The issue before us is one about how people construct an
identity through use of public symbols.  Public symbols
usually are about contemporary issues and purposes.  The
public politics of the present are different from those of 50
years ago.  Thus the meaning of public symbols today is
different from what it was 50 years ago, *of necessity.*  HOW
different, of course, is a matter open to debate.  But it is
incontrovertably and undeniably true that the symbols of
today function discursively very differently than they did 50
years ago, because the public conversation in play today is
radically different than it was then.

One of the major changes in the US in the last 50 years has
been the almost universal repudiation of officially
sanctioned racism.  The Texas murder Professor Finkelman
refers to in his recent post was universally condemned
throughout the US--a stark contrast to lynchings in the early
20th century.  It is hard to find any credible defenders of
offically sanctioned racism today, one of the great
achievements of US politics in the last 25 years.  I don't
mean to stand complacent here--racism is still a factor in
our public life, and needs to be condemned wherever it
exists.  However, I think we are being unnecessarily and
unrealistically pessimistic if we deny the achievements of
the last half century.  Our public life really has changed,
the residual survival of racist organizations notwithstanding.

Just what the Confederacy stood for--and, a related matter,
just why many Southern men fought for it--is a matter of some
debate, at least here in Virginia.  The myth that the
Confederacy was primarily about states rights is still
pervasive here.  What this means, however, is that
Confederate heritage groups can construct their history in
what they presume to be a fashion that is not racist.  Many
of them, so far as I can tell anyway, can quite sincerely say
that they are not defending racism by asserting public pride
in their Confederate heritage.  Whether or not I am insulting
their intelligence is, I think, moot, if I am accurately
reporting their views of the matter.  And at least for the
Confederate heritage groups with which I have had contact
here in the Shenandoah Valley, I can say with some authority
that this is in fact how they view it.

We can ask whether or not their view of the past is wholly
accurate, and fairly conclude that it is not.  (As an aside,
I think it is important to note that the reason political
societies go to war is usually quite different from the
reason why individual soldiers are willing to fight for
them.  This distinction strikes me as a useful compromise for
historians who wish to be taken seriously by and perhaps have
some positive influence on the thinking of local heritage
groups in the South.)  It is a very different enterprise,
however, to presume from their view of the past that their
ethical view of the present is evil, or that the identities
they construct through their retelling of the past are akin,
for example, to those of Nazis.  At the very least, we owe
them, and indeed anyone who makes a public statement about
the good society, the effort to understand what it is that
they think they are defending, before we condemn it.
Otherwise we are just condemining straw men.

Best,
Kevin

Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Department of History
James Madison University

To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html