revisiting monuments, remembering our whole history

To hear Brandi read the essay instead, click here: https://youtu.be/2qxRI1S9KL0

A version of the following essay was originally published four years ago, in three parts. It was inspired by what I think of as a coming out party for white supremacists, from the shame of the shadows into the brazen light in Charlottesville, VA. I’ve revised and combined the essays into one in order to offer historical context for how to think about the monuments removed from Charlottesville this week. The debate over monuments feels old to me now, but when I hear folks argue about how to teach history, and how to think about Critical Race Theory, I realize the debate has simply moved to a new arena. This essay is long, and full of history, but I hope you choose to hang in, pursue your own curiosity, and develop a newly informed perspective. On that note, I am happy to share what I know about CRT, fully owning my bias and approach, so hit me up if that would be useful to you. For now, let’s begin by acknowledging we simply cannot heal as a people if we can't understand or face our history. It is glorious, it is terrible, and it serves as both our origin story and a script we won't escape if don't find the courage to see the evil in our past.

In August of 2017 we witnessed a tableau of hate, violence and tension as white supremacist groups and others protesting them descended on the campus of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. At the center of those gathered was a statue of Robert E. Lee, Commanding General of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. The violence on display there was despicable, but beneath all of the hate and frustration lurks a question haunting every American: What do we do with our past? 

In Charlottesville and in many other cities, citizens are asking and yelling answers to the question of how we deal with the many confederate monuments littering our town squares. America has a wonderful history of liberation, sacrifice and generosity. We also have a lengthy past of violence against people of color, greed and hypocrisy.

For the most part, we have not found a way to explore these conflicting legacies in our churches, classrooms, or in the public sphere. 

Abraham Lincoln famously signed the Emancipation Proclamation; Lincoln also less famously argued that if he could preserve the Union without ending slavery he would do so. The conflict he experienced and the priorities he gave his passions can serve as a metaphor for our current conversation.  Most Americans agree that slavery was bad, but many refuse to admit that the idea of the South to which they cling produced the odious institution of slavery. If monuments celebrating the Confederacy only represented slavery, people would be less likely to overtly defend their places of honor.

These mementos do not only represent one story though, and if we examine what they signify we might better understand the debate surrounding them.

I believe the magnitude of passion surrounding this issue is due, in large part, to the national angst felt about the Civil War. Was secession a hateful and treasonous act of aggression in order to protect the cruel practice of slavery? Was it a noble stand to preserve states’ rights and defend against Northern aggression? Having studied many angles of American history and the conflicts that resulted in and were partially resolved by the Civil War, I would like to contextualize this debate by revisiting the history that is memorialized by the argued-over monuments. I do this hoping we can be more precise in what we are arguing about, and to help articulate precisely the history for which we advocate.

In the decades leading up to the Civil War, Southern states and their congressional representatives began to realize that they were in danger of becoming a minority in the United States’ Congress. This reality, along with the impact of William Lloyd Garrison, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass, whose abolitionary voices were growing louder, and the active resistance of the enslaved themselves, led the Southern states to actively advocate for new states to enter the Union as slave states. Battles over this desired balance led to legislation like the Compromise of 1850, the Missouri Compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. These acts upheld the precarious balance of states, providing equal numbers of slave and free states, and importantly, protection for the rights and legislative power of slaveowners. The South seceded when threats to that balance—and the power it protected—finally seemed to permanently favor free states. 

The economic stability, standing and growth of the country, both in Southern plantations and in Northern factories, was dependent on harvested cotton. Harvested cotton was entirely dependent on the practice of slavery and the efficient labor of enslaved people. Indeed, the work product of slavery had paid off American debts after the Revolutionary War, and continued to be crucial to the economic foundation of our country. The practice of slavery and the labor of Black people established American wealth, built American cities, homes and public spaces, and established American culture. Knowing this, many defenders of Confederate monuments, and lovers of a romanticized Southern past, remember that slavery was not only a dirty pleasure of the South, but a necessity for the United States of America. These Americans feel unfairly blamed for slavery, as if white Southern ancestors were evil and greedy, rather than making the best of a system the entire citizenry willingly endorsed and relied on for decades. 

