Over Labor Day weekend I went to Stone Mountain with some friends. Stone Mountain is mostly a big rock dome right outside Atlanta, but it also has a large relief carving of 3 Confederate heroes - Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, & Stonewall Jackson. The group I happened to be with hailed from Utah, China, New Jersey, & Canada. A few of them seemed to feel that having a tribute to anything Confederate was inherently racist. I have spent a lot of time in the past years thinking about the South's obsession with "The War of Northern Aggression" & its ties to racist. These are my conclusions:
People who have not lived in the South cannot understand the impact the Civil War had on it. The economy, culture, & society were all irrevocably altered. The South went from being the most prosperous part of the nation to the poorest, sickest, & least educated. And it has never recovered. The affects of the Civil War are still a part of daily life down here. Of course people still talk about it, dwell on it, & honor the people who lead the fight against becoming what the South is today. In educated Southern society, the fall of the South is not about slavery, it is about the destruction of a once successful land. Equating the acknowledgement of the most definitive event of an area’s history with racism is simply ignorant.
Disclaimer: It is obviously a good thing that the South lost the war. A society built on gross violations of human rights needs to be uprooted. And judging people based on the color of their skin (whatever is may be) is ridiculous.
1 comment:
hmmm, if only they'd won...i'd never have to work-how nice.
and now that that comment from me is on the internet, i probably cant run for political office if i ever wanted to, o well.
Post a Comment