Romanticization of the Civil War
POSTED BY: Niki2
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 4, 2026 09:53
VIEWED: 15839
PAGE 6 of 13
Niki, the statistic that I saw about racism was at a presentation about the health effects of air pollution, if you can believe it, but she's at UCLA.
Anyway, she studied racism and its effects on air pollution and health. I think the main indicator for racism was the sharpness of geographic boundaries based on race and income and the size of the difference across the boundaries. (I believe she used GIS software to help with the analysis.) The highest contrast and sharpest boundaries were in the NE and classified as "extremely" racist. CA and the South were classified "moderately" racist.
Anyway, one of her observations was that the sharper the boundary and the greater the difference across the boundaries, the worse EVERYONE did (health, education,income)... even the wealthy.
Doubtful you could find a copy of the paper, although I'm sure it's available.
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Try runnin it through demographics.
Apparently the more mixed a community is, the less racism - cause we got Detroit, which is primarily one, surrounded by a buncha communities/suburbs, which are another, and a lot of em are some *seriously* racist little gits - the worst of that is when you have police from a bitterly racist, primarily white, suburb, patrolling a city which is almost exclusively populated by afro-americans...
That's a recipe for amplification of existing problems within that dynamic, believe it.
So generally the more integrated a community is, the less of that crap goes on, and when you have two communities side by side with very segregated populations, it's usually pretty nasty, especially on the border area - ESPECIALLY when the racism gets cloaked in the behavior of real estate folk, homeowners orgs, and the like, and buried beneath red tape and bullshit - most folk are not gonna admit it, for a fact, no on paper anyways, but anyone with eyes can see it.
Anyhows, I don't think it's a geographical north/south thing so much as the population distribution, integration and related dynamics.
Even the hardest of cases can learn tolerance, living side by side with other people, the (excellent) movie Gran Torino is actually a pretty good representation of how that happens.
-F
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You may want to check this book,"The New Jim Crow".
I have just heard of this book and have not had opportunity to read it. So I can't offer an opinion on it.
http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=28764731
Traveler
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To carry my last point forward... the reason why the south doesn't acknowledge the brutality of slavery is not because southerners are so prejudiced against blacks. IMHO denial is due to guilt, not to current practices. that's why I think it would be better for southerners to "man up" to their past. Then they could fully move on.
But IMHO, while the proximate cause of the Civil War was "maintaining the Union", the REAL cause was still slavery. At heart, the southern economic model needed slavery to survive. Buying off the slaves wouldn't have worked, because the profiteers who were running the southern political show would have seen that tactic... and all others... as the death blow that it was. The south simply did not have an economic alternative to slave-based profit!
The north was already industrializing and becoming a wage-based, capitalist economy.
These two economic forms were politically yoked together.
If the south had seceded, then the north and the south could have interacted as separate nations. I think the south would have revived the slave trade, and the two nations would STILL have fought a war over the territories to the west.
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I'm thinking maybe I should start celebrating my heritage, too; I have family members from my mom's side and my dad's side who fought for the Union. Maybe we should start celebrating 150 years of kicking the ass off traitorous rebel scum! :)
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Mike, with everything in this thread, are you truly serious about "traitorous scum"? Just wondering...by now I would have noped you'd get a view of both North and South as human beings caught in a difficult situation, and that seceding wasn't a traitorous act, given the Constitution, all that came before on both sides, etc.
Okay, guys, I give in. Maybe my misconceptions are carried forward from the past (I lived through that stuff, too, and memories are pretty deep), I'll grant you that. My only remaining complaint is that "racist" needs to be defined as Black-White, because there are tons of all kinds of people here in California, and I know there is deep resentment of Hispanics, whereas all the Black people I have ever seen are mixed in with us, interracial couples, etc.
The Hispanics, however, live in their own areas, which pop up with Hispanic-titled stores, etc., and become known as Hispanic sections. NOT that it's true of all, but it's distinctly obvious. And of course we have tons of illegals all over the place. And hate crimes against Hispanics.
