Andrew J. Skerritt, an assistant professor of journalism at FAMU, worries about where the "We want our country back" crowd and Confederate re-enactors want to take America.From his recent column:
The triumphant e-mail arrived in my in-box a week or two ago. It announced a re-enactment of the Florida Secession Convention on Jan. 8, 2011, in the old State Capitol building, where the original event took place 150 years before.
"This will be an early event of the Sesquicentennial of the War Between the States as Florida was the third state to leave the Union," wrote the sender.
The Florida Secession Convention event is just one of many such spectacles planned over the next five years as the children of the Lost Cause revive ghosts of the Civil War. In Georgia they will re-enact the state's 1861 Secession Convention. Alabama will hold a mock swearing-in of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. People in Charleston, S.C., have organized a gala ball with period dress.
My fear is that what's happening is a classic example of history repeating itself. During the Civil War, poor white folks acted against their economic self-interest and waged a war that could only have benefited the landed aristocracy. The race card blinded poor Southern whites from seeking solidarity with their natural allies: Southern blacks.
The regions of the country with the strongest opposition to health care reform are areas with the highest uninsured rates: the states of the former Confederacy. Six weeks ago, many people voted for smaller, less activist government during a time that calls for innovative, daring leadership.
"This last election made no sense," said Abel Bartley, director of Pan African Studies at Clemson University. "In a time of economic recession, people voted for people who say they are for doing less for you, not more."
The same people who sacrificed the most and lost the most will do so again. A century and a half later, one thing is certain: The Confederacy was un-American yesterday. It's still wrong for America today. No re-enactment party can change that.
Read the full column here at The Root.