Thanks, Brent, for the appeal to calm.  And I suppose it is likely that
the subject has exhausted itself (yet again, and for the time
being?...), but I'd like to make a couple of observations about this
debate that I find interesting.

First, I'd like to thank all the folks who contributed to this spirited
exchange:  academics, writers, teachers, history buffs.  It got a bit
testy -- some people do mistake this forum for some sort of "blog" or
worse, a "chat room", but even then there were still interesting points
being raised all-around right to the end.

I study and write about history's history -- the cultural history of how
people remember and write about their past -- and I found this debate on
flags, and heritage, and history (and History) to show many of the same
themes that were present in debates long past.  I was struck especially
by the current of defensiveness in some posts; not merely the pro- and
con- of debate positions, but a tendency to look to history as a
guarantor of somebody's reputation: both the reputations of the present
generation and of the past.  There is a strong suggestion in this
defensiveness that there are natural continuities between the past and
present, and that they (the continuities) work both ways.   I think this
is why we get explanations of the Civil War that minimize the roles of
slavery and racism as causes; because a large segment of white
southerners today do not subscribe to these things, their ancestors
would not have either.  They today do not accept that the persistence of
racial jokes is a sign of racism -- and indeed, these are irreverent
times; "political correctness" rules nowhere so completely.   No one is
lynched by a bad joke and no one is legally enslaved by the flying of a
flag.

In the nineteenth century -- just to give the flag/civil
war/slavery/race issues a rest -- Virginians debated (hotly at times)
the cavalier origins of the Virginia gentry.  With little more than a
sense of surety that because they themselves possessed aristocratic
sensibilities, their ancestors must have too.  After all, they _knew_ it
was in their blood (this is pre-genetic testing).  When more scrupulous
scholars in that day (for instance, Hugh B. Grigsby)suggested that most
of Virginia's great families were descended from more humble stock, they
were attacked by the guardians of family pride, and of state honor.

I didn't enter into the debate last week because from my current
location -- in the midwest -- the issues around the Confederate flag do
not resonate.  My problem here is that my students don't have any mental
collection of facts about the civil war at all: they don't recognize
famous faces (CSA or USA) apart from Lincoln -- they didn't know John
Brown, Stonewall Jackson, WT Sherman, Grant....  Most could not name ONE
battle -- apart from Gettysburg.  That is frustrating.

But as a Virginian and a southerner, by birth and baggage, I did enjoy
this debate.

David Kiracofe
Grand Valley State University

David Kiracofe
History Department
MAK 1060
Grand Valley State University
Allendale, MI 49401
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