Great Minds Think Alike!

Seems on my days off, the Red Lady and I post at the same time. Kinda scary, huh?

In response to her Confederate heritage month, I think it's a silly idea. First off, if they called it Southern Heritage month, it will probably have a better chance to survive. 'Confederate' has the same connotations as 'Nazi'. It's not all warm fuzzies.

I do agree with her, we shouldn't have to apologize for slavery. It was an institution that had existed for hundreds of years, and the Southern United States seems to have been the one to exploit it, not always in a good way. I think it was/is an inhumane, cruel way to treat another people, regardless of color. Breaking up families, forced labor, beatings, all this is horrendous. As I've mentioned before, I am a product of the South, so in our defense, not all southerners owned plantations and had lots of slaves. Slavery was acceptable in the north also, but for more 'civilized' jobs, housekeeping, street cleaners, grave diggers, things respectable white folk didn't want to do. The north didn't have the agrigarian economy the south did, and didn't need to pick their crops.

My family didn't own slaves until my great-grandfather got married, and the slaves he got were in his wife's dowery. (Isn't is funny how we still don't want to claim that we were part of the problem?!)

The major problem with this whole issue is that we southerners are embarrassed with the whole
topic. There are always apologists, 'The Civil War wasn't about slavery, it was about States Rights', 'The Civil War was the 'War of Northern Aggression', 'We didn't own slaves', 'We didn't treat our slaves like that', etc. When I watched the movie 'Confederate States of America', I felt uncomfortable with how the CSA was portrayed. Then I realized this was a mocumentary, and laughed at it, but it makes you think. Things could have easily gone that way. It made me realize that the Civil War was about slavery, that the south stood for slavery, and we need to Get Over It. As soon as you recognize that to fight for that was wrong, even if it was a doomed way of life. It's never right or OK to subjugate another race for any reason.

And when we stop pointing fingers at each other and realize we are all in the same country, with the same ideals and stop fighting each other, this country will be a better place. As Martin Luther King said 'Judge me not by the color of my skin, but by my character' and I think that's extremely profound. We still aren't there, so maybe an aplogy is the way to go. It will take a little less pride from some white folks, and a lot of assuming responsibility from the black folks, but I think, someday it will happen. Actually, I think one day we won't have black and white folks, we will all be a lovely mocha color.