Refuting the Four Legs of Southern Confederate Memorial Defenders’ Arguments
This article discuses four loosely related arguments to try to justify the maintenance of Southern Confederate Monuments. These arguments are: The Tradition Argument, The Slippery Slope Argument, The Free Speech Argument, and The Ethics of Instruction Argument. All four arguments are found wanting and in basic denial of the phenomenological reality that these symbols carry in the public sphere. The constituted phenomenological realities of the life world of hate, violence, and terror these objects possess in the lives of Black Americans is evident when we turn to lived-experience.