So, I have a confession to make: I own two Confederate flag handkerchiefs, purchased by me with the intent of invoking the idea of the secession attempt as a positive thing. I needed handkerchiefs for geology camp (attended the summer before I came to the Baton Rouge campus in LSU back in 2001), and I made no attempt to hide my ownership of them there. But that's not the worst part: I have, on repeated occasions, been heard to say, "The South shall rise again!" in the latter half of my high school career -- those keeping score may well note I'm describing my days at LSMSA. Yes, I do cringe in embarrassment. I know this all looks bad, but please, let me explain.
I was always bothered by one key detail regarding the Civil War: that major policy was decided by military victories rather than policy discussion and debates. For me, it was my hippie liberal idealism which prompted me to travel a path that is often associated with fringe right-wing NRA supporters. This was my first real confrontation with the basic fact that the military is necessary, and me being young and foolish, I rejected the notion. This is what dictatorships do!, I thought to myself. There should be some principle other than fear of armed conflict that keeps a nation together! Granted, the textbooks I was given in grade school didn't help. I clearly remember one making the argument that perhaps at most a quarter of the people who fought in the war were slaveowners, so obviously the war could not be about slavery. (Considering a different textbook -- a science textbook -- described how people were being hoodwinked by lawsuits against asbestos, and the pain I unwittingly had caused someone who, when we first met, had lost a dear relative to mesothelioma, I am severely angry in response to aspects of my education; but I am even angrier at how uncritical I was of anything I read.)
I would have to say my saving grace is my curiosity. Or more precisely, that even if it takes a while, I have an innate need to understand, almost to the point of a compulsion, that kicks in whenever my stronger emotions have sufficiently dissipated. So, for instance, in response to a childhood of hearing certain influential grown-ups rant about the evils of affirmative action, when finally presented with the opportunity, I tried to learn as much about what affirmative action is, even though people at that particular Hugh O'Brien Youth Leadership seminar came to think of me as "that kid with the weird obsession with affirmative action." Whatever; I had made an attempt to sate my curiosity, which was my goal in the first place. That would have been during my sophomore year, I believe; since then, I have actually learned something of how to navigate social events, even though it took me a while. Well into my undergraduate years.
For a while I was content to take information passively, for the most part. So I would sit in such-and-such a talk, where afterwards, during the Q&A mingling, it was pointed out to me that the chattel slavery that was practiced in America before its abolishment was inherently different from the slavery practiced by, say, the Greek city-states or Roman empire; and that even if someone wasn't a slaveowner, the Southern economy was based to a large part on slavery -- surely there would be economic ramifications. While listening to NPR, I heard the point made that, contrary to popular belief, the Civil War did not end slavery; that was done by a change in law -- in particular, Amendment 13 to the Constitution -- as it should be: we see our mistakes, and we fix them as a result of discourse, not bloodshed. However, the issue of secession still bugged me.
Then I realized I had the answer all the time: the Articles of Confederation. America already went through a period of a weaker central government, and realized how bad an idea it was. So what do you do with someone who fails to learn the lessons of history? However, I'm no historian, and this argument really does nothing but taking further out of my preferred depths. But -- there's a more deciding factor, which is that the South attacked first, at Fort Sumter. One can well argue that the South was quite within their rights to attempt a secession through violence, but for honesty such a person must concede that in such an environment, the only rational move for the North was to retaliate: to expect anything else would be madness, willful ignorance, or outright stupidity regarding the workings of human society. With this realization, it becomes clear that morally, the North was in the right, and any attempt to repaint the Civil War as "Northern aggression" is either cynical revisionist history, or else a sharp break with reality.
This was not all I learned, however. I learned that the comeback of the Confederate flag, during the 1930s, was the result of action by White Supremacist groups. I was also introduced to an explanation to the "one-quarter are slaveowners" numbers problem, one which fits cleanly with my understanding of human nature: white supremacy was a defense mechanism used by non-slaveowners to rationalize their own inaction regarding the assistance of people in need; this one left me feeling like a member of The Family chasing after a Timelord: what I at first took to be a sign of strength on my part, in the silence of these experts, may well be their mercy to an arrogant, vicious group, an attempt to spare hurt feelings. But foolishly, I just pushed, and pushed.
Maybe I should keep the handkerchiefs, as a personal reminder about the dangers of using a symbol without knowing what it truly signifies; and also, as an admonishment to keep my mouth shut whenever I don't know what I'm talking about. (Speaking of which, it *is* "Toe the line." Sorry, CNN newsanchor I wrongly called out for that spelling.)
