I'm a black daughter of the Confederacy, and this is how we should deal with all those General Lees

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: August 30, 2017 at 7:35:33 AM EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] I'm a black daughter of the Confederacy, and this is how we should deal with all those General 
> Lees
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> [Note:  This item comes from friend Shannon McElyea.  DLH]
>
> I'm a black daughter of the Confederacy, and this is how we should deal with all those General Lees
> By Lisa Richardson
> Aug 27 2017
> <http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-richardson-black-confederate-history-20170827-story.html>
>
> As monuments to the Confederacy are swept away from public spaces, white supremacists, neo-Nazis and the president of 
> the United States have been fretting over the so-called attack on history, presumably their history. Their white 
> history.
>
> Attack, assault, erasure, destruction — well, truth and justice in the face of denial and dissembling can certainly 
> feel like that. But there is no such thing as whites-only history, there never was, not even with regard to the 
> Confederacy.
>
> Like millions of African Americans, I am the descendant of a Confederate soldier. True, we are most likely 
> descendants through coerced sex and rape, but we are descendants all the same. According to Ancestry.com, the DNA of 
> the average African American is 29% European. These bronzed southern soldiers are literally our forefathers too.
>
> In the peculiar, perverted institution of slavery, white men sired, enslaved and often sold their own children; black 
> nieces and white nephews played together before adulthood drove them to disparate destinies. Whites owned their black 
> siblings. Thomas Jefferson was 45 when he fathered the first of six children on the 15-year-old Sally Hemmings, who 
> was his wife’s half sister and also her property. My great-great-grandmother Mary Ellen Fulton was her mistress’s 
> niece.
>
> None of this is new or secret information. But the Southern states established powerful “don’t ask, don’t tell” rules 
> that were essential to both their social structure and the economics of slavery. With power on one side and 
> humiliation on the other, our mythical, segregated history took shape.
>
> Of course, most white Southerners of the period were neither villains nor heroes. The majority did not enslave other 
> people, but neither did they advocate the end of slavery or even the softening of slavery. They did not work to halt 
> the worst practices of the era — the sale of children away from parents, the separation of husbands and wives — nor 
> did they seek to end the concubinage of enslaved girls and women. Many did not own slaves simply because they 
> couldn’t afford them.
>
> Blacks and whites will have different perspectives on their entwined history. War victory for my white 
> great-great-great grandfather, Jeremiah H. Dial, who enlisted in the 31st Arkansas infantry regiment and was wounded 
> in the battle of Stone River, Tenn., in December 1862, would have meant defeat for my great-great-great-grandmother 
> Lavinia Fulton and their daughter, Mary Ellen. Instead, Lavinia died a free woman, living to play with her 
> grandchildren and give thanks to God every Sunday in church in Birmingham, Ala. I thank God my 
> great-great-great-grandfather lost. Every right-thinking person should be glad he lost.
>
> Yet the monuments debate isn’t really about the past. It’s about a present-day assertion of white supremacy and 
> whether our nation is going to stop making excuses and stare it down. Most of the statues, as has been widely 
> discussed, were erected long after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. They were hoisted into view to assert 
> white dominance at specific points in time when African Americans gained a measure of political influence — during 
> Reconstruction and the civil rights era. With the bronzes came domestic terrorism, lynchings, bombings and cross 
> burnings. The current uptick in neo-Nazi and white supremacist activity was entirely predictable. With clockwork 
> precision it surged at the time of the nation’s first African American president.
>
> So why do some people treat modern icons as if they were ancient relics, like marbles from the Parthenon?
>
> Fear. History isn’t being erased, but it is being corrected. Relocating a Confederate statue to, say, a museum, is an 
> acknowledgment that we see the naked emperor; we see through the contorted logic that it is possible to separate the 
> Confederacy from the institution of slavery, that it’s a whites-only story and slavery is blacks-only, and that 
> treason is the same as patriotism.
>
> The president has asked, “Where will it end?” Will the removal of General Lees lead to upheaval for Thomas Jefferson? 
> Trigger the end for George Washington?
>
> [snip]
>
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/
> Twitter: https://twitter.com/wa8dzp



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