A Third Way
When you hear “descendants of Confederates” who do you picture? Maybe you imagine a Confederate flag-waving White country boy? Or do you picture an older White man with a crisp business shirt who attends monthly Sons of Confederate Veterans meetings? Perhaps you imagine a fancy white-glove wearing elderly White woman who defends statues of Confederates? But why? There are millions of descendants of Confederates alive today. Why do we picture folks like these — folks who revere the Confederacy? To imagine that most descendants of Confederates venerate the Confederacy is a cognitive bias that is hurting us. Venerators may be organized and vocal, but their views do not represent most descendants. Daniel Kahneman, in his book Thinking Fast and Slow, describes a cognitive bias called “what you see is all there is.” In this case, if we don’t see descendants of the Confederacy who are against its reverence, then we assume they must not exist. The danger here has been that venerators are allowed to speak on behalf of all descendants of Confederates. I’ve long suspected that most descendants of Confederates want to see the relics of their ancestors’ “rebel nation” disappear. I think most descendants understand that memorializing the Confederacy is keeping open the wounds of this country, not just the civil division between north and south, but it maintains a racist ideology that regards the enslavement of Africans as tolerable (at best). I think most descendants understand this, but “seeing” them has been a challenge. Here’s why. First, you already know that millions of Black Americans are descendants of Confederates, right? You knew that. Most are likely descendants through brutal rape and “slave breeding”, but they are descendants just the same. That’s an obvious truth that gets overlooked, likely because it’s painful to remember. We need to picture Black Americans as descendants of the Confederacy, because it is true and their voices matter. Second, and this is the crux of my point here, I suspect that most White descendants of Confederates have felt shamed to silence, so we simply don’t hear from them. A recent Politico article offers some evidence that most descendants of Confederates, even of Confederate “heroes,” say little publicly but believe their ancestors’ names and images should be removed from public spaces. As White people with this heritage begin to accept the truth – that the Confederate cause was not just, that slavery was abhorrent, and that the resulting systemic racism has provided an unearned advantage to them – well that can be a genuine source of shame. Many would rather forget their Confederate ancestry and wish everyone in their family would as well. They may fear anyone knowing of their Confederate ancestry, lest they be held personally accountable for the evils of their ancestors. In fact, they may not even tell their children of this ancestry. Indeed, I discovered my connection as an adult and my father claimed to not know. Or worse, they may fear being mistaken as the kind of descendant who venerates the Confederacy. Such a fear is not far-fetched. Folks seem to assume a false dichotomy that there are only two ways to be a descendant of confederates: either you are a venerator or you should feel shamed to silence. If a descendant speaks of their ancestry, they are suspected of either being a venerator or someone engaging in performative shame. I’ve witnessed this assumption a few times myself. Recently, I’ve been speaking out about my Confederate heritage to my local paper and speaking at racial justice groups. After one article ran, in which I explained I was against Confederate named schools and yes, I am a descendant, an upset White woman called me. “Don’t try to use your ancestry to validate your opinion; that will backfire. Surely most descendants will disagree with you and you don’t want to validate their position.” She whispered to me, “I’m a descendant, too, and you don’t hear me going around and telling people about it. My family is ashamed! You should be, too.” At the conclusion of a talk I gave a Black woman raised her hand and said through measured breath, “I don’t understand you. What do you think you will get out of this?” Perhaps she was suspicious that my motivation might be to soothe my shame. She might have wondered if I was seeking “cookies” and congratulations to appease my guilt. Or was I seeking “self-flagellation,” a sadistic desire to inspire public blow-back for my heritage? Both of these women assumed the false dichotomy that if I am not proud of the Confederacy that I should feel shame and be silent – so which is it? Pick one. Burdened by shame White people are pretty useless as advocates for racial change. Our efforts can end up being “self-centering” as we seek to ease our shame. Or we can project our shame onto others and feel righteous (though ineffective) as we blast racism skeptics in an attempt to shame them, a diversion technique so that attention is not paid to our own shame. Shame is a not a starting place for change-making. If White descendants of Confederates want to be allies, we need a new starting place. I’m proposing a “third way” to be a descendant of Confederates that rejects both pride and shame. The motivation is not veneration nor guilt. In the third way, descendants are motivated by a special feeling of responsibility which results in actions aimed at changing the way things are and a consequential deep drive to effect lasting systemic change. [Note: If you wonder how one can hold responsibility but not shame, I suggest reading a previous blog I wrote on the two paradoxical conditions for healing: ownership and self-compassion.] Envision this with me: What if descendants were successful in changing the (false) narrative of what it means to be a descendant of Confederates? What if, when people picture folks with Confederate heritage, they imagine people — Black, White, and multiracial — who hold a
