American Democracy in Context. Joseph A. Pika
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Название: American Democracy in Context

Автор: Joseph A. Pika

Издательство: Ingram

Жанр: Зарубежная публицистика

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isbn: 9781544345208

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СКАЧАТЬ has been a renewed debate recently about what, if anything, to do with Confederate monuments. There are more than 700 of them in 31 states across the United States, in public spaces ranging from city squares to state capitols and courthouse grounds. Most of the monuments were erected decades after the Civil War ended, during the height of the so-called Jim Crow era of racial segregation from the 1890s through the 1950s. Rather than honoring Confederate soldiers who died in the war, as most monuments did in the immediate aftermath of the conflict, these glorified leaders of the Confederacy.1 Critics view them as symbols of white supremacy designed to defy civil rights. New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu agreed and ordered four such monuments to be removed in 2017.

      One of the four New Orleans monuments that were removed did not even directly commemorate the Civil War. Instead, the Liberty Place Monument, erected in 1891, commemorated an 1874 Reconstruction-era uprising led by white supremacists. An inscription added to the monument in 1932 hailed that uprising as an important step toward the results of the 1876 elections, which—as the inscription put it—“recognized white supremacy in the South and gave us our state.”2 The other three monuments that were removed in 2017 honored leaders of the Confederacy. One was a bronze statue of Jefferson Davis (the only president of the Confederacy), which had been dedicated in 1911 at a “whites only” ceremony on the 50th anniversary of Davis’s inauguration. Children wearing red, white, and blue formed a living Confederate battle flag and sang “Dixie” at the event. Another was a bronze statue of Confederate General G.T. Beauregard on horseback, unveiled in 1915 (the same year that the Hollywood film Birth of a Nation glorified the Civil War and the Ku Klux Klan). A time capsule in the giant marble base of the statue, put in place in 1913, contained Confederate flags, currency, medals, and a photo of Jefferson Davis.3 The final monument (and the oldest) was a bronze statue, dedicated in 1884, of Confederate General Robert E. Lee standing high atop a 60-foot column, facing north with his arms crossed. Debate about whether to remove similar monuments in Virginia drew national attention and led to violence soon thereafter.

The inscription on a memorial reads: United States troops took over the state government and reinstated the usurpers but the national election November 1876 recognized white supremacy in the south and gave us our state.

      The 1932 inscription on a Confederate memorial in New Orleans hailed the end of Reconstruction as recognition of white supremacy in the South.

      Although many aspects of the Civil War, the slavery issue, and race relations are distinctly American, many nations around the world have confronted similar questions about how to deal with monuments to former regimes. Understanding how they have dealt with the issue may offer guidance as we continue to struggle with how to resolve this contentious debate. In the aftermath of World War II, for example, the newly created Federal Republic of Germany (what we came to think of as “West Germany”) banned the swastika, the Nazi party, and even publication of Adolf Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, and systematically removed Nazi-era memorials. In the years to come, it enacted laws against hate speech (Volksverhetzung—literally “incitement of the people”) and Holocaust denial, which remained in place after the reunification of East and West Germany. Thus, neo-Nazi marches are legal in the U.S., but not in Germany. No memorials to World War II generals grace the public squares of Germany nor is it legal to display the Nazi flag (though it is in the U.S.). Even Hitler’s bunker in Berlin, where he killed himself in 1945, has been paved over for fear that it would be treated as a shrine for neo-Nazis. On the other hand, memorials to the victims of the Nazi regime have been erected—from the massive Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (mere steps away from the Hitler bunker) to tiny brass cobblestones called stolpersteine (“stumbling blocks”) on streets throughout Germany, providing brief biographical details of the men, women, and children deported from those locations to concentration camps during the war.4

The inscription on the brass marker in German mentions the name, year of birth, date and place of deportation, and date of death. A white rose has been placed beside it.

      Brass markers called stolpersteine across Germany mark the last official address of thousands of victims of the Holocaust and are engraved with biographical details.

      ODD ANDERSEN / AFP / Getty Images

      Nazi Germany may seem like a particularly harsh comparison, but should any of the steps taken in postwar Germany be applied to the Confederate monument debate in the U.S.? Here, the display of the Confederate battle flag is a common sight. Until 2015, it flew over the state capitol of South Carolina, and it can still appear on special-order, state-issued license plates in several states as part of the Sons of Confederate Veterans logo. Should the battle flag be banned? Should there be more memorials to the victims of slavery and racial violence? Would something similar to stolpersteine make sense here—identifying spots where slaves were sold or where lynchings took place? Should we ban neo-Nazi marches and other forms of hate speech? Should Confederate monuments be removed? If so, all of them? Were all four of the New Orleans monuments equally offensive? Answers to these questions are not easy.

      Slavery in America

      The struggle for civil rights in the United States—freedom from governmental discrimination (unequal treatment) based on age, gender, race, or other personal characteristics—has affected many groups in the United States. Slavery—sanctioned, however discreetly, by the U.S. Constitution—paved the way for decades of racial discrimination in the United States, and so we start there.

      Slavery and the Constitution

      The U.S. Constitution did not contain the words slave or slavery, but debates about slavery—by then a firmly entrenched and legally recognized practice—greatly influenced the framers. Slavery, of course, does not comport with the framers’ lofty rhetoric of rights, but the hard truth is that several sections of the Constitution not only recognized but indirectly sanctioned the practice of slavery.

      For example, Article I, Section 9, in roundabout language, prohibited Congress from abolishing the importation of slaves until 1808 and empowered Congress to impose a tax or duty “on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.” Article IV, Section 2 contained the so-called fugitive slave clause, which required the return of slaves (those “held to Service or Labour in one State under the Laws thereof”) if they escaped to another state—even one where slavery was outlawed. And the so-called Three-Fifths Compromise of Article I, Section 2, discussed in Chapter 2, allowed each slave to be counted as three-fifths of one person for purposes of representation and taxation. Even the Bill of Rights originally did nothing to protect African Americans because the incorporation of the Bill of Rights—made possible by the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868—is mostly a twentieth-century phenomenon (see Chapter 4).

      civil rights Freedom from governmental discrimination (unequal treatment) based on age, gender, race, or other personal characteristics.

      fugitive slave clause A provision of Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution that required the return of escaped slaves to their owners even if they fled to a state where slavery was outlawed. Repealed by the Thirteenth Amendment (1865).

      Congress outlawed the importation of slaves in 1808, but the legality of slavery itself was a decision left to individual states. Early on, some states, such as Vermont (1777, before it officially entered the Union in 1781), Massachusetts (1780), and New Hampshire (1784) abolished slavery through their state constitutions. But slavery continued to be legal in many states, and СКАЧАТЬ