Let's Get Rid Of Everything We Think Is Racist!

Friday on the radio I heard a local talk show host, Rick Roberts, talking about the Confederate statues being removed in Dallas and around the country, and schools and streets named after Confederates are being renamed. Rick got to thinking out loud about what else we should do away with because it relates to the South or the Confederacy. Here were some of the suggestions.

Elvis Presley once recorded “Dixie.” You know the one.

“Oh, I wish I were in the land of cotton.
Old times there are not forgotten.
Look away, look away, look away,

Dixieland.”

Elvis was obviously a racist to record a song like that.

Hank Williams, Jr. also made the list. He recorded a song called “Dixie On My Mind.” Obviously, any man who thinks of Dixie like that is a racist. We need to do away with Old Bocefus and his music.

The band Alabama recorded “Song Of The South.” What could be more racist than that?

And Lynard Skynard puts Confederate flags on at least some of their album covers. So they're gone as well.

My question since this whole “Remove the Statues” campaign began has been “Where does it stop?”

When we start removing harmless (and priceless) pieces of history, which these two things certainly are, where does it stop? Do we ban songs and recording artists who record “the wrong song?” Do we start removing books from libraries because they contain controversial stories?

A school district in Mississippi has removed Harper Lee's classic book “To Kill A Mockingbird,” a novel about racial inequality and hatred, because some people complained about some of the words in the book. (The book is still in the library.) Yet I would bet that those people complaining hear those same words from their favorite musical artists and/or comedians and that's perfectly OK.

A church in Arlington, Virginia, removed to name plates and a couple of plaques that were placed in the church as historical tributes to two of their more well known members – George Washington and Robert E. Lee. They said some parishoners were refusing to return to church because the plaques make them feel “unsafe.” Really?

I wonder how long they had attended the church before they decided they felt unsafe? Did they attend before the NFL players began taking a knee? And has anyone asked them how an inanimate historical plaque threatens them?

Where does it stop? Where does political correctness end and dealing with real life begin?

History does not change simply because you remove things that depict how things were or that honor brave men (and women) who lived extraordinary lives. The sooner people stop being offended by history and allowing for the fact that our past can't be changed to suit them the better off the nation will be.

By the way - the best part of the conversation was when he said “The Dixie Chicks – just their name is racist. But we don't need to get rid of them – they pretty much did that on their own.”