In Fairness to Our Heritage

Another two cents, perhaps my life savings.

I would like for those who equate Confederate statues with heritage to understand something:  this heritage did not exist in a pristine vacuum of only entitled people.  Due to circumstances beyond the control of women in subjection anywhere throughout world history, the statues became a symbol of my heritage, too. 

Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. discovered that “A whopping 35 percent of all African-American men descend from a white male ancestor who fathered a mulatto child sometime in the slavery era, most probably from rape or coerced sexuality.” (blackdemographics.com)

You have a lot of cousins you do not acknowledge – one Facebook page alone has 2,000 members who, like me, track their existence back to one slave owner and one slave.  It isn’t likely that all of us have had DNA tests or Ph.D.s in biology and it is likely some cousins married in, so let’s decrease that number by half.  I’ll even decrease it by half again.

Is it really any better?

When men and especially women who glorify the men of the Confederacy without qualification or restraint are willing to cull their family histories and erect statues in public spaces celebrating men who raped their foremothers, I will gladly reach into my rag bin and stand next to them to polish these symbols because then and only then, it will be fair.