The War May Finally Be Over...Let's Not Start Another One

As a small child growing up in the 1950s I loved war. The romanticizing of military conflict had exploded after WWII. I was particularly fond of the American Revolution and the Civil War, what little I knew. When I played Civil War, often by myself with make-believe solders, I usually favored the Rebels, despite growing up an hour north of New York City. After all, they were the scrappy underdogs. I didn’t have the slightest concept of what slavery was or had been.

My love of history taught me much more over the decades with a clearer understanding of the conflict we know as the Civil War, but often referred to by Southerners as The War Between the States. The difference in title is telling. Civil War implies a conflict between citizens of the same country while the other is more simply geographic affiliation, e.g. Nationalism

When I moved to Richmond, Virginia in 1981 as an educated, employed, white male I recall being impressed with the displayed (almost) reverence to the Civil War and the allegiances that had supported the Southern cause. After all, north of Gettysburg the Civil War has a fairly small footprint across village greens. It was like going back in time.

I was also keenly aware of the results of discrimination in the South, resulting in the socio-economic deficits experienced by African-Americans. However, it was relatively easy – way too easy – not to associate the plight of poor, less educated Blacks with the conflict that had ended 160 years earlier and its foundational discrimination.

As the years past and we experience life in the South, my wife and I slowly at first and then almost constantly reacted to a societal reality. As “Yankees” we were able to objectively observe how those native to the region had embraced their heritage like a religion. Unfortunately, from our perspective, that “religion” included underlying hostilities, fears, and insecurities. Casting  African-Americans as a single lot (the essence of racism), viewing Northerners as foreigners, extolling Nationalism but with Confederate Flags were all too obvious.

Gun ownership clearly had long expanded beyond practical use and become symbolic of defiance to anything that wasn’t consistent with the Dukes of Hazard.

With a growing family, we found ourselves loving the area, the congenial nature and honesty of Virginians, economic opportunity, and friendship warmly afforded to a young family. Still, when we’d see what was happening around us, the “stars and bars” snapping in the wind everywhere, war reenactments, and what was on the news daily, we’d often say to each other, “when in the hell is this damned Civil War going to end?”

That day may have arrived. Let’s hope so.

The BLM demonstrations have been supported by a wide spectrum of individuals and organizations. As part of it they have shined a stark light on the affection given to a conflict where the origins and motivations have been so removed as to allow those that extolled the conflict to act like small boys playing with make-believe soldiers. Despite any historical reference, the removal of tributes to the Conflict (statues, flags etc) is not only appropriate, but also carries the weight of morality.

Let the Civil War surrender itself to former battlefields and cemeteries. However, I find myself conflicted with the apparent attempt to erase slavery as an historical reality, most recently in the attacking of a rash of monuments that have no representation to the Confederacy, but some connection to slavery (Washington, Jefferson, Keyes, Grant etc.). I’m afraid in doing so they are missing the point and playing into the hands of White Supremacists.

We live in an enlightened world. The immorality of slavery is no more in question, regardless that it was morally acceptable as an institution for 95% of recorded history. Embedded pseudo-slavery, as with indentured servitude, imprisoned individuals, and women generally has existed even longer, and we also know it’s wrong, though in many areas of the world it still survives.

The real crime to consider for Black Americans and ethnic minorities generally is not slavery, it’s what happened after slavery ended: the subjugation of an entire population based on race to keep them as a viable economic resource while simultaneously denying them access to the opportunities of a free society, social and economic. This was true in two essential and critical aspects: education and real property ownership and it was done through legal policy that let discrimination flourish.

The BLM movement needs to pivot from the emotional backlash against history to supporting policies that fundamentally compliment the new understanding of morality we’re experiencing today. Get rid of the Trumplicans and place in office people at all levels of Government that understand how to get policy done.  Protest those that are trying to suppress the vote, and then get out and vote the right people in. It is the issue that transcends race or ethnicity.