I Am a Son of the South
July 17, 2015
I am a son of the South. While my birth certificate confirms that I was born in Illinois, I was born into a family of southerners who migrated north for several years but who eventually made their way back to the region of their ancestors. I spent much of my childhood and all my adult life in states that were part of the confederacy.
I grew up in a home where “regular” tea was (very) sweet iced tea and where trips to see Granny were marked by some of the best southern food I’ve ever tasted. Since I grew up in major metropolitan areas, I appreciated the slow pace of life and the peace and quiet that marked the way of life of my Alabama kin.
I love the lyricism of the slow southern drawl of my relatives. While I never picked up the southern accent possessed by my parents and my siblings, I did pick up southern sensibilities. That is part of the fabric of my being.
So, yes, I am a son of the South and I appreciate much of the heritage of that most unique part of the United States. I remain fascinated by it and I remain a resident of a southern state by choice.
As a southerner, I am glad the confederate battle flag was removed from the grounds of the capitol of South Carolina recently. I am actually not proud of that act, nor do I think it was courageous in any way. Rather, I am astounded that it took so long for legislators, so many of whom speak so heatedly about morality, to make that decision and especially so since they moved to do so only in the wake of a terrible crime of hatred that was fueled by bigotry. That there had to be a debate about whether or not to remove the flag indicates, I fear, that the insidious elements of our culture that led to the raising of the flag in the first place remain too much with us.
We shouldn’t be proud that it took us so long to do what was right. We should be sorry that it took such a tragedy to motivate us. We should be ashamed that in the past weeks some have chosen to flaunt the confederate battle flag as if there is something glorious about protesting the call to take the flag down. And we should worry about what remains in our hearts as southerners that might cause us to cultivate bigotry in any form in the future.
Some claim that the flag is about “heritage, not hate.” To whatever extent that flag marks cultural or ancestral pride about the South, it is so clearly associated with the hatred of people because of their skin color and their culture that attempts to defend the display of the flag on the basis of regional pride are both ridiculous and deplorable. South Carolina raised that flag in 1961 to commemorate the beginning of the Civil War a hundred years earlier and as an act of defiance against the burgeoning Civil Rights movement. That was an indefensible act. We should not attempt to defend that action then nor should we defend it now.
Just recently I saw a young man flying both the US flag and the confederate battle flag from the back of his pick-up truck. As if those flags somehow go together. They do not. One was the flag of an uprising that caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans, primarily in an action to sustain the enslavement of millions of other humans. The other, the US flag, marks our belief that we are a people who believe that all are equal.
Whatever our failures as a fledging nation with respect to slavery, we have fought to extend liberty to every citizen. To fly the confederate flag alongside to the US flag is to suggest that the hatred marked by one and progress of liberty represented by the other go together. They most surely do not.
To display the confederate battle flag alongside the US flag and to display it as an act of some sort of “regional pride” is disrespectful to the descendants of slaves. It is disrespectful to those who fought for our nation at its founding and to those who have since fought to preserve our liberty. One cannot celebrate the principle of liberty marked by the US flag while simultaneously celebrating the servitude symbolized by the confederate battle flag. To suggest otherwise is absurd.
I must note that I had ancestors who were slaveholders, and that my ancestors fought in the confederate army. On my father’s side my grandmother’s Granddaddy fought in an Alabama regiment as did the grandfather of my mother’s grandfather. While I appreciate my ancestors I do not appreciate what they fought for. I do not respect that they thought it their right to enslave other humans or that they fought to preserve that awful institution. This is not a heritage I am proud of.
I wish I could say that the end of the Civil War brought an end to my family’s part in the bigotry that is marked by the confederate battle flag. But it did not. As a boy I recall my father talking to me before we paid a visit to his parents in Alabama. He told me that I would likely hear them say things about black people that he wished I didn’t have to hear. He told me that they would call them names – that they would use the “N” word – which he despised. He told me that though he loved his mother and father, he was not proud of their racism.
He also told me that if he ever heard me use that word – the “N” word – that I would have my mouth washed out with soap and worse. It was one of the few times in my life I saw anger in my father. He wasn’t angry at me; he was indignant about a heritage that he abhorred. He was determined that the cycle of racism in his family would be broken.
We visited my grandparents. And I heard them use that word. Repeatedly. With malice, with hatred. I winced at the sound of Granny using that word. The same lips that quoted the Bible to me spoke venomously of people who shared her Christian beliefs but who didn’t share her light skin.
I loved my Granny and Granddaddy, but like my father I did not love their bigotry. I respect the good values they instilled in my father and which through him they passed on to me, but I reject their heritage of hatred.
