Posted on 12/02/2002 7:26:36 PM PST by stainlessbanner
NEW YORK--If you think you understand America's culture wars, try this quick quiz. Who said, "The days of one-sided, ignorant, and racist attacks are done. We will honor our heritage and speak out against the genocide of our culture"?
A) A black leader in Lansing, Mich.
B) A Latino spokeswoman in San Jose, Calif.
C) A white activist in Spotsylvania, Va.
The correct answer is "C," the white activist. He's Johnny Hostler, chair of the A.P. Hill Chapter of Virginia's League of the South. Hostler posted his remarks on the Internet last spring to condemn Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner, after Warner refused to designate April as Confederate History Month.
Blacks and women both have months to celebrate their heritage, other white Virginians argued. Don't Confederates deserve the same privilege?
Warner must hope to avoid the fate of Georgia's Roy Barnes and South Carolina's Jim Hodges, who both lost gubernatorial re-election bids this month amid controversies over the Confederate flag. Hodges backed the removal of the flag from atop his statehouse; Barnes supported a new state flag that minimized a Confederate emblem.
Across the South, meanwhile, the imbroglio has entered public schools through a different medium: teen fashion. Earlier this fall, a high school principal in Canton, Ga., barred students from wearing a popular line of Confederate-themed clothing. About 100 students defied the ban, noting that blacks wear clothes and hats with the "X" symbol of Malcolm X. Why shouldn't whites be allowed to wear their own X -- the Confederate battle flag?
In fact, the Canton school district also bans clothing with Malcolm X symbols. But whites' effort to invoke Malcolm signals an important shift in Southern sensibilities. For more than a century, white Southerners sought to impose a single ethos upon schools and communities. Now they're much more likely to argue in the idiom of modern multiculturalism, demanding "equal time" for their distinct "culture."
This maneuver closely echoes the recent strategy of anti-evolutionists, who have become fervent multiculturalists in their own right. Following the Scopes trial of 1925, fundamentalist and evangelical Christians demanded state bans upon evolution instruction in the schools. When the Supreme Court struck down such measures in the 1960s, however, activists began demanding equal time for so-called "creationist" views.
Even Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell now says that John T. Scopes should not have been convicted at Dayton, Tenn., because Scopes was merely trying to teach "both sides" -- evolution and creation.
Most of my fellow liberals will scoff at such claims, insisting that conservatives are co-opting pluralist language in order to promote their own political agenda. But I would urge liberals to view the new right-wing multiculturalism as an opportunity, not as a threat.
Don't celebrate -- analyze
First, the right-wing challenge should force us to reflect upon our own tendency to applaud -- rather than to analyze -- racial and ethnic history. Much of left-wing multiculturalism simply praises women and minorities, as Southern whites correctly sense. If blacks, Hispanics and Asians are celebrated in schools, Southerners ask, why not celebrate white Confederates?
The answer is that schools should not "celebrate" anyone, if by that term we mean uncritical homage. No group of people -- not even victims of horrid oppression -- has a monopoly on virtue. Black Africans participated in the slave trade; Spanish conquistadors enslaved and slaughtered Native Americans; and Native Americans slaughtered each other, sometimes as part of human-sacrifice rituals.
By ignoring or neglecting these facts, we clear the way for white Southerners to airbrush out their own foibles -- particularly their perpetuation of slavery after the American Revolution.
Second, right-wing multiculturalism provides a tremendous chance to promote the inquiry-based pedagogy that many liberals say they want.
According to the standard liberal critique, American education is too "fact-driven": especially as standardized testing increases, liberals complain, schools require children to recall information rather than to deliberate, analyze and explain it.
What better way to promote inquiry and discussion than to engage the conservative point of view? According Johnny Hostler's League of the South, for example, the Civil War was not really about slavery; instead, it was a war for Southern independence, modeled after the same principles as the revolution itself: freedom, equality and self-determination.
Imagine a high school history class that really debated this proposition. The class would have to examine the origins of slavery in North America; the drafting of the Constitution, which deemed each slave three-fifths of a person; the industrialization of the North; the extension of slavery into the West; the rise of sectionalism in the South; and so on.
In a full and fair discussion, I believe, most students would recognize that the defense of slavery was integral -- not incidental -- to the Confederate cause. Johnny Hostler believes otherwise, of course. Rather than celebrating our respective "cultures," then, let's subject them to analysis and argument in American schools. And may the best argument win.
Copyright 2002 by The News & Observer Pub. Co.
I would be happy with more critical thinking in our classrooms - we've got so PC with our education, that certain issues get a free pass, while others remain "unmentionable."
And it has many, many followers here on FR. Right SSB?
For those who don't know: SSB posts NOTHING but diatribes about how "Duh South Gon' RAZZ Agin'!"
Because Caucasians get the other 10 months out of the year to celebrate their heritage? And are more than welcome to celebrate their heritage during the other two months too?
Justin Wilson, the famed Cajun comic, once told a story about two duck hunters who pounded on the door of the local game warden, demanding "We want one more month to hunt duck!" The warden, clad only in his union suit after getting out of bed to answer the men's hammering on his door, said "What?" Both hunters repeated, "We want one more month to hunt duck! Duck season ends tomorrow, and we want one more month to hunt duck!" The game warden looked at both of them, asking "What you gonna name it?" The hunters looked, mystified, at the warden. "What you mean, 'What we gonna name it?'" The warden replied, "You already hunt 'em 12 months outta de year - if you want a new month, you gotta have a new name for dat month."
Americans have 12 months a year to be proud.
I always hear this nagging little voice in my head during "Group of Your Choice Month" saying, "Does this mean that "Group of Your Choice" are irrelevant the other 11 months out of the year?"
The open season on "all things Southern" has prompted a resurgence in Southern pride.
Agree. There were heroes and genuinely good men on both sides of the conflict, and to honor one group at the expense of the other is a zero-sum game. And I hate zero-sum games; they don't work, are divisive, and are not based on logic.
The left-wing attacks have taken a non-issue and turned it into a broiling controversy.
A talking point of the left, crafted to raise consciousness and funds (not necessarily in that order).
I waited 'til a number of other shoppers were around us to announce to my wife, "Oh, honey, remember when you aksed me what an oxymoron is? There's a great one on that book, Southern Culture.
I expected some hostile reaction from the natives, but realized they had no idea what I had just said.
LOL
Hank
Patsy Cline, BB King, Flannery O'Conner, Shelby Foote, Elvis, Grand 'Ol Opry, BBQ, NASCAR - the list is long -and- it's all part of Southern culture.
Check out the link and get back to us. I'm sure you will find some interesting books on that thread!
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