UNC protests present debate of law versus morality

Ali Akhyari
Charleston City Paper
Originally posted September 5, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Immediately afterwards, UNC Chancellor Carol Folt referenced a 2015 law that protects historical monuments from being removed from any public property. Instead of making a public statement about the gross persistence of monuments to hate, she claimed her hands were tied and that students shouldn't break the law. Remember, after Charlottesville, it was president Trump who seemed incapable of acknowledging hate, saying there were "very fine people on both sides" after a woman was killed protesting the white supremacist march.

The debate regarding Confederate monuments and flags will never end so long as there are southerners more interested in rewriting history than admitting the Confederacy is intimately related to white supremacy. The true danger, though, is the normalization of white supremacy and nationalism in the Trump era. So it should follow, then, that Americans toppling monuments to oppression and hate will be increasingly forgivable as long as the the state and federal government coddles white nationalism.

Right after UNC, Trump tweeted a popular white nationalist talking point about land redistribution in post-Apartheid South Africa — a mirror of the battle minorities in this country have fought since emancipation.

So, I applaud the removal of Silent Sam. The monument fell at a time when the president has not only failed to recognize racism and historical oppression, instead encouraging it, pining for the return of Anglo-Saxon supremacy.

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