Deanie's Blue Inkblots

"History's verdict is all we have left. And when tomorrow calls today into account, some of us want to say we stood up. We called out. We were not silent."
--Leonard Pitts, Jr., "Gestures of Conscience Bring Solace," Baltimore Sun, March 19, 2006

GOV. McDONNELL'S OPEN LETTER TO FORMER SLAVES OF VIRGINIA

This entry was posted on 4/8/2010 9:57 AM and is filed under uncategorized.

Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia was perplexed.

He couldn't understand what all the hubbub was about. After all, the proclamation of Confederate History Month in the state of Virginia was strictly intended to enhance the study of history and to promote tourism in the state.

What could be so wrong about that?

Everybody likes tourism, don't they?

After all, it's the 150th anniversary since the start of the War of Northern Aggression, which everybody knows was fought for things like state sovereignty and things of that nature, and this was just to honor the sacrifices of our brave boys in gray. So what's the big deal.

He had fully expected the liberals to get their panties in a twist because they get upset about everything anyway but he didn't expect the whole damn world to get all frothy at the mouth. After all, this had been a tradition going on...what...13 years now, not counting the years a Democrat was in the statehouse...a fine old tradition, and Virginia thrives on tradition.

Just because he forgot to mention slavery.

He thought he made it clear to the Washington Post when he said that he had not included slavery because, "there were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia."

Then people got all in an uproar because they thought he didn't think slavery was significant.

So, Gov. McDonnell thought he needed to write a letter to explain the omission, you know, to explain better why he forgot to mention the slaves.

Here's how the letter went:

"To the former slaves of Virginia and your descendents:

"I am sorry I forgot to mention you in my proclamation about Confederate History Month. It was not my intention to offend you.

"The thing is, we always overlooked the slaves. It's because we didn't think of them as people. We didn't even really think of them as property. When it came to field hands, we thought of them as machinery. You know, like a good combine, or a good thresher. Cotton-pickers. That kind of thing. The slaves were there to provide the massive agricultural industry that enriched our coffers and built our mansions and made us fat and wealthy.

"This is why we didn't think of you when we put together the history books.

"And like, in the house? We would pick the ones who were the most physically attractive and the best-spoken, but even then, they were supposed to be unobtrusive. NO SASS! They were supposed to wait on us, see. Quietly, in the background. Fan us in the sweltering Southern heat. Cook our food in the suffocating kitchens located separately from the big house so the rest of the house wouldn't get so hot. They were even supposed to nurse the babies for our Southern ladies who were too delicate for such a demanding task.

"And if the Southern gentlemen wanted to, they could grab up a pretty slave girl and have their way with her any time they pleased, and if she got pregnant or otherwise embarrassed the family, she and/or her baby could be sold, or he could just be shipped off to school and nobody would be the wiser.

"These things were always handled in just this quiet Southern way, you see. So, surely you can understand how it is that it just slipped my mind, that whole slavery thing? I mean, we're just used to not thinking about such unpleasantness.

"We keep insisting that the War Between the States WAS NOT ABOUT SLAVERY and that many of our Southern leaders opposed it, but the truth of the matter is that, without slavery, we could not have maintained our economy and, in fact, we did not. It collapsed. Took almost a century to rebuild and still has some of the biggest pockets of poverty in the whole country.

"I mean, you can not run those great big plantations by paying field hands for labor you used to get, basically, for free. Even Scarlett O'Hara, after the war, wound up making her fortune by using prison labor, when slavery was no longer an option to her.

"So anyway, like I was saying. Here in the South, we just sometimes forget all about that slavery thing because, well, we're just not used to thinking about it in that way.

"I mean, to us, it was commerce, see? Surely you can understand.

"Like...tourism.

"So, as you can see. I'm sorry and everything, but I really don't get all the fuss. I really don't.

