The Roots and Reality of White Supremacy in America

On this episode of Hard Facts, Dr Gerald Horne joins John Wight to explore the history of slavery in the US and beyond, and to analyze how it feeds into the events of Charlottesville and their aftermath as America confronts not only its ugly past but also, and more crucially, its ugly present.

After the ugly events of Charlottesville, historical revisionism has ensued with the attempt to legitimise the US Confederacy, ascribing to it the nobility and romanticism that is reflected in the statues and monuments to its iconic figures, such as General Robert E Lee.

This historical revisionism — or fake history — is an insult to the millions of African men, women, and children who were bought, sold, beaten, raped, and tortured at the whim of their white slaveowners across slave plantations in the South in service to barbarism. There was nothing noble or romantic about the Confederacy. It was a state established not on the basis of asserting state's right but with the objective of maintaining and expanding this vile trade in human flesh.

Thus the campaign to remove confederate statues and monuments represents a much needed historical corrective and opposition to the culture of white supremacy and racism that has long endured in the South, and which these monuments reflect.

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