proposing forgetting. There is no forgetting what is still being enforced, too often upon the lives and bodies of people of color. What is being proposed is that what is incorrect be corrected and that what is shameful be remembered as shame.
Maybe, if enough such things happen, we can pull our collective heads just a bit further out of our collective asses. But that's a slim hope, indeed.