RE: Mississippi’s Confederate Heritage Month. An open letter.
The Ghost of Otherness and inequality has lived on through generations from which segregation was derived. Little by little, it fades each decade. As the disenfranchised overcome the stigmas and impossible odds, they become politicians, judges- even U.S. Presidents. We see the tombstone of that dead past in school texts; we analyze its corpse in curricula, documentaries and other historical artifacts. Yet, its Ghost has continued on, transparent and only barely perceptible in the breaths of those privileged mouths that speak of meritocracy. Breaths, which dissipate as quickly as they are uttered. It is elusive, yet it still exists in so many willing and unwilling citizens.
Shallow minds occasionally commit acts of violence, claiming to be influenced by what is to them this Holy Spirit, this defunct but sanctimonious Ghost of racist propriety. Yet, this Holy Spirit of theirs has no true identity in modern times. Its acceptance and actualized symbols remained exiled in the past with the Klan and other idols now castrated and disempowered. They, too, are elements of that Ghost of Segregation in its less translucent form.
But now, one who must be a follower of this Holy Spirit, or at least an unknowing enabler, has emerged to construct a modern alter, some hopeless symbol of identity under which the faithful can seek recognition. This saint, none other than Mississippi’s own governor in the 21st century, has rekindled the Spirit of Otherness and segregation of the old Confederacy, revived from any faded glory or transparency into which it had fallen.
Otherness from ancient slave-state Mississippi no longer has to be alluded to as “Hip Hop culture” endangering “community values.” It has a state-recognized form: HERITAGE. Heritage can now radiate throughout the spirit of Mississippi during the month of April by the same Grace of God that saw to Governor Bryant’s own being elected. His (majority white) conservative constituents and Super-PAC donors can bask in this glorious Ray of Nostalgia that transports them back in time, to the Confederacy without all the modern problems of poor minorities burdening the state with their costly social programs and incarceration.
The Confederacy didn’t have a virulent Hip Hop Culture that endangers the good Christian Mississippi children with drugs, gang-related violence and unruly behavior. In the Confederacy, Blacks were complacent, subjugated, barred from even drinking alcohol and their culture had relatively little influence on the White children’s behavior and morals.
Governor Bryant’s Holy Month of Remembrance is a memorial not of segregation’s Ghost, but of its superior lineage. God-fearing Mississippians can celebrate the state of pure bliss that existed before they even had to deal with integrating their personal property into society as people, fellow citizens with personhood and Constitutional Rights. Before the Constitution’s wording (having too been Under God) was forcefully altered. The better days when they could whip, kill, profit from the labors of and sell Black non-citizens as a means of dominating them, instead of merely denying them awards at the Oscars, overruling democratic ordinances securing a $10.10 minimum wage and underfunding their healthcare and limiting public education.
Rejoice, fellow Mississippians, for April is a month of celebrating not a brighter future but a brighter past, a Heritage of True Freedom endowed by the Grace of Almighty God. One, which, we will never have again in this Godless age of homosexual marriage and floods of invading Muslim refugees.
But the Holy Spirit of the Confederacy still lives on in Mississippi, as now commemorated by law. It is championed by these select few traditionalists. By proxy, the Honorable Governor Phil Bryant has idolized that history of white freedom that is now marginalized. April allows Mississippians to exercise the freedom to recognize its glorious exaltation, by the Grace of God Almighty.
It appears that, like Jesus Christ, slavery died so we could pursue a more perfect union as a nation. But it is not dead in spirit. It lives on as the Holy Spirit of Segregation in every scholarship not awarded, every job application overlooked and every minority voice silenced. But for the month of April we now recognize that it lives on more deeply in the Mississippi voters who protected our Flag, the True Believers who ensured the Stainless Banner will continue to fly outside every government office and at every State function.
The state of the state of Mississippi is strong- and teeming with “Heritage” spirit.
Amen.
[End of Satire]
A White-splanation, to set the stage.
Slavery transitioned reluctantly through segregation, obviously. It reminded that Blacks were Others while allowing “them” to incorporate into society. Entire generations grew up with a disenfranchised sense of separateness. Some of us weren’t accepted or awarded equal opportunities. The State encouraged this where white establishment politicians harbored the behavior. Generations of African Americans and children grew up internalizing the disparity. Meanwhile, southern society pretentiously advocated meritocracy almost willfully ignorant of the damage that had already been done, of what makes equal opportunity more of an impossibility.
[From this point on, any use of ‘they’ or ‘them’ does not reference any minority, but rather Otherizes the establishment instead.]
Fast-forward to modern America and the evidence persists. Marco Rubio and President Obama are noted for rising above challenges of inequality that would have expectedly been imposed. The same is true of us who are women and other marginalized identities.
