A Confederacy of Heritage?

No one really likes to be termed a hater. No one likes to be called names. No one likes to hear, "Your symbols, language, or culture are expressions of hate."
As such, I hear people speaking of the Confederacy and its symbols as tied to a sense of history and heritage, not to hate. While I am pretty sure they are being honest in their comments, there is another side to this history and heritage. The Confederacy is part of my heritage, too. While there are positive elements to this Southern heritage to which I belong, there are far weightier matters in that heritage I find questionable at best.
Among other things, the Southern Heritage in the Confederacy is...
-A heritage of seceding from the Union over the desire to continue subjugating others;
-A heritage of keeping "coloreds" "in their place";
-A heritage of saying, "We were justified in fighting against Northern aggressors telling us we could no longer hold people as property";
-A heritage of whitewashing over how we mistreated and continue to mistreat people of color;
-A heritage of Jim Crow;
-A heritage that considered it appropriate to tell jokes that demeaned those of other races;
-A heritage of considering people as property to be sold and traded;
-A heritage of using the KKK's intimidation tactics to quell any who would raise a fuss over their oppression;
-A heritage of inequality before the law;
-A heritage that denied people of color the opportunity to purchase property and develop it;
-A heritage of pretending nothing was wrong in the ways we forced others to do our bidding;
-A heritage that taught us that no person of color should advance economically ahead of any white person;
-A heritage of slavery and the dehumanization of people of color;
-A heritage that excluded the possibility of mixed marriages;
-A heritage of excluding people who did not fit the appropriate mold of gentile society;
-A heritage that deemed Jews, Native Americans, and immigrants of color as lesser expressions of humanity;
-A heritage that taught us that people of color should never be invited to dinner;
-A heritage that led to the formation of the certain religious societies over issues of slavery;
-A heritage that taught us never to trust a person of color;
-A heritage of upholding a social and economic order in which a certain class of whites was deemed worthy of the subservience of all others;
-A heritage in which law enforcement was designed for the benefit of the wealthy.
If that's the kind of heritage we are talking about when we say the symbols of the Confederacy are about heritage, sure, I'll agree the term is appropriate. I will go a step further in accepting that those claiming heritage do not feel any deep-seated hatred toward people of color. That does not mean our heritage and its lingering institutional forms do not communicate hate. It is this same heritage that maintains segregation in our churches and social clubs throughout the South to this day.
It is enough that we consider fear of the other sufficient reason to kill, maim, and deny our assistance. It is enough that we find enough rationale in our heritage to write off swaths of people as unworthy of participation in the inner circles of our lives. After all, these are just alternative forms of hate we have sanitized in the culture of our heritage.
If your Southern Confederate heritage speaks to you of lazy summer afternoons on a porch swing, sipping sweet tea, shelling peas with Grandma, or going fishing with Grandaddy, I am happy for you. No one is wanting to take away those memories and associations of community, belonging, and heritage. I think we can find better symbols for those positive aspects of Southern heritage that are not steeped in a battle flag or marinated in the blood of soldiers fighting for the right to continue a system of oppression.
It's high time to drop the bloody symbols of the Confederacy and find those aspects of our heritage that are actually worth preserving. I could go for magnolia blossoms, cotton bowls, peaches, and some sphagnum moss. Then again, there's the front porch swing where many tales were told over and over again.
—©Copyright 2017, Christopher B. Harbin

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