Confederate Monuments, lynchings linked

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UVA researchers find link between Confederate monuments, lynchings

Important to say - I think these things are probably related, but I don’t think statues cause lynchings. It seems likely to me that the sort of communities that will lynch black people are also the sorts of communities that erect Confederate statues.

I support removing the statues or erecting plaques that are more appropriate, but we shouldn’t be under any illusions that this will make the world safer or less racist.

No, statues don't cause lynchings, but the Pro-Confederate/racist attitudes that went into erecting those Confederate monuments do.

Confederate Monuments are known to whisper racist thoughts to anyone who passes by them.

On one hand - the observation seems silly. Almost a tautology. Like saying "In the mostly Protestant USA states that have a high proportion of Spanish speakers tend to also have a high proportion of Roman Catholics. Ergo... speaking Spanish somehow causes a person to abandon Protestantism for Catholicism.

Though Catholicism and Spanish speaking correlate in the US (A) Spanish speaking, does not cause (B)belief in Catholicism. Both A and B are caused by (C) Immigration from Latin America because folks in Latin America tend to be both Spanish speaking and Catholic to begin with (and that is due to the fact that five centuries ago Latin America was founded by colonist and conquistadors from Spain which is a Catholic country). And the said immigrants from Latin America usually retain their native Catholicism once they come here.

On the other hand - its not quite like that. There is SOME half truth to it.

States that have a lot of Confederate statues presumably do so because they have a lot of local heroes in the Confederate cause. And they have that because they were once part of the southern confederacy during the Civil War. Those same states -southern states- also had segregation - in the post civil war era. Lynching was a way enforcing the racial power structure of segregation. Long story short- A)Confederate statues do not cause (B)Lynchings. Both A and B exist in the same region of the country that once had slavery- and fought a war to preserve slavery- and thus had military heroes from that war. So both A and B have roots in C (slavery). Much like the Spanish Speaking-Catholic correlation.One didnt cause the other. They both have a common origin in the past.

Except for one little thing. Many confederate statues were built in the 1950s just as the Black Civil Rights movement was emerging in the south. And they were built as a deliberate gesture of defiance to the Fed Govt. and to the Civil Rights movement.

So...such statues were often a statement about the present day politics. And thus were anti civil rights. Thus kinda WERE a deliberate statement in support of racism. So though its seems silly that A would cause B, there is SOME truth to thinking that A perpetuates the thinking the causes B.

The 1950s was almost 100 years after the Confederacy was defeated in the Civil War.

It seems pretty obvious that those who built tributes to Confederate folks harkened back to an ignorant past with hackneyed notions.

It’s a pity these folks could not put up with the equality of human beings of a darker skin color.