Now, we also have Richmond and one section of SF which are by far mostly Black; and drive-by shootings happen all the time. We also have areas almost completely Asian, Indian, Italian, etc. Neighborhoods, which I assume all urban areas have. Asians have taken over almost all of the mom-and-pop stores, and Hispanics women are by and large what man Sears and such places, and nannies for the damned yuppies. So that's what I see around me.
Why the Northeast? I don't get how that happened, anyone know? It doesn't seem logical, unless influx of ex-slaves into the area created racism that survives to this day?
I freely admit that when people live together, it changes things. I'm thrilled to learn the South has changed, and yes, I take back what I said; maybe their feelings about the war when it comes to slavery are somewhat guilt--also possibly that it's not "PC"? Guilt or no, if many people have the same misconceptions I do, it could easily be frustrating for the South to be seen in that light, and to want to avoid dealing with slavery because it's seen as something "ugly". I dunno.
Nonetheless, thank you for educating me, I guarantee I will pass on what you have told me in hopes of changing the perception of people I know and meet. It's really great to hear; but that everyone should be so!
"I'm just right. Kinda like the sun rising in the east and the world being round...its not a need its just the way it is." The Delusional "Hero", 3/1/10
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
To carry my last point forward... the reason why the south doesn't acknowledge the brutality of slavery is not because southerners are so prejudiced against blacks. IMHO denial is due to guilt, not to current practices. that's why I think it would be better for southerners to "man up" to their past. Then they could fully move on.
Thought I expect you won't believe me, I will tell you that folks in the South do recognize the brutality of slavery. They don't deny it. The folks whose ancestors held slaves often try to reconnect with their descendents and apologize for their forebearers actions. Many historical museums in the South have sections documenting the inhumanity of slavery. Folks - white folks - recognize it was an evil and are glad it's gone.
That being said, most young Southerners, while recognizing slavery as a great wrong, don't feel personally guilty about it. It happened 150 years ago. It would be like a young German feeling guilty for the Franco-Prussian war. It's history to them - a bad part of history, granted - but something from the distant past to be aware of, not obsess over.
If you have any evidence that most Southerners don not now recognize the brutality of slavery, or deny it was bad, please let me know.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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Bah, Mikey is just tryin to wind folks up, not so much to get their back up, although maybe a little, but to encourage further discussion and maybe cut through the bullshit by annoyin folk into revealing how they really feel.
S'why I haven't torn his head off, he knows what he's doin, and he knows damn well *I* know it too.
I've said as much as there's any point to sayin, but I will give you this to work with if you're interested - I never bought into the whitewash of our historical figures, in fact they're FAR more interesting when you actually investigate their flaws and personal issues with one another cause you start to understand them as people, and thus I knew quite a bit about Lincoln that rubbed me wrong to begin with...
But if you wanna muckrake the dirt on ole "honest" Abe, Thomas Dilorenzo is your go-to guy.
Admittedly he's biased, but 95% of the things he brings up are fully sourced and fact-checked beyond any reasonable doubt whatever, they kinda hafta be, given that any attempt to cut through the whitewash provokes some serious flameage from those tasked with putting it on in the first place.
And when viewed on the evidence alone, I state firmly without reservation that the man was a monstrous tyrant who's sanity was at best questionable, and in retrospect his abuses and usurpations make Nixon and Shrub look like pikers in comparison - the fact that we built monuments to this creep makes me feel physically nauseous.
But there's little point to discussin the matter with folk who can't get past the propaganda the were taught in public school, who keep banging the one drum while ignoring all of the real causes and factors...
And in respect to that, THIS.
What is gunpoint conscription but an even more brutal, more abhorrent, form of slavery ?
Did not many of the corporations Lincoln fronted for practice a form of economic slavery known as the Company Store or truck system - a practice which continued well into the modern era, and despite all efforts to the contrary, is still practiced in a lighter form by coal providers ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck_system
What *IS* Slavery but forced labor under threat, anyways - the idea that persons are property instead of people, a concept I am all too damned familiar with from another angle.
