This is not cool.  Although the Confederacy wanted slavery to continue it was not just the Confederacy that had Segregation and frankly not just the North.  I disagree with states having this day period but its like the Confederate flag issue its a distraction.  I do not want this flag flying but frankly we got bigger problems then flags or confederate holidays.  Despite the fact that we do not like BO his election changed things.  A black man is President and that will go a long way in healing things between the two races.  Now if we can just stop getting whites to stop calling people racist.

Sanders wrote:

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Yep, not cool at all.

Not that he should have done such a proclamation to begin with, but when he did, it was not an oversight.  There was a historic alternate statement where slavery was recognized in a proclamation.  Gov.McDonnell CHOSE to not include that paragraph in his initial proclamation.  It was not accidental.

I had high hopes for this person until this came out. The proclamation gave me a whole lot of insight into Gov.McDonnell that was rather surprising and disappointing at the same time.

Meanwhile, I really do not understand the need for a MONTH-long celebration of confederates in any state, let alone an annual celebration.


I also agree that election of Pres.Obama has changed the nation... or really ought to..  It is a refreshing change to see FLOTUS Michelle Obama for one as first lady. I saw her today on C-SPAN addressing children regarding good eating habits - this was in the White House with a facilitator from C-SPAN.  It was an excellent session with questions from the students and call-ins from students in schools. Kids had many ideas and clearly showed respect to Michelle as first lady.  All good.

We as a country need to give ourselves a chance to heal.  Celebrating history of ill-will and bad treatment of people is not giving healing much of a chance.


-- Edited by Sanders on Wednesday 7th of April 2010 08:09:54 PM

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Actually I think its time for African Americans to come to grips about slavery and celebrate the part of how We turned a lot of negatives into positives because of slavery. I mean we turned the worse parts of a pig into Soul Food.  We learned to use Music to communicate when the Masters prevented slaves from talking.  We need to celebrate the fact that when Ole Massa sold a mother seperating her from her child another "Auntie" stepped in to raise the children rather or not they were related.
There is a lot of  pain but most of our culture comes from slavery and instead of feeling anger or sadness we should feel joy.
I know my ancestors would be rolling over in their graves if they heard us complain about some of the things that we complain about.  I mean they went through slavery and then lynching we have a lot of shame that our peoples went through that but its time to let that shame go. 
Me I love my African American culture I love the fact that we went through so much and still survived.  We lost our orginial homeland and its cultures but we formed our own. I used to get so angry when I saw Roots and To Kill a Mocking Bird.  I used to be sad when I drove through the South and saw trees my ancestors swung from. 
Its time for African Americans to celebrate the only good thing about slavery and that is the African American people, culture and History.  We need to remember the bad but celebrate us as a people.  
I speak a language that is a combination of several West African countries and the southern part of the USA.  There are actually several of these laungues one is Gullah found in the South Carolina Islands.  True dat is a form of this.  
The most common is what is called "black English" or "Ebonics"  TH is replaced with the letter D.  So This and That becomes Dis and Dat.  I believe that is common with several West Africa languages.  
Music was used to communicate much like Rap Music does today.  Sadly Rap Music is trying to communicate what is going on in the hood.  That is what the Blues did.  We express ourselves with our music. 
I wouldn't trade Soul Food for any oher food. Yes it causes obesity but we went from using Lard in everything to using Vegetable oil so we can find ways to learn to advoid obesity. 
I am not a fan of Obama but his presidency proves one thing that Americans of all races will elect a black man President that is why African Americans can see a positive change in this country.  I thought a woman would be elected President before a black man but the black man came first.

 

Building 4112 wrote:

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I'd rather see this on Memorial Day, and not a whole month.........I just got to keep saying this was a rich man's war and the poor man's fight. I am proud of my people of the south, and many of them were not slave owners. I'll also remind you that it was the democrat party
members who were the white supermacist. Our entire country suffered because of that war,
and any before and all after, we suffer when we have war.

How I wish we'd have the draft in place, then you can talk about who gets to go to war and who doesn't among the rich and the poor, and which side you are on.

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I guess you can say its the American South which is our homeland Africa may be our Mother land but we have few of its customs. Our culture is most defiantly Southern.

