Confederate statues

[Cyberyeti]

A true daughter of the confederacy has written what should be the last words on the monuments:

 

By Caroline Randall Williams

June 26, 2020

 

I have rape-colored skin. My light-brown-blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the Old South.

 

If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the Confederacy, if they want monuments, well, then, my body is a monument. My skin is a monument.

 

Dead Confederates are honored all over this country — with cartoonish private statues, solemn public monuments and even in the names of United States Army bases. It fortifies and heartens me to witness the protests against this practice and the growing clamor from serious, nonpartisan public servants to redress it. But there are still those — like President Trumpand the Senate majority leader,Mitch McConnell — who cannot understand the difference between rewriting and reframing the past. I say it is not a matter of “airbrushing” history, but of adding a new perspective.

 

I am a black, Southern woman, and of my immediate white male ancestors, all of them were rapists. My very existence is a relic of slavery and Jim Crow.

 

According to the rule of hypodescent (the social and legal practice of assigning a genetically mixed-race person to the race with less social power) I am the daughter of two black people, the granddaughter of four black people, the great-granddaughter of eight black people. Go back one more generation and it gets less straightforward, and more sinister. As far as family history has always told, and as modern DNA testing has allowed me to confirm, I am the descendant of black women who were domestic servants and white men who raped their help.

 

It is an extraordinary truth of my life that I am biologically more than half white, and yet I have no white people in my genealogy in living memory. No. Voluntary. Whiteness. I am more than half white, and none of it was consensual. White Southern men — my ancestors — took what they wanted from women they did not love, over whom they had extraordinary power, and then failed to claim their children.

 

What is a monument but a standing memory? An artifact to make tangible the truth of the past. My body and blood are a tangible truth of the South and its past. The black people I come from were owned by the white people I come from. The white people I come from fought and died for their Lost Cause. And I ask you now, who dares to tell me to celebrate them? Who dares to ask me to accept their mounted pedestals?

 

You cannot dismiss me as someone who doesn’t understand. You cannot say it wasn’t my family members who fought and died. My blackness does not put me on the other side of anything. It puts me squarely at the heart of the debate. I don’t just come from the South. I come from Confederates. I’ve got rebel-gray blue blood coursing my veins. My great-grandfather Will was raised with the knowledge that Edmund Pettus was his father. Pettus, the storied Confederate general, the grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, the man for whom Selma’s Bloody Sunday Bridge is named. So I am not an outsider who makes these demands. I am a great-great-granddaughter.

 

And here I’m called to say that there is much about the South that is precious to me. I do my best teaching and writing here. There is, however, a peculiar model of Southern pride that must now, at long last, be reckoned with.

 

This is not an ignorant pride but a defiant one. It is a pride that says, “Our history is rich, our causes are justified, our ancestors lie beyond reproach.” It is a pining for greatness, if you will, a wish again for a certain kind of American memory. A monument-worthy memory.

 

But here’s the thing: Our ancestors don’t deserve your unconditional pride. Yes, I am proud of every one of my black ancestors who survived slavery. They earned that pride, by any decent person’s reckoning. But I am not proud of the white ancestors whom I know, by virtue of my very existence, to be bad actors.

 

Among the apologists for the Southern cause and for its monuments, there are those who dismiss the hardships of the past. They imagine a world of benevolent masters, and speak with misty eyes of gentility and honor and the land. They deny plantation rape, or explain it away, or question the degree of frequency with which it occurred.

 

To those people it is my privilege to say, I am proof. I am proof that whatever else the South might have been, or might believe itself to be, it was and is a space whose prosperity and sense of romance and nostalgia were built upon the grievous exploitation of black life.

 

The dream version of the Old South never existed. Any manufactured monument to that time in that place tells half a truth at best. The ideas and ideals it purports to honor are not real. To those who have embraced these delusions: Now is the time to re-examine your position.

 

Either you have been blind to a truth that my body’s story forces you to see, or you really do mean to honor the oppressors at the expense of the oppressed, and you must at last acknowledge your emotional investment in a legacy of hate.

 

Either way, I say the monuments of stone and metal, the monuments of cloth and wood, all the man-made monuments, must come down. I defy any sentimental Southerner to defend our ancestors to me. I am quite literally made of the reasons to strip them of their laurels.

