[Vision2020] Southern Fantasy

[Michael]

Keely,

 

I originally wrote:

 

".and that half of my country was filled with a culture far more respectable
than the one I currently live in."

 

The context (half my country destroyed another half) made it clear that I
was sad regarding the fruit of brutal civil war.  There is not any clear
evidence of 'idealizing' anything here.  My statement was merely a
comparison, and it is remarkable how easily it was taken out of context and
turned into an entire story of my private mental life. It is true that I
have a higher evaluation of southern culture than the culture of the North
at the time of the civil war.  However, given the charge of 'idealizing' the
south, I thought it worth while making the additional point that I would be
happy comparing the North favorably to our current culture as well as the
South.  I listed architecture only in my second response where I was
speaking of both the North and the South. I actually had in mind
architecture in New York and New Jersey, where I lived for four years.  In
your comments about post-war South, it seems that you are idealizing the
North.

 

thanks,

Michael Metzler

 

 

 

Michael,

 

I trust you're wearing your Keds, because I see a good bit of backpedaling
going on.  You were clearly idealizing the Southern past, and it's beyond me
how anyone could have read your post and not come to the conclusion that you


called Southern culture, pre-Civil War, more noble than our own.   I believe


that's what you intended, certainly.  To top it off, you list "architecture"


as one of the cultural glories of Dixie, as well as -- belatedly -- of the
North at the time.

 

As in, "Well, sure -- in the name of Christ they stole and traded slaves,
beat them, tore up families, raped the women, scattered the children, and
denied the slaves the right to even minimal enfranchisement and civil
protection.  But, hey --  those neo-Georgian rooflines were truly
awe-inspiring and I love what they did with the cornices . . . "

 

It makes me wonder if the evils of Jim Crow nearly a century later were
because of the pervasive racism it trumpeted, or because Southern people
would make a most unmannerly fuss to keep Blacks from those lunch counters
that, after all, were so poorly designed, and be ungentlemanly trying to bar
them from those dreary, industrial-looking drinking fountains . . .

 

keely

 

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