In Fit Of Wokeness, Confederate Statue Removed By Woke Mayor Of Woke ... (Checks Notes) ... Jacksonville, Florida
Good riddance!
After years of fighting, the City of Jacksonville, Florida, yesterday finally removed a Confederate monument from a city park that literally used to be named “Confederate Park,” but was renamed “Springfield Park” in 2020, in honor, we assume, of The Simpsons’ home town and its world-famous monorail. The removal of the monument is actually the city’s second erasure of history; the city had previously taken down another Civil War Participation Trophy near City Hall, also in 2020. The second monument was removed quickly yesterday, with crews starting work at dawn and hauling off the fugly memorial to white supremacy and Jim Crow on a flatbed trailer by 11 AM local time.
It’s like Confederate Monument Removal Christmas in America, what with the big ugly Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery having been yeeted from that place of honor on December 20. So sad. The former home of traitor Robert E Lee no longer has its treason statue anymore.
The monument consisted of a statue of a Southern white lady reading to two children, titled “In Memory of Our Women of the Southland,” as well as an ugly fucking thing on top of the monument depicting a Liberty-like female figure carrying a Confederate flag. We’ll assume the woman in the main statue was not reading WEB Du Bois.
Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan, who ran on a promise to remove the monument once and for all, explained in a statement,
“Symbols matter. They tell the world what we stand for and what we aspire to be. By removing the Confederate monument from Springfield Park, we signal a belief in our shared humanity. That we are all created equal. The same flesh and bones. The same blood running through our veins. The same heart and soul.”
Anticipating the inevitable whining, Deegan’s statement continued that the point here is to correct the false history of the “Lost Cause” that motivated the erection of Confederate monuments by white supremacists who sought to downplay the ugly history of slavery — a mission that’s still being pursued by the far Right today, hello Nikki Haley.
“This is not in any way an attempt to erase history but to show that we’ve learned from it — that when we know better, we do better by and for each other. My prayer today is for our beautiful city to continue embracing unity and bending the arc of history toward justice. Let’s keep lifting as we climb.”
Dazed citizens of the city, their historical knowledge wiped from their minds, were overheard yesterday afternoon asking “Civil War? Huh? You mean that Marvel movie with Captain America fighting, uh, Irony Man?”
The statement noted that the monument was erected, like most Civil War memorials, not in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, but “during the peak of early 20th century Confederate monument-building, part of a widespread campaign to promote and justify Jim Crow laws in the South and intimidate African Americans.”
The removal of the monument was met with the usual howls of sadness from white people in Confederate flag T-shirts who explained that they are not racist, they just want history to be remembered, especially if it’s false history that portrays the Confederacy as noble and gallant and shit. Typical was a dude named Wayde Alford, who told WJXT TV he’s with a group called “Save Southern Heritage.” Here’s his sentimental reflection on the defunct statue:
“It’s a representation of my ancestry. […] It’s about the women who stayed home, took care of their homes and their farmsteads ... women who couldn’t even vote. They stayed home and did what they did while the men were away, and some of those men were conscripted.”
Aww, isn’t that nice? Back when white women also knew their place, with all the moonlight and magnolia blossoms, and hardly any rape of enslaved women by the menfolk, or lynchings of troublemakers or any of that.
Naturally, Alford rejected the notion that the monuments were meant to remind Black citizens to know their place, explaining, “That’s a typical talking point from the left.”
To be fair, WJXT also spoke to JoAnn Brooks, a volunteer with a community group, who said the monument represented “a lost cause, hatred, division” and said its removal was like
“a chain being broken, where we can now grow and develop and see what Jacksonville can do together so that we can be a better place where we can invite our family and friends.”
And let’s hope that is the case, because that’s way healthier.
It’s not clear what the ultimate fate of the two statues included in the monument will be; perhaps they can be melted down and the bronze used to cast a statue of Homer Simpson holding a giant donut aloft.
PREVIOUSLY LIKE TODAY EVEN:
[WJXT / NBCWashington / NYT / WJXT]
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There's a wonderful book called "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" which is an autobiography by Harriet Jacobs, a mother and fugitive slave, published in 1861. Harriet makes several very important points in her book, one of which that is the institution of slavery made it impossible for African-American women to control their virtue, as they were subject to the social and economic power of men. Another point she makes is that white men who used that power over their female slaves were degrading their own ethical and moral standards. Finally she makes a very big point that the white wives of these slave-owning men were also morally and ethically degraded by being forced to tolerate their husbands' behavior. I highly recommend this book. It was out of print and ignored for 100 years until rediscovered and republished in the 1960's.
Republicans: Democrats were the Confederates who supported slavery in the Old South! Nanner' nanner noo noo Dems! What now?
Democrats: Okay, we are taking down our statues
Republicans: NO!! THAT'S OUR HERITAGE!!!