It has taken me a few days to decide to respond to J.R.’s petition to change the Jackson Lee holiday to Virginia Heritage Day. I had to get my head around this debate. It’s painful. And I still haven’t decided to sign the petition.
For those of who read the blog regularly and don’t know… I am black. I am liberal. I am Southern. And I’m proud. But I’m so tired to people talking around this issue.
J.R., I really appreciate your effort. You’re right. It is important to recognize and honor all of Virginia’s heroes, although it raises a debate over who really is a hero. What’s so infuriating is the fact that there is any debate at all over whether or not it was right to fight on the side of the Confederacy.
I don’t give two hoots about someone teaching little black kids the Bible. Jackson wasn’t helping them. He was teaching them to accept their inferior and substandard lot in life and using Christ to justify it. That’s how the Bible was used then and, that all by itself is sinful.
And the suggestion that these men fought for freedom! Whose freedom? Surely no one would suggest that either of these great Virginians were fighting for my freedom.
Like most of us today, Jackson and Lee had admirable traits and horrible flaws. It makes them human, and therefore deserving of some respect. But it doesn’t change the fact that they were on the wrong side.
Anyone who even attempts to offer up reasons why anyone might be so angry with America as to fly planes into the World Trade Center would immediately be shut down. Why bring up 9/11? Because the terrorists were wrong. And there’s no good excuse for what they did. And no matter how you spin it, the South was wrong. And Lee, Jackson, and Virginia in general were on the wrong side, too. The fact that there is even a debate over whether or not it was wrong only shows we, as a nation, have a long way to go in facing our crimes.
The South was defending an attack on its culture; a culture and a heritage that literally depended upon-could not have existed and thrived without- cruelty towards an entire race of people. It doesn’t matter that there were some who didn’t own slaves. It’s like saying Germans who didn’t actively participate in concentration camps didn’t play a role. The entire Southern society was complicit in this crime against humanity. The nation was complicit. And this crime against humanity continued long past the end of the Civil War with the help of the very people who fought for it and/or were sympathizers. Furthermore, the very same people who wave the rebel flag in the name of “heritage not hate”, are descendents of those who implemented and staunchly defended a modern day system of disenfranchisement.
Now having said all that, I’m not sure I’m going to sign the petition- as much as I appreciate what’s at the heart of it. Virginia, as well as the larger South, has a lot to celebrate in our history. The South gave rise to people like Martin Luther King, Thurghood Marshall, and countless others-black and white- who really fought for freedom. But, I want to remember people like Jackson and Lee and all of those who fought, effectively, against a forced end to slavery. Like the Holocaust, I hope we never forget.