"Sincerely,

"Governor Bob McDonnell, Republican, Virginia, Confederate State of America"

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4/8/2010 3:06 PM Booth McKeown wrote:
As a die-hard progressive born and raised in the deep South, I face a real dilemma on this issue. I reluctantly put away my Confederate battle flag years ago because of the hate and bigotry it seemed to engender. I am not sorry that the Confederacy lost the war and am certainly not sorry that slavery has ended in this country. But the South has produced many brave, intelligent, innovative, loving and caring people. Yes, it's produced George Wallace and Lester Maddox. But it's also produced William Faulkner and Eudora Welty and Jimmy Carter and Al Gore and Martin Luther King. I am proud to be a southerner, expatriate though I am, and I am proud of all the good and kind and decent people and things the South has produced. The Confederacy is part of that history, as is slavery, and we cannot celebrate one part of our history while denying another. Can we recognize the evil of slavery and Jim Crow AND celbrate the great things that have come about because of the South and because of Southerners? I don't ask for a bowdlerized version of history, but I do ask for an honest one.
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1. 4/8/2010 4:21 PM Deanie Mills wrote:
  Well, absolutely, Booth. I, too, am from the South. I wrote a senior literary thesis on Faulkner and, like most people, count TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD to be one of my all-time favorite novels. I agree with you on all your points--but the good governor didn't put out a proclamation of SOUTHERN history month. He put out a proclamation of CONFEDERATE history month, which denotes merely that time in Southern history when the South seceded from the Union and declared war.
  
  None of the lovely things you mentioned occurred during that time frame, I'm afraid. However, Southern gentlemen who went into battle did often take a slave or two with them to look after them, and if they were killed, those slaves often accompanied the body home if their families were able to afford the expensive and brand-new process of embalming and the train ticket home. If they were not, the slaves would sometimes go on home by themselves and then return with their owners, to show them where the young man had been buried, according to Drew Gilpin Faust's THIS REPUBLIC OF SUFFERING, Death and the American Civil War.
  
  So yeah, we can celebrate many beautiful things from the South and Southerners, but the Confederacy and the slavery it fought to preserve...not so much.
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  1. 4/8/2010 6:01 PM Regina wrote:
    You are absolutely correct Deanie to make the distinction between the confederacy and the south. African Americans take just as much pride in our southern heritage as do white southerners; however, when you talk about the confederacy you may as well be talking about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as far as we are concerned. It was all out war by those who did so in the name of a country they considered separate and apart from the United States of America. Slavery notwithstanding, how does any loyal American celebrate and revere that? In my humble opinion the governor's convenient memory lapse was nothing more than an attempt to disguise his true sentiments which are the same as those confederates who sought to divide this country 150 years ago. And with regards to African Americans his intent is also the same, which is to put us in our "place" beginning with the one in the White House.
    Reply to this
    1. 4/8/2010 7:04 PM Deanie Mills wrote:
      You nailed it, my sister--with that veeery last sentence: "And with regards to African Americans his intent is also the same, which is to put us in our "place" beginning with the one in the White House."
      
      The people who don't "get" that will never get it. But then, they have never been there.
      Reply to this
4/8/2010 5:01 PM Barry Considine wrote:
Really funny I liked it a lot. We know that my great grandfather on my mother's side owned slaves. We know this because we read his will where he bequeathed to each of his children certain slaves and farm animals as if they were one in the same. Some in my family feel this is some how the reason for my dark complexion and large lips. I keep telling them it didn't work like that.
If you think serving in silence is a thing of the past here in the South (yes Maryland is part of the South because we're below the Mason Dixon Line) you would be wrong. My wife and I met while working at a private dining club in the ritzy Mount Vernon section of Baltimore City. As a waitress she was required to stand table side and wait while the member wrote out their order on nice little pads that were at each table. In fact club members were more like to call me out to discuss how wonderful their meal was than to actually speak to one of the waitresses. And yes Carol was one of only two white waitresses all the others were black.
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1. 4/8/2010 5:23 PM Deanie Mills wrote:
  Interesting about the wait staff at the club--I'll have to tell my daughter that, who waited tables for ten years while paying her acting dues in New York and L.A. I don't doubt it for a minute, though. Nor do I doubt what you said about the will--designating the slaves with the farm animals.
  
  What most of the Confederate flag-wavers just don't seem to GET is that there really is a part of the population who would truly rather not be reminded, VIVIDLY, of this part of our history, every time they look up at the statehouse, or for a whole month in their history classes. We don't need to flinch from this shameful part of our nation's history--far from it--but then neither do we need to celebrate or glorify it. At least, that's how I feel about it.
  
  I have African American friends who I love. We'd all just pretty much rather think about the future than wallow in the distant past and glory days that depended upon the subjugation of an entire people in order for another people to be exalted.
  
