On "Southern Hatred": A Different Perspective
I rarely go to the lengths of responding separately to another blogger's posts, but the recent entry by Desidero regarding "ignorance" and "southern hatred" deserves at least a perspective from this point of view.
Desidero's post -- judging from its opening sentence -- seeks to encourage a more intelligent discourse about the South and civility and the potential for the Democratic party to regain a foothold in the area of the country south of the Mason-Dixon line. Desidero states categorically that those who take issue with "the South" have long-standing historical ignorance and consider southerners "traitorous, genocidal freaks." Desidero suggests it's hard to sustain much less begin a conversation when one's heritage and breeding is so attacked.
That much I will grant Desidero: wild accusations are not good for starting a conversation.
Neither is relitigating the Civil War for the umpteenth time. The ending remains the same: the south loses and is returned to the fold. But Desidero takes us there, so let us see if we can return to a real discussion of why certain parts of America -- or more specifically -- certain Americans take issue with certain aspects of "southern" history and certain "southerners."
Desidero makes the critical mistake of painting all of us on the "other" side with a very broad brush. (Granted, we, at times, have painted southerners with that same wide swath of critique. Two wrongs, however, do not make a right.)
Although I hestitate to do so, let's take Desidero's post point by point -- so at least complaints of taking statements out of context will be minimized.) Desidero's original is in italics.
If you imagine the South as Chechnya and the North as Russia, or more germane, the North continuing the British' traditional repression of the South's rural Scottish and Irish, perhaps you can expand your worldview to acknowledge that those who think they're on a mission from God are often the most blinded and misguided and cruelest, and engender the least respect.
The "Old South" and even the "New South" are not Chechnya repressed by Russia (or the Soviet Union), nor were/are they Scotland or Ireland repressed by the British. But those who most frequently invoke "God" as their "wingman" or "mighty and righteous warrior" tend to be of the Southern persuasion.
Item #1 from recent blog - "The South had horrible slavery, so everything Sherman did was justified." Okay. How exactly do you justify the fire bombing of Dresden? Obviously the Germans were in the moral wrong, so we could do anything we wanted to its citizens, correct? The Algerians tried to secede from France - and lost something like 1.5 million for their "treason", considering Algeria was an integral part of France. Hussein at one time invaded Kuwait and had weapons of mass destruction, so obviously we were justified in invading Iraq and having Hussein hanged. I love it when GOP and Democrat talking points segue so easily!!!
If we're speaking of Chechnya and Scotland and Ireland, as part of our expanded worldview, why bring Dresden and World War II into it? (Classic misdirection.) The original poster Desidero quotes conflates the ravages of slavery with Sherman's march through the south and the "Burning of Atlanta." Desidero, seeking to escalate the discussion overreaches. Atlanta, it seems, was burned by the men who had been assigned to protect it.
From Wikipedia: "On September 1, 1864, Confederate General John Bell Hood evacuated Atlanta, after a four-month siege mounted by Union General William Sherman and ordered all public buildings and possible Union assets destroyed. " (Emphasis mine.)
With regard to Dresden, a city I have toured, this is where history has us today (and worthy of its own discussion and comparison not to Atlanta, but Beirut or Baghdad, perhaps): "
The Bombing of Dresden by the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and United States Army Air Force (USAAF) between 13 February and 15 February 1945, twelve weeks before the surrender of the Armed Forces (Wehrmacht) of Nazi Germany, remains one of the most controversial Allied actions of the Second World War. In four raids, 1,300 heavy bombers dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on the city, the baroque capital of the German state of Saxony. The resulting firestorm destroyed 13 square miles (34 km2) of the city centre.[2] Estimates of civilian casualties vary greatly, but recent publications place the figure between 24,000 and 40,000.[3]"
We can argue over whether the bombing of Dresden was justified, was or was not a war crime. But Dresden and Atlanta would only be comparable if Hitler had turned his Blitzkrieg on his own city.
Desidero also includes a gross misstatement: "Algeria was an integral part of France." No, Algeria was (and remains) an integral part of ALGERIA. The French had colonized Algeria in the same way the British colonized India, the Spanish colonized the Philippines and the Portugese colonized Brazil. (The remainder of the paragraph is a bundle of nonsense not worth untangling.) It appears that it is the writer's and not the reader's worldview which must be expanded.
"Item #2: I don't know the figures, but I imagine that most Southerners accept slavery as the major issue for the Civil War - just not always the *ONLY* one. Which seems to be beyond the pale for some - that instead the South should grovel, accept slavery as the only reason, acknowledge that they're evil and genetically stupid, and continue in prostration until Jesus returns or Universal Health Care, whichever comes second. It should be noted that it was the northern states that started this practice in the first place."
Desidero seeks to discuss the reasons for the Civil War, but succeeds in some self-flagellation about being genetically stupid, Jesus and Universal Healthcare. None of which advances the original thesis of "southern hatred." And once again, history fails to support Desidero's assertion that "the north" started it. We can dispel that "misstatement" with one sentence from the online resource known as Wikipedia: "Slavery in the United States began soon after English colonists first settled in Virginia in 1607 and lasted as a legal institution until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865."
I'm giving myself a headache wading through the next paragraph, so for the sake of my own sanity, let's just skip it. (Already, we've seen Desidero's grasp of the historical facts are slim.) Next he mentions something about "lynching."
#4 Using the higher Tuskeegee estimates on black repression (about 50% over other ones), some 5000 blacks and 2000 whites were lynched over 70 years, with perhaps 20% outside of the South.
Here are the numbers from Wikipedia for a very specific timeframe: "Between 1882 and 1968 the Tuskegee Institute recorded 3,437 lynchings of African Americans and 1,293 lynchings of whites." (Emphasis mine.) We must remember however, that we have established that slavery started in this country in 1607 and thus these numbers do not reflect the whole 361 years marking slavery and Jim Crow laws. These numbers do not reflect the number of persons lynched whose deaths were not recorded because like cattle or horses or chickens or mules, they were considered private property to be used and disposed of as one desired. The historical record fails Desidero once more.
Desidero continues with more thrashing about Lincoln, Obama, the Emancipation Proclamation and freaks. But never do we really get to the heart of the matter: why do some people still have strong, angry feelings about "the south" and are those feelings justified?
Desidero -- if I read the post accurately and since it is an oozing mishmash of conflicting ideas, I sincerely doubt that I did so completely -- suggests that the south just wanted to secede from the union peaceably, that Lincoln had other motives for freeing blacks and something about George Bush.
But here are the (Wikipedia) facts: "The importation of African slaves was banned in the British colonies in 1807, and in the United States in 1808. In the British West Indies, slavery was abolished in 1833 and in the French possessions 15 years later."
But let us be clear: there is a difference between abolishing slavery and abolishing the trade or sale of slaves.
[Continuing from Wikipedia ...]