It is likely that America’s survival as a postcolonial powerhouse would have been impossible without the foundation of slavery. Enslaved people provided the expertise and labor that made the South financially great and culturally worth remembering. Our country was built by, on the bodies of, and under the creative leadership of African and African American men and women who were owned by white people. The entire country benefitted from this institution, and white Southern defensiveness about being solely blamed for two centuries of an atrocious moral lapse is logical when seen in this light. However, when powerful voices began to acknowledge the horrific nature of slavery, and tried to take active steps to free slaves and extricate themselves from this outrageously destructive bind, Southern states defended the practice to such an extent that they seceded from the Union that gave them their American identity. Despite the justifying narrative of Christian paternalism, the Confederacy was established and built on the idea of white supremacy and cruelty against Black bodies. Indeed, the Vice-President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, in his Cornerstone speech, asserted his new government was built “upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.” Confederate soldiers fought and died to uphold a racial hierarchy, and the monuments at issue here are, by definition, representatives of this view. 

Although the South lost the war, a new war quickly began for the memory of who the South was, how slavery functioned in it, and why the physical war occurred. In the words of Robert Penn Warren: “in the moment of its death the Confederacy entered upon its immortality.” Peter Kolchin, in his definitive history American Slavery, explains that during and after Reconstruction, and later while monuments were erected, “white scholars, politicians, and publicists celebrated the virtues of a Southern civilization now ‘gone with the wind’ and sang the glories of the ‘lost cause.’ An uninformed observer of the South in 1910 might well be pardoned if he or she concluded that the Confederates had won the Civil War.” The placement of Confederate monuments all over the South solidified this created—and now lasting—memory of Southern nobility, and the "racial mastery" of those who lost the Civil War (Blight).

In forming our views on the monument debate, we need to examine our own thoughts about the South, the reasons for secession, and the place of white supremacy in our past and present. After the Civil War, the Confederacy was in shambles, economically ruined. Although the Union won, the union of states that survived was deeply weakened by the death toll, the loss of a free Southern work force, and destroyed landscapes. In an intentional choice to reconcile, the congress passed laws to forgive confederate treason, allow former confederate leaders to run for federal office, and for the South to create their own racially based laws as they reorganized as a society. Immediately after the War, during Reconstruction, the Federal government prevented the South from enshrining white supremacy into law. Many Black folks were elected to office, built thriving business, and established successful communities. This came to an end as Redemptionists struck a political deal to remove Federal oversight from Southern states. Systems of law and order based on racial hierarchies returned, and the KKK and Jim Crow ensured Black gains were lost. During the 30 years after the war ended, the South struggled, shocked at having been defeated, reeling from the abrupt erasure of the foundation of their economy, and outraged at their forced submission. They were desperate to redeem the noble purpose of the cause for which they fought the war in the first place. As the immediate sting of the Civil War faded, a new war began for the memory of the war, and the South won this conflict handily.

The narrative of the Lost Cause, shared through Southern publications, memorial days, books, films, and throughout the political arena, created a memory of the antebellum South in which the enslaved were fiercely loyal to their masters, masters were good Christians who took care of their human property with gentle, fatherly guidance, and all Southerners were committed to hospitality, Christianity, and kindness above all. Historian David Blight explains,

            The Lost Cause took root in Southern culture awash in a mixture of physical destruction, the psychological trauma of defeat, a Democratic Party resisting Reconstruction, racial violence, and, with time, an abiding sentimentalism.  On the broadest level, it came to represent a mood, or an attitude toward the past…For many Southerners it became a natural extension of evangelical piety, a civil religion that helped them link their sense of loss to a Christian conception of history.

The Lost Cause represented a Christian narrative in which masters and enslaved were friends whose relationship was built on mutual sacrifice and steady loyalty. This narrative was undermined by the fact that hundreds of thousands of slaves abandoned their masters and their plantations during the course of the war. Nevertheless, the Lost Cause asserted the enslaved were not mistreated, but they, being either helpless children or wayward beasts, needed the paternal guidance a white Christian male could offer them.  Slavery simply provided the framework that allowed generous white people to care for lost and lazy Black people.  

In their view, and for many Southerners today, the Civil War was not fought to selfishly protect slavery, but to defend a state’s right to do what is best for its people. Historian Walter Johnson clarifies,

            when slavery was over and the slave market was closed, former slaves and slaveholder alike found themselves marooned on a shoal of history.  The longings of slave holders to hold onto the past as it receded from their grasp are well-documented.  Well-known, too, is the disbelief they experienced, the sense of betrayal they talked about, when their slaves left them behind. 

