Confederate culture too

The News & Observer ^ | November 24, 2002 | Jonathan Zimmerman

[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.

[Colt .45]

He has a point when he says the public schools shouldn't celebrate minority's holidays to the exclusion of others. The Founder's didn't mean for this to be a society where forced brotherhood is the rule. All of the assaults on our heritage are the end result of Clinton and his PC policy. Now the socialist left in America has taken up the hue and cry, but it only makes me to dig deeper and find more ammo to fight them with. I am resolved that I will fly my battleflag when I wish. They can kiss my Southern grits!

[stainlessbanner]

Well, thank you sir! Please accept my humble gratitude for your flattering post.

[Non-Sequitur]

Don't let it go to your head, Stainless. I'm still around to keep you in line. :)

So, little Ulyssia Techumsia has her first Christmas coming up if I'm not mistaken.

[Iwo Jima]

If the other shoppers were Southern, they were just politely ignoring your atrocious lack of manners and display of poor breeding (lack of education). After they walked away from you, they were quietly discussing among themselves the rudeness and regrettable state of ignorance you had just displayed.

[Tax-chick]

I found it interesting that the author identified the League of the South representative as "a white activist." It's a sad commentary on how our ideas don't matter to the poobahs of culture, only our color. (I don't keep up with the League of the South, so I'm assuming it's a Southern organization, not specifically a White organization. Correct me if I'm mistaken!)

The root problem, as I see it, is that the schools are being used as agencies of indoctrination, as the public schools always have been, and so of course the different constituencies are fighting for their different versions of doctrine! If we had local control of schools - and you can't get any more local than home school! - none of this would have to be a public matter.

FMCDH,

Xy

[4CJ]

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.

As long as they discuss the thousands of slaves that died in the "middle" passage by starvation, disease or drowning; yankee attempts to keep the West "lily-white"; Black codes in northern states; the laws that prevented emmigration of blacks into most northern states. Toss in mandatory classes about the Declaration, Articles Of Confederation & Perpetual Union, and the Constitution including the ratification debates; add readings from the Federal Writers Project/Slave Narratives, and discussion of Lincoln's repetitous attempts to repatriate blacks to anywhere but America.

I'm all for telling the truth - ALL of it - about the war and what led up to it.

[Non-Sequitur]

I'm all for telling the truth...about the war and what led up to it.

So when are we going to start?

[Hank Kerchief]

If the other shoppers were Southern, they were just politely ignoring your atrocious lack of manners and display of poor breeding...

No, cultured Southerners would not have referred to raising and nurturing children as "breeding," an expression reserved for livestock. Please see my post #39.

Hank

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

Well, I guess you're not quite the horses ass I took you to be...though, why you would purposely insult someone in bookstore is beyond me. Just reminds me that good manners are dying too. Otherwise, I agree with what you said. We've been McDonaldized.

[Hank Kerchief]

Well, I guess you're not quite the horses ass I took you to be...

My grandmother always said, "there are more horses arses than there are horses," as you are evidently aware, and I think we may have discovered some, even though you have let me off the hook. Please tell no one else, you might just notice that bulge in my cheek was my tongue.

I am absolutely amazed how many people take the things said on this or any forum personally and I enjoy some of the absurd reactions. For the most part, no one knows anyone else from Adam, so who cares what someone else says about them or anything else. Good grief.

You asked a good question, "why would I purposely insult someone in bookstore?" Ask youself another, "why would someone who would purposely insult people in a bookstore tell about it?" Would they?

Hank

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

someone who purposely insulted others in a bookstore would most certainly not be classy enough from bragging about it...

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

someone who purposely insulted others in a bookstore would most certainly not be classy enough to refrain from bragging about it...

[4CJ]

So when are we going to start?

WE have ;o)

[Non-Sequitur]

Gee, when are you going to talk about Black Codes in southern states, the part that the south played in the slave trade, and laws meant to keep free blacks from emigrating into southern states?

[Godebert]

[4CJ]

Gee, when are you going to talk about Black Codes in southern states, the part that the south played in the slave trade, and laws meant to keep free blacks from emigrating into southern states?

The truth doesn't hurt, only the attempt of some (not meaning you) to paint the South as participating in illegal actions while refusing to acknowledge the participation by the North. Both sections of the country ratified the Constitution - both in favor of retaining the slave trade, and considering slaves to be non-persons/citizens.

[TexConfederate1861]

Yea...sure.

The LOS is no more racist than you are....but then again, YOU hate Southern Culture etc........?!

[Non-Sequitur]

Both sections of the country ratified the Constitution

Sure, but while I in no way want to portray the North as an innocent party in all this, let's not also forget that the south was also an enthusiastic partner in the slave trade and the south had legislation restricting the freedom of free blacks that was more restrictive than anything up North.

[Colt .45]

The Constitution of the United States was written not because of slavery, but in spite of it. However when you have a despot who doesn't believe in a State's sovereignty, he will use any excuse to wage war and subjugate the inhabitants thereof to his whim.