PS: The ultimate irony in all this is that the term "Yankee" is the ultimate badge of the rebel in America. We, the Americans, took a British insult and proudly adopted it as an identity. And yet as a Southerner, I've been conditioned to cringe at the thought of being described by this word, as if we lived in an alternate reality where the South wasn't part of the USA. I want to claim this term to describe me, but it just feels weird.
I was always bothered by one key detail regarding the Civil War: that major policy was decided by military victories rather than policy discussion and debates. For me, it was my hippie liberal idealism which prompted me to travel a path that is often associated with fringe right-wing NRA supporters. This was my first real confrontation with the basic fact that the military is necessary, and me being young and foolish, I rejected the notion. This is what dictatorships do!, I thought to myself. There should be some principle other than fear of armed conflict that keeps a nation together! Granted, the textbooks I was given in grade school didn't help. I clearly remember one making the argument that perhaps at most a quarter of the people who fought in the war were slaveowners, so obviously the war could not be about slavery. (Considering a different textbook -- a science textbook -- described how people were being hoodwinked by lawsuits against asbestos, and the pain I unwittingly had caused someone who, when we first met, had lost a dear relative to mesothelioma, I am severely angry in response to aspects of my education; but I am even angrier at how uncritical I was of anything I read.)
I would have to say my saving grace is my curiosity. Or more precisely, that even if it takes a while, I have an innate need to understand, almost to the point of a compulsion, that kicks in whenever my stronger emotions have sufficiently dissipated. So, for instance, in response to a childhood of hearing certain influential grown-ups rant about the evils of affirmative action, when finally presented with the opportunity, I tried to learn as much about what affirmative action is, even though people at that particular Hugh O'Brien Youth Leadership seminar came to think of me as "that kid with the weird obsession with affirmative action." Whatever; I had made an attempt to sate my curiosity, which was my goal in the first place. That would have been during my sophomore year, I believe; since then, I have actually learned something of how to navigate social events, even though it took me a while. Well into my undergraduate years.
For a while I was content to take information passively, for the most part. So I would sit in such-and-such a talk, where afterwards, during the Q&A mingling, it was pointed out to me that the chattel slavery that was practiced in America before its abolishment was inherently different from the slavery practiced by, say, the Greek city-states or Roman empire; and that even if someone wasn't a slaveowner, the Southern economy was based to a large part on slavery -- surely there would be economic ramifications. While listening to NPR, I heard the point made that, contrary to popular belief, the Civil War did not end slavery; that was done by a change in law -- in particular, Amendment 13 to the Constitution -- as it should be: we see our mistakes, and we fix them as a result of discourse, not bloodshed. However, the issue of secession still bugged me.
Then I realized I had the answer all the time: the Articles of Confederation. America already went through a period of a weaker central government, and realized how bad an idea it was. So what do you do with someone who fails to learn the lessons of history? However, I'm no historian, and this argument really does nothing but taking further out of my preferred depths. But -- there's a more deciding factor, which is that the South attacked first, at Fort Sumter. One can well argue that the South was quite within their rights to attempt a secession through violence, but for honesty such a person must concede that in such an environment, the only rational move for the North was to retaliate: to expect anything else would be madness, willful ignorance, or outright stupidity regarding the workings of human society. With this realization, it becomes clear that morally, the North was in the right, and any attempt to repaint the Civil War as "Northern aggression" is either cynical revisionist history, or else a sharp break with reality.
This was not all I learned, however. I learned that the comeback of the Confederate flag, during the 1930s, was the result of action by White Supremacist groups. I was also introduced to an explanation to the "one-quarter are slaveowners" numbers problem, one which fits cleanly with my understanding of human nature: white supremacy was a defense mechanism used by non-slaveowners to rationalize their own inaction regarding the assistance of people in need; this one left me feeling like a member of The Family chasing after a Timelord: what I at first took to be a sign of strength on my part, in the silence of these experts, may well be their mercy to an arrogant, vicious group, an attempt to spare hurt feelings. But foolishly, I just pushed, and pushed.
Maybe I should keep the handkerchiefs, as a personal reminder about the dangers of using a symbol without knowing what it truly signifies; and also, as an admonishment to keep my mouth shut whenever I don't know what I'm talking about. (Speaking of which, it *is* "Toe the line." Sorry, CNN newsanchor I wrongly called out for that spelling.)
PS: The ultimate irony in all this is that the term "Yankee" is the ultimate badge of the rebel in America. We, the Americans, took a British insult and proudly adopted it as an identity. And yet as a Southerner, I've been conditioned to cringe at the thought of being described by this word, as if we lived in an alternate reality where the South wasn't part of the USA. I want to claim this term to describe me, but it just feels weird.
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