Well, as an Englisher Doper (who has lived in the South quite a while now) there is an odd attitude towards the days of Empire. Obviously there is no one opinion, but mine was a mixture - acknowledging the wrong doing, disliking the concept of imperialism in the knowledge it occurred, as well as a degree of good feeling (not necessarily pride, and quite probably historically misplaced) that we handled things better than other imperial powers. We didn’t destroy our economy thorugh our empire, like Spain. We generally speaking didn’t wait to be thrown out in long, bloody, drawn out wars (well, once we learned our lesson over here ), we built better infrastructure in the colonies than many powers (railways in India), and rather than ruling totally through people from the mother country (like I believe the French did), we at least attempted to foster a local class of bureaucrats, which amde the transition to independence easier. And we certainly weren’t the Belgians, who weren’t very nice at all in the Congo.
As I said, all of that could be complete claptrap, or it could be somewhat accurate but with rosetinted glasses. We don’t learn a lot about China (or I didn’t) but the opium wars aren’t viewed as a particularly proud moment in history. I think the general tack of British attitude towards Empire, especially for those of us on the left, is that “we could have been worse.”
Something I will say from 15 years in the States is that the US as a whole, not just the South, seems to be less willing than other countries to admit to past failings. Boy I am going to get it for that one.
( )^2. Then why is the Confederacy which those long-dead, rarely-considered relatives organized and fought for still so romanticized and valorized by so many Southerners? If Southerners are largely indifferent to the memory of those ancestral Confederates, why do so many of them still seem to identify so strongly with the Confederacy?
Absolutely, and I consider their stories (some of which were recounted by the journalist Jessica Mitford in her article “You-All and Non-You-All”) very moving. So are you saying that that’s the source of the difference in attitudes? In other words, today’s Southerners don’t still identify with Civil-Rights-era segregationists chiefly because there were a lot of Southerners on the “right side” to identify with instead, whereas there isn’t as much awareness of Civil-War-era Southerners on the “right side”?
I think the outrage being expressed in this thread isn’t primarily directed towards the actions of Confederate-era Southerners, but rather towards the actions of those Southerners of today who seem to take pride in and glamorize the Confederacy, despite its devotion to slavery.
From another great song celebrating that unique Southern ethos:
By God we’re so darn proud to be from Texas - yahoo!
Even of our pride we’re proud and we’re proud of that pride, too
Our pride about our home state is the proudest pride indeed
And we’re proud to be Americans, until we can secede
I pay particular attention to your posts. You write really well, apparently without much effort. I’ve said it before, you should write some Southern Gothic Humor fiction.
Southern confederacy pride is particularly irksome because it is so obvious that it is based on propaganda. Yes, these were brave and doughty soldiers: in the cause of enslaving a whole race of people. Ewww. Yuck. At least the Germans are mostly ashamed of the Nazis. And yes, they are comparable, with the Nazis looking considerably worse.
I think Liberal goes on a bit too much on Andrew Jackson, much as Der Tris is too harsh on religion, but without people being uncompromising in their criticisms perhaps those of us trying to be more balanced wouldn’t get a word in edgewise. Criticism of history needs to have the credibility of looking at the entire context.
By some in this thread all that you said would be summarized thusly:
The problem with defending Southerners as something other than monolithic simpletons who goose step to the past (and whether southerners include black people who’ve lived here for 390 years is at the discretion of whoever is speaking) is best summed up by rose-glasses refusal to accept the past.
