The “Unite the Right” riot in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12 has left many Americans shocked at the state of hate groups in America. For some, the image of swastikas, Nazi salutes, white power symbols, and torches seems like something from a different time, not 2017. For others, many of whom experience acts of bigotry on a daily basis, the events in Charlottesville, including a car purposefully hitting a group of counter protesters and killing one, is expected, though no less horrifying. For those in the United States that have been paying attention, the “Unite the Right” rally shows the promise of President Donald Trump’s America, an America where racism, white supremacy, anti-Semitism, homophobia, Islamophobia, misogyny, transphobia, and xenophobia are not only present, but encouraged. There are many different conversations that have emerged from the protests in Virginia, including debates over the status of the alt-right as a terrorist group, the responses and response time from the Trump administration, and the meaning of such hate groups for the United States as a whole. One important debate that has received less attention relates to the status of Confederate monuments in the United States.

The debate surrounding the Confederate flag and other Confederate monuments peaked in the public eye in 2015, after white supremacist Dylan Roof murdered 9 people in a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, a city where the government proudly flew the Confederate flag. Since this time, activists continue to protest for the removal of such monuments and are met with extreme backlash. In April, New Orleans, Louisiana started the process of removing Confederate symbols despite death threats issued towards the contractors. According to New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, “we will no longer allow the Confederacy to literally be put on a pedestal in the heart of our city.” In Charlottesville, a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee was supposed to be removed before the white nationalists staged their rally. Several people at the riot waved Confederate flags. On Monday night, protesters in Durham, North Carolina pulled down a statue called the Confederate Soldiers Monument outside local government buildings. The statue included the words “in memory of the boys who wore the gray,” referring to Confederate soldiers. Journalist and prominent Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King wrote on Facebook shortly after the statue was removed, “since the government wouldn’t take the Confederate monument down in Durham, North Carolina, the people took it down themselves. I support this. Don’t act like you didn’t have enough time. You had 150 years. We’re done waiting. TAKE THEM ALL DOWN.”

Many continue to argue the Confederacy is a way to honour proud southern tradition. According to Buzzfeed News reporter Henry Gomez, “two years later, the flag and the Lost Cause are flickering back as potent symbols in American politics — symbols sometimes of an open new white nationalism, but more often of a brand of identity politics that prizes upsetting liberals above all else, in which the Confederate flag also serves as an emblem against ‘political correctness.’” However, this argument ignores the historical realities of the meaning of the Confederacy. On his late night show on Monday, comedian Seth Meyers referred to the Confederate flag debate with the following: “so let’s be clear about something. The symbols of the Confederacy are symbols of slavery and white supremacy. Confederate leaders said as much in their own words at that time. And to ignore that or to sanitize it is historical revisionism of the worst kind.”

This debate is not by any means small. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) estimates that there are 1,500 different things in the United States that celebrate the Southern Confederacy, including flags, holidays, statues, and names of streets, counties, cities, and schools. In Mississippi, the state flag even uses the design of the Confederate flag. USA According to USA Today journalist Sam Hall, “as long as Mississippi has the Confederate emblem on its flag, and as long as white supremacists proudly carry the Confederate flag as a symbol of racism, then the two remain forever synonymous with one another.” The SPLC also found that the 1,500 different things were found in twenty-four states, including states in the Union and states formed after the Civil War. This means that across the country, the United States government supports the message of these monuments, a message of white supremacy.

These are just some examples of the ways in which the Confederacy is officially endorsed by the United States government. These things, whether flags or holidays or statues, are not a celebration of Southern pride, but rather it is a glorification of the institution of slavery and the people who broke away from the United States in order to maintain the structures that considered black people as less than human. Gainesville, Florida mayor Lauren Poe said shortly before the removal of a Confederate statue in her town, “we should not glorify a part of our history in front of our buildings that really is a testament to America’s original sin.” That is exactly the problem with arguments that support the Confederate monuments. They are a celebration of a period in history that the United States needs to, but has yet to, actively condemn.

Make no mistake. The events in Charlottesville will not be the last. The United States was founded on the oppression of people of colour and relied heavily on their sacrifice to benefit the white population. The Confederate flag is a symbol of white supremacy, a nostalgic reminder of a time when white slave owners could freely beat and rape their slaves, a time when black families were torn apart through auctions that treated them like livestock, a time when it was not only acceptable but encouraged to treat human beings as property. When the United States government proudly flies the Confederate flag or honours Confederate Generals like Robert E. Lee as American heroes, they are endorsing this era and the structures in place that empower white citizens at the expense of others. For non-white Americans, the condemnation of the hate groups present at Charlottesville means nothing when the government continues to support white supremacy in other ways. Though the removal of Confederate monuments would not solve a problem as embedded in society as racism, it would take a stand against the vile hatred presented by the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis.