Why all the nostalgia for the "good ole days" of the confederacy???

[Honeykiss1974]

CONFEDERACY NOSTALGIA...


CONFEDERACY NOSTALGIA MAKES ME NERVOUS
BY JULIANNE MALVEAUX

Why do so many white folks wish they were in the land of cotton? Probably because they weren’t the ones picking it. My question may seem facetious, but with so many Bush Administration nominees speaking fondly of the Confederacy, it is no wonder that George W. only garnered 8 percent of the African American vote. The combination of Republican National Committee Chairman James Gilmore’s declaration, last year, that April should be Confederacy month, South Carolina’s insistence of keeping a Confederate flag on its grounds, Attorney General-designee John Ashcroft’s waxing nostalgic about Confederate values with Southern Partisan Magazine, and Interior Secretary-designee Gail Norton’s comments on states’ rights and old time values is enough to frighten this black woman. Sure, nobody has come out and said that slavery was all right, or that they’d like to reinstitute it. But in embracing the Confederacy and the values for which it stands, they implicitly embrace slavery and the oppression of African American people.

There is no amount of historical parsing that makes slavery all right. There are those who will remind us that slaves were sold by Africans, as if that makes it right. Others will say that slaves weren’t that bad off, having been provided with clothing and food (the better to energize you to chop cotton) in a competitive Southern economy where poor whites often went hungry. I’ve read dozens of justifications of slavery, none of them compelling. It must depend on the lens through which slavery is viewed, whether your background is owner or slave. But it would seem to me that at this late date in our nation’s history, there could be no justification for our nation’s slave past.

This is why issues like reparations and an apology for slavery won’t go away. Without these, from time to time, it becomes fashionable to talk about the Confederacy, about slavery, in nostalgic terms. Confederate descendants talk about their ancestors and the lives lost defending the confederacy. They lost their lives for a lost cause, bluntly. They can fly all the flags they want to, wax eloquent about the past all they want to, but the fact is that the Southern economy before the Civil War depended on the exploitation of one group of people to provide the comfort of another. Northern liberals tiptoed around the issue for a while, but ultimately threw down. There was a war and the South lost, and they’ve not gotten over it since. So they obsessively fly the flag of a lost cause, establish universities that prevent race mixing, euphemistically speak of states’ rights, and then protest that they aren’t racists. Me thinks they squawk too much!

If they aren’t racists the are, at minimum, insensitive, and their insensitivity both scares me and makes me nervous. Especially when these folks who want to go back to the good old days are aspiring to lead government departments not in the past, but today. You can’t tell me that their old world values won’t seep into their contemporary work. You can’t tell me that someone who wishes he were in the land of cotton doesn’t picture himself sipping a mint julep with some silent slave serving it. And you can’t tell me that such a person doesn’t look at an African American member of Congress and somehow see that silent slave. That frightens me.

Of course, these Republicans say they want to be everyone’s leader, that they want to reach out to more African Americans to make their party more diverse. If they are serious, they can start by cutting that canned Confederacy rhetoric. They ought to take leadership on this issue, burying their Confederate past. If the Confederacy is every referred to in contemporary life, it ought to be referred to as an abhorrent mistake, instead of in nostalgic terms. But the fact is that when some people talk about the Confederacy, they aren’t only talking about the past. They are doing racial signaling, reminding some Southern whites that they aren’t the party of African Americans, like some say the Democrats are. But you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say you want to reach out to African Americans, then use symbols of our enslavement as your calling cards. Republicans will have to choose.

Actually, all of America will have to choose, one day, to come to grips with our nation’s racist past if we want to have a future where race matters less. We will have to come to grips with the enormous wrong that was done to millions of people, and to the fact that this wrong was compounded by post-slavery discrimination, and continues to have an impact today. Too often, I’ve listened to whites tell me that they don’t want to talk about slavery, that they never held slaves. Unfortunately, though, they still have bragging rights, which is what this nostalgic Confederacy talk represents. Here is what they are saying - I value the days when folks like me used to own slaves and folks like you used to be slaves. That frightens me, but also convinces me that anyone who wishes they were in the land of cotton ought to be there. Picking it instead of pursuing public life.

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I found this article interesting. What do ya' think?

[Blackwatch]

In these times in America, white folks are running scared about their position in the social heirarchy in America. In the confederate south, there was a more strident racial social hierarchy. Whites were at the top, Blacks at the bottom, regardless of socioeconomic status. Sure there were poor whites, as will be in any Capitalist society, but money wasn't the only indicator of status in the confederate South, white skin was very important as well. Things like voting and free passage on trains and land ownerdhip, etc. were predicated on skin color.
Today in America, whites are beginning to see that power is not just a skin color thing anymore, with the rise of the minority population in the last census and the apparent expansion of the minority middle class, whites have began to feel threatened. They are beginning to see what Dr. jawaanza Kunjufu once stated that when you take the shackles off of black folk, "we can fly !!!" They cannot compete, and with the economy fluctuating like it does, they are finding their social standing to be fleeting at best. They percieve a need for a more permanent basis from which to maintain hierarchy, which is skin color. Skin color is something blacks can't take away. They begin to go back to the basis of white supremacy, skin priviledge (not money priviledge). Thus we see the waxing nostalgic about a white racist political, economic , and social system called the Confederacy.
Personally, I think we ought to be alarmed. As black folk, and as black folk who are college educated, all of this Confederacy talk serves to take away any gains that blacks could have gotten due to hard work and discipline and render status in this country to system predicated on skin color alone. I stress college educated because we are the ones who are in position to effect more systemic change (Bro. Dr. W.E.B. DuBois' talented tenth theory). We need to fight this.
Blackwatch!!!!!!

