Thursday, September 13, 2007

“The Centennial is worth celebratingbut there is a ghost at the feast.”



—Walker Percy on the Civil War centennial

As promised, a few more comments and quotes from Walker Percy. The two essays of his that I’ve recently re-read are interesting, to me, for the fact that they are written by a philosophical novelistraised in the Deep Southon the eve of the Civil War centennial. A thoughtful commentator on life in the South, his observations about the region one hundred years after The War are of particular interest to those who spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about such things.

I was about two years old when the centennial years began, so have no personal memory of that period, but I imagine it must have been a strange time. There was a veritable explosion of Civil War books published around then, and the pace has hardly subsided since. Concurrently, the Civil Rights movement and racial discord were picking up steam, dating back to Brown vs. the Board of Education Topeka in 1954, and peaking with violent clashes and assassinations throughout the 1960s. The stark disconnect between the centennial celebration of noble combat and North/South (Caucasian) reconciliation on the one hand, and the decidedly unreconciled advent of groups like the Black Panthers on the other, tells a tale about how different parts of segregated America viewed the evolution of society in the decades since the surrender at Appomattox.

Percy’s essay “Red, White, and Blue-Gray” was first published in Commonweal in 1961, one year before his first novel, The Moviegoer, won the National Book Award for fiction. The essay was published some six years after Emmit Till was murdered, and Rosa Parks was arrested. It was published two years before Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, the March on Washington, and the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, the city where Percy was born.


It always feels remarkable to me how recently in our history the Civil War was fought. People I’ve known who had little interest in history are surprised to learn that there are people alive today who had a grandparent that fought in the Civil War, or a grandparent born into slavery. It must have seemed all the closer in 1961, which was not too many years after the last veterans of the war reportedly died.


Percy noted that:



“there is a paradox about current Civil War Centennial literature. It commemorates mainly the fighting, the actual frontline killingwhich was among the bloodiest and bitterest in modern history. Yet it is all good-natured. Illinois historians say nice things about Forrest; Mississippians, if not Georgians, speak well of Sherman. In the popular media the War is so friendly that the fighting is made to appear as a kind of sacrament of fire by which one side expresses its affection for the other.”

Percy dispensed with the oft-heard notion that history is written by the victors. Serious students of the Civil War learn very quickly that in the written history of the Civil War period, the vanquished held their own quite nicely. Percy wrote:




The South has certain tactical advantages in the present “war” (like the North’s industry and population in the first) and has accordingly won a species of literary revenge. The two great figures of the Civil War were Lincoln and Lee, and since most of the literature is about the fighting, Lee is bound to get the better of it. And what with the American preference for good guys and underdogs, and especially underdog good guys, and Lee’s very great personal qualities and the undistinguished character of his opponents, and finally the Army of Northern Virginia which was always outnumbered and nearly always wonit looks as if the next hundred years will see the South not only running the Senate but taking over the national myth along with it.

He goes on to mention the “unease” liberals felt about the centennial literature, on the basis that commemoration of the war as a problem solved would diminish the current and ongoing struggle for civil rights. Percy also bemoans the fact that certain phrases and concepts were co-opted by white supremacists, though he does not use that phrasing. The concept of “states’ rights" once held a certain political legitimacy, but in 1961, Percy writes, “when a politician mentions states’ rights, it’s a better than even bet that in the next sentence it will become clear what kind of states’ rights he is talking about. It usually comes down to the right to keep the Negro in his place.”

Likewise with the phrase, “A Southern Way of Life,” which Percy imbues with all manner of pleasant and respectable connotations. “But I don’t like to hear the phrase now,” he says, “it usually means segregation and very little else. In New Orleans, which has a delightful way of life, the ‘Southern Way of Life’ usually means ‘Let’s Keep McDonough No. 6 Segregated.’”


Some more passages from “Red, White, and Blue-Gray”:




Still and all, there is no need to worry about the Reconciliation. It was very largely an Anglo-Saxon war, and Anglo-Saxon has been reconciled to Anglo-Saxon. But to whom is the Negro reconciled?

The North did win and did put the South in Arrow collars. The sections are homogenized. Everybody watches the same television programs. In another hundred years, everybody will talk like Art Linkletter. The South as gotten rich and the North has gotten Negroes, and the Negro is treated badly in both places. The Northerners won and freed the slaves and now are fleeing to the suburbs to get away from them… .The South, on the other hand, has always managed to comfort itself by pointing to the hypocrisy of the North—not realizing that it is a sorry game in which the highest score is a tie: “Look, they’re as bad as we are!

I think it's safe to say that things continue to change for the better with respect to the reconciliation Percy was talking about 40-some years ago, though that is a matter of perspective, of course. Jim Crow is dead, or if not dead, driven deep into the sticks. Racism is alive and well, but no longer so overtly institutionalized. The next president of the United States may very well be a black man. Maybe the "ghost at the feast" will soon be sitting at the head table.


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This post provides so many opportunities to address that it's difficult to know where to start. First, Percy doesn't have a more southern view than I do given my family history in this country.

That said, I can't think of anyone who would agree that the "tactical advantages", a misnomer in my opinion, could ever hold a candle to the inequities and hardships endured by the South since the Civil War. Prior to the war, the South was a wealthy region, since then it ranks among the lowest in income, education, healthcare, political power, etc. Who wouldn't trade "underdog" status anyday in exchange for the aforementioned benefits?

