This story originally appeared in The Orlando Sentinel on Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2015

Should Confederate monuments be destroyed? No – and yes – and that’s not really the question. The focus shouldn’t be on granite, iron or art. It should be on the people who view the monuments.

In a convoluted way, many people’s defense of Confederate monuments may be a way to minimize the horror of slavery. This group isn’t exactly bigoted – they’re distancing themselves from evil by protesting too loudly, and focusing on the soldiers while ignoring the cause. Their Southern “heritage” goes back as far as mama’s cooking, warm hospitality and a banjo picking “Dixie.” It stops short of slave auctions, rape and lynching.

Under slavery, Americans (we) kidnapped human beings, chained them and beat them with impunity in “the land of the free.” Blacks were possessions with deaths unrecorded. It may be an apples-and-oranges comparison to the Holocaust, but apples and oranges are both fruit – and body count isn’t the only way to judge a crime against humanity.

In Germany, WW II Holocaust memorials are different. Tourists visit Auschwitz, but it’s not a shrine to Hitler – it’s a reminder of man’s inhumanity to man. It forces visitors to remember that unimaginable atrocities happen and decent people sometimes allow it.

With slavery, the North isn’t blameless. While the South owned slaves, the North allowed slavery and created black ghettos. There were naysayers above and below the Mason-Dixon line until 1861, but they clearly couldn’t naysay loud enough. Every multigenerational white American today has ancestors who were at least complicit in allowing slavery.

We need to own that.

We don’t need guilt, but we also shouldn’t marginalize U.S. atrocities. Southerners rationalize slavery’s evil by defending Confederate monuments as a way to honor the dead. Northerners rationalize slavery by blaming it on Southerners.

Which gets back to the Confederate monuments: How do we feel when we look at them? At least a tinge of sadness at the inhumanity of slavery? Are the monuments ever a never-let-it-happen-again reminder? Too often – almost always – we conveniently slip torture and murder out of the equation because the truth hurts. It’s understandable but it’s not ethical.

Confederate soldiers fought bravely. So did Union soldiers. They deserve honor and remembrance.

But when a Confederate monument crosses into history-worship territory, we, as a people, should clarify exactly what we’re worshiping. “Our heritage” is too general. Even if unintentional, we can’t close the wound of slavery if we praise the old South without simultaneously acknowledging our faults.

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