As long as some have become newly interested in slavery
reparations, who Joe Biden's friends were fifty years ago and so forth,
this article might be useful. My own view (shared by many psychiatrists)
is don't refight the past; take on the present and the future. The
former may have deeply impacted the latter, but it's the present and
future we can change. For example, as mentioned below, Lyndon Johnson's
past would have in no way predicted what he did for civil rights.
And
incidentally, Biden's former pal Strom Thurmond actually had a black
daughter. As someone said at the time - not sure it was about Thurmond:
"Oh he's just one of those sun up to sun down segregationists"
Sam Smith, 2011- The
150th anniversary for the Civil War will be heavily commemorated over
the next four years, but one question will probably not be seriously
asked: who really won?
We tend to view wars in the isolation of
their military events. By such a standard, there is no doubt the North
won. But what about the social, cultural and economic aftermath?
For
example, while the Civil War ended slavery, it would take more than a
hundred years to begin enforcing effectively the equality that was
presumed to result in its wake.
Right into the present the South
enjoys a disproportionate influence on our politics and values. When
was the last time you saw a politician afraid of what New England might
think?
Further, the increasingly hegemonic structure of our
business, political and cultural life has far more in common with the
southern past than with that of the anarchistic old west or more
democratic early Northeast.
I'm a southerner by birth - yes,
Washington was once clearly part of the South while also being a door
into the north - and I was long aware of what was at times an almost
triumphal southern influence over the capital and, by consequence, the
rest of the nation. After all, one key reason DC is still effectively a
colony of the U.S. is because powerful southerners long made sure that
the city's black population would remain under their control.
I
recall, as a young reporter, northern friends coming to work on Capitol
Hill and beginning to pick up a southern accent just by being there. It
eventually took a southerner - Lyndon Johnson - to substantially change
that culture through civil rights and other legislation.
But
traditional southern values still strongly affect our economic and
military policy. We wouldn't, for example, be anywhere near as warlike
were it not for southern culture.
But none of this gets
discussed because we judge military triumphs on such a narrow basis,
despite there being much more to it all.
Which is why we still negotiating with the North Koreans and why the Germany economy did so well after World War Ii.
If
there is any moral that should be drawn from the commemoration of the
Civil War - but almost certainly won't be - it is this: just because
your troops win doesn't mean that you did.
