[On October 12th,
1870, Robert
E. Lee died—but not before the post-war
deification of Lee was already well underway. So this week I’ll
AmericanStudy that process and other aspects of Confederate memory, leading up
to a special post on a great recent book on the subject!]
On long-overdue
changes, and why we need to go further.
As I draft this
post in mid-June (what can I say, I have a lot of locked-down time on my
hands), the George Floyd/#BlackLivesMatter
protests have produced (among many other effects) a striking set of changes
when it comes to the nation’s longstanding and frustratingly omnipresent
commemorations of the Confederacy. Statues of Confederate generals and leaders
are coming down all over the country, and their former pedestals
and controversial locations are being turned into sites for art, performance,
and collective celebrations. The US armed forces are considering renaming bases
and facilities named after Confederate figures, and a bipartisan
Congressional committee has endorsed the plan (although, shocking precisely
no one, the most white supremacist president
in history disagrees). And, in one of the smaller yet also more striking
moments, NASCAR
has announced that it will no longer allow Confederate flags (long a
central presence at NASCAR events) to be part of their races or speedways in
any way.
On the one hand,
these changes seem like nothing more than common sense, a long-overdue response
to the deeply bizarre phenomenon of the United States commemorating and
celebrating a group of traitors who fought against and sought to destroy their
own nation. But on the other hand, that phenomenon has been part of the nation for
more than 150 years, and as those various examples illustrate has permeated so
many official and unofficial levels of American society and culture (well
beyond the former Confederate states). Like the schools named after Nathan
Bedford Forrest (and other Confederates) that have drawn
attention in recent years, these ubiquitous Confederate presences have
become not just accepted but in many ways second-nature, a fundamental part of
the American landscape that for far too long and for far too many of us has
seemed unworthy even of comment. So while it might seem clear that we should
never have featured Confederate commemorations, or should have done away with
them decades if not centuries ago, this moment and process of disentangling us
from all those layers of collective memory is nonetheless impressive and
important.
But while I do
believe that there is significant value in such symbolic changes, we can’t stop
there. As I mentioned in one of my current reading posts last week, historian
Heather Cox Richardson’s vital new book is entitled How
the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for
the Soul of America (2020); as I traced in this
Saturday Evening Post column inspired
by her book, she doesn’t mean the presence of Confederate names and
commemorations. While of course white supremacy has been foundational to
America since
1619 (and before, but that makes for a clear demarcation point), it’s nonetheless
fair to say that Reconstruction
marked a potential turning point, a moment when the nation could begin to
move toward more genuine equality and justice for all Americans. But through the
various histories and conversations I’ve traced this week, among many others, America
became instead more white supremacist than ever in the late 19th
century, and has in so many ways remained so ever since. Which is to say,
rooting out the Confederate legacies in American society and culture is gonna
be a much more involved process than changing some names and taking down some
statues and flags—but I’m sure glad we’re starting to do that.
Special post
this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other aspects of Confederate or Civil War memory you’d highlight?
No comments:
Post a Comment