America’s identity crisis

Long before student activists started talking about pulling down statues of Cecil Rhodes, a cultural war was being waged in America over monuments honouring General Robert E. Lee and other leaders of the Confederacy. In 2001 there was a petition to remove some of these statues from the University of Texas on the grounds that their presence might ‘lead people to believe that the university is tolerant of the Confederate ideology regarding slavery’. The arguments that started on campus then branched out beyond it. To some, the statues were a symbol of Southern heritage and pride. To others, they were a monument to racism.

In recent years this argument has intensified, gathering a momentum that few of America’s political leaders fully understood. Movements like Black Lives Matter sprang up and pushed their agenda in the growing culture war. However legitimate their initial cause, such groups swiftly descended into rhetoric and activities which swapped the language of racial reconciliation for that of race-baiting.