Make Humanity Great Again?

"Make Whites Great Again" is trending on Twitter? Aaarrrggghhh. That settles it. This is Conservative Content Post #4.

First let's clarify matters for certain intellectual left-leaning types like the crowd at Making Light, who all know their genealogies and know exactly which European tribe they're entitled to claim pride in. I could relate to that, if that crowd hadn't been so insufferable about it. I have that information too. Old Virginia family on one side, old North Carolina family on the other. Ireland, England, Scotland, France, Germany, and also Wales. And Cherokee. And some of the English ones were among the aristocrats whose names are in the history books. Among some White supremacist circles that's creme de la White, while among others it's biracial mud-person scum who should not have children, which I've never done anyway. It is true that people whose families really have stayed close to each other, and to their European heritages, don't usually have to settle for "White Pride." We celebrate ourselves at St. Patrick's Day, Bastille Day, Oktoberfest, or other tribe-specific events, or at the Old Settlers Days in the towns where our ancestors disembarked from those sailing ships, or at the annual family gathering for which a public park has to be reserved.

It is also true that some people's families came to this continent in a different frame of mind. Maybe they didn't know how to write. Maybe they didn't have paper. Maybe they didn't want to stay in touch. Many Europeans were sent to the colonies as slaves, as convicts, or as "bound boys/girls" who sold usually five or seven years of their lives to the people who paid for them to get out of their home towns, because--at best--they couldn't find decent jobs back home. European governments soon learned that sending dissidents to the colonies as slaves-who-could-earn-their-freedom was not an effective way to suppress dissent, but even into the twentieth century well-off British families continued to export "remittance men" (and sometimes women) whose parents sent them money in the hope that they could enter a business or profession in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa. Or, failing that, at least they'd stay well away from people their parents knew.

Under such circumstances many people didn't bother keeping records and, as a result, there are a lot of White Americans who, if they run out of things to do, can always try to find out who their great-grandparents were. And when and whether they changed their names. (Ancestors who changed their names from Baumann to Bowman, Schumacher to Shoemaker, etc., in the 1770s are also creme de la White, as are those who changed from Moriarty to Moore or Gilleaspuig to Gillis even earlier. Ancestors who changed from, say, Krbovic to Kirby in the 1930s used to be considered a joke, although the Eastern European family might have ranked higher up the feudal scale.)

Meanwhile, those who always thought their great-great-great-grandfather's name was German, but on looking him up determine that he actually came from France, etc., etc., can at least identify themselves as White. That much they can determine just by looking in the mirror and confirming that they have blue eyes. Those of us who feel a need to look down on people in that situation have probably failed to grasp the point that our ancestors came to America, and should take their feudal attitudes back to Europe and find out how their titled and tiara'd cousins feel about them.

I have no problem with Whiteness and no problem with White pride, either, as long as it is pride in your own personal White American friends and relatives, as distinct from ill will toward other people. I do not believe those Minnesota Not-So-Nice guys who reportedly killed the misdemeanant were actuated by White pride; I don't know whether they had any special personal feelings about Black people, but from what I've read, which admittedly has been sensational reportage, they were just mean, angry, violent young men who weren't doing anything particularly nice for their own White relatives either. White hate is not White pride. White violence is White shame.

If you have no solid claim to English, Irish, German, Norwegian, Italian, Polish, Spanish, or any other specific flavor of White pride I'd suggest that you go ahead and enjoy generic White pride, but enjoy it in a solid, positive way. Celebrate your current neighborhood, if not your great-great-grandparents' neighborhood. Celebrate being American. Think of things your White children and grandchildren, if any, can feel proud of; do those.

I have no problem with Southern pride, either.

There's a book on sale in a gift shop in my little Southern town, a book-length list of things present-time Southerners can be proud of. Apart from whatever their individual ancestors did or did not do in any war. It runs a little bit heavy on food and popular music, as distinct from, say, literature or law, but that means you can open the book anywhere and find something any two randomly selected Southerners living today can probably agree that they like and feel proud of. It's a wonderful little gift book. When I can get the Amazon links back I'll put one here.

