ACKNOWLEDGE THE GREAT SOUTHERN MYTH TO UNDERSTAND THE SOUTH
Reproduced with the permission of The Austin American-Statesman. Published on July 9, 2015
All the stuff you’re reading about the Confederate battle flag isn’t really about the flag at all. The flag is just a symbol — a very potent one — but merely a symbol nonetheless. And what’s going on, in Charleston, S.C., and the rest of the nation, isn’t simply about racism. There’s racism everywhere; there’s certainly plenty of it up North.
What this is really about is the Great Southern Myth, the one that no one in the South wants to talk about, or even acknowledge. The one that’s been repeated from generation to generation for so long that people just accept it as true: that the War of Secession wasn’t really about slavery. That’s it. That’s at the bottom of everything, the idea that the War of Secession wasn’t about keeping millions of people in chains — that instead the Great Struggle was somehow really about states’ rights and freedom. In short, that the War of Secession was a noble cause.
It’s nonsense. Slavery was what underpinned the entire society in the Old South. It drove the economic engine and financed the ruling class, and the threat of slavery’s demise was what fueled the war. Leaders of the Old South spoke openly about slavery. They not only defended it, they called slavery a good thing, a godly thing. It’s a historic fact. Look it up. Everyone all over the world knows, and deep down, so do you.
Of course, there was bravery. Lots of Confederate soldiers and generals were very brave. So were lots of German soldiers in World War II, and their bravery is frequently noted, but no one enshrines the cause they fought for.
Slavery was institutionalized in the Old South, and after defeat, it became unofficially institutionalized via things like the Ku Klux Klan and enshrined in segregation. Segregation became the new form of white rule down South. It became the new way of life, the official way of life, and the Confederate battle flag became its symbol, an unspoken badge of white supremacy, of the way things were, the way a lot of people wished it could be again. Few people are ever willing to own up to this continuity publicly (few white people), but everyone knows.
This is why racism is different in the South. This is why most attacks on black churches have happened there, and most lynchings of black men. It’s not because there is so much more racism; it’s because it’s institutional, because it’s part of the fabric of Southern culture, and it all goes back to the Great Southern Myth.
Charleston is just a symptom. Much more important are the symbols, and as much as the Confederate flag has a unique place, it’s more instructive to look at concrete items right in the Lone Star State. The Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups operate numerous chapters in Texas, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Denials that slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War are easily found on the website of the Texas chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. And, of course, you can always go to Orange, where the Sons of Confederate Veterans are building a large memorial to the Confederacy just off Interstate 10. What better symbol could there be?
Back in the day of Robert E. Lee, Virginia was the pivot of the South.
Secession couldn’t really have happened without Virginia. Now, in a very real way, Texas is the pivot. Its population dwarfs the rest of the South (Texas is basically equal to Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia put together), and the Texas influence on school textbooks is enormous.
So, the real question now isn’t just how much has the South changed; it’s just as surely how much has Texas changed? Everyone likes to talk about “the New Texas,” and now it’s time to find out. How honest are the people of Texas going to be about the roots of all this, about what the Civil War was really about, and what the Confederate battle flag actually stands for?
There are no simple answers to all this, no quick solutions. But there won’t be any solutions at all as long as large parts of the South — and most definitely large parts of Texas — are in denial about the true roots of the problem. There won’t be real progress until most Texans and most Southerners alike can look in the mirror and stand up and say: “Slavery was evil. It was what the South fought for, and the Confederate flag is its symbol.”
by J.M. Purvis