The debate about things Confederate has fallen along the conventional faultlines. And, while it's easy to blame one side or the other for exacerbating things, it's time for everyone to take responsibility for policing themselves while still remaining true to their ideals. That should begin by stopping the bullshit that this censorship is somehow a new phenomenon and that somehow all hands are pristine clean and agendas holy. I'm perfectly willing to accept that there is a vast amount of overreaching and overreacting. But a lot of the same folks who are now accusing just about everyone under the sun of cultural cleansing are the same folks that went after Barney, the Teletubbies, Procter & Gamble, ACORN, Black Panthers, etc.
This morning Mobile is in a tiz because the statute of Admiral Semmes has been taken down. Some are applauding this and some are drinking hemlock. Given that this action seems to me wholly asymptomatic for our Mayor, I'm waiting to hear how that came about and what the intentions for the statue are. Are they hiding it so it doesn't get damaged. Relocating it? Putting it back?
I was raised up North. What I knew about the Klan - or the South for that matter - came from television and in those days we had as much information about them as we had about the Scarlet Pimpernel or Scarlett O'Hara. They seemed romantic. I remember we adolescents singing as we marched along a downtown Jersey City street. "We belong to the Ku Klux Klan. We belong to the Ku Klux Klan," Must've been a funny sight, these kids with sheets on their heads, wooden swords flashing, oblivious to the fact that our races would have kept us from joining this group. And, it was probably just for effect that a police squad car came up behind us, sirens blaring, nightsticks drawn, Black cops chasing us down the block. It was a hoot and a break from the summer doldrums.
It wasn't until my stint in the military and being stationed in the South that I drew full measure of the perniciousness of racism. College, the civil rights movement, union organizing, being chased by these fuckers in the depths of Mississippi, receiving death threats at home, hardened my attitude; anyone having anything to do with the confederacy should have been hung as traitors. And that's the issue for me. I have trouble separating the Klan from the folks - friends, good friends - who legitimately cling to the Confederacy as part of their cultural heritage.
Some years ago, I was trying a case in Baldwin County. When asked to describe a location, the deputy stumbled: "Negro Lake," he responded, self-censoring the description. It was really "Nigger Lake." That's what it was called. That's how it was listed on maps. That it still did was not just a shame, it's the issue. What part of our past do we embrace? What do we erase? In the case of a location with a racist name, the answer seems simple. But when it comes to our cultural icons and totems, it's a nuanced story.
As someone who often sports shirts with the likeness of Che, Mao, and the Macheteros - whose heroes are Albizu Campos, Lolita Lebron, and others imprisoned for sedition-like crimes - as someone who thinks of himself as part of this country's equivalent of the Palestinians - I'm in no posture to talk about the folks who hold the Confederacy in high esteem. I understand the draw of cultural relevance. I am emotionally conflicted about taking down statues of historical figures like Semmes. But I also understand the taint of history.
A few years back I took a shot at a Assistant United States Attorney who was prosecuting a forfeiture case. Offended by having to swallow the unpalatable pill of a forfeiture, I had accused him of being a "good German." He went over the top, excoriating me and reminding me that he was Jewish. I thought his umbrage inappropriate and melodramatic. But, not being Jewish and having some knowledge about the Holocaust, I gave him his emotional comfort zone. I sympathized with him and apologized. Wanting to eliminate or muzzle folks whose opinion or lifestyle disagrees with yours is something, I suppose, one can naturally fall into. But good cause exists for principally-minded individuals to work against that and towards understanding each other.