The last form of enforced servitude of adults (villeinage) had disappeared in Britain with the beginning of the seventeenth century. But by the eighteenth century, African and Indian and East Asian slaves began to be brought into London and Edinburgh as personal servants.[2] They were not bought or sold, and their legal status was unclear until 1772, when the case of a runaway slave named James Somersett forced a legal decision. The owner, Charles Steuart, had attempted to abduct him and send him to Jamaica to work on the sugar plantations. While in London, Somersett had been baptised and his godparents issued a writ of habeas corpus. As a result Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of the Court of the King's Bench, had to judge whether the abduction was legal or not under English Common Law as there was no legislation for slavery in England.
In his judgment of 22 June 1772, Mansfield declared: "Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from a decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged." Although the exact legal implications of the judgement are actually unclear when analysed by lawyers, it was generally taken at the time to have decided that the condition of slavery did not exist under English law in England itself. [...] It also laid down the principle that slavery contracted in other jurisdictions (such as the American colonies) could not be enforced in England.[3]
After reading of the Somersett case, an African slave in Scotland, Joseph Knight, left his master, John Wedderburn. A similar case to Steuart's was brought by Wedderburn in 1776, with the same result: chattel slavery was ruled not to exist under the law of Scotland. Nonetheless, there were native-born Scottish serfs until 1799, when coal miners previously kept in serfdom gained emancipation. [...]
Despite the disappearance of slavery in Great Britain, slavery was a way of life in the southern colonies of America and the West Indian colonies of the British Empire.
By 1783, an anti-slavery movement was beginning among the British public. [...] The African Association also had close ties with William Wilberforce, perhaps the most important political figure in the battle for abolition in the British Empire.
Black people played an important part in the movement for abolition. In Britain, Olaudah Equiano, whose autobiography was published in nine editions in his lifetime, campaigned tirelessly against the slave trade.
Now, do pay attention to the dates included in the passages above. And remember that during this time, although communication was not instant, as it is today, and travel was arduous although not impossible, American notables such as Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams traveled to England and France and lived there. Jefferson lived in France from 1785 to 1789. France first abolished slavery in 1794 and Haiti became the first former African slave colony to revolt and gain its freedom in 1804. So the seeds of abolition were taking root, and taking root in this hemisphere not far off the tip of Florida.
But that does not really address "southern hate." It merely raises the question of why, with the tide turning against the trafficking and holding in bondage humans, why did it take the US -- particularly the eleven southern states -- so long to find an alternative to its "labor shortage?"
And when it comes to southern hate, I have yet to hear anyone explain why those white southerners pursued the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws -- a policy that was so clearly outside their own self interests.
Jim Crow laws are routinely described in terms of enforcing racial segregation. But in the south struggling to recover from the devastation of civil war, wouldn't it have made more sense for southerners to work with their former employees -- er, slaves -- to rebuild their economy?
In simplest terms, wasn't Jim Crow (like the cries of reverse discrimination today) a kind of "sore loser shoots self in own foot" scenario? Screwing themselves and extending the recovery from war and its attendant poverty to pursue misguided white superiority? And to that end, the relentless violence against blacks (who had the audacity to get themselves freed) just proof of the south's dependence on slavery and the only issue for secession and civil war? It was not "states' rights," but "slavery now, slavery forever."
I am wandering way off the well-trod path, lost in the woods trying to chase the rabbit Desidero let loose. Let me find a way home by making this personal:
I don't "hate" southerners nor the south. But I do find this constant wallowing in the might-have-beens of "if only we had won the war of northern aggression," tiresome. I don't hate southerners any more than southerners hate Yankees. But I do hate people who having lost the war -- decisively, not on points, mind you -- calculated another way to take out their hostilities. Not against the northerners who kicked their asses, but against the people who birthed their snot-nosed children, cooked their meals, washed their nasty BVDs, cleaned their stained sheets, planted their damn crops, and harvested the same, and built their beloved, but motherfucking antebellum mansions and got shit in return. And I hate the southerners who 144 years later haven't gotten over the fact that they lost.
Desidero's orignal post can be found at: http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/desidero/2009/05/southern-hatred-and-ignorance.php
The main point to me is that "The South" without slavery would have amounted to nothing. Slavery was the only thing the made white southerners rich.
I also find it interesting that those states that were part of the confederacy are also the same ones with "right to work" aka anti union laws. The resent having lost the war and resent having to pay their employees reasonable wages. especially if they are not white.
C
May 25, 2009 11:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good post. I have perhaps too much tolerance for those whom glorify the Southern Generals, the manner and society which existed, and to this day drinks from a cup of bitterness over the loss of a war, which they believe was started by the United States.
In their view, all too often, you hear the romanticized version of southern history, where slaves were dear to their master, and even fought happily along side them. They don't want to be forgiven. They think that they were on the better side of people, yet lost out of sheer tragedy.
May 25, 2009 11:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well done. Noble.
Everyone enjoys disidero's pugnacious and prolific posts, but one can't grant much historical erudition to someone who equates the aerial firebombing and incineration of over 100,000 civilians with the "Sherman's March to the Sea". Disidero's comparison shows a vacuous understanding of the history of both the Civil War and WWII. Less blogging and more reading of books might be a remedy. Jade has covered other defective analogies well.
link
May 25, 2009 11:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
You make many important points here Jade.
THE CONFEDERATE FLAG IS AN ABOMINATION, pure and simple. It represents slavery, pure and simple. It needs to be torn down from 2? statehouses I believe.
We must remember that the Senator who Represented Virginia before Senator Webb was a white supremicist and one of the repub leaders in the senate. A man who as governor had the confederate flag in his office along with lynching ropes hanging from his ceiling.
Its not over.
I could go on and on here.
You have put together a fine post.
May 26, 2009 12:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
My take on the Confederate flag - aka Stars and Bars: It is the American equivalent of the swastika and warrants treatment as such. It is the emblem of those who took up arms against their countrymen, in no small part to preserve their ownership of other human beings. It is deserving of unmitigated contempt, as are all those who display it.
May 26, 2009 4:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes. My sentiments exactly.
May 26, 2009 9:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Highly recommend!
May 26, 2009 12:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Rec'd
May 26, 2009 12:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
I have read, somewhere way back, that the actual underpinning of the Civil War was economic. The North got immigration and the South Slaves. As I recall the gist of what I read, the war was framed around slavery, but the was to economically crush the South. In reality, very few Southerners actually owned slaves. But all this tells us (possibly) is that our wars (and maybe all wars) are based on lies and for interests other than the ones used to legitimate them in the eyes of the people.
On the other hand, racism is deep seated and passed both through culture and social institutions across the generations. Structured social inequality is not rational for all it is systematic and systemic. Therefore, the social hierarchy that maintained slavery targeted Black slaves. Jim Crow laws maintained that hierarchy. The fact that it decreased both the political and economic voice of the South are moot.
