A friend said to me last night that while he and his Dad were watching the inaugural festivities they couldn’t help but write off a large swath of the country with a big hearty “f**k the South.”
It’s hard to blame him, really. It’s where I was after opening the paper post-election and reading this:
Race was a strong subtext in post-election conversations across the socioeconomic spectrum here in Vernon, the small, struggling seat of Lamar County on the Mississippi border.
One white woman said she feared that blacks would now become more “aggressive,†while another volunteered that she was bothered by the idea of a black man “over me†in the White House.
While the south is still home to yahoos in Mississippi – as well as yokels in Tennessee who thought it necessary to fly their Confederate flags at half mast while President Obama took his oath – the last thing we should do is damn them.
First, they live here and they’re Americans. Second, we live here with them and we’re Americans. Third, racism is not a mantle carried only by those living in Southern states. And last, but most importantly, theirs are the words and actions of those fighting a losing battle.
After the Civil War, Reconstruction allowed for the election of African-American political representatives. The equality of the black man was enshrined in our laws that for a time were being enacted by the same. Then, the Northern “occupiers” left the South and bitter resentments led to evil hijinks: disenfranchisement, Black Codes, the Ku Klux Klan, bullying, beatings, lynchings, Jim Crow laws, “separate but equal.”
What makes it easy, in January of 2009 and the day after the swearing in of our country’s first African-American president, to reach out to our “Confederate States of America” in all their red-state racist ignominy, is that the sin of a failed Reconstruction can never happen again. We, as a country, have broken a barrier and the only way to go is forward. There are no troops here keeping a fragile system in place and no President to bend to the pressures of bigots holding steadfast to their racist ideals and an archaic way of life. Hatred and violence doesn’t play here anymore.
What makes it even easier to reach out is that as fellow Americans we can tell those flying their Confederate flags to either get on the bus or get left behind.
What makes it imperative that we reach out is that while they have their bigotry, we have the Constitution, Lincoln, Frederick Douglas, the Tuskeegee Airman, Jackie Robinson, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Congressman John Lewis, The Civil Rights Museum, The Children, the children, 2 millions Americans celebrating on the Mall, hope, love, and a President Obama.
You triumph all of this and look at what you are left with in these days. Yankees move down here by the thousands and why? Look around you and see what you have created and more importantly what you will create with your little Obama administration. If you truly think the South is dead and gone then you keep thinking that okay? That is what we want you to think. See ya in hell Billy Yank!
Mary, I would call these people “marginal-at-best” and “non-representative.” We have real racial issues in the South, but half-mast Confederate flags and sound-bytes from Flo at the diner are the least of them. Thank you for not damning us because of these cartoon-like characters. There are festering, stinking wounds here side by side with the shining light of redemption so many have paid such a high price for.
[...] Leaving the Confederate States of America Behind [...]
Let me continue by saying that I labeled them yokels and yahoos because of their actions and beliefs, not because of their skin color.
In other words, the content of their character is lacking basic human decency. I mean, really, how would you describe someone who flies a confederate flag at half-mast on the day we inaugurate our first African-American President or who says on the day after the election that “she was bothered by the idea of a black man ‘over me’ in the White House?”
And that’s not a rhetorical question. I’d like an answer. Because I certainly wouldn’t label them tolerant or decent or even nice.
“But isn’t this commentary mostly about the present and future? And about how future people will probably think differently than those of the past and some in the present?”
That and how we can never go back again to the horribly racist times of the past.
“Yea, we expected this after Obama’s elected, the black activist and revisionist would try to grab power by discrediting the South.”
What part of “While the south is still home to yahoos in Mississippi – as well as yokels in Tennessee who thought it necessary to fly their Confederate flags at half mast while President Obama took his oath – the last thing we should do is damn them” did you miss?
But isn’t this commentary mostly about the present and future? And about how future people will probably think differently than those of the past and some in the present?
I, for one, think that we should not give extra press to those referenced in the article, but extra prayers. Tuesday was proof that we are a nation moving forward, aware of our past but not limited by it. And that makes me proud to be an American.
Yea, we expected this after Obama’s elected, the black activist and revisionist would try to grab power by discrediting the South. Especially those that prey on their own race who voted for Obama because he is black.
What you have is a mentality and mind-set of Pesentism!
When our fellow citizens recoil in horror, disgust, hatred or fear from a Southern symbol, like Lee-Jackson Day, or Jefferson Davis, just as a vampire shrieks at the Cross, they’re engaged in “presentism.†It’s an affliction of the mind that pollutes the spirit and poisons the body politic.
Presentism is the empty, false assumption that all former people thought as some present people feel.
It’s fundamental to the worldview of Liberal Human Secularists who worship the trinity of race, class, and gender(s). It’s necessary for their hierarchy of evil that demonizes political and cultural enemies. It makes nothing Conservatives say count, because Conservative speech is permanently tainted by some hatred, intolerance, historical crime or politically incorrect no-no.
The presentism definition from Wikipedia lays out its flaws:
“Presentism is a mode of historical analysis in which present-day ideas and perspectives are anachronistically introduced into depictions or interpretations of the past. Some modern historians seek to avoid presentism in their work because they believe it creates a distorted understanding of their subject matter.
You have lied about history when you say that blacks were ELECTED during Reconstruction! They were put in place by the US occupying forces, some could not even read or write. The faithful black Southernors who could read or write were NOT given these government posts but regulated to digging ditches. They wasted our money, stole us blind and left us in severe debt. google it
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