As this web site has mentioned before: I had Confederate ancestors--plural. I have family stories of what each one of them did before, during, and after the War. One thing that's not in those stories is wanting to continue fighting that war or any other war.

I have no problem whatsoever with people who have lost the stories. They know their great-grandfathers or great-great-great-grandfathers were Confederates because they were buried in Confederate cemeteries, and that's all. Their Confederate flags, which they still fly and display, are all they have of their Confederate ancestors.

I'm a Southerner, a Virginian, and a lady. Those are proud things to be. In middle school my brother and I read about Virginia history, and the War, and our brave Confederate ancestors. Ours were, in fact, brave men; good men, on the whole. (Though the one who had made that magnificent gesture of freeing three hundred slaves never recovered his money, and ended up going west, living on pumpkins, and having a hotheaded teenaged son who joined the Union Army, and it was probably just as well that that great-great-grandfather didn't live to see what else his son, my great-grandfather, did after the War.) We had a right to fly the Confederate flag and play "Poor Rebel Soldier," and we did. I'd hate to deprive anyone of those privileges in middle school.

Then I grew up and went to Washington, where, among other things, I saw that the Confederate flag distracted and intimidated people. Some of those people were in fact the kind of left-wing snowflakes who really do need a history lesson, or several history lessons, and if other people have the time to try out-haranguing them, all to the good. I don't. Others were the kind of inner-city students whose ability to work with a non-Black teacher from a non-ghetto neighborhood was seriously compromised by what they had always been told was the emblem of race hate. Well, it's not. Obviously. If the Confederate flag had been an emblem of race hate, someone in Virginia would have given us a hint about it. But it has never seemed to me that displaying things that intimidate students or visitors unnecessarily was the sort of thing my Confederate ancestors, or Robert E. Lee, or Colonel William Peters, or even Stand Watie would have done.

It seems to me that the Southern pride thing is playing out these days rather like the White Pride thing. I don't need my great-grandfather's flags. I have the family secret that allowed a half-grown boy to make himself useful in the War; I have his son's, my grandfather's, flag and his Bible; I live on a small patch of my great-grandfather's land, and know which trees he kept and which ones grew during which of the subsequent generations of the family.

I see people who are still hanging great big Confederate flags on the backs of their vehicles to protest not being able to get them printed on their license tags, and I wonder whether they have any other souvenirs of their great-grandfathers at all. Many don't. One of them told me, within recent years, that someone had asked nicely enough whether he belonged to the local family he most resembled, and when he said he did not she asked where he came from, and when he told her which town she said "So you are from Virginia," not adding "at least," and handed him a little Confederate flag. And when your grandparents lived in what was known as a shanty in a coal camp, and the shanty's been bulldozed and the camp is now closed to visitors, that's what you have for a connection. It does not imply hating anybody, although I can imagine a certain tendency to impatience with people who don't understand.

To some Southern correspondents of good will, I'd like to suggest that they stop apologizing for being Southern and having Confederate ancestors.

To others, that being Southern is more than something to quarrel about. Tease your non-Southern cousin about, of course; that's traditional and acceptable and, presumably, fun for all concerned. Your cousin knows he's welcome even if your way of showing it involves teasing and bickering. But if you think about what your Confederate ancestors were fighting for, "Southern hospitality" was probably high on their list...it did not mean making visitors feel that they were hated, or among enemies.

To non-Southern readers, I'd like to say that when you see vehicles that still do display Confederate flags rolling down local roads, that's not because you are among enemies. It's because you're among people who have reasons to believe that their ancestors were in Virginia in 1860, but that's all they have that goes back that far into history.

There is no morally perfect tribe or nation of human beings. Humans are morally imperfect beings.

"Make Whites Great Again"? Hah. "Whites" is a laundry load. Why not try "Make Humanity Great Again"? Begin where you are; pick something you can improve, and do it.