Even now, many people are convinced to vote against their own best interests.
I fully agree that "Southerners" should get over the Civil War, though some are unlikely to do so. It has become integrated in a tangled knot of identity (for some Southern Whites) and racism, and who knows what all else. In an economically limited South, poor southern whites found themselves in a head on competition with "freed" slaves. Certainly this was played up by elite Southern Whites for their own advancement. It is still being played up (and not just in the South) with the rhetoric around "immigration."
Racism provides its own justifications, and those justifications inspire hate and fear, and none of it is rational.
While I agree with your ending argument, I hardly find racial hatred limited to the South. It seems to manifest in slightly different ways across the country, but that does not mean it does not exist. The rhetoric of "reverse discrimination" is rampant in the (assumedly liberal) Pacific Northwest where I currently live. And quite frankly I have been horrified by just how thin the polite veneer of "inclusiveness" and "acceptance" is. Like its more "blatant" (meaning this is how we have had expressions of racism identified in the past) in the South, it too is as "irrational" and "unthinking."
May 26, 2009 12:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Nor do I. Indeed, we currently live in the most bigoted area I've ever lived in. It's a midwestern city. I've lived all over. Including the south but mostly in the northeast.
This is not to take away from the point of the post.
For some reason, "losers" often hang onto a kind of psychic desire to really "win" something that's over. It happens in divorces. It happens in all sorts of disputes. And when people get locked into positions, as Rowen says above, it becomes part of their identity.
May 26, 2009 10:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
For some reason "winners" have a psychic desire to lord it over "losers" beyond all rational productive reason.
May 26, 2009 2:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Take a lesson from the Germans. They don't defend Hitler, and so they've been able to move on. When the concentration camps were liberated, who could have looked forward to a world where Germany and a Jewish state might have friendly and productive relations? But if you lie, romanticize, and deny, the past never goes away. The Japanese do it with their record in China and Korea; the South does it with the Civil War and slavery. It never works. All it does is keep wounds open that otherwise would heal.
The only reason to keep on triumphing over a loser is when that loser insists on thinking that he or she is somehow a winner. Admit that you lost, you were wrong, and those who keep on rubbing it in look vulgar, instead of righteous.
May 26, 2009 3:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Typically Southerners are not defending slavery, they're defending the honorable and beautiful aspects of the South that exist often separately, sometimes sadly intertwined with slavery and other issues of the past and present. The vast majority of the South doesn't look at the master with the whip in admiration, such as some skinheads/white supremacists. But people love to keep stereotypes of the South even as it runs 4 of the major space centers, has high tech R&D centers in several locations, a large proportion of new auto production, major media and banking centers, etc. - it's simpler to think of the South as Smokey and the Bandit or Ashley Wilkes.
May 26, 2009 3:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
An antidote to the myth of Southern Charm:
Mary Chesnut's Civil War Diary
Thanks.
mp
May 26, 2009 4:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
No offense Des, because I like your perspective just as I like others, but as a Southerner who may understand a lil' about the culture you were describing I find Jade's criticism on point. The south, whatever its traditions may been, needs to accept slavery as a stain on its culture. Not every southerner was a slave owner, not every southerner was ignorant of crimes against those in bondage, however there were many that were slave owners, many that supported Jim Crow laws, we must accept all of these facts. We must also move forward with that acceptance and by doing so maybe encourage this sort of attitude.
May 26, 2009 5:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
So you like the effect that the Southern Republicans have on our politics? You think their anti-worker, anti-tax, religiously fundamentalist appeals are healthy in a modern, financially integrated, ethnically diverse America?
P.S.: a quick note of agreement. I was in a ten-year relationship with an African-American woman during my twenties. One result of that experience was that I grew to viscerally feel the blind racism that AAs endure, no matter how benign the thinking behind it. To this day, I am incredibly sensitive to expressions of racism, and painfully aware hoe often they pop up in conversations among non-blacks.
I am now married to a politically liberal (white) woman from Alabama. I have grown similarly sensitive to blanket expressions of sentiment holding all Southerners to be racist hicks here in my hometown of Chicago as I grew to be of racism twenty years ago.
We do need to avoid stereotyping whenever possible. I make every effort to judge each person on their own merits when dealing with them socially or professionally. That said, the institution of slavery was an abomination, and should be recognized as such, by Southerners and Northerners alike. Furthermore, political appeals to the remnants of ante bellum society should offend the sensibility of anyone who believes in the equality of each person under the law, and each person's right to live free from discrimination.
If the Southern political legacy weren't so toxic, I'd be happy to denounce northern stereotyping. But as long as there's a Jeff Sessions in the Senate, the legacy of the Confederacy presents the much greater threat to a more perfect union.
May 26, 2009 5:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
For some reason, Thera, Norman "Quimby" Coleman comes to mind on reading your comment...
May 26, 2009 4:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
As I recall the gist of what I read, the war was framed around slavery, but the was to economically crush the South. In reality, very few Southerners actually owned slaves.
Slavery was the economic engine of the South; its economy was largely agricultural and agriculture was largely performed by slaves. Thus, anything lessening or eliminating it could not have done other than create large economic impacts.
And yes, slave ownership was largely restricted to a small percercentage of persons, the wealthy - who also owned a preponderance of the cropland. Thus, slaves were largely responsible agricultural production in the South.
It comes as no surprise, but it remains sad, that the non-wealthy Southerners, particularly the least wealthy, were most harmed by the continuance of slavery. It suppressed wages and allowed concentration of ownership of land, lowering their opportunities for employment and property ownership.
And that they furthermore also fully participated in maintaining the peculiar institution.
May 26, 2009 12:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
You beat me to it - this is precisely what I was going to post.
All wars are economic. Passion, patriotism and religion are merely used to convince the conscripts to throw themselves at the swords and sabers of their fellow men.
And slavery has always been an economic institution and only became a racist institution when the slave-holders felt compelled to justify the continuance of the practice in the face of worldwide rejection of the ownership of human beings. How do you get around that? Well, you make an argument that blacks are NOT human beings. You make an argument that blacks BENEFIT from the sober hand of their owners. You find the John Yoo of the day and you make an argument that blacks are outside the existing legal framework for the possession of human rights.
But why go through all of the rhetorical trouble of forming these arguments and cognitive dissonance of believing them? Because without the outrageously cheap labor that slavery provided the entire Southern economy would have had to have been reformulated.
May 26, 2009 12:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
"It comes as no surprise, but it remains sad, that the non-wealthy Southerners, particularly the least wealthy, were most harmed by the continuance of slavery".
O'Contraire! The most harmed were the slaves!
May 26, 2009 3:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Alas, you are very correct, and I should have been more specific that they were the free white folks most harmed ...