  It's kind of the way I feel about Andrew Jackson.
  
  Everybody likes to hero-worship the great Andrew Jackson. WELL I DON'T. MY people are Cherokee. The Cherokee, more than any other Native American nation, had thoroughly assimilated into the white culture, had intermarried, learned the language, were farmers and shopkeepers. Made no difference to ole Hickory. He said that they had to be rounded up like cattle, driven from their homes, and shipped off to reservations out West. The Cherokee, who were educated by then, actually fought that decision in the United States Supreme Court. AND THEY WON.
  
  But Jackson IGNORED the decision of the Supreme Court. He sent the soldiers down the east coast, all the way down to Georgia, dragging families from their homes--some in the middle of dinner--giving them no time to pack their things, and forced them to walk all the way to Oklahoma in the Trail of Tears, where ONE OUT OF FOUR of them died.
  
  So. I got no damn use for Andrew Jackson. Make it Andrew Jackson Friggin' Month--I ain't interested. So--that's how it is that I understand, "Confederate History Month" is not a happy time for all the people of Virginia, is what I'm saying.
  
  Reply to this
4/11/2010 7:43 AM Nigel wrote:
>>>We don't need to flinch from this shameful part of our nation's history--far from it--but then neither do we need to celebrate or glorify it.<<<

I agree with that sentiment. But, it's about time we stopped apologising for what our ancestors did. To me, that's like me apologising for something my brother has done. *I* wasn't there. *I* had nothing to do with whatever he did, so, let *him* apologise.

As you say, let's all move forward together, having learned lessons from our past. That seems to me where we often fall down. We read about a supreme cock up carried out by an idiaot and then find (vote for) another idiot to make the same mistake.
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1. 4/11/2010 4:04 PM Deanie Mills wrote:
  I don't think it's a matter of apologizing for ancestors, although I do agree with you, Nigel.
  
  It's the fact that in certain parts of the South, the resurrection of the Civil War as a point of glory and pride keeps occurring, as this op-ed, "Southern comfort," by Pulitzer Prize winning historian and editor of Newsweek, Jon Meacham wrote in Today's New York Times points out--whenever there are major changes in civil rights taking place in this country, such as major Supreme Court decisions on segregation, or Constitutional amendments assuring rights to blacks, or...gee, I dunno...a black president, maybe? And not just a black president, but the passage of health care reform, which right-wing talk show blabbermouths like Rush Limbaugh have literally referred to as "reparations" for slavery! That's right. The idea being that most of the 32 million uninsured in this country are the stereotypical black crack whores sitting around the ghetto getting fat on the dole and good hard-working people like good ole Rush will have his tax dollars pay for their health care.
  
  This is, of course, absurd. Those who are, indeed, poor enough to be on welfare already qualify for Medicaid, a government-provided health care plan. The uninsured in this country are the working-poor, those who make minimum wage or who work for small businesses which can't afford to provide health care for their workers, and so on, or people with pre-existing conditions who could not qualify for health insurance before health care reform was passed.
  
  Still--that stereotype is very prevalent in the Tea Party, right-wing crowd over here, the idea that a black president is pushing through a socialist agenda in order to force down the throats "government run" programs using tax dollars from good white people to those who don't work.
  
  The CRAZIEST thing about all this? Most of the Tea Party protesters over here ARE ALREADY ON FORMS OF GOVERNMENT HELP, whether it is Social Security, Medicare (government-provided insurance for people over 65), or veteran's benefits. They will literally hold up signs saying: KEEP YOUR GOVERNMENT HANDS OFF MY MEDICARE.
  
  You can't argue against that kind of ignorance. So this whole glorification of the Confederacy is all ABOUT racism, all ABOUT a black president somehow getting revenge for slavery.
  
  It could not BE more wrong, of course. But that is how a slice of about 25% to 33% of this country really sees it. And we've got an entire television network, FOX news, that feeds that fear, 24-7, with misinformation and nonsense.
  Reply to this
4/12/2010 3:51 AM Nigel wrote:
>>>You can't argue against that kind of ignorance. <<<

The mind of the bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract.

Oliver Wendell Holmes
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1. 4/12/2010 8:11 AM Deanie Mills wrote:
  Nigel, have I told you lately what a treasure you are?
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