Kevin writes:  "It is hard to find any credible defenders of
offically sanctioned racism today."

How do you interpret a US Senator from Mississippi saying we would be a
lot better off today if we had elected Strom Thurmond as a states'
rights segregationist?

Just so everyone understands my point:  I am not saying that all people
who fly the confederate flag are racists or in the KKK.  I am saying
that the Confed. flag stands for a racists, proslavery nation (that by
the way also suppressed in unprecedented ways, the free speech of many
white southerners). I am pointing out that it is simply not the case
that racism has disappeared from our public discourse or that no one is
openly racist any more.  I am also pointing out that many openly
dedicated racists -- Aryan nation, KKK, Nazi's etc. -- DO use the
Confederate flag as their symbol.

Paul Finkelman

[log in to unmask] wrote:
> 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


--
Paul Finkelman
Chapman Distinguished Professor
University of Tulsa College of Law
3120 East 4th Place
Tulsa, Oklahoma  74104-2499

918-631-3706 (office)
918-631-2194 (fax)

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