Up till the Civil War, the United States ran on the mutual consent of the governed, and the implied right to revoke that consent if the relationship soured.
And Lincoln, and the Union, ran that principle over to the point where american citizens are essentially serfs to a corporate oligarchy, which was the fully admitted intention of the Federalists from day one of the Constitutional Convention, and if you have an ounce of doubt..
Quote:
“I presume you all know who I am. I am humble Abraham Lincoln. My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance. I am in favour of a national bank, the internal improvement system and a high protective tariff.”
Mind you, this came *after* Jacksons wholesale assault on centralized banking as a grevious affront given that it was based on the Hamiltonian idea of making the people and "elite" dependent on the Government by putting them deep in an entanglement of mutual debt - a protofascist idea later put into practice in all it's unholy glory by Mussolini.
Now, I don't exactly *mind* payin a share of the costs to maintain infrastructure, but that ain't what taxes are about anymore, if they ever even were, and I for damned sure have serious issues with so much of my income taken from me by threat of force that I could not even put food on the table driving a cab for sixty hours a week - and not having any choice as to WHAT that money goes to, watching it being handed off to corporations as our infrastructure crumbles...
You tell me THAT is not a form of slavery, however you wanna whitewash it, cause a refusal to shell out that money *will* eventually result in men with guns coming to do something about it, won't it ?
Lincoln didn't free the slaves, he made us ALL slaves, his debt rid
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Quote:Oh, dear. Geezer, do you really need me to spell this out for you???
Thought I expect you won't believe me, I will tell you that folks in the South do recognize the brutality of slavery. They don't deny it. The folks whose ancestors held slaves often try to reconnect with their descendents and apologize for their forebearers actions. Many historical museums in the South have sections documenting the inhumanity of slavery. Folks - white folks - recognize it was an evil and are glad it's gone. That being said, most young Southerners, while recognizing slavery as a great wrong, don't feel personally guilty about it. It happened 150 years ago. It would be like a young German feeling guilty for the Franco-Prussian war. It's history to them - a bad part of history, granted - but something from the distant past to be aware of, not obsess over. If you have any evidence that most Southerners don not now recognize the brutality of slavery, or deny it was bad, please let me know.
First of all... one of the latest examples is (ahem!) you. I think I pointed out your unconscious bias pretty clearly about 10 posts ago, when you forgot to account for slavery deaths. At the time, I said it could only be an unconscious or deliberate... er... whitewashing of southern history. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt by saying it was unconscious.
Another recent example... According to Bob McDonnell, Governor of Virginia
Quote:
“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.” [...]
The seven-paragraph declaration calls for Virginians to “understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War.”
And even more recently
Quote:I think they're reflecting the same bias ... since slaves didn't amount to diddly as far as whites were concerned, neither did the issue of slavery.
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour on Sunday defended fellow Gov. Bob McDonnell for his decision to declare April "Confederate History Month" in Virginia without initially acknowledging the legacy of slavery, saying the controversy "doesn't amount to diddly."
But if you're going to reach back 150 years for your heritage, maybe you should accept the baggage that comes with it?
And I'm going to add the same thing about the FF. They were biased against natives and assumed that land was for the taking. That part of our heritage shouldn't be forgotten either.
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Quote:
The seven-paragraph declaration calls for Virginians to “understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War.”
And really, if McDonnell and others WEREN'T whitewashing the issue, why no mention of the sacrifices of SLAVES during the period? He specifically mentions leaders, soldiers, and CITIZENS, which slaves were most definitely NOT.
Is it because even now, same as then, they just don't think of slaves as actual, real, living and breathing PEOPLE? Or do they just not think that slaves actually suffered or sacrificed?
"I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 and intellegence [sic] had very little to do with that decision." - Hero, Real World Event Discussions
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