Saturday, April 10, 2010

Confederate History Month, a racist’s dream come true?

I listened to a portion of a local radio talk show where callers were pontificating over the evils of the newly elected Republican Governor's declaration of April as Confederate History Month. I listened as several callers attempted to espouse pro or anti sentiments and in general showed their total ignorance of this period of our history. But, with little emphasis on critical thinking being taught in schools in favor of Politically Correct history, I can't but cease to wonder at how little the vast majority really understands of where we have come. It does not help that anyone can label a political enemy as a racist if they do not espouse a certain level of liberal ideology. The term itself has become the broadly stroked brush of enmity by which we stifle debate or impugn someone's character.

Hence, any discussion of the Civil War and the Confederacy in general devolves into harsh and superficial epithets and I fear much of what people know today is colored by the demonization of one race or people in the effort to artificially prop up another.

I listened to callers who berated even Robert E. Lee for not freeing the slaves he inherited from his Father-in-law George Washington Parke Custis whose will stipulated manumission of the slaves living on his Arlington plantation; Lee chose to pay off his father-in-law's debts by hiring his slaves out. To this caller, Nathan Bedford Forrest was the most despicable human being who ever lived for his actions during the war and after in the formation of the KKK. The problem I had with these callers was their self assuredness in their feeble understanding of history and the view of our ancestors. Personally, Forrest was a ruthless man and Lee was misguided in his allegiance to Virginia, but I will also admit that these are statements from today using today's standards and knowledge of how history played out. To paint them both as racists simply because they owned slaves and fought for the south is to oversimplify and ignore the whole of northern public opinion that little differed from their own: that the black race was inferior to the white race.

That is not the historian's purpose, to paint the past with the brush of today but to paint it with the brush of yesterday and bring full meaning and understanding of where we are today by the road we have travelled. It would take a war and the grudging enlistment of black regiments to begin to sway northern opinion toward recognition of the negro race as deserving of equal treatment under the law.

Truth be told, any but the most radical abolitionist of the 1840's through 1865 would be considered as acceptable today and John Brown only notable for his having failed to lead a servile insurrection. The Great Emancipator himself in private and in public statements did not believe the negro could live in harmony with the predominant white population nor would they be suitable for fighting in the army. On several occasions he dismissed commissions from free northern blacks offering their services in raising all black regiments to fight. Lincoln supported an enterprise to colonize freedmen in Haiti, an effort that ended in failure and brought down on his head the almost universal condemnation of black newspapers and orators alike. Northern public opinion was little different than in the south save that they believed that the south should be deprived of her slaves. Few even of the New England states where blacks could enter into the professions allowed him to vote or to testify against a white. That the north held opinions of the black race little different from their southern counterparts is little portrayed in our history books but is information easily found if one bothers to look.

Do I support Confederate History Month? Do I care? Not really. I can't oppose it seeing that we allow for and even throw money at Black History Month, Women's History Month, Hispanic History Month … I'm personally lobbying for Dutch-German History Month as I feel I am underrepresented in the pantheon of me-to ethnic recognition. To paint this month as inherently racist is to practice poor critical thinking when we look at the gender and racial motivated months previously mentioned. Is not Black History Month racist? Only if one really wants to be fair about their opposition to Confederate History Month must they in the same breath admit that these other ethnic months too must be racist in their raising up of one group over and above another in their focus. It is the focus that is the critical point, not their content. To know why the southern states have a Confederate History Month is to also acknowledge the same need for a Black, Hispanic, or Women's history month. It is a call for balance, one that is sorely lacking in much discourse when race is involved and our poor history at treating the colored race.

One look at the first paragraph of the following Wikipedia page on this and a look at the discussions tab is all one needs to understand the issues: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_History_Month

That the original author of the post misrepresented the purpose for the month by including a statement from Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephen's proclamation regarding the ratification of the Confederate States of America's constitution as "… especially designed to celebrate … a new government . . . founded upon exactly the opposite idea [from that of the United States in 1776]; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

Nowhere in the proclamation or in any such state designations is this statement alluded to or the purpose for the recognition, but that mattered little to the person who started the information page. It was instead meant to harbor ill will and frankly a gross misappropriation of the historical record to front a claim of racism as the motivator.

Back to the radio show, some callers expressed their opinion that Virginia was doing this because there was a black man in the White House and as a protest against his election. With no proof and all hyperbole the discussion went on without any mention (at least of the part I heard, the host is usually good at reading the text of this stuff prior to opening up for calls so I can assume the audience had a full hearing of what the proclamation said) because it was Confederate therefore it was racist. That, is what rankles me the most: the misuse of our history and the view of the past with our standards of the day. The one caller who made the most sense was someone who asked why we had all of these special months to begin with; are we not all Americans? Shouldn't we instead have an American History Month?

In reading what Fredrick Douglass spoke in his orations or wrote in his newspaper and the writings of other clergymen and laymen about the need for the negro race to shoulder the burden of fighting in the war and then proving once and for all that there was no difference between the races in ability, for gaining the rights of suffrage in all of the states, and rejecting the Haiti and Nigerian colonization schemes it becomes clear that these men saw themselves as Americans, born in the land and deserving the same rights as the whites.

Do I believe that Confederate History Month is a celebration of racism? Only in so much as Black History Month is racist. Is the Confederacy a racist experiment in governance? Only so much as the whole of US history up to that time was. Is the celebration of Confederate leaders and their contribution to southern history racist? Only so much as recognition of Malcom X and Dr. Martin Luther King's contribution to black history is racist. I use the simple to make the point. In actuality the latter two are ethnocentric and not racist per the classical definition. But, to label someone ethnocentric just doesn't carry the same political and social power that the label racist does, yet to engage the critical thinking one has to admit that both center on one race to the exclusion or subjugation of the other. One cannot support the goals of Black History Month without supporting the same reasoning behind the other. If Confederate History Month is racist then so is Black History Month for both form exclusive ethnocentric paradigms of celebration and focus: to wit – to celebrate the contributions of Black/Confederate personages that make up a critical part of American/Southern History.

We should probably hold to a truer definition of racism before throwing that term around so handily today. The Reverend Jesse Jackson is famously quoted as saying that a black man cannot be a racist for he lacks the power to carry it out. That statement says it all about the use of the term today and its total lack of thought and simple stupidity that one can say no more about it. Yet, it is the common thought prevailing today, and that is just sad.

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