What Is Your End Goal? (Part 1)

April 2, 2009

in Teaching

fishingpierMore specifically, one of my readers recently asked the following: “[W]hat exactly is your end-goal/interest in how Confederate commemoration evolves and is acknowledged?”  It’s a fair question.  My response to it may help some people better understand how a boy from the beaches of Atlantic City, New Jersey ended up with an interest in the subject of the Civil War and its remembrance/commemoration.  The answer can be broken up into two sections; the first has to do with where I was raised while the second comes down to a deep philosophic interest of mine.

As I mentioned I am from Southern New Jersey. My hometown is Ventnor, which is located on an island and is surrounded by a bay on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other.  On the northern end is Atlantic City itself while the southern portion includes the small towns of Ventnor, Margate, and Longport.  My childhood was filled with the staples of beach activities and a healthy dose of competitive sports.  I had excellent schools through the 8th grade even if my performance was less than stellar.  That final year of Middle School, however, was filled with a bit of anxiety, especially as my friends and I approached graduation.  We all knew that next year would be a much larger school in Atlantic City itself.  I had seen the imposing structure – situated between Atlantic and Pacific Avenues – many times before on trips with friends and family to the amusement piers and boardwalk arcades.  The problem wasn’t the size of the building, but the students that I would have to interact with.  Up to this point my classmates had been overwhelmingly white.  On the other hand, Atlantic City was and still is predominantly black.  In fact, the school itself functioned (it was demolished some years ago to make room for a parking lot) as a fault line; as you moved a few blocks south of the school the community gradually turned white so that by the time you reached my town of Ventnor it was all white.  Rarely did we see blacks walking the streets and if we did I imagine we looked on them as a curiosity and even, perhaps, with just a little concern.

My introduction to a black community in Atlantic City took place during my 8th grade year as a member of the basketball team.  We played a team from Atlantic City and lost by 40 points.  Part of the problem was that no one expected to win given our attitudes about blacks and basketball; simply put, we all knew they were necessarily stronger, faster, and much more agile.  But what stands out for me and what I will never forget is what happened as the bus pulled away.  Keep in mind that our coach was also the bus driver.  As we pulled away one of my friends shouted out the window, “Nigger”.  Within a few seconds the entire bus, including the cheerleaders, were shouting out racial insults at the crowd.  I am proud to say that I was ashamed and embarrassed.  What I remember is crouching down in my seat, but in doing so I noticed our coach laughing hysterically as he drove the bus slowly down the street.  Once we turned the corner everyone quieted down and that was pretty much the end of it.  I have no idea why that experience has stayed with me for so long, but I am certain that it has helped to shape my understanding of race relations on some level.

That experience stands in sharp contrast with my high school experience.  I remember being warned not to use the Men’s Room without being accompanied by a friend or staying away from certain sections from the basement level.  I’m sure that there was a little anxiety those first few days of high school, but what I remember more than anything else were the friendships that eventually ensued from the classroom to the marching band to the cross-country team.  I don’t mean to paint a glowing picture of high school, but I ended up having the most problems with a white Anti-Semite who actually used to push me around in class and in full view of at least one teacher.  I don’t remember one racial incident during my four years of high school.  In fact, I remember cutting school and heading down to the beach or sneaking into the closest casino floor with just as many black friends.

My point for now is that I didn’t need to travel to Birmingham, Alabama to learn first hand about the problem of race in America.  I learned it in my own backyard.  I still have trouble getting my hands around the racial configuration of the small island where I grew up.  Even to this day, and with all of the changes that have taken place on the island, I can’t help but perceive it through the lens of history and race.  In recent years I’ve read quite a bit about the history of the place, including Bryant Simon’s Boardwalk of Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America (Oxford University Press, 2006), which has helped me to place the history of the city within the broader narrative of race in the North.

My interest in the South and, more specifically, the Confederacy is a natural extension of my earliest perceptions of race and prejudice.  It comes down to a fascination with the way in which our perceptions of race shape how we choose to live and interact with one another.

To be continued…

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  • Sherree,

    I agree with you that it is a limitation of the format.
  • Sherree,

    Of course, Jim can speak for himself, but it seems to me part of what is driving him is a concern that my interest in slavery/race in the South is part of a broader attempt to vilify it in comparison with a virtuous north. We've gone back and forth on this issue for quite some time and at every point along the way I've tried to alleviate these concerns. That I do not assume such a naive distinction was one of the main points in my post..
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  • Jim:

    I'll take it even a step further than Kevin has. He states "My main historical interest is that of the United States, in large, part because this is where I make my home. That historians make decisions on a particular time and region should not come as any surprise." There are a host of historians in Texas, where I live, whose sole region of interest is the state of Texas. We teach it as a subject in seventh grade here. It's what I teach.