The narrative of the Lost Cause created a context in which a man who owned others, who committed treason by seceding, and led an army who killed to protect the right to own, abuse and economically benefit from forcing others to do labor from which they would not profit, became a sympathetic character. After all, he was just protecting his people—property and family—from an overreaching North. He had worked so hard to take care of these poor wayward Black folks, and he sacrificed himself to protect a way of life they appreciated.

Those who nurtured the thinking of the Lost Cause soon created societies and clubs committed to memorializing their heroes. The first Confederate statues were put in place in the 1870s, but most were erected after 1890. Although confederate soldiers were not granted pensions at the same rate as their Union counterparts, they were memorialized, honored and held up as the best of the South. The organizations who commissioned them, like the United Daughters of the Confederacy, endeavored to remind every person who walked by the town square that the South laments the death of and memorializes the life of these great men who lived honorably and fought nobly for a Southern, Christian way of life that honored everyone involved, Black and white.

The North, anxious to put the country back together, allowed such intense memorializing to occur.  Indeed, twelve Confederate monuments were built for every one Union monument, shocking numbers when we remember the Union, who fought quite literally—in the words of Isaiah in foretelling the birth of Christ—to “release the captives”, won the war.  Indeed, “The Lost Cause left just such a legacy; it was not essentially inhuman in character, but its very existence depended on dehumanizing a group of people” (Blight). Part of our American history is that the South was encouraged in this revising of history, and that they built monuments to men who defended the right to ignore and erase the dignity of other human beings in the public square. While it is perhaps true that many white Southerners cherish these monuments because they celebrate a beloved homeland, the monuments themselves were erected to memorialize a mostly fabricated version of the South. In this way, the monuments symbolize the collision of Christianity, white supremacy, and loyalty, ideals that Southerners conscientiously admired and promoted. Blight argues this movement, “reinvigorates white supremacy by borrowing heavily from the plantation school of literature in promoting reminiscences of the faithful slave as a central figure in the Confederate war. Together, these arguments reinforced Southern pride.” 

The monuments’ place in society is problematic not because liberals want to rewrite history or because African Americans are sensitive; their place is fraught because of what they commemorate, then and now. Consider this: At the unveiling of General Stonewall Jackson’s monument in Richmond, Virginia in 1875, the KKK, the sponsoring group, was present. They wore hoods and carried arches which read: “Warrior, Christian, Patriot.” Knowing this past, should patriots—and Christians especially—be troubled by the version of history commemorated by confederate monuments? If we are concerned about erasing history by removing them shouldn’t we ensure we have learned all the lessons embedded in the history they honor? 

Confederate monuments were erected as a permanent public reminder of the Lost Cause, which revised the history of the South, making it a kind and loyal place, gently controlled by Christian men who protected their women and nurtured their slaves.  Many of the organizations that funded the monument movement were openly founded on the Christian legitimacy of the South and on the supremacy of the white race. We now find ourselves in a battle over this contested past. Many proponents of the Lost Cause, mostly white people who love their Southern heritage, are understandably frustrated that some non-whites, liberal whites, or Northern whites, want to remove Confederate monuments, preach CRT, and erase history. They feel defensive, as if their entire legacy is being vilified and erased by people with no right to speak into Southern history. This viewpoint makes sense if the only history of the South is the Lost Cause. 

However, most Southerners—of all races—do not know the full history of the South. They don’t know that most plantations were owned by absentee landlords, and were simply plots of land, worked by people under the lash of an overseer, with no “humanizing” white family nearby. They don’t know that Christianity and baptism were twisted and manipulated, finally shared with the enslaved only when evangelism could be used as a tool of coercion against the new converts. They don’t know that the vast majority of white people did not own slaves, and were victimized by a system that allowed huge plantations with a self-replicating work force to thrive while they struggled to get ahead. They don’t know that the institution of slavery fueled, funded and built every economic gain America experienced, and that America itself owes a deep debt of gratitude to the people of color who made America great and possible in the first place. They don’t know that statues of men who prioritized personal gain over loyalty to America were erected to honor a fabricated Southern legacy. This historical ignorance must be confronted in order to think clearly about the current Confederate monument debate.

Here are the two differing approaches to American history, confederate monuments, and educational standards:

For many, the Civil War and the Confederacy are part of our history, and the men who fought in the war were valiant warriors loyal to their families, fighting for the rights of those in their states. Honoring them has nothing to do with slavery, but instead commemorates the noble leaders who fought and died for their values in the bloodiest war America has ever known. They are part of our history, and should be remembered.

