Lifting my Voice

I am Southern.

I am ashamed.

I used to be able to hide behind various qualifications when I said "I am Southern." I hid behind my parents, who grew up in a time when racism was the norm, but managed to rise above that. I hid behind my own liberalism; I try to see the world from other's view points, and I thought that was enough. I hid behind the likes of Frank Porter Graham, Terry Sanford, and Bill Friday, saying, "No, see, THAT'S what North Carolina really is." I hid in my own little blue town, where I didn't have to confront my neighbors about racism, because even the conservatives are pretty liberal in Chapel Hill. And I hid on Facebook, by ignoring or actively blocking people whose posts I found upsetting.

I cannot hide any more.

I have struggled this weekend. I know I need to speak out, and I'm not sure how to. Partially, to be sure, because frequently my best words come in the form of snark and humor, and nothing is funny right now. Partially because when I start to write, I've become enraged. And partially because when I start to write, I begin to cry.

And, honestly, because I keep starting to write something on the theme of, "We are not this".  That's not enough anymore, and it's not true. If anyone still believes that, I have to ask where have you been the past 72 hours?

We are this. It's terrible, and it's sad, and it's scary, but we, collectively, as Americans, ARE godawful horrible, racist, ignorant, angry people. We have allowed the alt-right and the white supremacists and the neo-Nazis to plunder our democratic principles for their own purposes. We have allowed them room and board in our newspapers, in our living rooms, on our websites. We have encouraged them by our silence. We have enabled them by our fear.

We all own this.

Charles Clymer is one of my favorite Twitter personalities. His thread here is spot on. We need to stop the white supremacist, neo-nazi takeover of this country. And it will be hard.

We need to stop the nonsense that the Civil War was about anything other than slavery. Economics? Nope. If the economy is dependent on slave labor, then it's about slavery. States' Rights? Sorry. If the right that is being fought for is enslaving a human being, then it's about slavery. The Civil War was about slavery, first, last, and always.

We need to take down the monuments to that world, and to that war. I have no idea whose brilliant idea it was to put a statue of Robert E Lee in a park named "Emancipation Park" but that's not irony, it's cruelty. Take the damn statue down. Take Silent Sam down. Yeah, I giggled and twittered when I was a Freshman and they told me he fired his gun every time a virgin walked by. I don't care. Take him down. Rename the buildings, take down the monuments, stop the glorification of that godawful time.

"Oh, but history!" I hear some of you cry. Fine. Make a selection of monuments and statues and building lintels, put them in a museum (hell put them in MANY museums), with a placard that reads something along the lines of, "The Civil War, which was only about slavery, was fought in the middle of the 19th century. For more than a hundred and fifty years after the end of the war, the Southern United States continued to glorify and memorialize the Confederacy, to the degradation of the human race."

"Oh, but lots of the people who fought didn't profit from slavery/did it because their land was invaded/fought to protect their families/whatever!" I hear others of you cry. Possibly true; most wars are fought by young men who are not going to directly profit from the war, or who have been sold a package of lies from their politicians. But you know what? Those young men are dead now, and have been for generations. And their motives, whatever they may have been are irrelevant. The war was about slavery. Make a memorial of their names if you wish, but put on that these were young men killed in the Civil War, which was about slavery.

"Oh, but the North is just as bad!" I hear everyone cry. True. Absolutely true. And many of the white supremacists in Virginia last weekend were from non-Southern states. The terrorist who killed a young woman by using his car as a weapon was from Ohio. Another who was surprised that his face wound up plastered all over social media was from Nevada.

But the North didn't fight to enslave other human beings. The North didn't try to secede from a nation that outlawed slavery. The North does not have the talismans of flag and monument that draw the white supremacists to them. I'm sorry. It just doesn't.

We do. We have a current of racism and hatred that needs to be spoken of openly. When we fly a confederate flag, we invite the hatred in. When we put a "Forget, Hell" bumper sticker on our cars, we invite the hatred in. When we don't speak out, we invite the hatred in. When we pretend that we're better than this, but we don't scream with outrage when we see the hurt and hatred that are STILL being perpetuated on an entire segment of our nation, we invite the hatred in.

And that's wrong. And we must do better. We must do better now, and Southerners need to step up and accept our role. It is not enough to simply not be a racist. We need to accept that our heritage is being used against our country, and speak out, shout out, cry out, and we need to do it now. And tomorrow. And the next day, and the next, and the next.

And maybe, possibly, if enough of us are humble enough to lift up our voices to say, "Yes. The Civil War was fought by the South to allow slavery. That was wrong. It was horrible. And we must stop glorifying it." without qualifying the statement with a "but....." then someday we will rise to James Weldon Johnnson's words, and, "Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring, ring with the harmonies of Liberty."