Enough with the confederate monuments
by digby
Can you believe this nonsense is happening in 2019? This isn’t about some campus controvercy over micro-aggressions (not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.) This is about a pro-confederacy rally fergawdsakes…
Eight University of Mississippi basketball players kneeled during the national anthem ahead of Saturday’s home game in response to pro-Confederate rally nearby.
“We’re just tired of these hate groups coming to our school,” player Breein Tyree told reporters after the game.
Two groups marched to a Confederate monument on the Oxford, Mississippi, campus — only a few hundred feet from the game — to encourage the preservation of the symbol that has stood for more than 100 years.
“For over a decade, the administration and faculty have completely disregarded and disrespected the traditions of a once great southern university,” rally organizers said on Facebook.
The demonstration was scheduled to span four hours Saturday afternoon. On Friday, protesters demanded the removal of all Confederate monuments from the Ole Miss Circle on campus.
The Oxford community has been on alert after violence at a similar rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
Ole Miss basketball coach Kermit Davis called Saturday’s demonstrators outside agitators.
“This was all about the hate groups that came to our community and tried to spread racism and bigotry,” he said at a post-game press conference. “It’s created a lot of tension for our campus.”
The kneeling players, he said, “made an emotional decision to show these people they’re not welcome on our campus. And we respect our players freedom and ability to chose that.”
[…]
Similar demonstrations from groups on both sides of the Confederate monument issue erupted Saturday at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Protesters met at the former site of a Confederate statue. No arrests were reported.
There wasn’t any viuolence and the cops didn’t take up with the confederates. So that’s good. But the fact that this is still even an issue is absurd. It’s time to take all these monuments and put them in museums where they can be seen for what they are instead of some kind of tribute. They don’t belong in public spaces for many reasons but the top of the list is to take away a powerful symbol from people who are using them as a rallying point for their noxious white supremacy. Enough.