June 3, 2009 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Slavery is the South's original sin. It is the stain that cannot be expunged; it is the irreparable crack in the foundation of a mythic mansion of nobility and purpose.
To say that the South has never reconciled itself to the loss of the war is too simple. Rather, it's the existential pain that comes with being on the wrong side of a great conflict between good and evil. It's the knowledge that the war was lost because it could not be won.
May 26, 2009 1:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
As one of Ukrainian descent, it was not uncommon for people to ask, "Where is Ukraine?" when I was growing up. I would explain to the ignorant, Ukrainians are like Russian with a southern drawl. This is heresy to any real Ukrainian, but it made sense because the language is very similar, but softer in many ways. There are cultural differences, but when looking around the globe, Ukrainians are more like Russians then any other ethnic group, except maybe the Poles. Just the same, the Ukrainians and the Russians have their antipathy long extent even though they are so very similar.
My point is that these American Southerners are Ukrainians in-waiting. Give the south a few more centuries and they will have their own language, and perhaps an alphabet, and eventually, they may even get their own nation. It's what happens as time passes. It's natural. But one thing is for certain, taking up the mantel of slavery and racism as a source of pride is a seriously misguided quest.
There are so many other things about the South of which they might be proud, but slavery and racism? Those are the crutches of the weakest, not the strongest. Grow up! Move on! If you have to rely on someone else to be somebody, you're nobody and thinking otherwise is purely delusional.
May 26, 2009 2:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Gregor I used to tell my ex wife who grew up in Lviv and was the only grandchild of both Russian and Ukrainian grandparents that a Ukrainian is nothing more than a Russian with a bad attitude. That's one of the few jokes I ever made she actually laughed at. 1,000 years ago before Moscow was built Kiev was the capitol of ancient Russe wasn't it?
May 26, 2009 9:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
My hat is off to you! Great post and a superb concluding paragraph! Bravo!
May 26, 2009 2:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Responded to here because I couldn't use more than 2 URL's in comments.
May 26, 2009 3:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
One item for here, since I don't much address post-Civil War feelings and behavior, as I explain, much more complex than pre-Civil War. However I simply take the Tuskeegee numbers and add on 50% as some suggest to give a rough estimate of the magnitude of the lynching problem. This problem is specifically associated with the post-war South, and is not associated with ownership of slaves but with harassment and repression of free blacks. I simply wanted to put a reasonable number on it so that people could compare it for better or worse with other acts of inhumanity, as well as note that 20% took place in the North. Otherwise, we get into impressions of mythic proportions, such as ridiculous claims of 80 million and more dying in the Atlantic Crossing, etc., which fuel the ire of rants of hardened racists and demagogues and serve to dismiss and marginalize the still horribly quite high numbers of those who did die - the exaggerations turn the issue into fantasy and Hollywood myth, which it decidedly is not.
If issues like these didn't come up time and again in blogs and mass emails, I would have no interest in them, and didn't even know much about a lot of this until deciding to check on some dubious recurring claims. I certainly haven't spent my life fretting over Southern issues, and if anything the rise of the Internet has made much of this argumentation more heated and visible than it used to be.
May 26, 2009 4:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Re-reading the last paragraph, I should note (from a Spartacus web site, not necessarily the best source of statistics):
Most whites in the South raised their own kids, washed their own diapers, grew their own food and built or bought or leased their own houses. Again, more of the kind of ignorance that irks people, since most Southerners worked damned hard to make something of the earth, and were not the lily white Scarlett O'Haras of harlequin romance novels.
May 26, 2009 4:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
I certainly wouldn't try to suggest otherwise.
But the fact remains that they picked up arms to support those who did own slaves, and otherwise supported the war effort. Cultural pressures, common interests and I suspect, the Big Lie all contributed to that support. I don't mean to suggest that said support was in perfect alignment with slave owners ends.
But it remains the fact - the majority of white Southerners chose to secede, and enter into war.
Perhaps it was go along to get along. I'd like to believe that my ancestors didn't believe that some of their neighbors were witches and deserved to be crushed to death. Were that the case, they don't seem to have raised their voices in protest, so we are left with only the result to judge by.
May 26, 2009 1:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're wrong on one point. Most of the members of the Salem witch trials jury subscribed to a "Confession of Error" a few years after the trials ended -- you can find the full text in More Wonders of the Invisible World, a contemporary account:
If that were the voice of the South, we would not be having this discussion.
May 26, 2009 3:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks - that's something I wasn't aware of, and a good point you made, as well.
June 3, 2009 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Having a whole post in response to a comment - that must make you a TPM mover and shaker Desidero!
In the interest of candor I'm going to say it:
I really do hate The South.
I was reading some blog and someone in Atlanta mentioned "Confederacy Day" - I think it was in April maybe.
All I could think was - "Why not have 'Hitler Day' along with it?"
Let's celebrate human bondage! YAY!
It's a kind of blind and visceral response - I remember feeling the same 'irrational' rage when I heard about the Taliban blowing up 1000 year old mountain-side sculptures in Afghanistan.
Confederacy Day. I guess if Cheney gets his way we'll also celebrate "Torture Day" - could lead to some interesting Hallmark cards.
I'm sorry but you celebrate the Confederacy - I get to hate you.
I think part of this is wrapped up in the overt way FOX gets to put the hate on "San Fransisco" or "Nancy Pelosi" and then Dems are supposed to not hate the haters but 'reach out' to them.
May 26, 2009 6:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent!
May 26, 2009 8:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Brava, Jade. My hat goes off to you for trying to decipher what was a total jumble, the point of which I still haven't grasped.
May 26, 2009 9:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's a dog's life.
May 26, 2009 10:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
Now you're talkin'!
May 26, 2009 2:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Highly rec'd, Jade! Your willingness to take on thorny subject matter with wonderful grace is to be commended! The fact that this could be done in a civil thread, with Desi himself as a participant is itself a tribute.
Kudos!
May 26, 2009 10:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Douglas Blackmon won a Pulitzer Prize this year for his book "Slavery By Another Name" which shows that slavery persisted in the south through a system of kangaroo court proceedings, fines and 'legal' contracting out of black 'convict' labor up until the beginning of World War II.
So, this is not ancient history.
White supremacy remained the dominant ideology in the South for 100 years after the Civil War and, while that ideology had traction across the country (evidenced by race riots and lynchings) it was in the South where it was perfected. The so-called Redeemer movement that forced an end to Reconstruction in the South was a racist paramilitary movement that had as its objective ethnic cleansing. It was a vile an expression of race hatred that was no longer needed once white control of state and local governments was re-established after Reconstruction ended.
It was in the South where the basic dishonesty of conservative rhetoric that we see today began, as whites disenfranchised blacks, relegated them to second class status via Jim Crow laws, all the while saying race had nothing to do with it.
