Loose Leaf Notes

My friend Rob has been embroiled in a painful controversy regarding a book titled “The Truth About Slavery.” He has publicly asked the reasonable questions: What is a book with such a sensitive topic doing being sold by its author at our town’s yearly craft faire; and isn’t the authoritative title misleading for a book full of one man’s personal perspective?

Rob recently asked me what I thought about the controversy and fellow blogger Doug encouraged local bloggers to spread the word about racism in our midst. I generally don’t set about to write on any specific topic, but if I find myself thinking a lot about something, sentences usually start dictating themselves to me. When that happens I feel almost honor bound to write. While, I’ve been slow to respond in writing for many reasons, I’ve been thinking about the controversy a lot, and about Rob and others who have taken some heat from speaking out.

Firstly, there’s no question that slavery is abhorrent. Born in Massachusetts with a grandmother from Ireland and all of my great-grandparents from places other than the America, I consider myself more a product of immigration than a Yankee, and so I was confused the first time I was labeled that way while visiting my grandparents in Florida when I was young. As a young teenager, I watched the Civil Rights movement play out on TV, feeling upset by the violent reactions to it, but also proud of those who put their lives on the line to secure the most basic of human rights for themselves and others. Every time an African American breaks another barrier, I swell with emotion. Empathy for those who have been oppressed may be rooted in my Irish American heritage. The Irish were completely subjugated by the English for centuries. Under the Penal Laws, Irish Catholics were not allowed to speak their language, go to school, or own land in their own country. Poverty created by that kind of colonialism in the face of the potato famine was like giving Indians blankets infected with scarlet fever to kill them.

But histories are complicated and the “official versions” don’t always match realities, particularly as they apply to wars. From the limited amount of reading I’ve done on the Civil War I have concluded that slavery was not the initial motivation for the start of the war. The Emancipation Proclamation came a few years into the war; some believe to give the war more moral justification, which reminds me of the Iraq war. If we had prevailed in Iraq, historians would likely describe the invasion as a noble act of liberation fought in the name of democracy. Those of us living now know that “democracy in Iraq” only became a stated goal by the Bush administration after WMD were not found, and that even the WMD justification for invasion was a trumped up premise that disguised a hidden motive. Even conservative Alan Greenspan believes (and stated so in his recent book) what many of us have suspected from the war’s beginning, that the U.S. invaded Iraq to pursue geopolitical advantage in the Middle East and for access to oil.

I’ve lived for over twenty years in the Virginia and have many Southern friends. My friend Wade reminded me once that the winners of war are the ones who get to write the history about it, and when they do they tend to put themselves in the best light. He and other Southerners believe that the Civil war was a war about centralized government versus state’s rights and that it was fought for economic interests. Lincoln needed to save the Union because the industrialized North needed the rich agriculture lands of the South. History bears out that a tariff voted in by the North and benefited by them hurt the South who then moved towards secession, setting off a chain of events that led to war.

The problem is when those who put forth the non-idealistic motives of the North during the Civil War feel the need to also defend slavery. They tend to talk about the entire history of slavery, as if to say ‘see, everyone was doing it.’ Even worse is when they point out how well taken care of most owned slaves were, or how content many of them seemed to be. They don’t realize that others experience this kind of defense as condescending, demeaning, simplistic, hurtful, and ignorant of the psychology of captivity.

I haven’t read the book that has stirred the controversy and don’t plan to. From the little I have seen – a list of chapters and clips others have excerpted and printed – it appears that the author is trivializing slavery. It reminds me of those who deny that the holocaust existed or pose childish questions, such as ‘why didn’t the Jewish people fight back?’ In truth, throughout the holocaust and American slavery many did resist captivity and were killed doing so.

I have another older friend who grew up being taken care of by black women servants when the south was still segregated. At first I was shocked when she spoke so calmly about the idyllic rural life she lived and the sense of community she felt between blacks and whites before desegregation brought turmoil. My friend is not a racist. I came to understand that she was relating her direct experience as she felt and remembered it. I also know that the status quo may be comfortable but that doesn’t mean it’s right.

I don’t believe most change causes turmoil as much as it brings existing low grade turmoil to a head. Every couple knows that unspoken disagreements can fester into deep resentments that can be seriously damaging to their relationship. Arguments can clear the air and lead to opportunities for positive change, but not if one party remains defensive because they want to be right.

We view the world through our experiences of it. My perspective on dropping the atomic bomb is far different than my father’s. He, a WWII combat solider fighting to bring down Hitler, saw it as a quick end to war and was relieved not to be shipped off to Japan to face the probability of being killed. In defending the dropping of the bomb, he was not able to fully acknowledge or grieve the deaths of a quarter million innocent Japanese civilians. He especially was not able to do that with the gruesome images of mass graves and other horrors that he saw at Buchenwald Concentration camp in the forefront of his mind.

Do ends justify means? Does change have to come with bloodshed? I wish there were more examples of honoring what was righteous, while at the same time allowing remorse for what was wrong. But most of us have a hard time acknowledging the dark side of our country’s history, North or South. 10/9/07

Update: Christian Trejbal of the Roanoke Times covered this controversy on October 14th HERE.