[Reader-list] Racial Politics: Confederate History Month, USA

[Paul D. Miller]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_History_Month


The African World

Confederate History Month...yeah, you heard me right...

By Bill Fletcher, Jr., 
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

Black Commentator

April 15, 2010

http://www.blackcommentator.com/371/371_aw_confederate_history_month.php

Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell just had to do it:
renewing a strange symbol entitled "Confederate History
Month."  Once again, we are reminded that the US Civil War
never really ended and that certainly the Reconstruction
period that followed the Civil War did not simply end, but
was truly defeated.

What is always amazing with Confederate flags, uniforms,
money, and, once again, Confederate History Month, is the
celebration of an insurrection against the US Constitution
by those who like to speak about "American values."  The
Confederacy was a treasonous regime, pure and simple.

What is more striking is the manner in which the political
Right, which celebrates the Confederate past, walks around
the question of slavery to the extent of actually suggesting
that slavery was only one of a number of causes of the
South's secession and the subsequent Civil War.  Yes, the
Civil War involved a number of issues including the matter
of "free trade" which the British, French and the
Confederacy supported, while the North opposed it.  The
matter of slavery, however, was central to the conflict, a
point that became evident in the aftermath of John Brown's
courageous raid on Harper's Ferry (where he was seeking arms
to start a slave uprising).

In any case, I am a big boy so, I can get over this. If we
are going to have a Confederate History Month I insist that
we also have a "Tory History Month."  After all, at least
one third of the colonists in the thirteen colonies
supported Britain at the time of the War of Independence.
They fought courageously for their beliefs.  They suffered
from various forms of terrorism, such as being tarred and
feathered.  And, after the 1783 settlement of the War,
thousands were driven out of the USA, or left voluntarily,
forsaking their lands.

So, why not commemorate these brave champions of their
beliefs?

There are many people who believe that when there are
protests over Confederate symbols that this represents a
political lack of seriousness.  One could not be more
mistaken.   The Confederacy, and all that it symbolized, is
antithetical to the notion of democracy. Not only was the
Confederacy the home of slavery, but it was-no coincidence-
an extremely repressive nation- state.  It was not a
different sort of democracy; it was not a democracy.

The Confederate symbols are regularly brought out by the
political Right to lend a narrative to those who wish to
advance reactionary causes.  It is a way of laying claim to
an alternative history of the USA, one that asserts that
slavery was a necessary `evil' in order to build the USA,
and one that asserts that a national government should be
restricted in its authority to military and police matters.
When the Right wishes to reaffirm its opposition to any sort
of politics that approaches redistributionism, it calls upon
the symbols of the Confederacy.

Defeating the Right, and ultimately crushing right-wing
populism, means that we must take on the symbols of the
Confederacy.  Each symbol of the Confederacy is not only an
insult to African Americans, but a reminder that there is a
revenge-seeking right-wing political movement that, like
herpes, lies within the system only to emerge at times of
crisis.

If McDonnell wants to renew Confederate History Month then
let's make sure that central to the curriculum for the month
is W. E. B. Dubois' Black Reconstruction in America,
1860-1880.

Let the games begin.

[BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Bill Fletcher,
Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy
Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum
and co-author of, Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in
Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice
(University of California Press), which examines the crisis
of organized labor in the USA.]