The Education Wonks
Having both Confederate and Union veterans in my very diverse family tree, I have always puzzled over the refusal to accept reality and understand that the South lost the war. Even words end up being the subject of disagreement among various relatives, and I am not making this up:
Union side: Civil War
Confederate side: War of Northern Aggression
Union side: belly button or navel
Confederate side: Yankee shot (As in, "Granma, what's this in my tummy?" "Why, that's your Yankee shot, darlin'. It's where the Yankees shot you." --actual conversation when I was three.)
I imagine that the teachers who encouraged the performance of this song were just being oblivious rather than deliberately provocative.
But still---- Wow.
Actually, it's a pretty song--it's performed in the movie Gods and Generals.
If we're recognizing that no harm was meant, and the lyrics of the song speak of nothing harmful--is it really the teachers involved who are making an issue of this?
"Deutchland Uber Alles" is a nice little patriotic marching tune also.
Personally, though, I didn't much care for it when one of our social studies teachers stood up and sung it in the cafeteria. I could imagine many people taking offense at confederate marching songs as well, and I'd hope teachers would have the good sense not to do such things.
Obviously, my hopes would be all in vain.
I was 12 before I realized that "damn Yankee" was 2 words. Remember that at the time of the Civil War, slavery was Constitutional, the Supreme Court had ruled that Negroes could be owned, that the United States was supposed to be a Republic ("... and to the Republic for which it stands..."), and that the Northern textile mills in their need for cheap cotton encouraged the practice of slavery.
None of this is to support the idea of slavery but we cannot ignore it. The ownership of Humans was not just an American aberration either. Nor was/is it just about a particular race. It reaches as far back as recorded history and continues today. Some people of all races have been enslaved at one time or another.
I am a Yankee by birth, and remain so by choice. I went to a small women's college in Virginia and had male friends at Hampden-Sydney (all men), Virginia Millitary Institute (all men while I was in college) and Washington & Lee.
Man, was that eye opening. I was called Yank Girl, had to explain that yes, I might date a black man, if I met one I liked (I hadn't known any until college), and prove that not all Vermont girls go "au natureal" (yes, I shave).
I fought the civil war nearly every day of college, and then I ran home north, where things made sense.
Oh, and what's up with "Lee, Jackson, King Day" can't a black man have his own day?
Oh, let's not stop there-- what about calling Martin Luther King Day by an alliterative pejorative, or an assistant principal who once used the "n" word in front of me because he assumed that, being from a quasi-southern state, I would be amused instead of disgusted.
I think the words and history of this song preclude it from use in a school setting. Songs have meanings, which is why the whole Nuestro Hymno thing is such a hot button issue.
Wonk, I think you get the gist of the matter, but as Ms Cornelius says, it goes deeper than that. The song is a celebration and rationalization for owning slaves. (The "property" referenced, is, of course, black people.) A song from the Civil War period that did not enthuse over slavery could have been chosen.
Curmudgeon and Darren are engaging in typical neo-Confederate apologetics. Reality is nothing as awful as the chattel slavery practiced by Europeans nad Americans has ever existed anywhere else in the world. 'Slavery' has usually involved temporary involuntary servitude of those convicted of crimes or taken as prisoners in war. The chattel slavery Curmudgeon and Darren are defending is distinctive because it passed slavery along as a status, generation after generation. Other than escape, or rarely, manumission, there was no freedom from slavery for those born into it.
I'm glad that you wrote about this issue because including neo-Confederate beliefs in private and homeschooling material is increasingly common. Two sizeable providers of homeschool and private school materials, Steve Wilkins and Doug Wilson's outfit in Idaho, and Doug Phillips' in Virginia, are run by members of the neo-Confederate movement. There was quite a stink a few years ago when the mainstream press got hold of 'history' in which Wilkins and Wilson claimed that slavery was benign and slaves were happy. As more parents choose alternative education there is a danger of the racist indoctrination in these materials spreading. We need to be vigilant.
Some additional reading on the topic:
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/i...cle.jsp?
sid=254
http://hnn.us/articles/9142.html
Mac Diva, that's a little over the top. Read again what I said.
When I said "Fighting for the property we gained by honest toil" I don't read slaves--I read real estate.
Please don't project *your* issues onto me.
Darren, so let me get this right, you think the Civil War was fought over "real estate".
Ms Whitlynn Battle is one of those kind of people who strongly desire that their children be given the best education that money can buy - except when the education is not what they themselves decide their children should learn, thus keeping them in the dark and ignorant.
Ms Battle would be just fine if her daughter sat in a room and was bombarded with nothing but praises for the Union side of the war, and to hold hands and sing old Negro Spirituals, but God forbid that her daughter suffer thru an opposing viewpoint!
Ms Battle is quite the activist, being a member of M.E.C.A. and C.L.E.P.P.O., but when it comes to allowing her 11 year old to receive
a fair and balanced full rounded education, she is a narrow minded overzealous extreme racist bigot.
Now she has had her 15 minutes of fame at her daughters expense and made the Private School her daughter attends jump through numerous Politically Correct hoops and forced them to trip over themselves to appease her racist agenda, let us turn now and lift her daughter up before God with prayers for her life and the chance to receive an appropriate education without the hatred of her mother interfering.
Thanks & God Bless
Billy Bearden
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