The outcry from Memphis against the
state government have some asking to secede from the state. After the
controversial actions taken by the state legislation in Nashville, leaving the
state government behind would be appealing, however, this would solve none of
the city’s problems.
Last year, Memphis removed two
statues: one of Nathan Bedford Forest, KKK leader and military general during
Memphis’s bloodiest battle, the Fort Pillow massacre, and one of the
Confederate president Jefferson Davis. The land was sold to a private
organization to remove the statues, as the city of Memphis was not legally
allowed to so. However, Tennessee’s House of Representatives recently announced
that $250,000 would be removed from the bicentennial fund as a consequence for
the statue removal. One representative remarked, “This is politics. What was
done in Memphis, in removing the monuments, was basically a sneaky thing to
do." Despite the fact that the city of Memphis did not cross any legal
lines, the state clearly still feels the protection laws against removing Confederate
statues should have been upheld.
Perhaps it is the frustration of
disagreeing with a higher power; perhaps the city is getting fed up with
Nashville dictating what happens in Memphis. However, the want to secede from
Tennessee is arguably at least partially caused by the discrimination and
racist attitudes taken by state officials when removing money from the
Memphis’s budget. The fact that legislators explicitly stated their reasons for
reducing the budget draws a line in the sand. The State chose to perpetuate the
memory and idolization of a figure who was a white supremacist. The removal of
white supremacy that Forest stood for, both in his actions at Fort Pillow and
as a leader of the KKK, is being punished by the state. A House representative agreed with this idea,
saying, “[the state is] going to choose to honor that person here on this floor
today, and hold it against a city." Many believe seceding from the state
of Tennessee would leave a ‘Big Brother’ with racist tendencies behind.
However, racism is not simply in
the government at the state level. We are not free from the grip of racial
injustice within the city limits. Memphis is a place of unequal opportunity,
and leaving the city to its own devices would not solve our racial issues. Simply
looking at our education system, racial divides between private and public,
urban and suburban schools are startling. The schools are funded by property
taxes, which unequal as a result of white flight and redlining. These
situations disproportionately affect children of color, setting them up for failure.
To say nothing of the resulting financial troubles for the city, leaving the
state would do nothing to relieve Memphis of its racial inequality issues. The
local government is nowhere near being a nonbiased, equal opportunity entity. The
city needs to combat its own issues before attempting to leave the state’s
behind.
I believe that this idea of Memphis seceding is ludicrous at its core and will not get any tractions. While the legislators in Nashville might be more outwardly racist, the city of Memphis has many of the same problems with racial injustice. It is absurd that state lawmakers would take 250,000 dollars of out our cities because they did the right thing and took down the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue. With that aside, Memphis still needs to address issues such as segregation, public housing, and the fact that there are no free homeless shelters in the city of Memphis.
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