An Open Letter to Confederate Sympathizers
Last month the KKK visited my county seat with hoods and recruitment signs. This message isn’t for them. They felt welcome here due to my county’s fierce resistance to changing the names of two public schools that were named after Confederate leaders in the 1950s and 1960s (in the midst of desegregation). Resistance here comes from some county politicians, school alumni, and community members. This message is for them. …AND for anyone who is fighting to keep any of the 1747 Confederate symbolic representations in public spaces (see Southern Poverty Law Center report). Among the common arguments in my county is a fierce defense of the Confederacy. Here and here are some recent doozies: •”[Robert E. Lee & Stonewall Jackson’s] involvement in the war had absolutely nothing to do with slavery.” •”The war was not fought over slavery.” •”The Civil War was fought to determine if a state had the right to break away from the country as a whole.” •”[Stonewall Jackson] purchased two black teens he didn’t need because their mother asked him to buy them. He brought them to sit in church, in the pew with him, and was reprimanded by others who said they needed to sit in the balcony with the other black members of the congregation. His response? ‘My children sit with me.’ ” Comments like these read thick with the Lost Cause narrative — a twisted interpretation of historical events that tells a false story that the Confederate cause was just, that the war was not about slavery, and that slavery wasn’t that bad. Assertions that folks who think otherwise need to learn history are a projectionist stance. Contemporary PhD-level historians have provided overwhelming evidence that the Confederates indeed went to war to defend the institution of slavery. Countless first-hand accounts of enslaved Africans (and common sense) tell us that slavery was abhorrent and immoral regardless of how “benevolent” any slave owner ever was. It’s a no-brainer that defending the institution of slavery is a white supremacists ideology. This is just not a debatable point among those who seriously study the war and are open to peer review. In fact, the idea that the Lost Cause narrative is myth is so mainstream now that you can learn about it on Wikipedia! What’s tricky about the Lost Cause narrative is that factual historical information is misapplied to arrive at an inaccurate conclusion that flies in the face of heaps of evidence to the contrary. So, while the following arguments might hold historical truth… •”Abraham Lincoln said, ‘If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.’ So those who say that the Civil War was ‘all about slavery’ are ignorant of what the ‘Great Emancipator’ himself said.” •”[The Union] did not fight to free slaves…Who do you think bought that Southern cotton for their Northern textile mills, and who bought that sugar cane for their Northern Distilleries? New England mills alone consumed over 283 million pounds of slave-produced cotton, or 67% of the 422 million pounds of cotton used in U.S. mills in 1860.” •“[Jackson] taught, for years, a Sunday School class for all the black people, slave or free, at the Lexington Presbyterian Church. He taught them to read (which was against the law) because he believed that it was every child of God’s right to read His word for his or herself, not via an interpreter only.” …this does NOT therefore mean that Confederates were not defending slavery (they were) and that slavery was humane (it wasn’t). Historians DO understand that the Union did not go to war to end slavery; this is widely understood as well. The entire nation was complicit, north and south. There is room for empathy. I do not blame you for having heard, believed, and retold this narrative. Ever since the war ended, descendants of Confederates have been busy creating and perpetuating this narrative in an effort to save face. The United Daughters of the Confederacy in particular pushed a powerful and successful strategy to set the Lost Cause narrative into our national culture through targeting children: Children of the Confederacy chapters, stocking school libraries with Lost Cause narrative books, sponsoring lost cause essay contests and teacher scholarships, and campaigning for the UDC’s own approved school textbooks — many of which stayed in the school systems for decades. The residuals of these initiatives continued when you and I were attending school. We were taught the Lost Cause narrative, in part or in whole, as if it were objective truth. We were good students and learned what we were taught. I spent an embarrassingly large portion of my life holding the Lost Cause narrative interpretation as truth, when it never was. (By the way, did you hear that Pluto is now considered a dwarf planet, butterflies do NOT emerge from cocoons, and dinosaurs were not reptiles but pterodactyls were?) Amazing how what is “known” changes over time when we get more information. I have compassion for you. You are my family after all. You are my grandfathers, uncles, aunts and grandmothers – we are cousins. You are my people. I grew up in Fredericksburg, Virginia where my father and his ancestors were born and raised. I was born a Carter and descend from the Northern Neck Carters, just like Robert E. Lee did. I am a descendant of a Confederate soldier. I’m no “come-here” Yankee, though I have traveled. I suspect defenders of the Confederacy are also descendants of the Confederacy, especially when they display a depth of knowledge of the Lost Cause narrative as if it were learned directly from the Confederate Catechism. Our history and heritage are painful to face. The Civil War was crushing for white southerners. A credible statistic estimates that 75% of southern white men (ages 17-50) fought