I speak for all Southerners to the same degree you speak for all the English. You can’t believe how hysterically funny I find being the personofication of the Lost Cause Apologia; I’ve been damned near crucified by my fellow southerners for my statements about my fellow southerners. My experience of the south is a bit different than most peoples because I have observed it as an insider (a white blonde haired blue eyed person whose ancestors all settled here before the Revolution) and as an outsider (a gay atheist). My father was a Civil War historian who discussed Antietam during commercial breaks from Hee-Haw and had one of the most fascinating conversations on race I’ve ever heard while waiting to sober from a moonshine drunk and talking to a returned-from-the-north Korea-vet descendant of one of his great-grandfather’s slaves; the night he died he sang LORENA and quoted a letter from Jefferson Davis to Varina Davis in giving an apology of sorts to my mother. My mother was a bipolar hillbilly of mostly German ancestry who would make incredibly racist comments (in private) about mixed marriages and who would do absolutely anything on Earth to help the many black individuals she honestly and sincerely loved like family. We grew up extremely isolated with old women on the compound who kept photos of their Confederate grandfathers prominently displayed on their cabin wall* so all in all it was a lot more talked about in my house than most, and with surprising objectivity. My experience of the south as a kid was vastly different from those born the same day who grew up in affluent country club suburbs, housing projects, trailer parks, small cities, or hell- five miles down the road. I think the childhood upbringing of bipolarity and isolation as daily realities informed my view as much as primary source materials.
But I do not, did not, cannot conceive of evidence that will make me see it as all evil or all good rather than an incredibly multilayered ethical and sociological carbuncle of issues of widely varied values.
I think ancestral pride is particularly irksome regardless of the subject. If your great-grandfather was Chairman Mao, the Grand Dutchess Anastasia, the world’s first parking attendant or a drunk taxidermist in Krakow who finished second in Olympic Wifebeating- well, it’s interesting, you have every reason to display his photo, I can understand researching it, but neither his accomplishments or failures are yours. I find Gay Pride to be obnoxious- I didn’t choose to be gay, I just am. What I have with both gays and Confederates and the overlap thereofis a lack of shame.
As has been mentioned, the ire raised in this thread is not about the South, or Southerners. It’s about false historical revisionism and the revulsion and pain it causes.
Honor the memory of your ancestors who fought honorably - fine. Just don’t make up fables about what happened or go into tu quoque overdrive about how everybody else is equally guilty and isn’t it uniquely wonderful that we’ve got the Southern Poverty Law Center etc.
A large part of respecting your history is accepting it for what it is.
Promoting denialism is always going to raise hackles, and I think you’re smart enough to know that the reaction cannot be simply dismissed as regional prejudice.
Well, I think that the point the OP and many others in this thread are making is that there ought to be some shame for modern Southerners in identifying with the Confederacy. Insofar as it was based on and devoted to the perpetuation of slavery, it was an evil regime (although of course, many of the individuals belonging to it were good and kind, and many performed heroic actions).
Naturally, issues of history and heritage are very complex. But the beef here doesn’t seem to be with people acknowledging complexities and pointing out the ramifications of multifaceted issues. The beef seems to be primarily with people acting in very simplistic symbolic ways to assert identification with or respect for the Confederacy, like displaying Confederate flags on their bumper stickers or naming things after Jefferson Davis. Those are the actions that you’d think would be prevented by feelings of shame about their connections with the pro-slavery cause.
Ask those who romanticize them, not me. I don’t, never have. I find them interesting. I came in to answer why the Confederacy is no more deserving of contempt than most other things in history.
I should have confined my response to
but that wouldn’t be me.
I once lived in a house owned by Virginia Durr and when she was old I cleaned up some of her pee stain from the seat of a chair. Today she’s forgotten, the Norma Desmond of Civil Rights. It irks me that most people praising Rosa Parks don’t even know Virginia’s name, though in fairness I long ago through away that Kleenex.
Who are what? One-percent of the population down here? Like the Roman Empire in Rome it’s at once all around and rarely thought about. Are there great big Confederate Pride rallies through the streets? Does the rebel flag still fly over all state capitols?
The OP asks why we don’t condemn the Confederacy. My response question is how exactly do you want them condemned?
By defeating them in war? Done.
By illegalizing slavery? It’s done.
By stripping Lee and Davis of their citizenship for their lifetime? Done.
