July 6, 2020

Conservatives Should Take Protests of Confederate Statues Seriously

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As near as I can tell, the most common reaction from most high-profile, movement conservatives to the toppling of Confederate statues is . . . sarcasm. Hey, how about toppling statues of Margaret Sanger? Burn! Why aren’t we toppling statues of Marx and Engels? Burn! How about the Hollywood Walk of Fame? Burn! And your hero Lincoln was just a big ol’ racist too. Why aren’t we toppling statues of him? Burn!

Is there something in the water that prevents so many conservatives with big media platforms from taking this seriously? There is, obviously, a perfectly good case for tearing down Confederate statues but leaving nearly everything else alone.¹ I should know, since it’s pretty much my position. After all, it’s one thing to have been racist in the past, when explicit racism was all but universal, and quite another to literally fight a war of secession in defense of Black slavery.

There’s nothing non-conservative about this stance—unless you’re afraid of offending a big chunk of your white Southern readers, of course. Or if laying sick burns on liberals is more important than seriously discussing whether or not statues of Confederate soldiers have any place in modern American life. So how about killing the sarcasm and taking a serious position on this?

And since I’m taking conservatives to task for this, I should also point to this piece by Jim Geraghty about the renaming of military bases. He makes a sensible argument about the best way to go about it.

¹“Nearly” because movements to de-statue racist colonizers like Columbus and Junipero Serra are of very long standing.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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