This past weekend, Manassas City officials cancelled the annual “Manassas Civil War Weekend.” Because goddamn, that is exactly what would spread peace, love and healing among the people after Charlottesville, a festival celebrating the Civil War, complete with reenactments of the 1st and 2nd Battles of Manassas.
One year, a Confederate reenactor used LIVE AMMO and shot a Union reenactor. Given our current political climate, cancelling this event was the right call. I applaud City leaders for their good sense--not something we always see in our politicians.
The idea that we continue to celebrate the point in history when this country was at its most divided stumps the fuck out of me. No doubt, we are severely divided right now, but half of us haven’t taken up arms against the rest of us—at least not yet.
The terrible truth is that many in the U.S. (not just southerners) embrace the “white-pride” ideology that the Confederacy, the Stars and Bars, and Nazi symbols communicate. Others argue they're all about fighting back against a tyrannical Federal Government; they are trying to “take their country back” from unconstitutional government overreach. Still, others insist that they’re just “honoring our nation’s history and culture,” as they whitewash the fuck out of the evils white men have perpetrated on women, people of color, and indigenous peoples.
I call BULLSHIT! The southern states mobilized against this country— a treasonous act of armed rebellion if ever there was one— for one reason and one reason only: slavery!
Wealthy southern landowners knew damn well that, without slave labor, they could not maintain their highly privileged way of life, and compete with the industrialized North. The South prospered for 200 years at the extraordinary expense of Black men, women, and children.
THAT’S our history.
The forced relocation of thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral lands onto reservations. The horrid living conditions on the reservations, and the continued disenfranchisement of Tribal Nations by white men.
THAT’S our history.
THE VA LEGISLATURE PROTESTING DESEGREGATION by naming all those public schools after those damn Confederate generals and political figures, to intimidate Black students and reinforce the message "you do not belong here."
THAT’S our history!
As white folk, we bear neither the guilt nor the responsibility for our white ancestors’ sins, but we damn sure have an obligation to make certain we never repeat this history. And we are failing in this because too few of us speak out, too many of us declare we’re “not political,” and far too many of us believe that we, as white folk, are more deserving than our fellow citizens of color.
Here’s some more history for you…family history.
My family has been in Virginia since the 1600s. Our history runs throughout Northern Virginia; a few of my ancestors fought in the Army of Northern Virginian. One of these men fought at Manassas. I know this because my grandfather loved researching our family history, and he shared this history with me.
I know that my family owned slaves because Granddad proudly showed me the ancestor’s will in which people were bequeathed as property, along with livestock and land, to his white children. My grandfather was proud of this history; I was horrified.
Now, I’m not congratulating myself for my extraordinary “wokeness.” Being horrified that your family owned other people is not righteousness, it’s the minimum bar for being human!
There is no other way to say it: my grandfather was a racist. Closeted, perhaps, but still a racist. I say “closeted” because, in public, he kept his opinions to himself. He believed that God created all men, but people should stick with their own “kind.” He did not consider himself racist. He wasn’t in the Clan; he wasn’t anti-Civil Rights, Granddad wasn’t against Black folk voting, he didn’t hate working with Black coworkers. If he were alive today, he would argue that he was “tolerant.”
He very much believed that white men were superior to all others, and that white man should have greater privilege than a black or brown man. And I have other family members who believe this too, some more openly than others.
Not all racists wear hoods, or Swastika arm bands, or march down streets carrying Confederate or Nazi flags. Many describe themselves as ‘tolerant’ of other cultures. They’re simply ‘defending white culture,' or ‘protecting their free speech’ or ‘protesting political correctness’ or any of the dozens of other dog-whistle euphemisms these alt-right fucks infect our society with, via social media. They are a plague; they are also very well-armed.