It seems evident to me that all regions of America have shown an aversion to civil rights at some point AFTER the war, whether real or perceived. If you look at the history of lynchings, race riots, Black Laws, and socio-economic standings, then this is undeniable nationwide. What is surprising is the rate at which the welfare of former discrimination victims have improved here. As you say, it wasn't that long ago since the Civil War was fought.

I would argue that the only reason for today's attacks on the South and Confederate memory rests with at least 2 objectives: 1) remove any sign of Confederate symbols and culture for the express purpose of reinforcing who the victor was regardless of what proportion of the population that would object. 2) make the traditionally conservative and less centralized South more flexible and compliant to liberal political goals through a feeling of guilt and obligation.

Most people today feel that the war is over and that the optimal way to make progress is to move forward without trying to revise the past for the purposes mentioned above. After all, it's more important to agree on how to move forward than on what happened in the past as those views are unlikely to ever change.

dw said...

Anonymous,

Thanks for the note. Addressing some of your comments (set off with >><<) in order:

>>First, Percy doesn't have a more southern view than I do given my family history in this country.<<

Whatever the case may be, his was a southern view. Nowhere in his writings do I detect a claim on his part to have a more southern view than other people. That would be very odd.

>>I can't think of anyone who would agree that the "tactical advantages", a misnomer in my opinion, could ever hold a candle to the inequities and hardships endured by the South since the Civil War.<<

Percy is not comparing the things you complain of. His quote refers to tactical advantages in "the current war," meaning the way the story of the Civil War was playing out in centennial literature. In my opinion, his observation is right on the mark (though he clearly underestimated the amount of books that would continue to be released about Abraham Lincoln). There may not be another Civil War in history where the vanquished were so successful in gaining widespread adoption of their version of events.

>>It seems evident to me that all regions of America have shown an aversion to civil rights at some point AFTER the war, whether real or perceived.<<

No question about it. Percy makes the point repeatedly, in one of the quotes I used (saying the Negro is treated badly in both the North and the South), and a quote I did not use (saying that if anyone thinks there's less racism in the North, they should ask James Baldwin). But if you think that, generally, the rest of the nation was as overtly racist and repressive toward African Americans as was the Jim Crow South, then you're not being honest with yourself, or you're astonishingly naïve.

>>I would argue that the only reason for today's attacks on the South and Confederate memory rests with at least 2 objectives: 1) remove any sign of Confederate symbols and culture for the express purpose of reinforcing who the victor was regardless of what proportion of the population that would object.<<

Not even the NAACP claims that as an objective. It seems pointless to try to craft a serious reply to such a fanciful bit of fiction.

>>2) make the traditionally conservative and less centralized South more flexible and compliant to liberal political goals through a feeling of guilt and obligation.<<

Oh please. Your Fox News fantasy is upside down -- the traditionally conservative crowd has ruled the roost for six years, getting their way on everything from unnecessary invasions and occupations, to curtailment of constitutional liberties (just as the historic South ruled the roost from the constitutional convention nearly all the way to the Civil War). You want to cast the South as the victim of some liberal conspiracy -- even projecting your personal politics onto history -- but it doesn't wash.

>>Most people today feel that the war is over and that the optimal way to make progress is to move forward without trying to revise the past for the purposes mentioned above. After all, it's more important to agree on how to move forward than on what happened in the past as those views are unlikely to ever change.<<

Studying the past does not prevent us from moving forward. Indeed, you could make a good argument that studying the past helps ensure a better future. It only becomes a problem when you read history with an emotional chip on your shoulder, and feel compelled to defend a conclusion that you're unable to support.

Anonymous said...

DW, I just wanted to add that I agree that we should study the past, but it's whose past we study that I'm concerned about.

You wrote, "But if you think that, generally, the rest of the nation was as overtly racist and repressive toward African Americans as was the Jim Crow South, then you're not being honest with yourself".

Let's go chat with the Native Americans about that. Oh, most tribes were completely annihilated by the unracist North? Oh well, I guess we can just ask the handful that are left...

You wrote, "Not even the NAACP claims that as an objective". (sigh) No group that is interested in it's own racial advancement would actually SAY that, but you know many are thinking just that.

And it's the conservative class of Americans that keep it working rather than ruining it with fantasy-like entitlements. Give this country to the liberals and you might as well call us the US of Venezuela.

dw said...

Anonymous,

You're having trouble with reading comprehension. I said that, generally, the rest of the nation was not as "overtly racist and repressive toward African Americans as was the Jim Crow South." How you get from that to the treatment of Native Americans, or the inference that I said the North was non-racist, one can only wonder.

Obviously, white Americans North and South treated the Native American in a disgraceful and tragic manner, but that's not a "northern" thing. Some of your Confederate heroes were among the most celebrated Indian fighters in America, and of course, every state of the Confederacy was once well populated by native tribes. Do you think they all just moved on voluntarily so that Southerners could establish plantations?

As for your absurd claim that members of the NAACP are "thinking" something that they don't publicly express, the fact that your argument has devolved to claims of mind reading speaks volumes.

You have no qualms about misrepresenting the NAACP's stated objectives, then stake your position on what you imagine some of the members of that group are thinking. That's pretty pathetic.

And spare me the laments about "giving the country to the liberals." What has the "conservative class" wrought lo these past several years? Erosion of constitutional liberties, exponential expansion of government, wanton roll-backs of environmental protections, blurring of the separation of church and state, unprovoked invasion of a country that posed no threat to us. . .

I don't see how the liberals can do much worse.