 

Caroline Randall Williams(@caroranwill) is the author of “Lucy Negro, Redux” and “Soul Food Love,” and a writer in residence at Vanderbilt University.

[thepossum]

I'm curious about this issue and I'm not sure where I read it (maybe Breitbart) but I saw somewhere that 13/16 statues proposed to be demolished were democrats. Just curious as an outsider

[hrothgar]

I'm curious about this issue and I'm not sure where I read it (maybe Breitbart) but I saw somewhere that 13/16 statues proposed to be demolished were democrats. Just curious as an outsider

 

In the period before the American civil war, the Democratic party was very much concentrated in the South. The Whigs (and the later, Republican party) was more heavily represented in New England and what was then the West.

 

After the war, the Democratic party was very much a regional Southern party until two major realignments. The first occurred in the the 1930s during the great depression. The second in the 1960 - 1980s, and resulted from the civil rights movement.

 

Its not at all surprising that that the overwhelming majority of statues being taken down belong to "Democrats". The party history is awful.

 

With this said and done, Breitbart is playing fast and loose with the truth. Breitbart is most likely trying to insulate "The Party of Lincoln" from claims of racism and point out that the "Democratic Party" was full of slave holding KKK members. (As if the 1960 political realign wasn't all about race and as if the modern Republican party bears any relationship to the party of Lincoln)

 

Note in passing: Breitbart is a cesspool of idiocy and racism. There is absolutely no reason to ever bother reading it. In particular, if you aren't familiar enough with American politics and history to know right off the top of your head why the overwhelming majority of the statues that are being removed belong to Democrats, I'd argue that it is actively detrimental for you to be reading Breitbart.

[thepossum]

In the period before the American civil war, the Democratic party was very much concentrated in the South. The Whigs (and the later, Republican party) was more heavily represented in New England and what was then the West.

 

After the war, the Democratic party was very much a regional Southern party until two major realignments. The first occurred in the the 1930s during the great depression. The second in the 1960 - 1980s, and resulted from the civil rights movement.

 

Its not at all surprising that that the overwhelming majority of statues being taken down belong to "Democrats". The party history is awful.

 

With this said and done, Breitbart is playing fast and loose with the truth. Breitbart is most likely trying to insulate "The Party of Lincoln" from claims of racism and point out that the "Democratic Party" was full of slave holding KKK members. (As if the 1960 political realign wasn't all about race and as if the modern Republican party bears any relationship to the party of Lincoln)

 

Note in passing: Breitbart is a cesspool of idiocy and racism. There is absolutely no reason to ever bother reading it. In particular, if you aren't familiar enough with American politics and history to know right off the top of your head why the overwhelming majority of the statues that are being removed belong to Democrats, I'd argue that it is actively detrimental for you to be reading Breitbart.

 

It was just an interesting stat and I was trying to provoke a bit of discussion :) I just have Breitbart in my feed for a bit of "light" relief and actually a bit of variety from the tedious monotony of whatever the dominant media culture is these days. I even follow Fox for similar reasons. Having said that the only chance I had to see a fully unedited Trump Covid Taskforce presentation was via Breitbart. It was educational seeig something unedited, uncommented on and unexpurgated etc

 

I am trying to learn more about the Civil War and confederacy. The democrat thing was something I only discovered relative recently. As a non-US citizen its not exactly core to my historical learnings - although I remember an amazing and brutal Civil War series from many years ago. And of course I know a fair bit about the civil rights movement. A little about the war of independence etc I've been to quite a few monuments (in my tour round the USA) and seen a large number of statues no doubt - some of whom were people I would have known from the history books and some maybe not - I tended not to be able to take every experience and tourist site into my brain. But I didn't study history once I chose my electives at high school (in those days we were streamed for science or humanities etc) so never got much beyond the standard fare at the time in the UK (ancient history, Romans, Vikings, Norman conquest up to mix of kings and queens and local history) - we certainly didn't learn much about the colonies, battles for independence etc I don't think the English liked talking about the US Independence Battles for some reason - it took a visit to the USA for people to delight in telling me a lot about it :)

 

I regret not learning history more. I would prefer to learn history backwards and why things happened but they started at the beginning which takes a long time to get interesting.

