The marble soldier stands tall, looking proud and mighty. Etched into the plaque at the base of the pillar is the phrase “The principles for which they fought live eternally.” Here, in the heart of Valdosta, Georgia, in front of the Lowndes County Courthouse Square, a place meant for fair and unbiased justice, stands a monument dedicated to the Confederacy (Nolan par. 1). Because I am not an American citizen, I feel inclined to say that I have no dog in the fight about whether or not cities should remove these testaments to the Confederacy. On the other hand, as a black man who recognizes that it may have been happenstance that prevented my own ancestors from becoming slaves in America, I feel compelled to try to contextualize the mindset and historical precedent behind why monuments dedicated to the Confederacy still stand to this day. This is especially relevant because the history associated with them is something from which America actively wants to distance itself.
The historical precedent for modern customs and commemorations finds its roots in cultural heritage, which is defined as the traditions, language, morals, and trades which are passed onto subsequent generations of a specific cultural group and aid in keeping up its persona. Additionally, it provides both tangible and intangible representations of values, beliefs, and lifestyles of prior generations. It is not unusual to see the manifestation of this definition in different ethnic groups in America. For instance, it’s easy to recall the celebrations of Oktoberfest by those of German heritage, the Hindu festival Holi, and whole months dedicated to Black History and Hispanic Heritage. These are events that people celebrate to keep the positive aspects of their cultures alive. Those who proudly wear the mantle of Confederate history treat their heritage in the same way. The reasons for celebrating one’s heritage varies wildly for each ethnic group, but these reasons all tend to be positive, practical or neutral. For Holi, the reasons may range from socio-cultural, to religious, to biological. It helps its observers to stay close to their religions and their mythologies as it is essentially the celebration of various legends associated with the festival (“Significance of Holi” par. 1,3,9).
Black History month is set aside in remembrance of the struggles and triumphs of black people in America. These celebrations all have positive connotations attached to them. To be Black, Hispanic, Irish, Hindu, Catholic or even a Southerner is not an inherently bad thing. In contrast, the Confederacy has many negative implications attached to it, with the most noteworthy being that they fought to retain slavery, the most extreme example of American categorical inequality (Kinder pg. 200 par. 3). Actively and proudly identifying oneself as a Confederate confuses me because the Confederacy lost the Civil War and was not inherently better or nobler than the Union Army which it fought. When speaking of his heritage, Tommy Little identified some innocuous or positive features, including soul food, sweet tea, respect for military and law, and religious freedom. All of these could be interpreted as aspects of the more positive Southern tradition that would be more inclusive to people who are not white Southern Americans. Historians look at the Confederates as rebels who fought against the USA.
127 our experts are availableright now
Their memorials were resurrected not with the intention of celebrating a righteous history, but instead with the intention of distorting history by portraying Confederate leaders and soldiers as heroic, in an effort known as the “Lost Cause” (Lowndes 00:00:25 – 00:00:33). The United Daughters of the Confederacy, a women’s group that was formed in 1894, led the effort to revise Confederate history at the turn of the 20th century, the aforementioned Lost Cause. It targeted the minds and identities of children growing up in the South, so they would develop a personal attachment to the Confederate cause. They lobbied local governments to erect memorials to the Confederacy all over the South, including in prominent public spaces like courthouses and state capitols. They formed textbook committees and pressured school boards to ban books that they deemed ‘unjust to the South,’ which was anything that shed a negative light on the Confederacy (Lowndes par. 1-2).
The daughters were able to imbue a sense of cultural heritage based on biases and prejudice. This was even exhibited by my interviewee, who expressed his belief that Southern culture and Confederate culture were synonymous to each other (Little). In a classic display of the concept of Ethnocentrism, they nurtured the predisposition of Southerners to divide people into in-groups and out-groups. More accurately, into a readiness to reduce society to an “us (The White Southern Confederates) versus them” mentality. (Kinder pg. 8 par. 2). The evidence to support the prejudiced slant lies within the timeline of when most of the monuments were erected. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, most of the monuments were erected during times of racial conflicts, long after the Civil War. Many of them were built in the early 1900s when ex-confederate states in the south enacted the infamous Jim Crow laws and the KKK reemerged. Another noteworthy period of the increase in these symbols came during the 1960s, a century after the Civil War when the Civil Rights Movement was in full swing (“Whose Heritage” Par. 30-45).
The concentrated effort was successful and has seeped into the collective mindset of some Southerners, allowing them to have a sanitized and distorted view of history that grossly misrepresents reality. Often this view is represented through phrases such as “they fought for their rights,” or claiming that the South’s main reason for secession from the United States of America was states’ rights. Consequently, this view allows most of them to distance themselves from the horrible and uncomfortable truth of the Confederacy and the collective ideology for seceding. Indeed, they were fighting for their rights, but it was for their right to continue the practice of slavery throughout the South. Fundamentally, they were fighting to prevent people like me from having any rights, a sentiment reflected by Pruitt in her article (par. 3-4).
While Mr. Little noted that very few Confederate soldiers owned slaves themselves, he, like so many others, failed to recognize that Whites who could not afford slaves wanted them in the same way that, today, most Americans want to own a home (Bouie and Onion). The inherent racial prejudice of the Confederacy is reflected in its constitution, which contains a clause enshrining slavery forever: “No bill … or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed” (Oliver 00:04:56 – 00:05:01). This is reinforced in the “Corner Stone” speech by Alexander Stephens, who served as the Confederate Vice President in 1861. In that speech, he states that “the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.