The Republican 'Southern Strategy' — that has given the country such intellectual giants as Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama — is the linear descendant of the Redeemer Movement, toned down, dumbed down, and moved out to the gated communities. Redeemerism and the rise of Southern Republicanism share a common core of a belief in white supremecy.
As a white southerner, I recognize that racial hate is alive and well in this country (some of it not-too-thinly masquerading in anti-Obama rhetoric). Racism remains America's original sin. It enslaves us and limits us. We have not yet won our national redemption from it. The struggle over the issue has defined our past and it will define America's future.
May 26, 2009 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
In short the southern whites really like slavery and were/are really pissed off that they can no longer engage in it.
C
May 26, 2009 12:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
The trouble with being losers is that to feel good, you have to make sure you have someone available who's an even bigger loser -- even if you have to make that other person into a loser by your own actions. It's rather like a limping person who gets his jollies kneecapping an athlete. This is why the Southern reaction to blacks who managed to get ahead despite all obstacles was often so incredibly spiteful (cf. the Tulsa riots of 1921).
May 26, 2009 3:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tulsa is in Oklahoma, not often considered part of the South.
May 26, 2009 4:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
The belief in 'The Lost Cause' is still strong. There is still a longing for 'the good ole' days'. A sanitized version of Southern Heritage is still worshipped. Call it what you want.
May 27, 2009 1:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
And yet until the 1972 election the south historically voted democrat. Figure that one out...
May 26, 2009 8:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not all that hard. They blamed the republicans for the end of slavery, the civil war and reconstruction. Lincoln was a republican.
Then they got pissed at the democrats for civil rights and the end of segregation. Oh and they are still pissed.
C
May 26, 2009 8:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, well that 1972 election was the second election cycle after passage of the Civil Rights Act. Lyndon Johnson knew exactly what the next generation of southern politics would look like after that act was passed. In a 1964 speech in New Orleans just before that presidential election, he predicted that the Democratic Party would be consigned to minority status as whites abandoned the party over its support for the laws that ended segregation.
In the next electioni cycle (1968), Nixon rolled out the Southern Strategy in which the Republican Party played on white southern anger as a path to national and regional election success. It was so successful for so long that the Republicans cannot break themselves of their addiction and now find themselves a regional (Southern) party that does not know how to speak to the needs of those they have ignored for so long: African Americans and Latinos.
May 27, 2009 1:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Nice work, Jade.
There's one more Southern Big Lie that generally goes unchallenged: that the North started the war.
Most Southerners I have met honestly believe it, and are often chagrined to realize that they cannot think of the first Northern attack on the South. The reason is simple: the South fired first, at Fort Sumter. Despite the brilliant rebranding of the "War of Northern Aggression," the South spontaneously seceded because they lost a Presidential election, and then took over federal armories and forts, often by treachery, but by force when necessary. They refused to acknowledge, then or ever, that Lincoln had been elected on a moderate platform and had no possible interest in starting a Civil War. He did, however, refuse to back down from their unprovoked attacks, and thereby earned unrelenting resentment.
May 26, 2009 12:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent diary. The Confederacy is analogous to Nazi Germany. Those who seek to rehabilitate the South seem to forget that many, many southerners are black and descendants of enslaved Africans.
Unfortunately, many white southerners have been an impediement to expansions of democracy in America for generations.
May 26, 2009 3:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, as have many stupid Northerners equating the South with Nazi Germany and other unhelpful and inaccurate idiocies. But go ahead, have a conversation with your fellow bloggers who think no one's calling Southerners "traitorous genocidal freaks", that they're only paranoid (and guilty of course).
May 26, 2009 5:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jesus Christ, the south isn't analogous to nazi Germany. Let's not get silly here.
May 26, 2009 7:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
The analogy is in part that both Nazi Germany and the South believed that there were two classes of citizens and that the lower had no rights that the upper was obliged to respect.
May 26, 2009 11:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
The analogy is in part that both Nazi Germany and the South believed that there were two classes of citizens and that the lower had no rights that the upper was obliged to respect.
May 26, 2009 11:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Desidero is struggling with a problem confronted by any group of people -- such as modern Germans -- whose ancestors have committed atrocities -- what must I do to separate myself from the wrongs that that my ancestors did or what must I do to excuse the wrongs that they did -- either by arguing that the wrongs were not so bad or that good things were also done.
Using sloppy versions of history, Desidero attempts to argue that the Southerners were not so bad because other people did terrible things.
The constant temptation is to make these kind of excuses rather than sitting down and looking clearly at the culture from which you spring to see what aspect of it caused your ancestors to commit those particular wrongs and to do your best to eradicate any remaining aspects which lead to similar wrongs.
May 26, 2009 3:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you trace your heritage back to Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, et al in the 1640's, your ancestors were committing atrocities, they were part of the newly legalized slave trade that continued for 150 more years there. That was the fabric of the Colonies.
May 26, 2009 5:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
But those states VOLUNTARILY ended slavery. I'd say the difference is gigantic and there is no "they did it too" school yard argument that can relieve the burden of those who fought to preserve, protect and defend slavery by taking up arms against the United States.
May 26, 2009 6:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
I stopped beating my wife several days ago. I feel like a new man.
May 26, 2009 6:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Um, I have German ancestors more recent than that.
May 27, 2009 11:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
I didn't find Des's post an apology for slavery or an excuse for racism. More and more I find liberals with the narrowminded view of the world that any attempt to explain and understand any issue is a de facto argument in favour of the enemy.
Seeking understanding and understanding doesn't mean that we condone or approve of whatever the subject is, it means simply that - a willingness to understand the underlying conditions and issues that lead to any conflict or resolution of conflict.
May 26, 2009 8:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jade, while I always love most anything you write, I find need to passionately associate myself with the last paragraph of this post! Thanks for blood stirring!
May 26, 2009 3:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great post Jade, thank you. While it is true that racism exists all over this country, I was appalled at the casualness of it in the southern state I lived in for 17 years and the constant assumption that because I was white I also must be racist. When I would refuse to go along with racist remarks I was often accused of being a "pinko northern" or some such slur. I did meet many white people who like me loved the place they lived but were not racist - sadly most of them were imports from non southern areas.
I don't know how I would feel if I was on the losing end of the civil war. I sat in on a history class were the teacher said he would try to make us understand why the defeated South felt like it did but he couldn't do it - for me or any of the black students in the class.
May 26, 2009 3:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
I know it is fashionable to pretend that only happens in the South, but that's not the case. That same casual racism and set of assumptions can be found in rural areas all over the country. It's exactly the attitude that I encountered when I lived in northwest PA.
May 26, 2009 3:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
I should add that I have a friend who grew up in rural Ohio. From what he says, the attitudes there were not all that different from what you would find in rural Georgia or South Carolina.
May 26, 2009 3:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh you are absolutely correct. I grew up in a very rural part of north eastern Ohio. Mostly German and Scandinavian. I myself am half Finnish and I can tell you that the Finns were some of the worst racists I met. It really pissed of my father that his family was so racist so he would do what ever he could to needle them.