 

As an aside for a long time (my childhood) all I knew about the issue was the controversy between Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynrd over Sweet Home Alabama, I remember the Wallace assassination attempt In Birmingham in the 70s. Most of the other news from/about the USA in the 70s when I was growing up related to Vietnam or the space race and the presidencies (EDIT and Watergate of course) etc Obviously we all knew something of the civil rights movement Martin Luther King, Malcolm X etc (apologies for my edits - I'm piecing together memories from a long time ago). Most of what I knew about slavery would have come from the TV show Roots back in the 70s. During the 70s there was a huge amount of bad stuff going down in the UK (economic issues and race conflict, justice movements etc) and apartheid in South Africa which tended to dominate my consciousness and that of the music of the main political phase of my life in late 70s and early 80s. Sorry I didnt know much more about USA. Oh, we knew something of the Pilgrim Fathers. And I learned something about Harvard from a Harvard scholar at my college (I just looked him up to remember - its good to remember people ometimes -possibly the first American I ever met to chat to much - other than a US exchange student at my high school for a term or two). Oh, how could I forget the 2nd World War. That dominated most of my knowledge about the US for ages - especially through movies (as I said trying to piece together what you knew, when and why other stuff was so lacking). My main personally purchased hisotry book was a Modern History of the World (1500-now) book from the Sorbonne so very dominated by French view of history - a little bit about the New World in early Chapters

 

I am trying to catch up on areas of history I dont know much about (especially those where my country of birth were involved) - which sadly is a great deal :)

[pilowsky]

I'm with you on this one.

 

I once sat next to the Democratic congressman from California on a flight to LA. It was United, I was window, he was in the aisle. He was reading that kind of right-wing stuff. When I asked him if he was a Republican he explained that he liked to keep track of the opposition. His name was Howard Berman. He told me they called him the representative for Hollywood. It must be him - it's in Wikipedia! ("...the representative from Hollywood."^[39])

 

I tune into different parts of the political spectrum to make sure that I am aware of what disinformation is being propagated.

Fox 'news' has been gaslighting since Murdoch's grandfather Keith sent CEW Bean over to the fields of WWI to undermine General Monash - Australia's legendary Jewish hero of the battle of Hamel.

The Murdoch family has not stopped pumping out antisemitic lies, conspiracy theories and white supremacist nonsense since that time. There is a well-known bumper sticker here - "is it true- or did you read it in the Telegraph". One of his papers was called "the Truth" My all-time favourite piece of newspeak. Right up there with every country that inserts the word 'democratic' into its name - or 'republic' for that matter. You have to wonder if they are trying a little hard when they put democratic or republic in their name.

 

It's no surprise to me that the United States took Murdoch on as a citizen. Along with Werner von Braun and all the others. It seems like the accumulation of wealth no matter where it came from is the central creed of the USA.

 

No surprise that their grip on politics is so incoherent and rife with conspiracy theories. No surprise that hope and prayer play such a large part in their planning for the future.

[thepossum]

Its a strange thing what I end up watching or find entertaining. When I lived in the US for several months in the 90s it was a combination of cable shows (CNN,PBS, CBS, ABC etc) but I did end up (for some reason) watching a fair bit of Fox - especially some of the more out there commentators. I dont know why - must be the entertainment value if nothing else - but I agree you hear some rather crazy/scary stuff presented to the masses sometimes

[hrothgar]

 

 

As an aside for a long time (my childhood) all I knew about the issue was the controversy between Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynrd over Sweet Home Alabama

 

Don't forget Warren Zevon's contribution to that...

 

[pilowsky]

I thought you were going to mention this one !

[thepossum]

Don't forget Warren Zevon's contribution to that...

 

 

Thankyou. I must admit I didnt know much about different music of that time, other than what we heard in UK charts etc. Thats a very brutal song

[Cyberyeti]

I thought you were going to mention this one !

 

That and lawyers guns and money are my 2 favourites of his and both fairly scathing.

[hrothgar]

I thought you were going to mention this one !

 

Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner is one of Zevon's best, however, its not a direct antecedent to the songs in question.

 

 

CSNY wrote "Southern Man" which lead to Skynrd writing "Sweet Home Alabama" and then Zevon came out with "Play it All Night Long"

 

What's amusing is that I really like all three songs...