This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.” Even Georgia’s Declaration of Secession mentions slave or slavery 35 times, whilst stating that one of the significant reasons for the secession was essentially the quarrels with Northern territories due to Lincoln’s abolition of slavery, imposing federal laws to protect former slaves, and the economic impact of the abolition (Justice par. 3). Cemented in the history of the Confederacy is the very notion of inequality and forced servitude of one race by another, as racially-based slavery was the foundation of Southern social, political, and economic life (Talbert par. 10). These facts are seemingly overlooked by those who hold onto the Confederacy heritage proudly.
This pattern of behavior aided in cementing the ethnocentric beliefs of Southern Whites, or in other words, the continued evaluation of other cultures according to preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of one’s own culture. They used this ‘acceptable’ version of their history to further differentiate themselves from other Americans, leading to the intensification of the cultural divide. An analogous situation to America’s controversial Confederacy past that comes to my mind is Germany and its history with Nazism. Both USA and Germany have a regrettable part of their history that dealt with the abuse and subjugation of a specific group of people. Both these movements may have had idealistic or patriotic individuals fighting for what they genuinely believed was a noble cause, but both movements had collective ideologies with extremely prejudiced views and the willingness to suppress and dehumanize an entire group of people.
The biggest difference comes from how both countries handled the aftermath of the groups. Both countries have acknowledged their histories, as they should, but Germany has outlawed, and continues to outlaw, the display and use of any Nazi symbolism. On the contrary, USA allowed for the display of Confederate symbolism, which was used by some to alter the context of the symbols, and thus the fundamental clashing ideologies of the Civil War. The symbols and monuments were distorted, changing the context of simply respecting fallen rebel soldiers who were once fellow countrymen, to celebrating soldiers who were noble ideologues, staunch protectors of individual and states’ rights, who chose to secede from the increasingly overly-controlling Union. Mr. Little expressed a similar sentiment, saying “The South was willing to go to war to fight Northern aggression and what these folks believed in.” To further illustrate this point, one only needs to view the survey, “Civil War at 150: Still Relevant, Still Divisive,” conducted by the Pew Research Center.
In the survey, there’s no consensus about the primary cause of the Civil War, with 48% of participants saying it was mainly about states’ rights. Conversely, only 38% said it was mainly about slavery, with another 9% offering a compromise of both slavery and states’ rights being equally responsible (“Civil War” par. 5). The refusal to acknowledge the past history of their proud heritage is a case of “vincible ignorance,” or ignorance that a person could remove by applying reasonable diligence. Simply put, with a little research, understanding and objective reasoning, one could enlighten himself or herself of the realities and implications that come with the strict adherence to the heritage of Confederate culture. Unfortunately, the in-group versus out-group dynamics of ethnocentrism comes into play, as most of the people who choose to identify themselves as Confederate in some way are seeking out other members of their in-group who share in a special bond and dynamic that is more niche, and thus more special, than simply being American.
Members of the Confederate in-groups are assumed to be virtuous, safe, friendly, cooperative, and trustworthy and act as a support group and echo-chamber for the Confederate beliefs. When asked what he believes we should do to address the past of the Confederacy, Mr. Little made a statement that had positive elements in it: “We as a people must accept our history… All we can do is love one another and learn from mistakes previously made in our history and push forward with God’s blessings.” Unfortunately, he also said “quit race baiting by the far left liberals,” which serves as an example of pushing the blame of the controversy surrounding the modern representation of the Confederacy onto an adversarial out-group (Little). Even the echo-chamber effect was observed in the interview, where he made mention of white slaves existing during American Slavery, a claim that has been proven false through research by historians, but persists through certain groups (Bouie and Onion; Pruitt; Stack).
This us-against-them perspective is strengthened by the inheritance of a culture that has ethnocentrism ingrained into it. Yearwood argues that through ritual symbols, teachings and traditions, ethnocentric sentiment becomes learned and passed on through subtle and unmarked practices. Each following generation has this false history further reinforced through their heritage. Furthermore, the legitimate criticism of their Confederate history seems to only invigorate them to continue to support and defend their heritage, in a demonstration of the classic phenomenon, the Backfire Effect. The Backfire Effect is defined as a cognitive bias that causes people who encounter evidence which challenges their beliefs to reject that evidence, and strengthen their support of their original stance (“The Backfire Effect” par. 4).
This group has believed themselves to be victimized, and their culture has been sanctified for so long that efforts to change their views to one more empathetic of the concerns of others will continue to fail until a more effective method arises. The behavior of the those who actively define themselves as Confederates demonstrates that the willingness to ignore the greater normalization of social norms in relation to historical accuracies. Some Southerners look fondly at the Confederate’s history due to the bonding potential it has with people who they would be willing to actively identify themselves with, and the emphasize that their surroundings and groups have placed on the falsified but generally accepted aspects of Confederate history. Like Tommy Little, many Southerners grow up with the belief that, although they are Americans, their Confederate history is still an important factor and defining characteristic, with Confederate monuments and symbols serving as the manifestation and celebration of the ideology. Like Hispanics will be able to readily look to other Hispanics for emotional and social support due to a shared cultural background, Confederates have the ability to do the same with other Confederates.
They share a cultural bond that goes deeper than just being American. Subsequently, they impart and imprint on future generations an emphasis on a culture that has a proclivity to highlight the false positives of failed state, which, at best, could be described as selfishly Machiavellian, but realistically continued the enslavement of another race for an economic boon, regardless of the atrocities that were regularly committed on that race. And as modernization and education begin to erode the roots of this ideology, those who staunchly defend their reasoning to continue to identify as Confederate will lash out more fiercely against the factors that they feel are undermining their culture. The most ardent of them pledged to fight eternally for the principles of their forefathers, no matter how ignoble they are.
