I can’t recall why I asked the question. We were standing around near the stereo in my Nashville condo, having drinks before dinner, listening to the Doobie Brothers. Trisha and Diane worked with me at Ford Credit. On this evening, I was meeting their husbands for the first time. The condo sat in Printers Alley opposite the Bourbon Street Blues and Boogie Bar, a popular tourist destination.
Nashville holds a special place in my heart. As African Americans my wife, son, and I encountered less racism there than in New York or Michigan. Our guests that evening were all Caucasian, unimportant to us, but salient to this story.
“Trisha,” I inquired “what do you know about the Civil War?” She replied “I know we won.”
For a couple of seconds, her husband, a Tennessee native, stiffened, then joined the rest of us in laughter at Trisha’s innocent insensitivity. Diane and her husband, like Trisha’s husband are native Tennesseans. Trisha, my wife, and I are “Yankees”.
“It’s not that simple,” I amusedly advised Trisha. The current controversy over confederate statues is one example of its lack of simplicity. Many people are understandably fed up with these symbols of slavery and white supremacy towering over us in public squares. While I concur, having lived and socialized in Hagerstown, Maryland Jacksonville, Florida and Nashville, Tennessee I’ve come to appreciate that every guy with a rebel flag on his cap or belt buckle doesn’t wish me enslaved nor intimidated. Nor did I seek to insult them wearing my N.Y. Yankees cap or my X cap in remembrance of Malcolm. I don’t suggest that I have all the answers, but I do have an opinion. Here it goes.
There should be museums in the South acknowledging the memory of those who fought and sometimes died for a cause that they believed in. If your forebears fell at Antietam, they’re no less loved by you than mine who fell there as well. Calling confederates traitors is wrong, as wrong as having their statues symbolically lording over citizens in public plazas.