as a person living in the south, it is hard to forget the civil war. i have lived here in richmond for years, literally in the places where people died, marched, slept, dreamed. my old house was situated right where a confederate encampment was and i was only yards from the main road where stonewall jackson marched. years ago i did research on my ancestors, finding out that 3 of the 4 great-great grandfathers were in the civil war. do i feel a huge affinity for the war, my confederate granddaddies? not that much. it was, as they say, history.
it's funny that as a descendant of confederate soldiers i don't feel some sort of pride/heritage thing, but the truth is, i didn't know them. they could have been wonderful, great people, or they could have been ignorant, cruel people. i didn't know them. my only connection to them is purely genetic. it is DNA. not stories, not things passed down like diaries, old rifles, watches, quilts. it's just tiny DNA samples, little cells. and that doesn't add up to much in the long run.
their civil war experience is no more impacting on me than the gene for allergy to cats or the tendency to have cholesterol. their contributions to who i am are not deep or far ranging. i don't know where these people are buried or the first thing about who they were in their own worlds. they are names from an archive, dates on a tombstone somewhere...and i don't know where some of them are.
given that thought, it isn't hard to see why i marvel at the ongoing tensions between what i refer to as the redneck right and the unforgiving blacks. in my school, there are 1500 kids. of those, maybe 100+ are black, and in our case, you are black if you are chinese, hispanic, native american or anything mixed in between. the rest of the student population is white with no distinguishing characteristics other than lighter skin color. the socio-economic level of most of the student population is middle class, including black and white. few of the students struggle from a financial standpoint, and few do without. we have very few taking advantage of any governmental supplements for lunch, and we have few who have had to live for any length of time in any poverty. they have so much more than any of our ancestors might have hoped for, so many advantages, so many more opportunities to live good, positive, happy lives. so what are they fighting over and so passionate about?
apparently, respect.
the problem is, how one side defines respect vs. the other leaves a lot to be misinterpreted. and neither side is willing to listen or even consider the other's complaints. we have apparently once again reached critical mass when it comes to lack of tolerance, and the war is on again.
someone somewhere must be laughing on the way to the bank over the sale of confederate flag bedecked t-shirts. there are more and more of them, cleverly disguised as "dixie outfitters" or things stereotypically redneck. they promote poker, hunting, mudbogging, souped up cars, rifles and any number of outdoor pursuits associated with the stereotype of a southern redneck. but somewhere on that shirt, small or large, will be that harbinger of controversy, the stars and bars. they have given to hiding or downsizing it in the montage of other things, but it is still there, sort of a little hidden heartbeat, and truth be known, that little flag is likely the most alluring part of the t-shirt, and a lot why the purchaser buys it. it means a lot of things to them, but mostly it is a defiant thing...
so what are you saying when you wear that shirt? according to my screaming, angry, camouflage dressed female student this morning, it isn't about racism, it is about HISTORY and black people need to get over it.
sure, it is history. yes, a war lost, and 20 years of brutal financial and political subservience to our northern brethren that history lightly refers to as RECONSTRUCTION. things were built back, but not what had been before, and that probably was not a bad thing. certainly, things needed to change. slavery is morally wrong. sometimes you have to burn down the structure and envision something new. the ideal would be to build that new vision on the ruins of the old one. you would think that we would be enthralled at the new thing we have built, but sometimes that is not what happens. too often there is a focus on the crumbling burned out foundations, the "what was" and the "why we lost it." that single minded focus it what prevents us from moving forward.
apparently one of the things reconstructed was a rooted hatred for all things yankee, and in many cases, black. not without some good reason. unfortunately, our northern liberators in many cases chose to punish southerners by reversing the roles of slaves and their former slaveholders. this was done mostly on an economic and political level, with heavy taxes levied against the landholders, taxes so high that many lost their lands. former confederate soldiers were not allowed in many cases to vote, and the only males left able to do so were either transplanted northerners or newly liberated and often vulnerable and gullible blacks. white people in some cases shamelessly used the newly liberated slave population as a weapon of punishment for the defeated southern whites. they got what they wanted, which was to punish, humiliate and belittle the loser. however, reconstruction could not last, and when the southern states finally were able to reclaim the running of their own dominion, blacks suffered. they were the ones left to take the brunt of the rebounded hatred. hence jim crow laws, segregation, the klu klux klan and the massive separation of the races.
and there it stayed, status quo, until the civil rights movement of the 1950's, which culminated in equality legally for blacks in the united states. note that i said LEGALLY. you can't legislate compassion or kindness or govern prejudice or hatred.
