The South Still Lies About the Civil War & Slavery

I see where you are going and I don't entirely disagree. However, your first sentence here is interesting. Southerners are allowed to be proud of many things... their country, their church, their football team, their BBQ. It's not that they are not allowed to have pride so much as it is impossible for all but the most obstinate white supremacist to be proud of slavery and the price paid by the South for defending it.

By the way, the book mentioned in the OP is rather ambitiously titled to evoke comparisons with The Mind of the South by W. J. Cash, a 1941 book that is a classic read for southern historians. At the end of the book, Cash summarizes his thinking:

 

Yes they are and if you here some of them like Andrew Young who was Carter's ambassador to the UN talking about when he and his wife first went from Atlanta to NY you will see exactly what I mean. You can buy it from Amazon if you wish. Here's what the description says about Young

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/5919

In the interview Andrew Young talks about he and his wife moving from the South to New York, and how nervous she was. He went to work the first day and encouraged her to go shopping. She went out, and when he got home Young's wife was in tears, because of the lack of southern hospitality and how hard it was for her. He mentions that as part of the culture that he appreciates from the South.

To reduce the South simply to racism is ignorant. To ignore the South's history of racism is also ignorant. Being aware of the different aspects of what Southern heritage is, and to appreciate the good parts, and despise the horrible parts seems appropriate.

 

I, as a conservative, am not afraid to admit that slavery is wrong.

I do not think the South is correct in having slaves
The South was not correct in enforcing segregation
I do not like NASCAR that much
I do not own or wave a Confederate flag

 

Its not something you should have to admit is wrong...I don't think anyone would admit it is right...


that being said I like the effort?

 

Air Langhi is clearly a victim of white guilt. *snicker*

 

I wouldn't doubt any modern southerner admitting slavery as wrong but there are still quite a significant amount of Southerners that generate excuses for slavery such as "Africans enslaved other Africans" or the "Southern economy would have collapsed if slavery became illegal".

 

One problem is that much of our rhetoric is simplistic, based on sound bites and on coded words so it should be no surprise that there is a lot of cognitive dissonance. This isn't just a problem with Southern Pride but about a lot of other issues. My own view is that we should embrace the complexity of the issue and that the best way to deal with this is to learn and understand history better.

I don't think there is anything wrong with acknowledging the bravery of Confederate soldiers and the brilliance of General Robert E. Lee while at the same time acknowledging that the cause they fought for was wrong. Further we can also discuss the humiliation of Reconstruction and the brutality of Sherman's March to the Sea while also saying that the overall cause of preserving the Union and freeing the slaves was good.

It is only natural to feel attacked when your history is criticized and respond back in a reactionary way but I think this is why we need to move beyond just simplistic understandings of history. History is complex and in my view reducing historic figures and great events to just good and evil frankly does a disservice to history. For example a recent D&D debate regarding the dropping the atomic bombs.

Another thing reason why I think things like Southern Pride and the Civil War become such hot button issues is that they are used as proxies over modern issues regarding things like gun control. While it is important to understand history part of that understanding though is seeing the big differences between then and now.

 

It's funny to watch him squirm and try to back-peddle out of it. Dude can't even admit it. I'd have an ounce of respect if he could just apologize.

 

People don't want southerners to pay reparations, they just want the racist southerners to stop being racist.

 

Link about the Alabama vote? There was a vote regarding some language about school segregation in their constitution, but I can't find anything about blacks and whites sleeping together.

 

This is the dirty south motha****as! Ain't nobody got time for dat!

 

I popped in an episode of "The Civil War" (Ken Burns) again last night.

Historian Shelby Foote recalls when he visited with the granddaughter (years ago, of course) of a Southern Civil War general (Robert E. Lee? I can't remember).

Foote mentions how the Civil War produced, in his opinion, two great geniuses: Abraham Lincoln and, I think, her grandfather (if it was Lee, but for the life of me, I was drifting off as I watched this).

He says she got real quiet and grim when he said this, then finally answered, "Well, we didn't much care for Lincoln in our house."

He laughed, saying, "[This old Southern lady] didn't like me lumping Lincoln in with her granddaddy. But that's how that is. Southerners are very peculiar when it comes to the Civil War."

This peculiarity fades with each successive generation but it's like getting a long-untended red wine stain out of a white lace tablecloth that you refuse to replace. Not even a Tide commercial could fix it.

 

Excellent point!

 

And thank God that we "stole" Texas from Mexico, because I'd much rather be an citizen of the US than a citizen of a second world country even more corrupt, more violent, and more dysfunctional than our own.

 

The other genius that Shelby Foote was talking about was Nathan Bedford Forrest: A calvary officer for the confederacy and later first grand wizard of the kkk.

 

Certainly, and I don't deny it. I'm thinking more about the historiography than the history.

I don't think they have quite as much permission as you suggest when it comes to things that have persisted since the antebellum period. Proud of your beautiful, historic, architecturally significant plantation home? Slaves built that, sorry.

But, I'm mostly reacting the the statistic cited in the OP of 48% of whites saying the war was about states' rights (which the article obviously thinks is code for the antebellum version of holocaust-denial). 48% of whites are not virulent white supremists. So, why do they answer a survey the way they do? That's what I'm thinking about.

That's one of those things I'd say are probably illogical positions taken out of defiance because people feel they are under attack. But, I'm only vaguely familiar with that one.

And probably the worst way to go about doing that is by running around calling them racists.

 

I really don't think Southerners can't be proud to be that however the use of the Confederate flag is some symbol of southern pride is what trashes the whole thing. Southerners push southern pride by waiving that flag. I really don't see it much different than Germans waiving a swastika as German pride. There's a lot of southern things that you can be proud about but when you use that flag it kills everything. Young people gravitate to that flag as some southern pride thing and it's freaking ignorant. Hell read the article in this thread. Some kids bring a Mexican flag for Cinco de Mayo and the next day white kids bring a Confederate flag. What the hell? That's just sick.

 

out of context? you said this about a whole country on why you wouldn't visit