[pilowsky]

Speaking of US music politics and Bridge all in one sentence, how about Standard American: real Trump music

[pilowsky]

And just thought I'd step back in history to see if anything was different in the old days.

It wasn't

[thepossum]

And just thought I'd step back in history to see if anything was different in the old days.

It wasn't

 

A rather pathetic attempt at ad hominem but...

 

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

 

Stick to physiology and be very careful about any assumptions where you are positioned on your normal distribution of merit and intelligence

 

Oh sorry. Don't know why I'm wasting time here. I should be down the road at my local white supremacist meeting.

[hrothgar]

A rather pathetic attempt at ad hominem but...

 

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

 

Stick to physiology and be very careful about any assumptions where you are positioned on your normal distribution of merit and intelligence

 

Oh sorry. Don't know why I'm wasting time here. I should be down the road at my local white supremacist meeting.

 

I am genuinely confused?

 

In what way is posting a picture of a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert an ad hominem attack?

 

Who is even being attacked?

[pilowsky]

I was baffled. Nothing to do with thepossum ring- or brush- tailed. No hominems ad'ed here.

[thepossum]

I was baffled. Nothing to do with thepossum ring- or brush- tailed. No hominems ad'ed here.

 

It needed a response. Too ambiguous by far

[kenberg]

And just thought I'd step back in history to see if anything was different in the old days.

It wasn't

 

 

Perhaps in some weird way this could lead to a useful discussion. Useful to me anyway.

 

To start with the obvious, they are very good, are they not?

 

I have immense gaps in my knowledge of music. I see this concert was from 1977. That's about when my second marriage was breaking up and I was a mess. I couldn't tell Lynyrd Skynyrd fro Mama Cass. (Ok, I looked it up and she was dead by then. But I didn't know that.)

 

Otoh, Becky (wife number 3, I wed three wives) says she wants Freebird played at her funeral. I don't think she is joking. Not that either of us is planning for a funeral anytime soon. I just now played the cited video and Becky came out to ask why I was not up and dancing. She continued watching and commented on how the audience knew how to appreciate good music.

 

We saw Lynyrd Skinyrd (well, re-constituted, I know) a few years back.

 

I am not sure I want Freebird played at my funeral, but I do think it's a great number.

 

I volunteer as a guinea pig. Feel free to say what you think of me for my enthusiasm for Freenird.

 

The reason I think this could be useful is that it had not, until just now, even vaguely occurred to me that liking Freebird might mean anything other than that I liked Freebird. And i am far from sure that it should mean anything else.

[Winstonm]

Perhaps in some weird way this could lead to a useful discussion. Useful to me anyway.

 

To start with the obvious, they are very good, are they not?

 

I have immense gaps in my knowledge of music. I see this concert was from 1977. That's about when my second marriage was breaking up and I was a mess. I couldn't tell Lynyrd Skynyrd fro Mama Cass. (Ok, I looked it up and she was dead by then. But I didn't know that.)

 

Otoh, Becky (wife number 3, I wed three wives) says she wants Freebird played at her funeral. I don't think she is joking. Not that either of us is planning for a funeral anytime soon. I just now played the cited video and Becky came out to ask why I was not up and dancing. She continued watching and commented on how the audience knew how to appreciate good music.

 

We saw Lynyrd Skinyrd (well, re-constituted, I know) a few years back.

 

I am not sure I want Freebird played at my funeral, but I do think it's a great number.

 

I volunteer as a guinea pig. Feel free to say what you think of me for my enthusiasm for Freenird.

 

The reason I think this could be useful is that it had not, until just now, even vaguely occurred to me that liking Freebird might mean anything other than that I liked Freebird. And i am far from sure that it should mean anything else.

 

I think it is fairly simple - the listener determines the values and how they apply to themselves.

 

I happen to like Robby Robertson's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" played by The Band. I appreciate that Robertson, a Canadian, took the trouble to get the facts mostly right in the song, that there really was a Danville train and Stoneman did tear up the tracks over and over. I can appreciate and sympathize with the feelings of the song narrator without agreeing with his politics.

 

However, I would not want this song played as an expression of my life. I like the song; I like the mood expressed; at the same time, I am completely disgusted by the political views expressed, that it was romantic somehow to be a Confederate and a traitor. If they did not want their "very best" taken, they should not have started a traitorous war.

