The author as a child, on a family vacation to famous Civil War battle sites.
With the horror of the white supremacist terrorist attack in Charleston, South Carolina still fresh in our national consciousness, one small solace has been the recent SCOTUS ruling siding with Texas against the Sons of Confederate Veterans over respecting the state's decision to disallow a specialty license plate from the group incorporating the Confederate Battle Flag. It was the right call, and even Clarence Thomas was on the side of the angels this time and for that I am grateful.
I was born in Atlanta, Georgia to an unwed college sophomore from South Carolina who gave me up for adoption to a pair of transplanted Missourians I today call "Mom & Dad". We moved around a lot in those years, but my childhood memories only go back as far as Kindergarten in Columbia, SC where one of our class activities for the Bicentennial in 1976 was to look at pictures of Mr. Carter and Mr. Ford and decide who we thought should be president. I can recall picking the sitting President, Mr. Ford, because I thought he looked more "Presidential" somehow. We moved to Houston, Texas when I reached 3rd grade.
I'm ashamed to admit it, but I had Confederate paraphernalia I'd collected as a kid...flags, reproductions of CSA currency, etc.
It took me a long time to develop a critical perspective on the conflict. I didn't have my first black friend until I was in Middle School, and he was the adopted son of a white Church Minister and his wife. Everyone I knew treated the historical conflict very superficially and tribally. It wasn't until I made friends with a fellow NJROTC cadet in High School from Ohio that I began to question my perspective more critically. He was also unabashedly a liberal Democrat, which to me seemed scandalous at the time. But this friend was smart & really cool, so I let myself entertain new thoughts on these previously unquestioned tribal matters.
It bothered me morally that although the legal Segregation of schools by race was a thing of the past, according to our history textbooks, it was plain as day to anyone who looked that our school (Clements High School) was majority white with some Asians, some Hispanics, and a handful of black students. While across town, Willowridge High School was majority black. It is still that way today. If anything Clements may have less black students now than in my day. I posted some digitized VHS video to YouTube a few years ago and current students remarked in the YouTube comments to those videos with surprise at seeing black people at all in the hallways of "their" school, which was disheartening to hear.
Fast forward to today, I thoroughly repudiate and disclaim any so-called Southern Heritage. I despise it. Since my adoptive family is from Missouri, a border state, I have (adopted) ancestors who fought on both sides of the conflict. My sympathies are with those who fought to preserve the Union and free the slaves.
There might have been a time in my past where I would have viewed the recent SCOTUS ruling with dismay, but it meets with my approval now as a mature, thinking adult. In the wake of the ruling, Texans may still drive around our great state with an exact replica of the General Lee from the TV show The Dukes of Hazzard if they like, but the State of Texas will NOT issue them a State-sanctioned License plate with their traitorous, blood stained, terror inducing emblems upon it. It is not an issue of free speech and never was, and SCOTUS was correct in their ruling.
Of course, I made the mistake of reading the comments section of several local news organizations and the racist NeoConfederate apologists were out in force, spewing their lies about the Civil War and berating liberal commenters for not studying "real history".
I don't know why, but NeoConfederate apologetics is a particular hobby horse of many contemporary Libertarian thinkers and writers, many of whom are naturally pre-disposed to being contrarians on a great number of topics.
By far the most frequent and most rage-inducing claim (read: lie) made by NeoConfederates is that the Civil War had nothing to do with Slavery (some even go far as to say it had nothing to do with racism either[!]...) but was a factor of much more intricate economic rationales, or it was about the noble principle of STATES RIGHTS (all caps!) in the abstract, absent any meaningful context.
While it fills me with enough anger to make me wish I could Force-Choke them Sith style over the Internet, what I have been doing instead is providing some of that historical context they ignore in favor of their revisionist "analysis".
The States Rights in question were the the States Rights surrounding the issue of slavery and the fear of white southerners of too many of the new States entering the Union being "Free" States that would eventually outnumber "Slave" states and democratically end their "peculiar institution."
To be blunt, the claim that the Civil War was not about slavery is a lie. To any NeoConfederate who would make this claim in your presence, you should tell them in no uncertain terms "yes it f*cking was, and the rebel bastards were NOT shy in saying so explicitly at the the time."
Then quote for them the following relevant passage from the 1861 Texas Secession declaration:
"Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated States to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility [sic] and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery--the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits--a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?"
and
"In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color--a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and the negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States."
I quote the 1861 Texas Secession document because it is my home state, but all of the rebel states issued similar declarations with similar language. They were very explicit about their aims and reasons in 1861, which after 1865 they've been running from and trying to obscure and lie about ever since....because it's embarrassing and shameful. It should be. It is, and we should keep throwing it back in their faces every time they try to evade this history and legacy and talk about the "Stars And Bars" or their Battle Flag (yes, I know the difference you pedantic sh*ts, stop typing) as being only about "Southern Pride". Don't let NeoConfederate apologists get away with spewing this sh*t online. It's easier to debunk now more than ever, but we still have to do the anti-racist work. Rolling our eyes and scrolling on past to the cat pictures is an exercise in white privilege.
I consider it a standing insult to the victims in Charleston that the Confederate Battle Flag is still flying on the Capitol grounds in Columbia. It rubs salt in the wound with every flap in the breeze. It needs to go. I take small comfort in the fact that in Texas at least we've withheld official government endorsement of this hateful symbology on our state license plates. It's not nearly enough, but it's a start.