That heritage, which still pined for “separate but equal,” which judged people more by the color of their skin than the content of their character, and which was infused with hatred and bigotry, is for my family buried with my grandparents. And there it should be left to die.
I grew up in a home where “regular” tea was (very) sweet iced tea and where trips to see Granny were marked by some of the best southern food I’ve ever tasted. Since I grew up in major metropolitan areas, I appreciated the slow pace of life and the peace and quiet that marked the way of life of my Alabama kin.
I love the lyricism of the slow southern drawl of my relatives. While I never picked up the southern accent possessed by my parents and my siblings, I did pick up southern sensibilities. That is part of the fabric of my being.
So, yes, I am a son of the South and I appreciate much of the heritage of that most unique part of the United States. I remain fascinated by it and I remain a resident of a southern state by choice.
As a southerner, I am glad the confederate battle flag was removed from the grounds of the capitol of South Carolina recently. I am actually not proud of that act, nor do I think it was courageous in any way. Rather, I am astounded that it took so long for legislators, so many of whom speak so heatedly about morality, to make that decision and especially so since they moved to do so only in the wake of a terrible crime of hatred that was fueled by bigotry. That there had to be a debate about whether or not to remove the flag indicates, I fear, that the insidious elements of our culture that led to the raising of the flag in the first place remain too much with us.
We shouldn’t be proud that it took us so long to do what was right. We should be sorry that it took such a tragedy to motivate us. We should be ashamed that in the past weeks some have chosen to flaunt the confederate battle flag as if there is something glorious about protesting the call to take the flag down. And we should worry about what remains in our hearts as southerners that might cause us to cultivate bigotry in any form in the future.
Some claim that the flag is about “heritage, not hate.” To whatever extent that flag marks cultural or ancestral pride about the South, it is so clearly associated with the hatred of people because of their skin color and their culture that attempts to defend the display of the flag on the basis of regional pride are both ridiculous and deplorable. South Carolina raised that flag in 1961 to commemorate the beginning of the Civil War a hundred years earlier and as an act of defiance against the burgeoning Civil Rights movement. That was an indefensible act. We should not attempt to defend that action then nor should we defend it now.
Just recently I saw a young man flying both the US flag and the confederate battle flag from the back of his pick-up truck. As if those flags somehow go together. They do not. One was the flag of an uprising that caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans, primarily in an action to sustain the enslavement of millions of other humans. The other, the US flag, marks our belief that we are a people who believe that all are equal.
Whatever our failures as a fledging nation with respect to slavery, we have fought to extend liberty to every citizen. To fly the confederate flag alongside to the US flag is to suggest that the hatred marked by one and progress of liberty represented by the other go together. They most surely do not.
To display the confederate battle flag alongside the US flag and to display it as an act of some sort of “regional pride” is disrespectful to the descendants of slaves. It is disrespectful to those who fought for our nation at its founding and to those who have since fought to preserve our liberty. One cannot celebrate the principle of liberty marked by the US flag while simultaneously celebrating the servitude symbolized by the confederate battle flag. To suggest otherwise is absurd.
I must note that I had ancestors who were slaveholders, and that my ancestors fought in the confederate army. On my father’s side my grandmother’s Granddaddy fought in an Alabama regiment as did the grandfather of my mother’s grandfather. While I appreciate my ancestors I do not appreciate what they fought for. I do not respect that they thought it their right to enslave other humans or that they fought to preserve that awful institution. This is not a heritage I am proud of.
I wish I could say that the end of the Civil War brought an end to my family’s part in the bigotry that is marked by the confederate battle flag. But it did not. As a boy I recall my father talking to me before we paid a visit to his parents in Alabama. He told me that I would likely hear them say things about black people that he wished I didn’t have to hear. He told me that they would call them names – that they would use the “N” word – which he despised. He told me that though he loved his mother and father, he was not proud of their racism.
He also told me that if he ever heard me use that word – the “N” word – that I would have my mouth washed out with soap and worse. It was one of the few times in my life I saw anger in my father. He wasn’t angry at me; he was indignant about a heritage that he abhorred. He was determined that the cycle of racism in his family would be broken.
We visited my grandparents. And I heard them use that word. Repeatedly. With malice, with hatred. I winced at the sound of Granny using that word. The same lips that quoted the Bible to me spoke venomously of people who shared her Christian beliefs but who didn’t share her light skin.
I loved my Granny and Granddaddy, but like my father I did not love their bigotry. I respect the good values they instilled in my father and which through him they passed on to me, but I reject their heritage of hatred.
That heritage, which still pined for “separate but equal,” which judged people more by the color of their skin than the content of their character, and which was infused with hatred and bigotry, is for my family buried with my grandparents. And there it should be left to die.