Letters to the editor (June 19, 2020)

Golden controversy

Recent events at Wichita State University generated a storm of intrigue involving the Trump administration, campus activism, and alumni support. Unfortunately, reporting by the press on these matters has been flawed. A questionable decision about free speech on campus was quickly transformed into one focused solely on a loss of donor support. I intend to correct the record.

I believe President Golden’s decision to abandon principle carelessly created animosity between students and alums. I felt his actions would result in a decrease in financial support, affirmed by emails I received from many across the community, who contribute in amounts large and small. So, I was dismayed to read that the media chose to mistakenly concentrate on Koch Industries to establish sides. There was widespread reporting that the company was “threatening” to withdraw its support, which was never the case.

To be clear, my actions in writing to the university and Board of Regents were based on my sincere belief that WSU’s decision to blunt Ivanka Trump’s commencement remarks ran afoul of the First Amendment’s constitutional guarantee to free speech and expression. This is about much more than just dollars to the university, which much of the media overlooked.

Racial reckoning

White Americans have never truly reckoned with our racist history. We went from slavery to the Civil War to failed Reconstruction to segregation to the Civil Rights Movement, decimating and traumatizing Native people and subjugating all minorities along the way. Then, without any reparations paid or reconciliation for horrific past behavior, we — white people — decided to pronounce a racially equal, colorblind society. But if we do not reckon with that gruesome past, racial equity will never be achieved.

We can no longer avoid confronting that history or deny our participation in it, because if you have lived in this country for any significant length of time you have either benefited from or been harmed by the institutions created to keep white people in power.

I am already seeing white folks’ interest in educating themselves and pushing for systemic changes that are so desperately needed start to decline as news coverage of national and global demonstrations starts to lessen. Guess what? Black and brown people do not have the luxury of withdrawing from that conversation because their lives and the lives of their children quite literally depend on that change arriving. White people shouldn’t be allowed to either.

Juneteenth and the Confederacy

So, we are back to arguing about Confederate flags, statues, and names on bases. Will it never end?

The South was defeated 155 years ago in a bloody war that cost the lives of at least 600,000 soldiers and even more civilians. Why would we glorify that? Confederate leaders were, in modern terms, guilty of treason.

Our adoration of Confederate icons gained steam in the early 20th Century. Historians contributed temporarily by arguing that the Civil War was rooted in competing economic systems. But clearly, the Confederacy’s distinct economic foundation was slavery. We finally got it right; almost no respectable historian now argues that the South’s determination to preserve slavery was not the root cause of the war.

Initially, Abraham Lincoln did not fight the war to emancipate the slaves but to salvage the Union. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a war measure — emancipating slaves only behind Confederate enemy lines, and exempting border states allied with the Union. All slaves, including those in border states, were not formally liberated until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. However, Lincoln certainly knew that his proclamation was the irretrievable first step in the demise of slavery.

Then what is “Juneteenth?” June 19, 1865, was the date that Union soldiers took control of Texas, effectively emancipating the slaves in that most remote Confederate state. African Americans have come to revere June 19 as the date slavery effectively ended.

Given this history, why do we cling to icons of these defeated enemies of the United States? If the Confederates had won, America would never have become the nation we salute in the Pledge of Allegiance — one nation “indivisible,” professing “liberty and justice for all.”

We do not dedicate statues of Nazi leaders. We do not name military bases for Japanese commanders who attacked Pearl Harbor. Why then, do we insist on retaining these tributes to the Confederacy? Black Americans think they know why; we cling to them as comforting reinforcement for our continued bigotry, rooted in slavery.

Enough! Pack up your Confederate memorabilia; store them somewhere out of sight. Please do not display them, especially on Juneteenth. Doing so will only add to the pain for our black brothers and sisters.