On the one hand, I can see how folks might feel like being a member of SoC would make some folks uncomfortable. On the other hand, the stated purpose of the group is historical and heritage. I guess at least one of the questions I ask (as a lifelong Southerner) is: Can you be a member of a group that celebrates the Confederacy without tacitly endorsing the fundamentally racist nature of the Confederacy?
To be clear, I don’t know this guy, and I’m not making a value judgement about him personally.
And I wish people would stop acting like you can separate the Confederacy from the racist beliefs that created the it in the first place. It’s like saying you only joined the KKK to learn their fancy wood burning techniques.
I find the connection to the racist past damning, but I find the current willingness of SCV to march alongside white supremacists even more troubling.
That said, I am more than a little concerned with the idea that a government employee can be censured for taking a super-shitty political position that doesn’t call for any illegal activity. Supporting past illegal activity like betraying one’s nation doesn’t count, nor does supporting past super-shitty activity like engaging in chattel slavery.
His cases need to be looked at very closely for possible bias, and if any is found, fire his ass. But absent evidence of bias? I dunno, man.
As a black man in America I have no faith that anyone who chooses to associate themselves with Confederate anything will engage with the public fairly. In my opinion, his voluntary association with the CSV is all the evidence needed to demonstrate bias.
I agree. Twenty-five years ago I briefly considered joining the Sons of Confederate Veterans, because I thought it would be cool to belong both to them and the Sons of Union Veterans (both organizations are only open to people descending from Civil War vets, and I have great-great grandfathers on either side). But back then, they were more of a hobby group; they were originally a spin-off of an organization of actual Confederate Army veterans.
They’ve since become political, and their politics are of the very ugliest. I firmly agree that this officer’s membership in the SCV raises very serious questions about his impartiality in his job. It shouldn’t be an automatic bar, but it should prompt thorough scrutiny of his interactions with African-Americans.
Chances are good that it’s going to be almost impossible to find bias, even if he is biased. And the reason for that is that it’s very likely that his caseload is either predominately white or predominantly non-white. *
But I don’t think that really matters. Because a lot of the time the appearance of bias is as harmful as actual bias. I work for a similar agency and our actual policy is that employees may not be members of a racist/terrorist organization. In theory, I could belong to an organization that maintains gravesites in a Confederate cemetery because there’s an least an argument that the organization itself is not racist, even if a lot of its members are. But once a group is marching with white supremacist and racist organizations, you can’t make that argument anymore. At that point my employer would absolutely fire his ass- and that’s before we get to the issue of the allegation that he is the commander of the local group and therefore can’t credibly claim that he was unaware of the affiliation with racist groups.
Parole and probation officers are typically assigned based on where the people they supervise live - in some cases, that may mean an officer is assigned to multiple counties and in others, like NYC it may mean they are assigned to* part* of a police precinct. But it’s not uncommon for those smaller areas to be less diverse than the larger area they are part of.
If there’s a general policy that we can put in place to keep racist idiots out of public positions, I am all about that. How can we set such a policy up that doesn’t run afoul of first amendment rights to association and speech?
“Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of [del]the Communist party[/del] the CSV?”
If you can show that he discriminated against his clients, or that he broke the law in some way, fire him. Advocating for nasty political positions is not against the law, and does not constitute probable cause to arrest or proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Are these laws still in place? What sort of loyalty oaths do we still require?
Considering the anti-BDS laws in place, I wonder if we could set up a requirement for public office along the lines of, “I am not, nor will I be, a member of an organization that works to praise or glorify any group that engaged in armed insurrection against the government of the United States.”
I also think the comparison with Communist Party basically answers the question. The reality is that if the electorate is sufficiently opposed to the ideology held, or imputed to be held, by a member of an organization then they might make it disqualification from at least some kinds of public positions of trust. You can argue it’s hypocritical for people to criticize past discrimination against membership in the Communist Party (a strictly political/ideological org) in the US yet favor discrimination against membership in what purports to be a non-political/ideological historical society (though it’s claimed it’s not what it purports to be and maybe not) but again the reality is that overwhelming public revulsion with certain associations results in them being discriminated against. Which might not actually happen in NC, though I guess it’s more likely it would if a stray member of the SCV wanted to be a probation officer here in NJ.
Asking non Americans outside the US who want to come to the US about their political/ideological affiliations is IMO though a whole different story. I’ve no qualms about that at all. This kind of issue with Americans (or residents who must also be afforded the same liberties) though can be troubling and difficult.
I personally don’t accept that respect for Confederate military achievements is endorsement of pro-slavery or even racism (beliefs about race per se were of course much less of a distinction between common beliefs in the the North and South at the time of Civil War, but the seceding states did secede principally to preserve slavery, there’s no reasonable debate about that, it’s in black and white in their secession declarations ). The part about SCV affiliating with white supremacist groups now if generally true would be a lot more of a problem IMO.