Friday, June 16, 2017

Business community view of Confederate Monuments

This is a link to a Bloomberg article, "Alabama Won't Quit the Confederacy."

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-15/alabama-won-t-quit-the-confederacy

The subtitle is, "A state law preservers old monuments, the trace elements of treason and tyranny."

The article explains the law's workings. It is very critical of the state. These are some quotes.

Alabama markets its racial crucible, but still can't bear to get beyond it. In 2004 Lee Warner, then executive director of the Alabama Historical Commission, resigned from the commission, complaining that other members were less than eager to memorialize the civil-rights struggle.
And:
Meantime, black children continue to move through abysmally underachieving high schools named for Davis and Lee. Like Mississippi, Alabama continues to observe a combined state holiday jointly honoring King and Lee, a slave owner who fought to maintain totalitarian tyranny over black people. It's an occasion both to begrudge King's achievements, and to thwart them.

If white supremacy in America refuses to die, it's in part because too many white politicians insist on filling its decaying lungs with breath. The Memorial Preservation Act is only the latest attempt to resuscitate the corpse.
There are many articles critical of Confederate monuments and this article is a good article doing that. What makes it very significant is that it is in a prominent business publication and it sends a message to the business community that Alabama is retrograde on Civil Rights. Not a good place to locate a facility which will require hiring professionals with various specialized skills.

The Nation has an article about the farce of Republican legislators using various pretexts to keep Confederate monuments. https://www.thenation.com/article/republican-legislators-want-you-to-think-confederate-monuments-arent-political/

The Bloomberg article doesn't pull punches. This is the comment of the author.
That the law's proponents were too cowardly to admit what they were doing -- they just love old stuff -- might be considered incremental progress. But as Landrieu acknowledged, there is no decent way to compromise with the Confederacy. The statues and school names, trace elements of tyranny and treason, must go.
Across the political spectrum, excluding right-wing cranky, there is support for Confederate monuments to go.

It is my intention of keeping a registrar of who votes for the retention of Confederate monuments. If the Republican Party is the party of the Confederacy they should know that it will be documented and it is and it will be their public image.

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