20SP1101: Faulk, Project 2
dr.mmcginnis@gmail.com
Podcast Script
Hey listeners, this is Caleb Faulk with Dr. McGinnis’s class, and today I will be discussing “Why Confederate Monuments Must Fall”, written by Karen L. Cox as an op-ed piece for The New York Times. Cox is a history professor at the University of North Carolina. The topic and opinion of this article are clearly stated in the title, but the article itself is a bit misleading.
In the first paragraph, Cox writes about how activists in Charlotte, North Carolina decide to take down a monument of a Confederate soldier. While reading about it, I was initially very confused. Cox uses words such as “yanking”, “kicking”, “beating into submission”, and “literally” to describe the way these activists take down the statue and what they do with it. Using these word choices, she led me to believe that she was against these activists, which would be contrary to her opinion/argument, later established, that the monuments should be taken down.
For a large section of the article Cox primarily addresses only the pros of removing the Confederate monuments. She mentions that Donald Trump, along with white supremacists and Confederate apologists believe these monuments should stay up, but she writes about their explanation to a point where I initially questioned which side she was on. In her opinionated “argument”, she doesn’t have very much reasoning as to why these statues should be taken down, which to me isn’t exactly a great argument. The little bit of reasoning that she does have is her opinion. Cox continues to explain that these monuments should be taken down because “Confederate monuments have always been symbols of white supremacy.” However, this statement is, like I said, only her opinion. Depending on the way you view these monuments, they could represent our nation’s past, or just be memorials for important historical figures. It all depends on one’s opinion. Cox’s opinion doesn’t have very much support, which makes for a weak argument.
Another thing I noticed in the article was that Cox continues to explain that these Confederate monuments were put up because of racism and violence towards African-Americans. However, she fails to discuss the fact that they could have been built for other reasons. For example, she describes Robert E. Lee’s monument as if it was erected simply because he was a slave-owner. However, she overlooks the possibility that it could have been built because he was a brave and noble warrior fighting for what he believed in.
Cox brashly equates the loving respect of Confederate monuments with “white male supremacy”, “nativism”, anti-feminism, anti-Semetism, and homophobia. She doesn’t hesitate to put everyone who has an appreciation for these monuments in this category. Is it possible that this appreciation for Confederate monuments has deep roots in Southern culture and history with little or no regard to the reality of slavery?
The author describes those who want to keep the Confederate monuments up as if all of them are neo-nazis. Although the passion with which she presents her argument may cause some people to agree with her, it also seriously skews the reality of this social conflict. It would be like me saying that all people who participated in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s condoned the violence of the Black Panthers and Students for the Democratic Society.
Confederate monumtents sprinkled around the South are, in Cox’s reasoning, nothing more than a tribute to slavery. She conveniently ignores the probable likelihood that the statues were instead erected to honor brave and noble men who sacrificed their lives for what they believed in.
Professor Cox, in her highly opinionated and biased assessment of the Confederate monuments issue, tries to skew the reader’s opinion to her mindset by using trigger words, which serve no purpose other than to sway the reader’s emotions. She uses words such as “neo-Nazism”and “homophobia” to change the reader’s attitude towards the topic. These words have no relation to the issues being discussed, but have the ability to capture the emotions of the reader.
If the objective of Professor Cox was to evoke the emotions of the reader, she was gloriously successful. However, if her goal was to bring edification to a contentious issue, she failed.