C
May 26, 2009 4:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
And not all that different than Colorado or California or North Dakota.
May 26, 2009 8:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, racism does exist all over the country. And as confirmed by the 2008 election, people will vote against their economic and other self-interests solely on the basis of race. See Pennsylvania during the primary.
But there is something very different about "personal" racism -- that is where I might hold racist beliefs even when they conflict with the laws and world around me -- and "institutional" or "governmental" racism where normally "equitable" institutions -- the courts, legislative and executive branches of government create and enforce NEW laws to codify racist beliefs and behavior. And the south began to do this almost as soon as Reconstruction began. Now it is true that the US Supreme Court by way of the Dred Scott decision put a federal stamp of approval on this institutional racism, but Jim Crow laws bubbled up from the south, they did not trickle down from the north.
Rural southeastern Ohio is essentially the same as northern Kentucky and West Virginia. It is that poverty-stricken band of land known as Appalachia. But Ohio is also home to a great many colleges and univerisities founded to educate free blacks, and of course it was one of the destinations of the Underground Railroad.
May 26, 2009 4:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, rural southeastern Ohio is the same as eastern Kentucky, rural and urban southwestern Ohio is the same as northern Kentucky.
May 26, 2009 8:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, racism does exist all over the country. And as confirmed by the 2008 election, people will vote against their economic and other self-interests solely on the basis of race. See Pennsylvania during the primary.
Nah, as an astute campaign operative from Hazleton, PA told me in most of PA outside of Philly and Pittsburgh voting is a tribal exercise. You vote the way your tribe, your neighbors do or you catch shit for awhile before and afterward. It's a powerful motivator in small town America. For a lot of them Hillary was their consensus candidate and in the primary nothing was gonna change that. Everybody was voting for her. You don't and you're an odd bird, a stupid shit just like your great uncle who bought that new Edsel in 1958.
But then in the general a canvasser was polling outside Pittsburgh in some hardscrabble hill town right out of the Deerhunter. A woman answered the door and in response to his question she yelled into the house, "Honey who are we voting for?" Shouted from the dark recesses of the house where only the glow of the teevee flickered into the gloom was the response, "the n*gger". She turned to the canvasser as if he didn't hear and in a matter of fact tone repeated, "we're voting for the n*gger."
May 26, 2009 8:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Everybody was voting for her. You don't and you're an odd bird, a stupid shit just like your great uncle who bought that new Edsel in 1958.
Now Edsels are collectors items and a fully restored one goes for a small fortune.
Go figure.
C
May 26, 2009 9:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Take a chiapet Obama and put it in a jar and bury it in the backyard and dig it up and sell it on Ebay in 40 years and you'll be able to retire in style. Or maybe not.
May 26, 2009 9:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've heard that story so many times under so many different circumstances that it is approaching the status of urban legend.
May 26, 2009 9:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
I heard Urban Legends were myths.
Or sumthin' like that.
May 26, 2009 9:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think you are correct...
May 26, 2009 9:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've heard that story about Obama being elected too so many times under so many different circumstances that it is approaching the status of urban legend.
Or maybe it's just the truth.
May 26, 2009 9:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Civil War was fought to decide the issue of States' Rights: viz, to what extent could the individual states veto (or 'nullify' in the contemporaneous term) Federal actions and laws with which they did not agree.
The election of Lincoln was widely seen as an immediate precursor to the destruction of the Doctrine of Nullification. Slavery was the wedge issue because of the struggles over bringing in new states -- "slave or free?" As long as the political strength in congress was equally divided between slave and free states, the Southern leadership could hold its own. With the election of Lincoln, the continued expansion of slavery was effectively ended, they knew it and they invoked nullification.
A very good book about the politics of the Confederacy itself is Emory Thomas' The Confederate Nation.
Thanks.
mp
May 26, 2009 4:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
"I do find this constant wallowing in the might-have-beens of 'if only we had won the war of northern aggression,' tiresome." Was that what Des' piece was, Jade? An "if only we had won" rant? And that "constant" wallowing? Hmmm. Me too. Jeez, I must read, 6, no, 7 pieces a day on it here.
"And I hate the southerners who 144 years later haven't gotten over the fact that they lost." Or maybe this was what Des' piece was all about? He just hasn't gotten over the loss, eh? Or are you referring to someone else you hate?
Some of you have been making Des' case for him, but not intentionally. I see the obligatory "I'm not blaming the South today or hating on Southerners today." And then... the South is a bunch of bible-beating, racist Republicans today. I also dig the repeated references to Germans and even Nazis which are made, and allowed by other readers to stand. Extraordinary.
An example - and I'll pick my examples from people I like and respect a great deal. My good buddy Dick has a post up today about some racist Republican candidate. From Georgia. The very word triggered in Dick a rapid mental and emotional link to the history of slavery. And, the words of a Ray Charles a song. Now I love Dick. I "get" what he's saying. And absolutely, yes, there is a connection to slavery, and the past. And MY mind makes those connections.
BUT. In no way, no how, would Dick's mind - or ours, or mine - make those same automatic connections about a really Northern state. Nor would people accept using the name of a state like "New York" as short-hand for a really really racist GOP candidate. Our own minds would automatically narrow the debate to the individual candidate, or the GOP as a party.
But, as Des pointed out but most people still aren't getting, because the Northern states had slavery too. Just try to stop yourself from immediately kneejerking here, ok - I'm not about to try and justify the South, and yes, slavery had less of a presence in the North, and yes it lasted a lot less long, was less entrenched in the economy, and the culture. But think about this. Slavery was a part of the North's history.
WE NORTHERNERS WERE SLAVERS TOO.
But in our minds, it's as though that didn't exist. We just do not associate "slavery" with "Maine." Slavery has become, pure and simple, "the South's" historic stain - a 100% versus 0% thing. We trip over references to the North having slavery fist. Why? Because it clashes with our self-image. Yet Britain and Brazil and Canada and lots of other countries had slavery. The South did it worst in the US, so yes, everyone has to dig deeper and work harder to change the South, but it was everywhere.
Try this. If I mention Liverpool, in England, what do you think of? The Beatles. Well, funny, 'cause Liverpool was a massive center of slave-trading, as was the city of Bristol. Those 2 cities ruled frigging world trade. 40% of GLOBAL trade moving through Liverpool. But when you see those massive houses, palaces, in those great Atlantic port cities, the slave-trade built them. But it is not 1 in 1000 tourists that sees that or thinks that. It has been ERASED from the set of mental connections we make. We do not think Liverpool and Slavery.