However, we must accept that meritocracy in this post-segregation, integrated society still does not materialize as its proponents idealize. This is a result of generations of conditioning on behalf of the state and to which society was complicit. Conservative libertarians can speak breathlessly of a blind meritocracy, but they are not speaking from experience as a poor or minority citizen who knows otherwise.
Society had a brief window of opportunity to put the racial differences reinforced during slavery behind us. At the very least, segregation should have been been resolved expediently, deemed unacceptable. Yet, in 1992 First Lady Clinton still spoke of her ‘Goldwater Girl’ days with laughs and jokes, referring to 1962 and the Establishment’s struggle to keep the nation divided. Reagan’s racist Drug War followed, furthering segregation in a de facto criminalizing of Blackness into the modern era.
These, followed by President Bill Clinton’s ramping up incarceration even after the 1980’s Crack Epidemic’s prime. Only now addiction discourse is shifting, viewing it as a medical, not criminal problem- now that White people are the subjects. Prison and drug reforms NEED to happen, as they are artifacts of the past where segregation could legally, and with White support, be used to repress and debilitate poor minorities.
Mississippi’s institutions have adjusted to profit off poverty through prison contracts, Dept. of Justice’s Civil Forfeiture grants, debtors prisons and the many corporate constituents who “invest” in (using lobbyists and dark money) and have built commerce around such unethical issues. Out-of-state corporate bribes taint and tempt Mississippians in power.
The payday lending lobby is also notable, for as the poorest state MS has the most payday lenders per capita nationwide, of which are concentrated in poor and Black communities. To ensure this ongoing privilege, since 2003 Mississippi Consumer Finance Assoc. has paid over $255k to Mississippi politicians including Phil Bryant, Tate Reeves and numerous state legislators.
Confederate Heritage Month reminds us: It’s not about the flag.
With current corruption issues aside, Mississippi Governor Bryant’s declaration of April as Confederate Heritage Month comes in response to the recent movement to change the state’s flag, which has on it a Stainless Banner. The governor’s action is toxic and disparaging rhetoric that mocks the vile and unfair treatment of the poor and minority communities in the south. In my view, it validates the continuance of a society that encourages racial divides and profiting from institutionalized inequality.
The more bold Conservatives complain about welfare and social programs, while some influential Mississippians have referenced a “Hip Hop culture” that promotes gun violence and degrades “civic values.” The latter, Chris McDaniel, marginally lost in a Senatorial runoff against the incumbent.
These political leanings and rhetorical speech Otherizes and presumes to exalt the (largely White) Establishment over the impoverished constituencies who are, statistically, communities of color (although this may change with the elimination of the Middle Class altogether.)
In reality, conservatives like Governor Phil Bryant and Chris McDaniel unintentionally unmask their racist proclivities, revealing a hard truth that neither of them, nor even Conservatives in general, wishes to admit: Alienated otherness for which they show no regard was caused by “Confederate Heritage” to begin with. The very same institutions of which they are defensive members reinforce the ostracizing of the same peoples who were enslaved in the fields of the Confederacy.
Maybe a polar opposite of, yet equivalent to April’s “Confederate Heritage Appreciation” would be to acknowledge an appreciation of all those impoverished communities of color who are marginalized and disenfranchised by the State. Those who Conservatives complain about burdening the State with costly welfare and social programs. Those of whom the continued lack of opportunity, the imprisoning, the racist drug policy, the predatory lending and debt slavery and the underfunded education are the Black victims of White, Free Market “meritocracy.”
This is the Confederate Heritage that persists to this day. Why should we celebrate it? It’s an embarrassment. The Free Market favors those with capital. Where does that leave impoverished communities of minorities? How is that meritocracy truly fair to Us?
Us as a community. Us as part of the same State of Mississippi we all call home. Us as in we and not them or they. The General Public Good of Mississippi now applies to everyone of all colors and identities. This was not true of the Confederacy prior to the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution, legally. This divided Confederacy of the past is what our governor wants us to celebrate?
Some Conservatives continue to quietly uphold the institutionalized inequality that helped to create the problems central to their campaigns and rhetoric. And now, they seek to commemorate the depressing state of affairs each April- or at least the birth of its modern iteration.
It is now a counterfactual, but had post-slavery African Americans and children been wholly accepted and incorporated into society with equal opportunities, education and respect then it is unimaginable how different the world could be.
Slavery was horrid and segregation ensured that horror transgressed into modernity. Now modernity is struggling to shed that skin to let it rot in the past. A Confederate Heritage Month is antithetical to necessary paradigms of social change that most of the United States appears to recognize are happening.
Author’s note: No racial undertones were intended in writing this piece. This isn’t about individuals as much as it is about the political institutions (and authority) on their behalf. I apologize to any who feel triggered by any brash language, or who may feel I had no right to be so upfront in my speech.
I hope this speech is harmless but informative in ways I feel are necessary to deconstruct these unfortunate and complicated sociopolitical dynamics.