[MTSUGURL]

Sorry to crash your thread, but I saw the topic and was interested. Being a white girl from the south, as a part of a family that has been in the south since our ancestors came here, I just want to say that never have I heard anyone in my family or group of friends say they wish we were in "the good ole days" or anything similar. Generally, the people who make such statements are regarded as uneducated and they are ridiculed. I don't mind talking about slavery - I see it as the biggest crime against humanity that could have been committed, but that doesn't mean I think I should apologize constantly for these crimes committed by people before my ancestors came to the US just because I am white. Even though I am not intending to, I realize I may be offensive in making this statement and for that I apologize. I was openly atacked in a history class by an African American man for saying something similar when he stated that all the white students should apologize to him for his great great grandfather being held as a slave. What do you feel the appropriate response to him would have been?

[straightBOS]

I have only been in the South for two months and I can relate partially to Ms. Malveaux's statements. The Rebel flags, bumper stickers, etc. DO make me nervous. Unlike most people would have us believe, such articles from the "good ole days" are not present only on pick-up trucks and double-wide trailers, but --- in my experience can be found more readily on nicer cars and homes. THIS defineitly makes me nervous in ways that walking through South Boston in the middle of the night never have.

Indeed, we all have the right to honor our own ancestors and our own nostalgia in whatever way we choose. But I believe that anyone who is that adament about their beliefs and associations publicly can be a danger. When you are in climate that accepts this behavior, it is easy for others to turn a blind eye when those nostalgic folks use they're longing for the past against people of today. Would not like an apology, in fact, I do not support that, or reparations ( for my own reasons). But, it is not about that and has never been-- and everyone should already know that.

[AchtungBaby80]

Originally posted by MTSUGURL
Sorry to crash your thread, but I saw the topic and was interested. Being a white girl from the south, as a part of a family that has been in the south since our ancestors came here, I just want to say that never have I heard anyone in my family or group of friends say they wish we were in "the good ole days" or anything similar. Generally, the people who make such statements are regarded as uneducated and they are ridiculed. I don't mind talking about slavery - I see it as the biggest crime against humanity that could have been committed, but that doesn't mean I think I should apologize constantly for these crimes committed by people before my ancestors came to the US just because I am white. Even though I am not intending to, I realize I may be offensive in making this statement and for that I apologize. I was openly atacked in a history class by an African American man for saying something similar when he stated that all the white students should apologize to him for his great great grandfather being held as a slave. What do you feel the appropriate response to him would have been?

I totally agree--you said it better than I could. My response to the guy in your class would have been to laugh at him and tell him to "naff off," to be honest with you. What happened is already done. The only thing we can do is not repeat the same mistakes.

And I think the fascination with the antebellum South is because of the clothes...who wouldn't want to dress like Scarlett O'Hara?

[Honeykiss1974]

MTSUGIRL and Achtungbaby....
This thread and article IS NOT about whites apologizing for slaverly (albient if you did, what good would it do?), but since you to took it there....

I am not surprise that you yourself would not apologize on behalf of your people that committed such acts.....that would require you to actually admit that you are probably continuing to reap the benefits of what they did.

And honestly for you Achtung to say that the fasination is due to clothing.... *lol*

Back to the article..........

What I found interesting about this article was the fact that well-known powerful, influential people have been quoted to making reference to "those days". Respect and attributes of that nature did not end and begin with the confederacy. Many of those qualities existed well into the late 20th century.

Being born and raised in the south (Mississippi to be exact), I can truly say that I only ran across the occasional person openly displaying things such as the confederate flag (aside form the state flag). However, here in Kansas I see folks with it all the time and in certain neighborhoods, it does make me uncomfortable.

Finally, I do agree with Blackwatch, that this is something that we should be alarmed about and keep a watchful eye on.

[AchtungBaby80]

Originally posted by Honeykiss1974
I am not surprise that you yourself would not apologize on behalf of your people that committed such acts.....that would require you to actually admit that you are probably continuing to reap the benefits of what they did.

And honestly for you Achtung to say that the fasination is due to clothing.... *lol*

"My people" fought on the Union side (you know, anti-slavery)...so technically you, too, are "reaping the benefits" of their efforts.

I would like to say, though, that for public leaders to say the things mentioned in the article is really tacky. Thank goodness I'm a Democrat, is all I can say.