By seizing property belonging to many Confederate officers? Done.
By destroying the Southern economy? Done.
By having people admit “slavery was a very bad and evil and unjust system”? Done.
By making it said that slavery was the ultimate cause of the Civil War on the southern side? Done.
What more do you want? By digging up the graves of Confederate veterans and grinding them into powder and using it to make a statue of Tolerance?
What and where exactly is all of this veneration and worship of Confederacy by modern day white Southerners that gets people so worked up?
The words of a few dumbass jingoistic politicians? News flash- every region has dumbass jingoistic politicians.
The fact some people fly the rebel flag on their private property? News flash- it’s their right to do so. If I choose to fly a gay pride flag or the flag of Nova Scotia on my property then I don’t feel the need to justify it to anybody.
The fact that Confederate historic sites are marked and often open to the public? So are Revolutionary sites, and millions of northerners fought in the war and their descendants or people who have no descent from them are interested in those sites as well.
Should we condemn everything to which there’s an offensive side? Shall we start with the Federal Holidays perhaps?
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Birthday- he was a plagiarist and a womanizer who took credit for the deeds of others and had a questionable relationship with the FBI; condemn it.
Washington’s Birthday- slaveowning social climber who wrote passionate love letters to his best friend’s wife and may have had sex with his slaves. Get rid of it.
Memorial Day- for people who died in war? Including those killed by friendly fire? Including those who were killed taking land from Mexicans? Are we saying ‘only those who died are worthy to be honored’? Get rid of it.
Independence Day- an act of treason against Great Britain signed only after the inclusion of an abolition clause was itself abolished and slavery was continued for 89 more years and with unnecessary religious references from men who denied women or Indians the right to vote; it surely won’t be missed.
Labor Day- Salute the laborers? A bastard child holiday to commemorate the Emma Goldmans and Leon Czolgosz’s and Jimmy Hoffa’s of the world? To hell with it, we already have Red October we just don’t celebrate it.
Columbus Day- As his fellow Italians in America would say, ‘Fuhgeddabout it’- racist imperialist bastard who brought the Cross of Inquisition to a people he subjugated for profit and killed with disease.
Veterans Day- Oh, so just having served in the armed forces is honorable? So we have a holiday to honor William Calley and the firebombing of Dresden? J’accuse, y’all condemn.
Thanksgiving Day- a day of fasting not feasting begun by genocidal white supremacist superstitious religious fanatics and was later codified as a holiday by a white supremacist who wanted to relocate blacks to Africa or South America and in order to divert attention from the tens of thousands of people killed in Grant’s agressiveness that year and enacted the exact same month Sherman was destroying property and starving people to death in Georgia is now used to congest interstates and airways and increase the already horrible problem with obesity in America all so some steroid and hormone laden turkeys can get sold? No freaking way!
Christmas Day- some garbled nonsense about a virgin giving birth on a day we dont’ know tacked onto a pagan solstice festival that’s mainly used to encourage people to buy disposable crap they can’t afford for people they don’t like who don’t particularly want it in the first place? Thus with a spot I damn it.
And then you can tack on state holidays- some give a Friday before or Monday after Easter, some unintelligible dribble about a zombie some people believe was divine yet the holiday itself is named for Eos or Ishtar and set at equinox and somehow nobody seems quite sure why it’s celebrated with rabbits, eggs, and plastic grass? That don’t even make good nonsense- get it outta here. Father’s Day/Mother’s Day- you’re asking people from abusive homes to relive it?
OR- you can say "these holidays are what they are to different people, and the individuals honored had good sides and bad sides and the religious or historical ones are mixed in heritage, but on the holiday we honor the good part because we are humans and often selective in what we choose to honor. And so long as it doesn’t “break my arm or pick my pocket”, that’s really quite okay.
