[Vision2020] The crazy side of the line

[melyndahuskey at earthlink.net]

Michael writes:

"Further, each culture is going to have its own unique sins; and the South, with its very high ideals would undoubtedly fall into the ditch of hypocrisy; the American Indians fell into their own ditch, which I would bet wasn’t the ditch of hypocrisy."

By which I presume he means to assert that "American Indians" lacked moral standards or high ideals. "Unique cultural sin" looks like the same old racism in a new package. But that was just a throwaway line in a much bigger argument, which turns on the meaning of the word "respectable."

When I look at historical documents from the antebellum South I find it difficult to come to the conclusion that its primary failing was being too darned idealistic.  And when we look past the Civil War through Jim Crow and the rise of the lynch mob, respectability looks even less plausible as a key note for the culture.  You seem to be claiming that prior to the Civil War, the moral climate of the South, despite slavery, was superior to that of the North or the West, and that "respectability" is the quality which elevated it.

So maybe I'm just not getting what "respectability" signifies, or how it can counterbalance the gravity of slavery.  Note that I'm not asserting that the North was or is free from racism; the largest lynch mob ever documented was far above the Mason-Dixon Line. But I'm missing a big step in the argument.  Yes, the Civil War had multiple causes.  Yes, racism permeates the history of the U.S. in every geographic region.  Yes, life is complex.  But how do I get from there to the notion that the antebellum South represents a moral high point from which we have lamentably declined?

Melynda Huskey

P.S.  I highly recommend the Jim Crow Museum website http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/
as a corrective to ideas about black-white relations in the antebellum and Jim Crow South.  It's not for the squeamish, however.  "Respectability" apparently doesn't preclude joke postcards showing black children being used as alligator bait.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20051128/b5f48435/attachment.htm