Des was also trying to point out that the way the Civil War story is told "cleanses" the North. But from what little I know of the Civil War, there was a lot of racism in the North, and a lot of support for just leaving the South and slavery alone. Riots against the draft, and killings of African Americans, in New York, right? Copperhead state leaders in the North. Now the instant response to this is to say "it's justifying the South" to mention it. But does anyone really think it helps us understand later racism, or the real-world difficulties our leaders face today, if we turn the Civil War into some kind of Sunday School story?
More widely, look at our approach, say just after the Civil War - and often by the same Generals and soldiers - toward Native Americans. It was monstrous beyond comprehending. They were starved out, en masse, and in many cases, just downright, straight-ahead slaughtered. Yet somehow most of us put this in another compartment of our mind. As North Americans, we in no way grapple with what was done to the Native peoples to the degree that we do the Civil War. Usually, we don't even connect it. Even though much of it was more recent than the Civil War. And yes, slavery is terrible, but genocide is no small thing either.
But, it was often our own beloved Northern politicians, and voters, and Union Generals and officers and troops (e.g. Sherman) doing the starving and killing of these Native peoples. How does that work? If we're all about freedom and goodness?
But instead of using this as an opportunity to pull some of these threads apart, it's yahoo time! Everything has to be smushed up together. Sorry, all freedom on our side, no honor on theirs. And then we end up asking things like, "Why did Jim Crow happen, anyhow?" Doh.
Des threw out a dozen possible analogies for secession in other countries. But nooooooo, not one of them was relevant. In any way. People braying about how it wasn't like Scotland and not like the Czechs and not like Algeria and... well, frankly, you're pretty dense if you don't accept ANY damned historical analogy. Hello? Secession's happened outside the 1860's in the US. The point is not to find an analogy which works perfectly and fits completely, it's to use them to pull out points of similarity and look at them. People reacted like someone had pissed in their shoe.
Like so. The issues of secession and slavery can be pulled apart, but were connected to some important degree in the case of the South. Instead, it's all "If you think there was a right to secession... then you must be justifying slavery... and ummmm, be a traitor.... and against freedom... and deserve a beating."
If you can't pull some of these things apart, and can't see where the same forces that were exemplified in the South also ran through the North, then you're not only gonna be flying blind on Jim Crow and how/why quasi-slavery got rebuilt... but you sure as shit won't get the (deeply racist) series of wars America has fought overseas.
And this is the big stink-bomb beneath this debate. Because the whole terrorism thing is shot through with racism, right? And... a lot of people think it's also shot through with our defence of economic interests. Resources which we somehow feel we have a god-given right to. Now... you hearing any resonances at all in those phrases? Any Southern accents in those phrases?
In some sense, isn't our defense of Empire, and the mental and racial assault against every nation and people we've fought for the last 40 years - sandn*gg*rs anyone? gooks? - is there anyone out there that "gets" how much this smells like... the Old South? Protecting their plantations/oil. Their way of life.
But even if we have questions about these foreign wars, we STILL - just this past weekend - chose to "honor" our troops for their "service." Let me be more specific here. Take my friend Oleeb, whom I regard as one of the brightest and best on the site. Oleeb was arguing, just yesterday, that those who fought for the South should not be honored on Memorial Day. And that the case of the South was purely about slavery, and "freedom" and "honor" were purely on the side of the North. But on Destor's thread today - which I think is a fine one - Oleeb states:
"It has been many decades since those who have died in the US Military were fighting for our freedom. It is right and honorable to pay homage to those whose lives have been taken during miiltary combat, but it is certainly inaccurate to say they died fighting for freedom in any of the wars in my lifetime starting with Viet Nam. All our wars in recent decades have been imperialist wars whose main aim is to dominate a country or region."
Now make those two sets of statements mesh. No soldier who fought for the South is to be shown honor. No matter if they were kids, or fighting for their hill-farms, no matter their lack of education, or if they were stepping up because their father or brother was killed, right? But a total racist who joined the US Forces to fight in Iraq, hot-headed and full of hate, who killed families using massively high-tech equipment, but then got killed himself... should be honored? Fight for the South - NONE are to be honored. Fight for us today in wars overseas - ALL who die are to be honored.
Does no one get that listening to people bleat about outmoded cultural attitudes of the Old South, and the South's silly view of "honor," and their desperate attempt to hang onto what they thought was theirs, and the outlandish intellectual justifications they made is............. precisely what we see in our foreign wars today, and thus is an attitude that continues to run through the whole nation, rather than having been one that was fought in the South? And it's always been there, from the Mayflower on through Manifest Destiny and a thousand other examples? But we found a way to dump most of the "racist" sin at the feet of the - admittedly - complete bastards who owned and ran the South?
Shorter = WHAT IF THE UNITED STATES HAS BECOME THE OLD SOUTH?
And what if part of it was because the US had not been able to look honestly at its own history? If it had found ways to shimmy loose, shoving some blame there, and renaming this here, and better dump a bit of this in some foreign land. Ahhh, there. Comfy.
And for Joe Everyday, feel the Glory of that great big ole historic victory, and how gooood it felt to be on the side of right, and mannnnn, how about those Southerners.
And how we KICKED their asses.
And how they were SO morally wrong. Nazis.
'Cause we're all about FREEDOM, man. 24/7, the Freedom.
And why do those LOSERRRRRS just keep whining?
May 26, 2009 5:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
US of Angst
Quinn,
Yes in Oregon we even once had a KKK Governor; a Democratic governor, Walter Pearce. My folks moved here from Texas during the Depression and they told me Portland was more overtly racist than their home towns. My dad was mixed race White and Cherokee, and I believe Black although it’s been suppressed in our family history. He “passed” in P-town mostly. My mom is White. Je suis Indienne, aussie Je suis Cowboy.
Often missing in the discussion is the point that people have migrated all over and around this Native American continent and taken their learned racism and empire and blood quantum with them. My folks included. So here we are. I asked myself, which part of me should I hate?
I just try to recognize and analyze it, whenever and however it comes out, and call it by its name.
The answer to your question is YES.
May 26, 2009 11:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was born in Richmond, Virginia. I lived in Atlanta for two years during high school. I promise you that the way I learned about the Civil War (I never heard "The War of Northern Aggression" until I was older, and it was framed as a joke) was different than the way someone growing up in say, New Hampshire. I think, I read, I listen, and I have even learned something from all this discussion back and forth.
But you know what, guys? That damn war was over more than 100 years ago. My relatives came from Scotland and Germany long after, and none of them as far as I know every had slaves, but I'm pretty sure some of my Scottish ancestors were pirates. Do I feel guilty that my pirate relatives probably stole stuff and killed people? No. Why? Because I am not guilty of it myself.
This discussion has outlived itself. One person's "snot-nosed kid is another person's hope for the future; one person's "freedom-fighter" is another person's terrorist. Does anyone really think anything different? We have a planet full of problems. Let's move on to them.
(BTW, I plan to post this on the "other" blog as well.)