the war still rages on, just not on paper.
i am listening to a generation of young people whose minds are in my belief more confined and closed than those of people 50 years ago. i am perceiving that the attitude amongst whites then was not so much one of active dislike as it was more of a benevolent caretaker. blacks were considered inferior intellectually and every other way, and were to be pitied or felt sorry for. the attitude was one of superiority on all levels, a hard mindset to change.
but change it should. those arguments don't hold up anymore. and the reasons are complex and convoluted. the cultures have melded, yet divided. blacks have become more independent, more liberated from the status quo of whites, yet they still seem to be yearning to be part of a white world that simply will not let them join on equal footing. it is NOT equal, regardless of the what the law says. people are NOT more informed, despite the plethora of information sources. people are NOT more understanding, despite all outward attempts to bridge the gap and encourage tolerance for the differences in people.
we're back in the camps, deeply entrenched, guns at our sides to "defend" ourselves whenever there is a perceived threat to the "cause" we are defending. for the blacks, the "cause" is the right to be equal and the perception that they never will be. for this white minority of people, the "cause" is "history" or "heritage" and the knowledge that those clinging to that old chestnut are a shrinking minority. most americans are weary of the periodic resurrection of this old conflict and it's implications. but still there are those who are still unwilling, despite all of the information, to let go of this last vestige of ancestry. to them, to do so is just another defeat. so they celebrate a loss 140 years later, and revel it it. they wear the stars and bars like some mantel of honor and defy anyone to disagree. the world disagrees for the most part, but no one seems to feel the need to just let them go and wave their flags. consider this. if they get no audience and no one cares, wouldn't it seem logical that the continued pursuit of this outmoded way of thinking would just start to look ridiculous? consider what happens when the klu klux klan, in their small numbers, march and chant. who doesn't look at them and almost feel embarrassed for them? such displays of public ignorance ought to provoke a kind of pity instead of anger. anyone willing to display themselves in this way is way beyond being sensible or even smart. they are simply stupid and embarrassing.
but many black people aren't seeing that they could win by letting these ignoramuses flaunt how stupid they are. they still see these ingrates as being powerful. they get their power, my black friends, when you give it to them. my black students are sensitive to this confederate flag and N-word form of "disrespect" and will react on instinct at anything they perceive as a threat to their quest for equality. to them, the flag represents everything that has kept them "down" and unable to achieve. it is both a catalyst and an excuse for both action and inaction. action comes in the forms of fights, petitions, name calling, deliberate acts of pushiness and offensiveness that they know will irritate some whites. in a school situation, this type of passive/active behavior comes in the form of cutting in lunch lines, talking loudly, blocking stairwells or lanes of passages in the halls, things that many whites object to because they aren't socially correct in the white world. in a black world, this behavior isn't a problem. and, truth be known, if the shoe were on the other foot, a white person doing any of these things in a predominantly black school would not be tolerated. white kids are not going to provoke because they believe there will be an action, and it won't be one they will profit from. however, our black students know that many whites struggle with this combined sense of guilt and fear. they don't like what they see some black kids doing, but they are intimidated and just internally fester and let it happen. or not. the extreme redneck kid fights back with the biggest weapon...they call the blacks "niggers" and prepare to fight...and fight you get. the n-word is the heavy duty grenade guaranteed to injure still.
i have spent my last 24 hours talking in vain to kids that appear set on a course where no one wins. it tell them that the history of this conflict shows that every time this battle begins, it ends in an ugly draw. blacks are no more equal or liberated. whites are less likely to take off their confederate t-shirts; in fact, they are more likely to buy one just to pour salt in the wound. blacks are less likely to discontinue their demands or curtail some of the perceived provoking behavior. more likely, there will be more joining in the lunch line cutting, more standing shoulder to shoulder to block a travelled hall, more talking loudly and doing what they want to do with more abandon. and the war rages on...
and both sides breed the seeds of discontent, both physically and emotionally, and the little specs of DNA from those displaced slaves and dirt poor farmers become more diluted, generation by generation. but their nameless, faceless forms grow more in stature hundreds of years later. the fly specs of DNA become the concrete foundations of something growing beyond what they ever were or could have been in their own lifetimes or culture. what has arisen from those old ashes of history is another house, another statue, and it in many ways is not an improvement over what was lost. it just a more complex, convoluted house with no clear passageways, no open doors or windows. a place that is a fortress and uninviting, intimidating and ugly, solid and divisive.
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