Hi, all. On this glorious July 4th, I thought I’d take a second to talk about a topic that’s been on the forefront of a lot of people’s minds in recent weeks: Heritage. Specifically, “southern” heritage.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s in Georgia, and have lived within an hour of Atlanta my entire life. In grade school, we had a class on Georgia history; and, as part of that history, the Civil War. We learned that the Civil War was basically fought over state’s rights. Oh, there was the slavery issue too; but that was just a smokescreen. We learned that Sherman was a sonovabitch while at the same time learning that Lincoln was a saint who freed the slaves. Might have been something about Frederick Douglass in there. Oh, and Martin Luther King fought for equal rights and was assassinated. Roadside history placards still called the Civil War, “The War of Northern Aggression” well well through the end of the century.
And that’s… about it, until high school (and sometimes not until college) history classes. But the seed was set… We were led to believe that all that racism stuff was handled in the 60s and we’re all good now. Sure, some guys still tell “black jokes”; but, you know… That’s just guys telling dirty jokes; they don’t mean anything. The “Stars and Bars”, as we proudly called the confederate battle flag, were everywhere and on everything, including the State flag. We were told that was to honor those that died fighting during that terrible conflict and not at all racist, and we believed it. Every Friday night we watched Dukes of Hazzard and watched the Duke Boys make a fool of Roscoe P. Coltrane, the flag prominent in almost every scene. It’s part of our history; our heritage.
Except… it isn’t. Most of what we learned wasn’t an outright lie… but it was only one sanitized sliver of the whole story. Yes, state’s rights and economic peril did figure in the roots of the Civil War; but those issues only existed because of slavery. The Civil War was a rebellion of rich, white slaveowners against the United States that killed 750,000 people and cemented racism in the south as a permanent fixture. Oh yeah, they lied about racism not being an issue any longer in these modern times, as well. The confederate battle flag isn’t a symbol of plucky good ‘ol boys who never did no harm and hasn’t been since the end of the war. It’s a gigantic middle finger to anyone who isn’t white; a reminder that for a vast number of people, the much seen on bumper stickers slogan “The South will rise again!” isn’t a pride-swelling symbol of the south, but an implied threat to everyone who isn’t white, or heterosexual, or protestant. It isn’t heritage, it IS hate, solidified in a symbol.
So, on the 4th of July, 2020, I’d like to remind the staunch defenders of the ol’ Stars and Bars, that…
The Confederacy lost.