People say that if Germans don't display swastikas over their public buildings, US Southerners shouldn't fly Confederate Flags over theirs. They're both reminders of shameful pasts, right?
But Hitler never got to cloak his infamy in rosy myths; also, Nazis
never benefited from the ministrations of beloved media apologists, like fiction writers and movie stars, who glorified the memory of antebellum Dixie.
Views on antebellum culture began to transform with this nation's
first efforts to heal by honoring war veterans from both sides at early 20th century parades. Then along came "Gone with the Wind”, and historical revisionism dug in for good.
Subsequent media depictions of the Confederacy were mostly sympathetic. The Antebellum South became a happy memory-land of singing darkies and the kindly whites who "took care" of them.
For at least a century, the white South's celebration of its antebellum history was considered a harmless quirk. Racism? Slavery? Those pages conveniently flapped loose from the main script to become anomalies, unrelated to the True Glories of Dixie's Past.
As the child of Cuban exiles, I landed in 1960's Miami amid these historical delusions. Back then, all blacks lived in separate neighborhoods. Florida schools were segregated, so they housed no black sensibilities to offend.
One local learning institution named itself Robert E. Lee, while another, the South Dade Rebels, draped its marching band in Confederate uniforms. Kids carried Confederate flags to football games and waved them whenever their side scored.
We Cubans snickered at these displays, but they didn’t really bother us; that flag was just a symbol of battle, too bad it got hijacked by the lunatic fringe.
Also, back in the 60's, Cubans were oblivious to any considerations of prejudice or bigotry. We even ignored the subtle fumes of apartheid that enveloped us in high school, because we believed they were coming from us, and not from the ones who were excluding us.
Tacitly kept from Anglo American fraternities and sororities, we created our own, or joined honor societies and academic clubs. We flocked together in hallways, classrooms, games, sock hops and the cafeteria. We only dated each other. We had no "American" friends, because acceptance by the larger group would mean suppressing
our ethnic ways.
And we thought Anglo Americans were boring, anyway.
The more sinister racial implications of Southern history also eluded us, because we considered ourselves white. So I grew up with the idea of Former Confederate Glory as a normal ingredient of the Zeitgeist, part and parcel of my adopted background as an American.
And when I moved up North as an adult, I was startled to discover just how deeply the Southern perspective had been etched into my soul. Who knew that a cemetery in rural Vermont could hold nothing but Union Soldiers? That a historic hotel in upstate New York would proudly display Union relics? That anyone could celebrate the same people who had victimized poor antebellum Southerners?
I've since gotten over those qualms, but I had to wince at the recent outpour of media vitriol against the South, at the hate one segment of the country was directing towards another. To me, that's like stomping on a corpse, or disparaging American war dead. It's compounding past wrongs.
Yes, slavery was a major disaster and this entire country would have been much better without it and all of its unfortunate ramifications. Just think: we could be Canada! (Kidding.) But no, we're rabid Americans, bent on redressing historical wrongs with violence. On both sides.
It occurs to me that while we're at it, we could also start trashing the hayseeds who died at the Alamo, trying to defend Texans' right to lynch Mexicans and steal their land. Instead, we celebrate them, which I’ve always found appalling as a Hispanic.
Why isn't anyone talking about THAT?
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