Perspective

This Isn't a Border Wall: It's a Monument to White Supremacy

Like Confederate monuments, President Trump’s vision of a massive wall along the Mexican border is about propaganda and racial oppression, not national security.
President Donald Trump shows off U.S.-Mexico border wall prototypes in March 2018.Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Not long ago, I sat on a panel to discuss monuments and memorials as civic infrastructure at the National Trust for Historic Preservation conference in San Francisco. Afterward, during a question-and-answer period, an older white man asked if there was any universe in which these existing monuments to the Confederacy should stand, given that the South won the war.

Yes, you read that correctly.