Two time capsules discovered underneath removed Confederate time capsules

[Cicada 5]

And if that was the goal, there'd be a lot more destruction and attempted destruction at play: slave auction sites, plantations, old state houses, just to name a few. I daresay if that was the goal, BLM protesters would have burned Lafayette Square and St. John's in June, 2020, rather than take refuge in them -- let us not forget, Lafayette Square was a slave market.

No, to date the extent of the destruction has been narrowly, insidiously, and tellingly tailored -- specifically, that of erasing the history of Jim Crow. As has been stated by all sides, and thoroughly agreed upon. Which, of course, obfuscates the existence -- and answers -- to multiple questions, many of which those encouraging statues' removal find rather inconvenient:

1. Why did Jim Crow happen?
2. Why did northerners, abolitionists, and supposed progressives tolerate -- or even support -- Jim Crow for a century?
3. What was going on outside former Confederate states at the time?
4. How does systemic white supremacy outside former Confederate states reflect, and coincide with, Jim Crow?
5. Who raised the funds and commissioned the statues?
6. Did Jim Crow ever really end, or did it simply evolve with the times?

...and the most important one...

7. Why, as materially-interested parties, are those in power tolerating the destruction of these monuments when they enjoy the monopoly of violence and have ample power to put an end to it?

Occupy, the 2014 BLM movement, and the events of summer, 2020, reveal what happens when movements actually capable of threatening systemic white supremacy come into being. They're suppressed with extreme prejudice, using the most violent and demonstrative means available. It's no new, or unfamiliar, phenomenon -- contrast the fates and legacies of Fred Hampton, Malcom X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The only one of those three men whose birthday is a national holiday, is the one whose message was capable of being censored, subverted, and captured by the state.

When Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, and what his advocacy had become at the time of his assassination, tells the true tale.

The only people who think removing Confederate statues is erasing history are the ones in favor of keeping them. A statue is not a history book. Removing it does not obscure anything.

Did the state's censoring and subversion of King's message involve tearing down Confederate statues?

 

[Eacaraxe]

The only people who think removing Confederate statues is erasing history are the ones in favor of keeping them...Removing it does not obscure anything.

Yes, it does. It obscures the reasons for their construction, why it was allowed to happen, and who funded and commissioned the statues. Systemic white supremacy is not an exclusively southern phenomenon, contrary to popular belief, and neither were exclusively southerners the perpetrators and beneficiaries of Jim Crow. Exceptionalizing and obfuscating the legacy of it, does nothing save hide national complicity, and in many cases active participation in it, by those outside former Confederate states. Which is precisely what I called out in the post you quoted.

What you should be asking yourself, is which parties economically and socially benefitted most from Jim Crow. Or, not to put too fine a point on it...a labor force of some 6,000,000 freedmen left the south during the Jim Crow era with little but the clothes on their back, eager for economic opportunity and lives comparatively free from racial oppression, who made for a perfectly fine, easily demonized, captive labor force in the Gilded Age, an era marked by the rise of the company town, debt bondage, convict leasing, and violent suppression of labor rights movements through both private security and US military intervention.

Did the state's censoring and subversion of King's message involve tearing down Confederate statues?

Did it have to?

King got plugged when he launched the Poor People's Campaign -- and lest we forget, the Poor People's March protest encampment received exactly the same welcome as the Bonus Army, BPP, Occupy, and BLM...widespread state violence. In other words, when he did something genuinely threatening to the state. In the meantime, the state already had a solution to perpetuating systemic and violent white supremacy, in a form tried, tested, and far more palatable to the American populace than Jim Crow itself ever had been, or ever would be...because its proof of concept came from the north: the war on drugs, the carceral state, convict labor, the prison-industrial complex, and debt bondage.

The game was rigged against the civil rights movement from the start. Civil rights legislation was allowed to pass, because the state already had means to continue systemic white supremacy beyond dated and rejected concepts such as chattel slavery, segregation, and their intertwined legacies.

 

[Cicada 5]

Yes, it does. It obscures the reasons for their construction, why it was allowed to happen, and who funded and commissioned the statues. Systemic white supremacy is not an exclusively southern phenomenon, contrary to popular belief, and neither were exclusively southerners the perpetrators and beneficiaries of Jim Crow. Exceptionalizing and obfuscating the legacy of it, does nothing save hide national complicity, and in many cases active participation in it, by those outside former Confederate states. Which is precisely what I called out in the post you quoted.

What you should be asking yourself, is which parties economically and socially benefitted most from Jim Crow. Or, not to put too fine a point on it...a labor force of some 6,000,000 freedmen left the south during the Jim Crow era with little but the clothes on their back, eager for economic opportunity and lives comparatively free from racial oppression, who made for a perfectly fine, easily demonized, captive labor force in the Gilded Age, an era marked by the rise of the company town, debt bondage, convict leasing, and violent suppression of labor rights movements through both private security and US military intervention.

Let me ask you this - where did you get all this information?

If your answer is anywhere but a statue, you've defeated your own point.

Did it have to?

King got plugged when he launched the Poor People's Campaign -- and lest we forget, the Poor People's March protest encampment received exactly the same welcome as the Bonus Army, BPP, Occupy, and BLM...widespread state violence. In other words, when he did something genuinely threatening to the state. In the meantime, the state already had a solution to perpetuating systemic and violent white supremacy, in a form tried, tested, and far more palatable to the American populace than Jim Crow itself ever had been, or ever would be...because its proof of concept came from the north: the war on drugs, the carceral state, convict labor, the prison-industrial complex, and debt bondage.

The game was rigged against the civil rights movement from the start. Civil rights legislation was allowed to pass, because the state already had means to continue systemic white supremacy beyond dated and rejected concepts such as chattel slavery, segregation, and their intertwined legacies.

So that's a "no", then.