 

There is a romanticism connected to the Civil War, which many in the South still call the War Between the States, that will never die. And that romanticism has nothing to do with slavery or racism. If any of you have ever seen the old movie called Shenandoah with James Stewart, it pretty well defines that romanticism. Tack on the huge number of Civil War cemetaries, battle fields, Jefferson Davis, the burning of Richmond, the noble words of Robert E. Lee when he surrendered, and you get the picture, not to mention how much a part of Virginia's economy is attached to tourism of those battle fields and cemetaries. Most Southerners will stand you up and down and fight you to the bitter end that the war had nothing to do with slavery and everything to do with States rights, and quite frankly you see that battle emerging today with the states suing over this health care bill. Its the concept of the little guy taking on the big bad federal government knowing he can never win which contributes to the romantic notion of the war. And for a lot of Southerners, there is a whole lot of pride in being the little guy.

Optix, yes, that is very familiar. My latest experience of that subtle racism came in a 'friendly' form and the person knew what they were saying too!

Back to the Virginia topic..  I have been reading a lot of articles on this and learning far more than I ever intended to find out about confederates and most of what I have read even on conservative sites I have not liked so far. There is pretty little in terms of accomplishments.

Here is an artilce I thought I would post mostly for the comment on it that really was impressive. Let me post both the article and that comment.

Read @ The New Republic

"

Neo-Confederate History Month

by Ed Kilgore, April 8, 2010 | 12:09 pm

As most readers have probably heard, Virginia’s Republican Governor Bob McDonnell got himself into hot water by declaring April “Confederate History Month,” in a proclamation that did not mention the rather pertinent fact that the Confederacy was a revolutionary (and by definition, treasonous) effort to maintain slavery against even the possibility of abolition.

After the predictable firestorm of criticism, McDonnell allowed that it must have been a mistake not to mention slavery in his proclamation. And then he repeated his rationale for the whole idea, which was, he claimed, simply a matter of promoting tourism in anticipation of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War’s outbreak. Tourism!

I’m sure most conservatives will consider McDonnell’s act of contrition sufficient, while many liberals will cynically conclude the whole thing was a dog whistle to the far Right, much like his earlier and less notorious commemoration of March 7-13 as Christian Heritage Week, in honor of the Christian Right’s revisionist theory that the Founders were theocrats at heart.

But as a white southerner old enough to remember the final years of Jim Crow, when every month was Confederate History Month, I have a better idea for McDonnell: Let’s have a Neo-Confederate History Month that draws attention to the endless commemorations of the Lost Cause that have wrought nearly as much damage as the Confederacy itself.

It would be immensely useful for Virginians and southerners generally to spend some time reflecting on the century or so of grinding poverty and cultural isolation that fidelity to the Romance in Gray earned for the entire region, regardless of race. Few Americans from any region know much about the actual history of Reconstruction, capped by the shameful consignment of African Americans to the tender mercies of their former masters, or about the systematic disenfranchisement of black citizens (and in some places, particularly McDonnell’s Virginia, of poor whites) that immediately followed.

A Neo-Confederate History Month could be thoroughly bipartisan. Republicans could enjoy greater exposure to the racism of such progressive icons as William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson, not to mention Democratic New Deal crusaders in the South like Mississippi’s Theodore Bilbo. The capture of the political machinery of Republican and Democratic parties in a number of states, inside and beyond the South, by the revived Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, would be an interesting subject for further study as well.

Most of all, a Neo-Confederate History Month could remind us of the last great effusion of enthusiasm for Davis and Lee and Jackson and all the other avatars of the Confederacy: the white southern fight to maintain racial segregation in the 1950s and 1960s. That’s when “Dixie” was played as often as the national anthem at most white high school football games in the South; when Confederate regalia were attached to state flags across the region; and when the vast constitutional and political edifice of pre-secession agitprop was brought back to life in the last-ditch effort to make the Second Reconstruction fail like the first.

Bob McDonnell should be particularly responsible, as a former Attorney General of his state, for reminding us all of the “massive resistance” doctrine preached by Virginia Senator Harry Byrd in response to federal judicial rulings and pending civil rights laws, and of the “interposition” theory of nullification spread most notably by Richmond News Leader editor James Jackson Kilpatrick.

Continues @ The New Republic

"

And here is that comment, and I quote:

======================================================

There are many great comments at that site.


I still think that we do not need a "CELEBRATION" nor a "MONTH" dedication.  Yes, it should be part of Memorial Day that is the day for recognizing (not celebrating) people lost in war.


Another Thursday and it's been way too long. Got to rest up a bit. If I wake up before midnight I'll check in and post a few more... unlikely. G'nite

-- Edited by Sanders on Thursday 8th of April 2010 08:26:38 PM