For others, the monuments of Confederate leaders honor men who betrayed their country through legislated mutiny, and then fought for the right of their fellow statesmen to own, abuse, and control every aspect of the lives of their human chattel.  For these folks, the antebellum South, the Confederacy, the flag, and the soldiers who fought for the states who seceded are all fruit of the poisoned tree of slavery. 

The past is fluid and invasive and one cannot separate part of the memory for honor when slavery was the reality that created the whole.

So what are we to do with this history? I do not think that we can praise every confederate honoree as an unblemished hero or as a despicable tyrant who should be shunned. That said, we cannot pretend that this debate is about a choice to honor history when the statues themselves were created to erase history. America is a mixed bag; we are brave and free and fair, while also being cowardly and abusive and greedy. It is problematic to pretend this debate has a side who want to ignore or erase history (those in favor of removing monuments and teaching history with an awareness of racial hierarchies) and a side who wants to learn from or honor history (those who want to preserve monuments and ban teachers from utilizing CRT). The history memorialized by confederate statues is a history created after the Civil War to erase the evil of the history that established, paid for and built our country. The status quo of public and educational historical standards is one largely defined by erasure as it stands today.

As a Southern American, I agree that we cannot erase or ignore history by removing confederate statues. We have inherited a legacy of erasing and white washing the very histories of hierarchies based on race left to us by our ancestors, and this debate gives us a chance to reckon not only with our past, but with the ways we continue to remember and disremember that past.

We are responsible, each of us, for what we do with the legacy left to us by our ancestors. 

For my part, I do see a place for confederate monuments in public life, but only if the following changes are made:

1) The monuments should be joined by other conflicted “heroes”, like enslaved folks, slave rebellion leaders, abolitionists, and leaders who spoke truth to the power of white supremacy when it was dangerous to do so. (It still is dangerous to do so, in fact.) The commemoration of others will create a robust dialogue about the role of individuals in promoting or confronting systems of injustice. America has a legacy of abusive oppression, but we also have a legacy of resistance and seeking justice for all.

2) Existing monuments should be moved to museums or accurately contextualized with posted explanations. Nathan Bedford Forrest was a brave confederate general AND a violent promoter of racial hatred as a slave trader and the Grand Wizard of the KKK. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence AND forced a teenage slave he owned to have sex with him and bear many of his children, some of whom he freed while continually writing that interracial mixing was an abomination and abhorrent to God. Robert E. Lee was a tenacious general who believed slavery was “evil”, supported abolishing it, AND owned hundreds of slaves, held racist views that slavery civilized Africans and became famous killing soldiers who fought to abolish it. The question about moving statues to a museum instead of honoring them in public parks in not a question of who is willing to remember history, it is a question of who is willing to place these statues in the historical context in which the men they honor lived and died, rather than the manipulative context in which they were originally placed. 

Our history is neither all progress nor all degrading shame; we are and always have been mixed bags. We would do well to take an honest look at what our “heroes” accomplished on their best and worst days, allowing that knowledge to explain the legacy we all carry, and what we are to do with it today.

claiming Lincoln, claiming King: speaking with precision in the public sphere

To hear Dr. Kellett read this week’s essay, click here: https://youtu.be/cpp3Gp4TbDg

President Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King were quoted often on the floor of the House during the second impeachment of President Trump last week. Members invoked their memories boldly, sure that each legend would back the person now quoting them with such intensity. Collectively, the body, surely without meaning to, reminded students of history of President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, given in the midst of a long raging Civil War. Lincoln aptly observed that both sides of the conflict believed their cause was righteous, and both sides invoked God’s help, as they fought for the decent, patriotic, good guys:

“Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained…Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered—that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes.”

Last week, members from both sides tried to be the spokesperson for American heroes, for hardworking, decent, patriotic Americans. Lincoln knew then, and we would be wise to remember now, that anyone pretending to speak for God best do it with a large dose of humility. Indeed, “The Almighty has his own purposes.”  

Seeing the violent assault on the Capitol the Wednesday before last and the absurd posturing in the Capitol last Wednesday, brings to mind the idea that each of us believes our cause, our action, our perspective, is the best one. We think Lincoln would agree with us. We think Dr. King would agree with us. We think God agrees with us. We think we would have handled the Civil War with nobility and nuance. We think we would have marched with King. We look back to history and insert the myth of our own heroism.

Not so fast.

