Why I Can't Celebrate 'Confederate Heritage Month'

[struggle4progress]

FEB 28 2016, 8:53 AM ET
by TIMOTHY ABRAM

Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant has proclaimed April 2016 to be "Confederate Heritage Month."

... As a history teacher, I wholeheartedly agree that it is important that we analyze our past to avoid mistakes in the future. As a black Mississippian, I simply cannot find anything to celebrate about the Confederacy. However, if the central purpose of this proclamation is to educate, then by all means let's start educating. What shall the first lesson be? ...

... we have the rationale from the state government on why Mississippi seceded from the Union (slavery) and we have the "chief interest" as the export of a "commodity" (cotton) from the President of the Confederacy. I am clueless as to why these two pieces of "heritage" are difficult to digest. I guess more reflection is needed ...

... if celebrating Confederate Heritage Month means we reflect on the immoral, inhumane chattel slavery that the Confederacy defended and how the legacy of slavery ripples to today ... I guess I have been celebrating Confederate Heritage Month for quite some time.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/editorial-why-i-can-t-celebrate-confederate-heritage-month-n526246

[Warren Stupidity]

1. How about we just rename it "wasn't slavery great month" so that everyone understands

exactly what they are 'celebrating'?

[okaawhatever]

2. God I'm so sick of this. I'm white, I can't imagine how AAs must feel. I read this about

half an hour ago and went to do some research because I remembered seeing something on TV about a TX college voting to take down a statue of some confederate soldier that had recently been put up. The interviewed some guy from the Sons of Confederate Veterans who said the group had paid for the statue. I vaguely remembe seeing something else about them recently so I thought I'd look them up and see what was going on.

From the SPLC:

Right-wing radicals in the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) have at least temporarily won their three-year battle for control of the nation's largest Southern heritage group, culminating months of complex legal and parliamentary maneuvers. As a result, thousands of SCV members appear to be leaving the organization.

"I have no desire to be associated with neo-Nazis and white trash," Henry Seale, a local "camp" leader from Texas, wrote to colleagues in the SCV this spring. "With great sadness, I concede that this is what the SCV has become."

I noticed all of the declarations had started since around 2000 which led me to believe that the organization had somehow changed course. Now I know.

[pfitz59]

3. All my Civil War relatives were Union

Some from Illinois. Others from Connecticut. Lets change the name to "Losers Heritage Month"