As I noted in my original post on this, we shouldn’t ignore that many of us have benefited from the willful amnesia about what the Civil War was and was about. Many of us. Not all of us. From TPM Reader DR …
As a lifelong Black person raised in Georgia, I can tell you the views of TPM Reader JL are all classic Southern appeasement.
We change the names of streets when the men (mostly men) they are named for can no longer be justified or reconciled with our values.
Nathaniel Bedford Forrest Street in Atlanta is no more, for good reason.
But growing up, we always took field trips to Stone Mountain, and most of the kids, all Black like me, didn’t know the significance of the men carved into the massive rock above their heads, looking out over the city.
It would be unthinkable to have a monument to a terrorist. Yet this is ok. Many of us say it isn’t and its refreshing to see any non-Black person “get” why it isn’t.
I doubt we will ever forget the reasons we fought that war. But I worry we will continue to gloss over them. In the name of “Southern Pride.”