It is difficult to realize you are living through a moment that will later define your generation. We experience life in the present tense, feel conflicted, and do our best to make sense of our allegiance, words and actions. When we look back on big American moments, moral clarity looks easy. In real time though, we struggle to articulate our positions.

I’d like to gently remind us that the number of Americans who denounced slavery as evil was actually quite small. The number of Americans who marched with King, civilly disobeying, breaking the law and sacrificing their own safety, was quite small. (In fact, the number of Americans who didn’t hate him was quite small; he was widely regarded as a trouble maker and a dangerous agitator). Most Americans felt either apathetic or conflicted, and in either case chose to keep their mouths shut. Our African American brothers and sisters led us, in both instances, to demonstrate what it looks like to know a thing is wrong, to articulate why it is wrong, and then to move with haste and courage to end that wrong.

The legacy of Dr. King is rhetorical in that he articulated so much of what plagued us, and named who we might be in the Beloved Community he worked to inhabit. Nearly everyone loves this part of his legacy, but we do so while simultaneously overlooking or ignoring his physical legacy in active, precise resistance. Dr. King is attractive to us from a distance, as we each find parts of our own humanity in the invitations he offered to elevate our higher natures and affirm the dignity of everyone.

However.

This year, as we mark his birth and legacy, we must examine the massive chasm in us between who we think we are and who we demonstrate we are. Most of the white folks I know would have nodded along to the words of Dr. King, but refused to challenge the grip of white supremacy in their own neighborhoods. They would have said that naming or physically challenging white supremacy was “getting political” or “contributing to our divides.” We hear the same today: “Sure, I agree that things got out of hand since the election, that people got too intense…But anyone speaking out about what led to these divides, to this violence, is contributing to the tension. Ignore it, and it will go away.”

Friends, most of us would not have marched with King. It dishonors his legacy to pretend we would have while shunning those who speak specifically against white supremacy and racially motivated violence or fraudulent claims today.

We do not speak with precision about things that make us uncomfortable. Here in Nashville, as we reflect on 2020, we talk specifically about the damage of tornadoes, the isolation of students, and the death toll of Covid. We use no such language to refer to the collective protesting of police bias and brutality, nor the systemic and societal devaluing of Black lives, nor the President’s stoking of xenophobic fears. Instead, we say the “tension from this summer,” or mention our “intense political divides.” If we can’t name it, we can’t address it. If we won’t address it, let’s not pretend we care enough to do anything about it.

King spoke with precision, and then he acted sacrificially to bring about change. As Presidential power transitions this week, I urge us to take the chance to reflect on our speech and our actions. What are you willing to name as wrong, abusive or a lie? How do you describe what occurred in the last 8 months? How do you speak up about what happened in our Capitol in the last 3 weeks? What are you willing to specifically support or disavow? Friends, I ask these questions with fear and trembling. I am asking them of myself, and I think they will bring you needed clarity if you join me in asking them of yourselves.

Many Southerners in the Civil War found slavery to be a fraught and even evil institution, but they would not agree that disruptive action was necessary to end it. What good was their uneasy sentiment, or lack of support, if they refused to take action to stop institutionalized oppression? Many Americans in the Civil Rights Movement felt uneasy about the caste system created by Jim Crow. They felt terrible about the indignities Black folks had to daily face, but they would not agree that strong action was necessary to end it.  Again, what good was their awkward discomfort if they weren’t willing to sacrifice their social acceptance to speak out against evil?

We might not have had the chance to speak up then, but we do now. If you find yourself aligned with the Republican Party’s traditional platform, and voted for Trump, and now feel that you are not aligned with “those people” who rejected election results or brought violence to our capitol, then find the courage to precisely name what you are for and what you are against. Your vague discomfort with what your vote might have been supporting will not save anyone’s life or republic. You have to name and reject it.

I am currently more aligned with Democratic values, and I commit to doing the same there. I will challenge specific behaviors that endanger the lives of others, that destroy the public trust through repeated injustice. As we remember King, and keep hearing about Lincoln, let’s be like the few Americans who went all in to affirm the better angels of our nature, not like the majority who noticed the evil but took no action to stop it.

civility: what ta-nehisi coates taught me

Ta-Nehisi Coates came to Nashville this week. His first novel, The Water Dancer, was released this fall, so he came to talk about it. Coates is a truth teller of our time, and his voice has become a trusted translator-of-history for so many of us trying to understand how the biases and beliefs and policies and norms of our past determine how we move in our present world. His 2015 book, Between the World and Me, explicitly tries to explain the implications of American history and habits for the body of his son. Toni Morrison called it “required reading” because she understood our collective need for a voice to explain not just how we got here, but what our responsibility is to ourselves and each other now that we have arrived. 

