The governor of Mississippi just declared April to be "Confederate Heritage Month".
Turns out it's the 30th year of this tradition, but this is the first I've heard of it.
I had a formative childhood experience that relates to how I took in this news. I call it formative because the shock I experienced makes it one of my earliest memories - I must have been 5 or 6, and this is one of very few memories I have from that far back.
I grew up largely in the south, spending almost 9 years of my childhood in Georgia. My father comes from the south as well and so I have lots of family around there. At the time I certainly identified as a southern boy. This was one of the occasions we were visiting Stone Mountain, an enormous chunk of granite onto which are carved the images of various southern civil war generals (there are 4 including Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson). Like any curious child, I was asking questions about them, and thus hearing for the first time about the civil war, how the southern states fought against the northern states.
Somewhere into this line of questions I asked: "but we were the good guys, right?". The shocking answer from my father that I'll never forget: "No, we were the bad guys."
As a father today, I suspect I'd have been softer in my answer (I'd also have been wrong). I'd probably go into a speech a 5 or 6 year old isn't ready for, about how both sides in any war believe themselves to be in the right. I'd have muddied the waters, and I'd have let my son off the hook. But my dad met me where I was: he echoed my identity language: "we" - and leaned right into the good guys / bad guys premise.
No, we were the bad guys.
He left the subtle conversation debunking the good guys / bad guys dichotomy for another time - there would be time when I was older and ready for it, and he had a more important point to drive home today.
I didn't want this to be the case of course. I wanted to be on the right side of history, standing up for justice, and feel the way I felt when learning about World War II. And more than wanted, I *expected* the south to be in the right - particularly in those surroundings with a giant monument to southern generals. Thus the shock.
But the way my father steered the conversation led to me learning about slavery, how (despite the modern revisionism) it was the primary factor that led to the war, and how ultimately it's a good thing and a genuine American triumph that the south ("we") lost.
Taking in the "Confederate Heritage Month" news today is a stark reminder of how few southern boys had a dad like mine.
~tjp
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