I
admit it. I love grits with lots of butter, hot cornbread, and fried
anything. At 60, I still say “yes, sir, no sir, yes, ma'am, and
no, ma'am,” the way it was drilled into me as a boy. And, no matter
which side of the Mason-Dixon I land, I use the plural of you every
chance I get. In fact, I'm such a son of the south that my great
grandfather, a Tennessee farmer, was named after not only one
Confederate “hero” but two, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee.
Yes,
I love my southern heritage, a phrase that's only besmirched, when
you package it as an excuse to keep symbols of white supremacy, which
in 2017 we should be long past defending. Our southern heritage, you
see, is not only all that bad stuff. It's our food, our friendliness,
our beautiful accents. But, most of all, it's our culture.
Imagine
American music without the three Southern cities of Memphis, New
Orleans, and Nashville. It can't be done. American music does not
exist without the south. And our culture doesn't stop there. Southern
writers, like Robert Penn Warren, Flannery O'Connor, and William
Faulkner taught me the pure joy of words and gave me, a teenage
misfit in suburban Houston, a way to make sense of the craziness that
has always been the south. To me, this is my southern heritage. But,
obviously, others see things differently.
When
I was a teenager, after a morning doctor's appointment in downtown
Houston where my dad worked, I was allowed to play glorious hooky the
rest of the day. That afternoon I wandered through underground
Houston, long hallways under streets that connected downtown
buildings back in the seventies, and, for all I know, still. Later, I
found myself in the old downtown library, a multi-story red-brick
affair, now long torn down. But I didn't stop there. I wandered all
the way to Sam Houston Park, a little west of City Hall. If you've
ever driven on 45 through downtown Houston you've seen it, an oasis
of green with old buildings, and yes, a statue.
Picture
me there, a 70's high school punk happily AWOL from the internecine
conflicts of high school, sunning himself on a bench, just enjoying
a little teenage R&R. After breathing in all that youthful
freedom, I noticed an especially ugly statue looming behind me. It
was a male angel with wings and a sword and not much else on.
Curious, I got up and spotted its name: the Spirit of the
Confederacy. I then read its dedication: “to all the heroes of the
south who fought for the principles of states rights.”
Gob-smacked,
I reread the inscription again and again. Here we were in the
seventies, and there was an actual statue honoring those who'd taken
up arms against our nation, who, in other words, were traitors. And,
even though, I was white and privileged, I remember being bowled over
that in downtown Houston, where many African-Americans lived and
worked, there'd be a statue to people who thought enslaving other
human beings was not just par for the course, but worth fighting an
especially brutal war over. How the hell must that make them feel?
One
argument I've seen on Facebook is that this struggle over statues is
overblown. It's just not important. One meme blared as Harvey was
pummeling my hometown with trillions of gallons of water that nobody
in Houston now cared about Confederate statues. A statement, I
suspect, even then was false. This urge in 2017, some commentators
believe, to get rid of these statues is just so much misplaced
angst. Why now? they opine.
But
this specious argument can be turned around. If the existence of
these statues is as unimportant as some conservatives claim, then one
could plausibly argue, why not take them down if some members of the
community are offended by them. Yet the truth is these statues, like
most symbols – our flag, for instance – are important. Yes, the
removal of these offensive monuments will not magically heal the very
deep and real wounds caused by America's original sin of slavery. But
it is still very much a fight worth having and having now.
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