Endless Struggle

Endless Struggle

Just because something is proclaimed to be one way or another does not mean that it is. The Civil War ended in favor of the North and that was believed to signify the ending of slavery and equal rights for the former slaves, the masses assumed emancipation would be finally realized. Although laws and amendments were passed to maintain this belief, the Union failed in their attempts to reconstruct the South. To have such patriots of the Confederacy stop flying their flag and suddenly flying their enemies was too much for Reconstruction to handle, too much to just be amended.

In Tony Horwitz’s book, “Confederates in the Attic”, he discusses the death of a man named Michael Westerman, a 19-year old high school grad gunned down through his truck’s tinted windows because of his Confederate flag, and the area he lived in and died in. The town of Guthrie, described in the book, is a backwards, small American town. Still separated by race, it’s a wonder that not more people have been murdered over the hate symbol.

In his book, Horwitz explores a world where Confederate flags are raised high and proudly, and racism is practiced and taught as something normal. It is, in a way, a cliché world inhabited by Southern stereotypes. Most people laugh at this world, but in reality it has a very dark history. Reading about this area in Kentucky, I was quite affected by this reading; mainly because I was one of the people who didn’t/don’t believe it exists. Reconstruction ended abruptly and the many compromises struck with the North and South to keep out of each others business did not help. Hundreds of people all across America have been killed since the end of the Civil War over race.

There is a reason why we consider the end of the Civil War to be the beginning of modern America, and that’s mainly because it shot us out from the dark ages of thinking. Some people say that it was the start of Modern-America; some people think it was the start of Modern problems. “They say that war ended a long time ago. But around here it’s like it’s still going on.” In many respects to what happens in people’s minds, it is still going on. The paramilitary racist factions that struck their high point during the early 1900s are mostly still here today. The Ku Klux Klan is believed to have anywhere between 6,000-8,000 members, and use modern day technology to hide and still spread the word of White Christianity. Basically, that’s what happened to the Confederate radicals and that’s kind of why people believe the war not to be over, people are still fighting for change.

In all of the written and legitimate ways the Civil War is over, but that doesn’t mean people are not still fighting. Some people don’t believe it is, yes they’ll agree that the Confederacy isn’t still around, but they still fight, just under new names. Neo-Nazis, The Ku Klux Klan, passed on from generation to generation, the beliefs and practices of the South are still carried out, and the United States tried to deny this until the point when it becomes problematic. The Confederate flag still flies high, so high it has become a legitimate United States symbol for public schooling, for example the school that Westerman went too, along with the four black students who killed, all went to that high school. I am surprised that the Confederate flag problem has not gained as much press as you would think. We fought against the South, and here was its flag standing in for legitimate government symbols. I guess I was just suppressed that it’s a part of the government and not just hanging from people’s backyards.

I do not know what is more horrible, the Confederate flag, a blatant symbol for hatred, religious and skin color superiority, and Anti-Americanism, being used for a public symbol or a man being killed, shot in the heart, in front of his wife. Its not that racism isn’t a stranger to California, but this historical problem lasting longer than one hundred years is beyond racism. Yes the Civil War ended in 1865, yes it abolished Slavery, and yes America was one notch more accepting, but just because slavery is absent, does not mean the belief of skin color superiority is. If humans can’t get past skin color than we are doomed, guaranteed.

Sources:

1. KKK Main Site, “http://www.kkk.com/” (Updated 2009)

2. US History Post-Civil War Conditions,” http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h409.html” (2002)

3. Authentic History Civil War Timeline, http://www.authentichistory.com/postcw.html (Updated 2006)