It's been four years since I made this post about the KKK rally in Charlottesville in July of 2017. Today, they took down the confederate monuments in Charlottesville, including the one where this rally happened, and the other one where what came to turn Charlottesville into a hashtag happened a couple blocks away. As someone who was raised in the rural south, loves the American south, grew up around confederate flags and even used to wear clothes with them when I was younger, about these confederate monuments getting taken down in Charlottesville, let me just say...
good. The monuments were racist in intent and meant to intimidate. People holding onto the philosophies behind those monuments' intent has held back the progress of a truly beautiful, diverse, and culturally unique geographical part of America. and I'm very thankful for the leadership of Black women in making today happen. We are very blessed in the American south with a lot of strong, intelligent, but also very real and practical people like the ones who were instrumental in making today happen. And to be honest, that's the south I've always loved, even when I didn't know any better.
We don't have many public spaces in American culture, despite that being the precedent in most all indigenous cultures on this continent, in Africa, even in Europe to be honest. Public commons were considered expected, not something that had to be created. So for the few public spaces we have in our culture to be marked by monuments which say "not for y'all" is even more fucked up. I hope DJs set up on the abandoned concrete plinths and we have Saturday evening cookouts all summer long forever moving forward. Plenty of room for horseshoe pits at the former Lee Park too, in my opinion. Fuck the confederacy, but long thrive the south.
good. The monuments were racist in intent and meant to intimidate. People holding onto the philosophies behind those monuments' intent has held back the progress of a truly beautiful, diverse, and culturally unique geographical part of America. and I'm very thankful for the leadership of Black women in making today happen. We are very blessed in the American south with a lot of strong, intelligent, but also very real and practical people like the ones who were instrumental in making today happen. And to be honest, that's the south I've always loved, even when I didn't know any better.
We don't have many public spaces in American culture, despite that being the precedent in most all indigenous cultures on this continent, in Africa, even in Europe to be honest. Public commons were considered expected, not something that had to be created. So for the few public spaces we have in our culture to be marked by monuments which say "not for y'all" is even more fucked up. I hope DJs set up on the abandoned concrete plinths and we have Saturday evening cookouts all summer long forever moving forward. Plenty of room for horseshoe pits at the former Lee Park too, in my opinion. Fuck the confederacy, but long thrive the south.
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