When Nazis lost World War II in 1945, Germany made laws forbidding any Nazi flags, statues of Nazi military figures or naming things after Nazis. However, when slave-owning Confederates lost the U.S. Civil War in 1865, southerners flew Confederate flags, erected statues of Confederate military figures and slapped the names of Confederate soldiers on everything.
So it makes sense that racial justice protestors in 2020 are tearing down these monuments to racism. In one particular bit of poetic justice, protestors in Raleigh, North Carolina toppled bronze soldiers off of a 75-foot Confederate monument at the state Capitol, tied ropes around one statue’s neck, literally dragging it through the city streets and then stringing it up on a corner traffic signal for all to see and applaud.
Not only did the treatment of this statue mirror the exact same public lynchings that southerners and white supremacists terrorized Black people with for generations, it was especially sweet that this act of public defiance occurred on Juneteenth, the day commemorating the emancipation of Black slaves in the United States.
It’s important to note however that the protestors weren’t inflicting a bit of revenge on the Confederate statue. They were merely treating it like an object and a political prop, the same way that racists and the American system have long treated Black people, dehumanizing and abusing it for public spectacle.
At one point, a protester knelt on the statue’s neck in a reference to George Floyd, the 46-year-old Black man who died on May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Later on, someone affixed a sign to the statue bearing the names of Black people killed by police before the statue was publicly hung.
With its bronze skin, this statue wasn’t a stand-in for what Black people believe should be done to white racists — it was a stand-in for what Black Americans have endured at the hands of their white neighbors many times over.
It’s actually a sign of progress that protestors are increasingly tearing down such statues during the ongoing protests. By doing so, they’re sending the message that they’re tired of living amongst those who, like Nazis, deserve to be reviled and forgotten in their bigoted infamy.