Brunswick Beacon, 07.04.24
Maya Angelou said: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." By repeatedly honoring white supremacists, Congressman David Rouzer shows who he is.
The Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery depicted a slave woman, described as “Mammy,” dutifully looking after a white soldier's baby, while another slave follows his master into battle to preserve slavery.
More American soldiers were killed by Confederates than died in WWI, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan combined. The monument honoring the killers was removed last year.
On June 13 Rouzer and 191 Republicans voted to reinstall it, failing because every Democrat and some Republicans refused. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, an African-American, blasted representatives like Rouzer who supported its reinstatement by saying, "What tradition are extreme MAGA Republicans upholding? What Confederate tradition are you upholding? Is it slavery? Rape? Kidnap? Jim Crow? Lynching? Racial oppression? Or all of the above?”
This is a repeat performance by Rouzer. In 2021, Congress voted to remove statues of four notorious white supremacists from the Capitol. Rouzer and 119 Republicans voted to keep them.
Rouzer voted to honor Vice President John C. Calhoun, who called slavery “a positive good," and U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, whose Dred Scott decision called African-Americans “so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
Rouzer voted to honor Arkansas Governor James P. Clarke, who said he was entrusted by “the people of the South” with “upholding white supremacy.”
Rouzer voted to honor NC Governor Charles B. Aycock, elected as a white supremacist. Aycock instigated the Wilmington Massacre of 1898, the only successful insurrection in American history, which violently overthrew a duly-elected, integrated government because, Aycock said, African-Americans were "unfit to vote" and "unfit to rule.”
How many times does Rouzer have to show you he supports white supremacy before you believe him? Or don’t you care?
Eileen Farrell
Sunset Beach