What do Mississippi and Virginia have in common? Racially insensitive governors, that’s what. This may seem like a harsh condemnation, but since both Haley Barbour and Bob McDonnell have declared April Confederate Heritage month, it seems appropriate.
Confederate heritage month has been put into place in order to teach young southerners about what the confederacy stood for and why the states went to war. Rev. Cecil Fayard, the chaplain in chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, believes the Confederation stood for the same exact thing the tea baggers stand for today: to voice their opinions and to be free of an oppressive government.
While this is partially true, Fayard, Barbour, McDonnell and anyone else who supports the idea of having a month dedicated to remembering the values of the Confederacy are forgetting one thing – the Confederacy also fought to keep slavery legal.
While abolishment was obviously not the only cause of the Civil War, it was a huge dividing factor between the Confederacy and the Union. I am honestly in disbelief that an elected official is encouraging people to emulate a society that enslaved human beings, and was rebellious against the federal government.
Did I drive through a time warp when I crossed what I thought was the state of Alabama? Apparently so, because this sounds like something that would have been implemented in the 1950’s, not in 2010.
I can understand how some Southern families would want to honor the memory of their ancestors who fought in the war, but it’s not a good idea to teach the beliefs this civilization held to impressionable children. Learning about the history of this country, is extremely important. However, we should not glamorize what the Confederacy did, much less what it stood for. Isn’t there enough racial tension in the state of Mississippi without adding an entire month dedicated to a culture that enslaved African Americans?
I was raised in the South, yet somehow I don’t have this unwavering “Southern Pride” that provokes so many people decorate their cars with Confederate flag paraphernalia. In fact, whenever I see the Confederate flag, I associate it with racism. Although I’m sure not every one of these people is racist, or fond of the idea of slavery, I am not the only person who finds this image offensive and regressive. This is clear because the Georgia state flag was changed in 2003.
Georgia, or at least the metro Atlanta area, has started to move forward and distance itself from its Rebel roots. It would be beneficial to the entire country for every former Confederate state to move forward as well. Teaching, and preaching, the values of the Confederacy will only hinder the progress that the South is making towards racial equality.
It’s not a bad thing to be proud of where you come from, however we Southerners must focus on where our society is now and not where it was decades ago. If we only glorify the past we can never move forward as a society, region and country.
Nora Donnelly is the opinion editor of The Reflector. She can be contacted at [email protected].