 

And to be clear, the south was not just traitorous to the United States, but were traitors of humanity as their only goal in creating a separate government was to justify continued enslavement of fellow human beings. That was the entirety of the states' rights they now claim - but it was only the right of a state to enslave.

[Cyberyeti]

Perhaps in some weird way this could lead to a useful discussion. Useful to me anyway.

 

To start with the obvious, they are very good, are they not?

 

I have immense gaps in my knowledge of music. I see this concert was from 1977. That's about when my second marriage was breaking up and I was a mess. I couldn't tell Lynyrd Skynyrd fro Mama Cass. (Ok, I looked it up and she was dead by then. But I didn't know that.)

 

Otoh, Becky (wife number 3, I wed three wives) says she wants Freebird played at her funeral. I don't think she is joking. Not that either of us is planning for a funeral anytime soon. I just now played the cited video and Becky came out to ask why I was not up and dancing. She continued watching and commented on how the audience knew how to appreciate good music.

 

We saw Lynyrd Skinyrd (well, re-constituted, I know) a few years back.

 

I am not sure I want Freebird played at my funeral, but I do think it's a great number.

 

I volunteer as a guinea pig. Feel free to say what you think of me for my enthusiasm for Freenird.

 

The reason I think this could be useful is that it had not, until just now, even vaguely occurred to me that liking Freebird might mean anything other than that I liked Freebird. And i am far from sure that it should mean anything else.

 

Count me in as an admirer of Skynyrd's music if not their values. And other than really serious political affiliations which you can't divorce from the music (there is a Hungarian band which after I decided I liked the music, I discovered was essentially Jobbik's house band and many of the lyrics were ultra nationalist), I tend to let the music stand on its own. I don't listen to Gary Glitter any more either, but am prepared to listen to people whose views/misbehaviour fall short of that.

[hrothgar]

If we are diverging into music, my favorite song from my favorite band

They are phenomenal live

 

[pilowsky]

The reason that music can be toe-tapping good, funny, wildly inappropriate and completely bad all at the same time was explained by Mel Brooks in the Producers. Easily one of my faves.

[kenberg]

As much as I liked Freebird, and that's quite a bit. I disliked The Producers even more. But neither my liking of Freebird or my very substantial dislike of The Producers was in any way connected to my political/social/moral views. I just thought The Producers was a really dumb movie.

 

Which is something I was getting at.

 

Life can be complicated. But sometimes it is simple/ I like Freebird. I dislike The Producers. That's pretty much the beginning and the end of it. I don't even have an artistically informed opinion of either and I am happy to have no politically informed of either.

[thepossum]

For some of us we grew up being inspired but good music from all sources. And if you want a good performance from my teens in the UK, you cant do much better than this one

 

 

I miss good live music shows

 

Oh, and for those who get at all confused what influenced me politcally was the economic, political and racial issues in our country at the time. Not whether somebody likes making political capital from a band with some of the best musicians in the world at the time. My first awareness of music politically was a few years later - thats more age related than anything. Its strange trying to place things in time, when you heard what, and became more interested in music and politics - maybe when the BBC refused to play God Save the Queen/Anarchy in the UK and a curious teenager wonders why? etc

 

PS I enjoyed Mel Brooks movies too. I cant remember the first one I saw, maybe Blazing Saddles

[pilowsky]

Hitler was a vegetarian. But on the whole, being a genocidal murderer makes home not good and I don't like him. My family would still be alive in Poland if it wasn't for him.

Donald Trump does not drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes as far as I know. but he failed to listen to good advice and as a result, thousands of people died needlessly in the current pandemic.

Nazi doctors performed experiments on human subjects that allegedly resulted in the collection of data that was used to save the lives of German soldiers.

Simply because some people have a 'skill' in an area that someone else finds admirable or just because they believe that what they are doing is in a 'good cause'. does not make it admirable.

What is admirable about being the world champion at Bridge if your partner has a heart attack and you do not know basic first aid.

If you consider the producers to be 'dumb' or do not understand why Southern Rock in the USA may not be all that great or why the 3rd Reich was a bad thing, then your moral compass may need re-alignment.

By the way, most 'pop/rock is all the same - just listen to

. Or

. There is nothing impressive about being paid large amounts of money for doing nothing productive at all.