What southerners identify with the Confederacy? ALL of them? SOME of them? Just the white ones? Whites and blacks as well? Or a minority? And if a minority then how many do you suppose? 10%? 49%? 0.00001%? And define “identify with”- acknowledging we live in the same area as and are descended from these people? That’s not identification with, that’s statement of objective fact; if I moved to Australia or the North Pole I’m going to be a descendant of Confederate veteran and possessed of a world view to some extent (certainly not exclusively) informed by growing up in the south from the late 1960s onward. Crying out that blacks should be slaves and the Federal government should sanctify it? Who does this exactly?
Should white southerners all write out statements denouncing the deeds of their ancestors and nail them to church doors? Or have their DNA replaced (not a bad idea for some I’ll grant but financially infeasible)? Should the schools stop teaching that slavery was a good thing and the South was in the right… oh wait, they don’t teach that… not even when I was in an all white elementary school in the 1970s was that part of the curriculum- so… get rid of Confederate Memorial Day? Well, I can understand the reasoning, but really I think people of all ancestries would be more pissed by losing a paid holiday than rejoicing over gaining an empty victory. I just honestly don’t understand where all this glorification is that causes such ire.
Yes, if we lived in a fairy tale world where history could be modified to suit our desires. Unfortunately, we lived in a world where reconstruction did happen and Jim Crow did happen and the damage those two things did both black and white continue to pay for today. Give your hobby horse a rest for a while.
What an apropos statement given the general tone of this thread!
Yeah, and what you’re stupidly and offensively glossing over is that slavery was the root cause for all this damage. Please remember that when you persuade an African American not to be so hard on those brave little Confederates.
You know, I don’t know what got your britches trapped in your ass crack, but you should go on and pull them out real quick-like now before I stop being so undeservedly civil to you.
Yes, that’s an example of a deliberate symbolic act that appears to proclaim pride in and support for the Confederacy.
Sure, I don’t think anybody here is arguing that Southerners don’t have the legal right to honor the Confederacy by displaying its flag. The argument is merely that they ought to be ashamed to do so, because of what the Confederacy stood for.
No, but the apologists should stop distorting Civil War history (i.e. making up tortured justifications explaining how the South didn’t really start the war by committing aggression against the North since, well, uh, no one died during commission of the South’s initial attacks, or at least, um, not directly)
We’d settle for you not relating carefully selected vignettes designed to show that Jefferson Davis’ slaves supposedly loved him - which is the sort of babble the diehards engage in while claiming that slavery was a benevolent institution.
That the north drew first blood and was the first to send troops on a civilian land is indisputable fact of history. In that post I was asking why the bloodless seizing of Sumter was morally different from the bloodless seizing of Ticonderoga and I was not discussing who started the war at all. I have not in this or anywhere else claimed nor do I believe that the war was started by anybody other than the Confederacy and to attribute this sentiment to me is a lie, stupidity, functional illiteracy, or some combination thereof.
I detest Jefferson Davis. I said in this thread that he was an arrogant jackass and a white supremacist even by the standards of his day; I once posted himas the worst American in history. I have never once said slavery was benevolent (though for nitpickers I’ll concede there was such a thing as “benevolent slavery” in history) and refer to it nowhere as anything other than a morally bankrupt institution. I will not however say that on the individual level it was about inhuman evil even though that would seem to fit into your ideas of it; some slaves had evil masters, some had kind masters, most masters were somewhere in between, and it was a complicated system.
So you are saying you don’t like stupid people who don’t understand history or politics in its entirety and are insensitive to the feelings of others? I’m with you there completely, but what do you propose to do about it? Outlaw the rebel flag? Personally educate them through use of documentaries and readings from first person narratives?
Well, you could ignore them I suppose, but where’s the fun in that?
Most people who display the Confederate flag are not members of the KKK or Aryan Nations (both of whom lean more towards other symbols these days anyway and are far from exclusively southern). They do it because it gets a rise or because it means anything to them from the worst possible things to the fact they like Civil War history to they hate a strong Federal government to they think it’s pretty. It might make for an interesting poll but I’ve no interest in undertaking it and until someone does you really don’t know what it stands for to all or most, but if you’re going to start taking people to task for believing in something and spouting something they haven’t thought through I’d start with churches first.
