An American Education
A Response to some of Dr. B. E. Stone’s “Thoughts on Civil War Monuments and America’s Polemical Politics”
Essentially, the Civil War never really concluded as it was meant to conclude.
The State of Education in The Union
“Why do we fail to teach the Civil War in schools with the kind of specificity one needs in order to understand the debate concerning Civil War monuments?”
As a teacher of young adults in secondary school in Southern California and abroad I can say a couple things from the perspective of both a student at that primary and secondary level and as a teacher. My formation as a public school student in Los Angeles and the Inland Empire (“south of the 10 Freeway”) was abound with teachers who attempted to create a wide-angle vision of American History. Two of my 10th grade Social Studies teachers’ required texts were Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and Kenneth C. Davis’ Don’t Know Much About History, to give you an idea of the higher caliber of historical information we were expected to understand and interpret at that level. By the time 12th grade came along, of course we were more informed, perhaps, than a generation or two before us.
Many teachers are definitely engaging students in this dialog and not with a merely morally ambiguous or amoral perspective that creates false equivalence — as a teacher and tutor of many subjects (I’ve taught basic to advanced levels of literature, writing, physics, calculus, grammar, and history) I must remember to touch on relevant current and historical events to prepare my students not only for the next academic level, but for life, encouraging reflection that invites decisiveness. In turn, I have had the experience of mostly being encouraged to pursue the same caliber of teaching I received in my public education, in both public and private settings, with few exceptions. To me this says that this “failure” is a fault of policy and politics, both of the powers that control subject matter and interpretation and of the community (including parents, students, and the local school staff), and not specifically of desire or ability or even historical resources (these are always present, one way or another). The truth is, what most approximates Truth has never been in plainer sight for those prepared adequately in matters of logic and judgment (which in my opinion, is not so difficult to attain as early as middle school).
Great America and the War with No End
“Is it a fair question to point out, in the spirit of Deleuze, that war machines operate in accordance to their own rules? Indeed, the Civil War came to a documented end, but did the war itself ever actually end?”
It is with this formative experience and knowledge that I answer your question about the “end” of the Civil War, and point out that even that documented end is not complete. In 10th grade we were appalled to learn that Reconstruction — which was to be the proper process of conquering or effacing the bellicose, traitorous spirit of the Confederacy, reintegrate Southerners into a cohesive, slave-free Union, as well as integrate freed slaves into local and frontier society by providing them economic, legal, and even military support — was sacrificed by exactly that need for political compromise with White supremacists and through the cunning re-infiltration of Confederacy sympathizers into the dominant political parties (most especially the Republican party) after Lincoln’s assassination and through the Grant Administration. President Hayes put the final nail in the coffin for any hopes of Reconstruction’s revival after the Compromise of 1877, also known as The Great Betrayal (Jones, Stephen A.; Freedman, Eric (2011). Presidents and Black America. CQ Press. p. 218).
Essentially, the Civil War never really concluded as it was meant to conclude. War machines may have their own rules, but these are merely the rules of men in their schemes for power and status, and these do not exist in historical vacuums. The Republican Party of today is nothing but the direct political (and likely biological) descendant of the “States’ rights” Redeemer Democrats (in opposition to Northern Democrats) who sprung up in the short-lived Reconstruction era, and who finally abandoned the Democratic party after the Truman nomination and the Democratic Convention’s explicit repudiation of White supremacy, to go on to hijack and revitalize a waning GOP. Their rise and consolidation lead to the ex-Confederacy essentially becoming an anti-Union shadow nation existent within the United States, which was allowed to trample on the Constitution as they saw fit to disenfranchise Black Americans (and other non-Whites) and keep the internal flame of the South’s rebellion alive (you can say they are the original “RINOs” — in the same vein, it would be a genuinely false equivalence to equate these Redeemers with the present Democratic party; this has always been a tactic of White supremacist rhetoric in the U.S.).
This is the historical source of their “Alt-History” that would not be possible without both the persistent crystallization of false narratives (mythologies, essentially) of what the Confederacy truly and unashamedly stood for — the preservation of slavery and White supremacy — coupled with the lack of a strong Federal hand against unconstitutional de facto and de jure policy in the South in every facet of societal participation. The aftermath of Brown v. Board meant that the Federal government finally understood that the only way to enforce the Constitution in the ex-Confederacy was through the force it weaseled out of in 1877, nearly a century later. Unfortunately, further “compromise” meant that would also not last for long.
For more than a century-and-a-half, we have been living in a societal time bubble, unable to move forward from the initial promise of what America should have been after the Civil War, for which countless citizens and a President gave their lives. That is why in the ex-Confederate mind and narrative, Great America is only a little while back in the spring of (18)’61, and “the South shall rise again” is but a fresh and persistent rallying cry. While for the rest of us, Great America hasn’t really happened yet.
A Spectrum of Responsibility
“Is it a fair question to point out […] that ‘good white people’ are simply trying to exorcise the Civil War from the national memory?”
This history is what puts the idea of “good (or bad) White people” in a questionable light. There are the Northern (and now Western) White people, that went on with their lives for decades upon decades under compromises that put the rights, livelihood, and lives of Black Americans and other non-Whites on the political table for their own peace of mind. And there are the Southern White people, many of whom participated directly in that exact process.
It is ironic that a movement so incensed by the Politics of Identity today has been the perpetrator of such heinous acts under the same general ideas of identity. From this, we come to the No true Scotsman fallacy occurring in a couple dimensions. The first dimension, in which we who are not White do not participate directly, is between those of White identity. The second, in which all citizens participate, is regarding American-ness. We are therefore creating infinitely regressing distinctions, but to what end? To compartmentalize fault? To arrive at the libertarian’s cliché and insufficient conclusion that we are all ultimately unique and beholden to our own actions as individuals alone? The present situation warrants a more satisfying conclusion that will lead to immediate and effective action.
Many Whites on “both” sides feel no sense of being beholden to “the sins of their fathers” because they feel no sense of or simply deny being current participants in the same acts or contributing to the same conditions that were the “sins” of both their biological and political ancestors. Don’t get me wrong, I feel even as an immigrant and émigré a sense of my own inclusion in perpetuating these injustices, even indirectly, but I understand responsibility of this to be on a clear, multi-dimensional spectrum defined by direct action and apathetic inaction. We are all as Americans beholden in specific and clear ways to this situation, one way or another, and to different degrees; we can maintain this position without creating false equivalences.