Two Conditions for Healing
I have a friend, we’ll call her Jessica, who doesn’t speak to her mother, says the relationship is damaged beyond repair. When Jessica was a child her mom allowed abuse, defended the abuser, and turned the parenting of Jessica over to her grandmother in order to continue living with the abuser. Jessica says, “I’ve tried to have a relationship with her over the years. We’d keep hitting an impasse. I’ve told her how she’s hurt me; but she has excuses. ‘I was poor, trying to survive myself. I was a victim, too.’ I can’t heal from her excuses. It’s been a long time to realize this, but for my own mental health I’ve had to let that relationship go.” The trust between them is gone. I have another friend, Trina, who is a recovering alcoholic and rocking it. Says she went down that road in the first place because her parents were alcoholics. They thought it’d be fun to make getting wasted a family activity with Trina beginning when she was in 10th grade. They know better now; they’re even decades into recovery themselves. But Trina didn’t start to recover for another 10 years after them, after a lengthy visit in a treatment facility. Part of Trina’s recovery was to name her folks’ role in her addiction. They agree, but don’t see the purpose in lingering there. “We were young. We didn’t know alcohol was that harmful to kids. We just wanted to be your friend.” And later, “We thought that if we could recover, so could you. That would be your responsibility, not ours.” Trina does have a relationship with her folks, but they rarely if ever talk about this history. It’s too raw; it’s unhealed. Relationships with trauma in the past are hard to heal. A few years ago I went through an intensive Community Trustbuilding Fellowship. The fellowship consisted of five monthly residential weekends at a spiritual retreat center. The cohort of twenty-five fellows from around the country (and some from abroad) engaged in a deeply instructive and reflective process that prepared us for meaningful community work. The Community Trustbuilding Fellowship is offered by Hope in the Cities/Initiatives of Change USA, and their mission is to “transform inequality and conflict through systems of honesty, accountability, justice, equity and peace” (from their website). To work with communities and not at them we would have to build trust that, in many cases, had been destroyed. The challenge of building trust is complicated. My own story is a case-in-point. In many ways, I am a social do-gooder. I volunteer, teach social responsibility, and want to “make a difference.” I live outside of Richmond, Virginia where the population is half Black. It’s not hard to see racial inequalities here (and elsewhere), and I’m educated enough to know the inequities were created by centuries of national and local policy. Of course, Richmond’s history as a top importer and lead exporter of enslaved Africans and as the former capital of the Confederacy shows up in how we all live here today. So do the relics of Jim Crow segregation, redlining, Massive Resistance, and mass incarceration (just to name the most obvious forces). I am motivated to impact racial change in my community. Initiatives of Change’s mission to transform inequality is my jam. But me as a trustbuilder in Richmond? This is complicated. Most of the Black residents of Richmond are descendants of enslaved Africans. And me? I’m not only White, and therefore a visual representation of Whiteness, but also a descendant of a notorious owner of enslaved Africans and a descendant of a few Confederate soldiers who fought to defend slavery. I mean, my NAME “Carter” tells that story before I even speak a word. As a beginning community trustbuilder, these were the questions I held: Would my Whiteness proceed me? Would my skin be enough to inspire distrust? What would I do when I met a Black person with the last name “Carter”? Would I become overwhelmed with guilt? Would I be more likely to establish trust if I kept my ancestors a secret — don’t mention my family name, my hometown? Is there a place for me to process my familial history in this trustbuilding context? Or will I destroy trust by mentioning it? What if I literally wore my values, like a “Black Lives Matter” message tshirt? Would that make a difference? Are others even sizing me up? Or am I projecting my own insecurities onto other people? I have some answers now. I recently read an advice column that helped me to frame my approach to trustbuilding. A parent wrote in to ask advice about salvaging a relationship with her adult daughter who does not speak to her. The two of them blame each other for the failed relationship. The advice columnist, Lori Gottlieb, is a psychotherapist and author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. She had some helpful advice for healing relationships. “Being blamed for a child’s unhappiness can make a parent feel defensive and frustrated, but layered underneath that frustration might be feelings of shame or self-blame. (My grown daughter’s life is her responsibility, not mine—but what if there’s some truth in what she’s saying?) One way to rid yourself of those feelings is to dismiss her complaints entirely—which probably just makes her protest louder. Replacing self-blame with self-compassion, on the other hand, will allow you to look more closely at yourself, in a kind way, so that you can consider with an open mind why your daughter might be so angry with you even if you did your absolute best as a parent under the circumstances.” There are two conditions for healing that may seem at odds. First, we must honestly face our role in past events, fully own the things that we have done. Healing can begin for my friends if their parents could say, “I am deeply sorry I didn’t support you as a child; I see that my choices hurt you, and