About confederate memorials. They are definitely a part of US history, that's why they belong in a museum about racism.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/08/16/the-whole-point-of-confederate-monuments-is-to-celebrate-white-supremacy/?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.2bd70987d9f7
I disagree with that. The Confederacy wasn't just about "racism". In fact, given the misinformation and the lack of awareness of many with regards to the "electoral college", I would proffer that the idea of the Confederacy is more relevant than ever, and is being clouded - no, let's be more direct and say "overwhelmed" - by the spectre of racism.
This is what I mean by the notion that "identity politics do not trump other issues". Yes, racism was an element of that whole fiasco. But there was racism in the north AND south before the Civil War, during the Civil War, and unfortunately, after the Civil War. Some of you would argue (not wrongly) that there is racism today.
What the Confederacy was about more than racism (I know, I know, I must be DEPLORABLE!) is STATES RIGHTS. That doesn't marshal people protesting in the streets, it doesn't lend itself to cute little memes with a beautiful (in every sense of the word) black woman standing down armed, armored law enforcement, but it IS for better or worse the crux of the issue. The Founding Fathers did not consciously and with forethought punt the slavery issue because they were white racist bastards; they punted it because they knew something that the emotional and reactive didn't: that without a union of States (someone look up the name of this country; it'll tell you a lot) slavery wasn't going ANYWHERE. It was here to stay as long as each colony was an entity unto itself. Further, that "union" of states, united in purpose, would never happen if a prerequisite was "get rid of slavery". Adams in particular - this was the guy that risked EVERYTHING to defend British soldiers in a court case just prior to the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, to much scorn and ridicule, I might add - knew slavery to be a dead end economically, politically, and from a basic human rights perspective. He was not naïve; he knew it ran afoul of almost every tenet of the new "Bill of Rights" document.
But he knew it had to be a process (this is why Adams is by far my favorite of the Founding Fathers). And so the first step was to get the country - as opposed to the colonies individually - united as states. The United States of America. From there, the Federal sovereignty could assert it's power, always in keeping with the powers reserved to the States explicitly and implicitly in the Constitution, and address the elephant in the room. The CFA was a reaction and a rejection to that.