Some people revere the Confederacy because they are dumbasses, but why is that reflective on an entire region? And how do you know what the symbol means to those who do display it? Should all New York City Jews be assumed to approve of Bernie Madoff and Sam Berkowitz if they don’t specifically condemnt them? Should all black men who buy rap CDs be assumed to be drug using misogynists, or all people who march down the aisle to the Lohengrin wedding march be assumed to be antisemitic? St. Patrick’s Day marchers take such pride in their Irish Catholic heritage that one must assume they’re pro Sinn Fein and know Whitey Bulgur’s location but aren’t talking perhaps.
Trust me: if affects me a hell of a lot more than it does you because I live here and I can assure you that if they’re openly racist then they’re probably homophobic as well, and it doesn’t affect me all that much, so get over the sanctimonious pointing at the South and tend to the beams in your own eyes.
I think the point of resolving the Civil War was to ensure that America was put back together, a feat that couldn’t be done if one side held the other in open contempt.
Of course it would be stupid to assume all Southerners revere the Confederacy, and I don’t do that (especially since by almost any measure I am a Southerner). However, I do think that those Southerners who choose to display symbols of the Confederacy are, at best, being dumbasses. Whatever they think it means, you can’t fly the flag of a political regime (or the armed forces thereof) that was formed in a particular time and place and lasted a little over four years before being curbstomped out of existence without (however inadvertent you may claim it to be) signaling support for the ideals upon which that political regime was founded. Since the Confederate States of America was demonstrably founded on the ideals of maintaining the enslavement of African Americans, and white supremacy more generally, it just isn’t possible to somehow divorce its flag(s) of all that and have them be about genteel manners and sweet tea and “defending your rights against oppressive central government”. (If you just want a symbol of being a rebel against oppressive central government, fly a rattlesnake flag. Or wear a brown coat.)
Obvously I don’t think all Jews support Bernie Madoff, but if I see someone wearing a “Free Bernie Madoff!” t-shirt, I reserve the right to form an opinion about that person. Maybe he’s just being an ironic hipster, but I have the right to think that at the very least he’s being a doofus.
Since England opposed tens of millions more people than the Confederacy ever did does having the Union Jack as a bumper sticker or T-shirt or being a self admitted Anglophile mean that you are an imperialist who opposes the formation of Israel or Indian home rule?
Nobody said it was. I haven’t seen any posts here condemning the South or Southerners as a whole. The ire is directed at those Southerners who express pride in or support for the Confederacy.
I don’t know what it means to each one personally, because as you point out, the Confederate flag means a lot of different things personally to different people; but I know what the symbol formally represents. It stands for the Confederacy, a political entity that was founded upon, and spent the whole of its short lifetime fighting for, the institution of slavery.
People who publicly display a well-known symbol must expect their actions to be interpreted as expressing support for what the symbol is known to stand for. They have no business expecting other people to give them the benefit of the doubt about the intended meaning or motivation of their public use of a symbol that officially stands for something contemptible.
No, that would be a violation of freedom of speech. What I do about people who symbolically proclaim support for a contemptible institution is to feel contempt for them.
), we built better infrastructure in the colonies than many powers (railways in India), and rather than ruling totally through people from the mother country (like I believe the French did), we at least attempted to foster a local class of bureaucrats, which amde the transition to independence easier. And we certainly weren’t the Belgians, who weren’t very nice at all in the Congo.
)^2. Then why is the Confederacy which those long-dead, rarely-considered relatives organized and fought for still so romanticized and valorized by so many Southerners? If Southerners are largely indifferent to the memory of those ancestral Confederates, why do so many of them still seem to identify so strongly with the Confederacy?