Luella E. Cole: It’s not the statues we should bring down, it’s those who cling to racism
I am a born and bred Democrat. But I fear that some in my party are making a serious mistake in demanding that all vestiges of the Confederacy must be obliterated. The Civil War is part of our history, one that we as a people should have taken lessons from. Unfortunately, it must be apparent to anyone who is paying attention that many factors leading to the secession of the southern states have not gone away, in spite of wars fought against such wrong-headed thinking. Do we want to fight the Civil War and World War II all over again?
Insisting upon destruction of symbols of the Confederacy will do nothing but create chaos, inflaming those who live in the past into committing the kind of domestic terrorism that we saw in Charlottesville. For us to precipitate in that sort of action, even with the best of intentions, brings no favor to Democrats. If there is to be any hope of reclaiming our democracy, we must let the courts deal with domestic terrorists. Let them crawl back wherever they were hiding before Trump called them out. Let us focus on equality for all.
Luella E. Cole, Modesto
This story was originally published August 18, 2017 at 12:35 PM with the headline "Luella E. Cole: It’s not the statues we should bring down, it’s those who cling to racism."