 As a white person reading, I benefit from eavesdropping on this important and familiar father-son chat. Coates helps me understand more intimately how America’s disdain for and abuse of black bodies built the foundation of wealth we now enjoy. At the same time, we erase and diminish those very bodies who made America great. He educates me.

 As an American reading, I am confronted with the reality of our predatory past. Coates helps me understand my own responsibility in carrying this past with me in 2019. While the book is for his son, he gives us all the gift of his honest lament: Reading eyes and lips join his chorus as we confess what we have done and grieve what has been done to us/for us/against us/in our name.

It is easy to leave such lessons to historians, but Coates allows no such thing. For him, history is cyclical, living, breathing and informing our every moment. Indeed, The Water Dancer, set in early 19th century America, centers around memory as an invitation to mourn and as a conduit to power. Memory inspires action, ever present, ever affecting.

 In the compelling interview he gave in Nashville this week, Coates was asked about his research for the book. He visited Monticello and other plantations that once belonged to famous founders or lesser known influencers in our history. He spoke specifically of time he spent in Tennessee, and of a tour he took of various Civil War sites across the South. He told of a long day that ended at a site where they planned to fire a canon for the guests’ education and edification. Feeling the weight of all he had seen and witnessed that day already, Coates said he quietly slipped away to his hotel. Knowing why he had come, he also knew the cost such a tour took on his mind, body and spirit. Our American history is a story of pain and loss, even as it also tells of resilience and hope. That evening, he had seen and heard enough of pain and violence, and decided to avoid witnessing more.

 The next morning as he joined the group, Coates shared that the other guests began to stammer apologies, to express their concern that he had been made to feel uncomfortable, to extend their warm welcome to him as a full participant in the tour. On stage in Nashville, he explained, “For them, it’s a civility thing.” His fellow guests could not or would not grapple with the evil parts of American history and their implications on the belonging and safety of a black man. They could not or would not imagine how they share the weight of responsibility for this history, that a person like Coates should not be alone in feeling the awful trauma of our collective past. They could not or would not openly acknowledge that this history of white supremacy lives on, that it damages and divides us still, shaping the way we view the worthiness or belonging of non-white people. They could not or would not speak to the horrific and long-term injustice of the majority of our past. Instead, they apologized for their bad manners, for their incivility.

 On this tour, Coates had seen slave quarters and cotton fields, plantation houses and dim, crowded kitchens. At gas stations and restaurants he had seen rebel flags and Lost Cause memorabilia. The other guests took it all in at his side, compartmentalizing this present history, perhaps? Maybe they did not see the connection between the tour sites and the windows proudly displaying images of white supremacy. They approached Coates that morning not to comfort a body and spirit still impacted by this history; instead, they kindly reached out in an effort to be civil.

 As another election cycle ramps up, so do calls for our lost civility. We decry the meanness of so many of our public figures, their rants on Twitter offending our notions of respectful discourse. We want civility! As The Water Dancer and the movie Harriet show, however, even slave owners sometimes treated the bodies they owned with civility. Consider this: If we each stay committed to civility without confronting the deep disdain, abuse or indifference that thrives underneath our “civil” surface, we have refused to carry the burden our country—built on notions of white supremacy—offers us. Even worse, if we train our mouths to be civil while our policies exclude or even destroy the bodies we undervalue, we can claim innocence even as we destroy the lives of others.

 Our problems with history are not with the way we retell it or how uncomfortable it makes us feel. Our problems with history are that we have ignored the greed and abuse of the folks who owned it, and we continue to deny the implications of such a foundation. For each of us, it can’t just be “a civility thing”; it has to be a justice thing.

 Civility is helpful, but if we are to learn from our nation’s history, we need to offer more. Each of us has the choice to carry, and thereby share, the burden of our white supremacist history. If we each carry our part of the load, we will begin to understand America’s historical and present approach toward those whose lives were necessary but abused. If we each carry part of the load, we will embody civility by acknowledging our wrongs and pursuing justice to correct them. If we each carry part of the load, we will realize that we no longer have to live as an us and a them, but as a people with a broken past who must constantly work to create a more perfect union.