May 26, 2009 6:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm looking forward to a rousing debate about that "Scottish pirates" smear.
They were.... ummm.... sportsmen. Yachting.
Yeah. That's it.
May 26, 2009 6:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, my great uncle Sutherland, from the Orkneys told me many tales -- they were skalleywags all! I think it's where I get my love of the sea, and my desire to smack anyone who talks of a 'rope' on a boat. [What's the only rope on a boat, man? That would be a bell-rope, sir! Everything else is a line]
May 26, 2009 6:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
My ancestors were horse thieves, reprobates, ass lickers, barn burners, drunkards, forgers, money lenders, foragers, pantie sniffers, sodomites, Prussians and vandals. They got to America the earliest and stayed the longest. Some of them held jobs, but not very often - mostly they lived through blackmail, extortion and subterfuge, with occasional periods of morphine abuse. Slave owners, mercenaries, Pentecostals, they just thought they were living the American dream. Nothing for me to apologize for, is there?
May 26, 2009 6:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rum... check.
Sodomy... check.
The Lash... check.
Looks like we got us a winner, folks.
Or a loser. It's all the same in this town.
May 26, 2009 7:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think I saw your whole family tree in the scene in Blazing Saddles where the protagonists try to sign up with Hedley Lamar's goons wearing Klan robes.
May 26, 2009 10:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's the good side of the family.
May 28, 2009 10:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
No, just apologize for the pantie sniffers and I'll be happy.
May 26, 2009 7:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
So sorry, didn't realize they were yours.
May 26, 2009 7:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, it's your own fault for following me into the laundromat!
May 26, 2009 7:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Strange, I though it was just an awfully clean and noisy bar.
May 28, 2009 6:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
quinn, you're a hard act to follow. That is one righteous rant, and you have nailed some critical points.
It is now the norm for a lot of people to portray the South as a monolithic bastion of evil -- then and now. But just as there were many white southerners who opposed slavery, many also opposed the Jim Crow laws. And while Jade is correct that there is a difference between personal and institutional racism, it is also true that many southern whites did what they could -- often at risk of their own lives -- to oppose Jim Crow.
One of the lesser known historical details is the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, which was started in eastern Arkansas. It was an alliance of poor tenant farmers that persisted through the Great Depression. It is remarkable because it was fully integrated, with blacks, whites, men, and women all having equal status, holding offices and leadership positions equally. From a small group meeting in churches for safety, STFU grew to more than 35,000 during the Depression. And when the mercenary armies of the rich landowners came to "enforce" Jim Crow, those white men and women were beaten and killed and along with the black men and women.
But they persisted, and they changed many of the institutions before the Civil Rights Act. For example, my Jewish father had many black friends and some status in a southern city of about 100,000 during the 1940s and 1950s. When one of those friend's son returned from the war, he wanted to become a police officer, but the police force was not integrated. My father convinced the mayor and police chief to hire the young man, which led to hiring several other black police officers and black firefighters, and so on. The civil institutions, including the schools, were effectively integrated by the 1950s. Was there still racism? Probably. But there was also opportunity. Does it bother me to hear my father and other courageous people called racists other pejoratives by people who have no idea what they are talking about? Wouldn't it bother you?
As to the Civil War, in many southern states the majority of the people were not in favor of succession. There was no popular vote on succession. Succession was engineered by the wealthy and their political lackeys. In his book, Bitterly Divided, historian David Williams cites evidence to support this including: 1) the huge number of white southerners who fled the south rather than participate in the war, 2) the necessity of instituting a draft in south in the early days of the war (then, as now, the children of the wealthy didn't want to fight) because volunteers were almost non-existent, 3) the extremely high rates of desertion among those draftees, 4) the women's networks that actively organized and worked against the southern military, and 5) that as many as half of the counties in some states voted not to secede AFTER the war had begun.
Slavery was (and is -- our buddies the Saudis still actively trade in slaves) an abomination, but both slavery and secession were a function of the wealthy trying to hang on to their vast holdings. Having not read the original post, I cannot characterize it, but I would make one other historical point. Sherman did not burn Atlanta, and that is not why he is held in such great contempt. After a 4-month siege of Atlanta, Sherman cut a genocidal swath in his scorched-earth march to the sea. What his 62,000-man army couldn't eat or use, they killed. Then they burned everything until there was nothing left standing. Then they dug up railroad tracks, blew up bridges, and decimated everything approaching infrastructure, inflicting more than $100 million in damage and leaving behind --- land mines, which continued to kill blacks and whites alike for years.
BTW, among the thousands killed (he also took no prisoners) in what Sherman termed his "Christmas present" to Lincoln, were hundreds of slaves, who, having been freed, sought to join Sherman's army. Sherman told his commanders that "Negroes who are able-bodied and can be of service ... may be taken along" but not fed, reminding them that "the question of supplies is a very important one" and their first duty was to "them who bear arms."
Sherman, it seems, didn't care any more for blacks than he did for native Americans. His prosecution of the war was a lot more about winning and, perhaps, a license to kill than it was about liberating slaves.
May 26, 2009 8:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
There were no "thousands killed" in Sherman's march to the sea. It was virtually unopposed - total number of confederate soldiers killed was 650. He also did not present slaves as a Christmas present to Lincoln. The slaves had been emancipated. We all seem to be getting carried away here with our historical facts.
May 26, 2009 9:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
The main point to me is that "The South" without slavery would have amounted to nothing. Slavery was the only thing the made white southerners rich.
It wasn't just the South which prospered on the backs of slaves. The whole country, from 1650 on, at least, prospered because of slavery.
And genocide. There were about 100 MILLION indigenes in North America in 1493. There were fewer than a million in 1900...
It's not only Southerners who are at fault. It's white people, and every white person in the USofA STILL benefits from the legacies of slavery and genocide.
May 26, 2009 8:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
That 100 million estimate is way too high, even including all the Americas it is still wildly off the mark. I'm not arguing that the indigenous were not maltreated, only that the population was not that high pre-Columbian.
May 26, 2009 9:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Benefitting from something you had nothing to do with isn't the same as being at fault for it.
May 27, 2009 8:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'd like to thank you for writing this.
It's long past time for southerners to get over the Civil War, and to dump the damned confederate flag.
Some of my own forebears were confederates--and not just cannon fodder, either, but the big boys, army and navy officers and confederate government officials, so I don't have any patience with people who assume that since I grew up in Pennsylvania, I don't understand the "heritage" or "pride" they feel about the confederacy (I like hitting them with my family history and then watching their faces as they try to fathom how somebody whose ancestors were confederates could denigrate what they did and believed, but that's neither here nor there)
Anyway, confedrate apologists need to get over themselves, recognize that the confederacy--and indeed, the U.S.--was built on the backs of slaves, and try to have a little empathy for others.
May 26, 2009 9:03 PM | Reply | Permalink