    While Kevin and other historians choose to narrow their focus, its not because they feel the need to ignore any aspect of history. Recorded human history is between 6,000 and 7,000 years. Academic historians and, in my opinion, any casual student of history who focuses on a particular era or region does so for the intensive study it provides, not because they are under any impression that it is the only part of history that should receive focus. I'll equate it to medicine. Do you think any less of a doctor because he or she chooses to specialize in cardiac medicine over general practice?

    Experiences in life necessarily influence students and teachers of history, narrowing the focus for a variety of reasons. Kevin has offered us at least one of his reasons for narrowing his focus. I was raised in Texas and trace my roots seven generations in the state. That narrows my focus to Texas history, though I also study the US Constitution, Jacksonian Politics and the Civil War and Reconstruction. Why do I study these specific eras, topics and regions? I've briefly explained Texas. I had the fortunate opportunity to take an elective in high school focusing on the Constitution in addition to the regular civics class and I have continued to study the document that, from my observations, many Americans have little actual knowledge. The age of Andrew Jackson solidified the two-party system in this country, and while there are those who believe that it is the bane of our society, I find the balancing effect of multiple viewpoints is probably what has, ultimately, helped us survive an event like the Civil War.

    But why do I choose to study the Civil War? I've outlined it on my own blog, so I won't belabor the point. Suffice it to say, after witnessing events surrounding the dragging death of James Byrd, Jr. in Jasper, Texas in 1998 while a rookie reporter left me with a distinct question of whether Southern gentlemen like Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson were social and political schizophrenics. I went searching for answers. Some I found right away. No one has ever called the character of men like Lee and Jackson, or even Jefferson Davis, into question. They were good men with ideas that were incompatible with a broad definition of equality. Do I believe the nation should have literally split and fought itself over the issue? No, but that's because we have built into our Consitution a means of peaceful resistance. It's called an election. That neither side would accept this method of resolving the dispute is a travesty we are still living with today. Other answers were more difficult to wrap my head around. Sure, some Southerners were defending their homeland, but then I ran into Unionists (later discovering I have some in the family tree) and disgruntled Confederates. And that's only the white Southerners. Basically, I got into a study of the Civil War to try and prove that Lee and Jackson, guys I had long admired, even put on a pedestal, were worthy of the hero worship I had heaped upon them after learning about them in grade school. I just accepted the fact that everybody in the South was a Confederate, except slaves. While it took a man dying and me witnessing the aftermath to begin questioning that and, even then, it took the better part of ten years of study and research to finally come to the conclusion they were just men and men make mistakes and somtimes support the wrong ideas.

    Call the war anything you want, but, in the end, it was a war of ideas and ideas are hard to kill. Look at the 150 years since then and that becomes painfully visible. "These United States" are not exceptional because we are better than everybody else in the world. "The United States" is exceptional because its citizens, even though it has taken a long time and there is still work to be done, learn to be better people as they live through a variety of circumstances, both good and bad.

    And, please, don't judge historians because they choose to focus or for their reasons for doing so. The fact that they do makes us better students of history because historians have given us a body of literature that looks much deeper than the one-dimensional ideas presented in a survey course or general history text. While I have only recently come to appreciate this in its full impact, I wouldn't want it any other way.

    Kevin:

    I'm sorry this went long.
  • Jim
    Thanks for the book reference which I should read. I'm not sure what response you were looking for from me regarding your experience; however, one reason I interpret you the way I do could be that I'm no historian and I desire the big picture context which you already possess. So I can see the necessity of a historian having to drill down as far as one can go into a subject. At the same time I fail to understand why you have to be "careful" in describing the motivations of your focus here. And I'm trying to grasp race relations being interpreted through the American South and what often appears to be one-dimensional views of Confederate history.
  • Jim,

    You are very welcome. I find that the true insights only come on that deep level, but than again, I was trained in analytical philosophy which emphasizes detail. Much of what is out there is one-dimensional. I like to consider this blog as one place where you can find a sustained critique of some of these deeply-ingrained themes. Others, of course, may disagree.
  • Jim
    Did I miss a meeting or something? I thought I asked a simple straightforward question - sorry if I offended, but I didn't mean to do so. Re: Bob's suggestion that I don't think the CW was over slavery, I will say that I DO think that slavery, i.e. Constitutionally-legal real property was a major part of the issue along with protection from invasion, but only in that slavery was a competing economic model. I also believe that there was moral parity among whites between the American regions regarding race.

    Lastly, unlike Kevin who focuses solely on the South, WHERE I'M STILL SEEKING ANSWERS AS TO WHY, I understand slavery in a global context. Examples include the overwhelming majority of slaves were transported under England's command, that other nations like Brazil and the Carribean took the vast majority of slaves rather than America, that slavery existed in all regions of America, and that other nations like Brazil again had slavery longer than America did. In light of these truths, I still see an inordinate amount of blame on the Confederacy and the American South for all things slavery. Instead of discussing the issues here, I feel that we are dancing around them many times.
  • Jim,

    Again, I do not take offense to your comments. I was, however, a bit surprised at how little you had to say in response to my post. I am trying to be as honest and as careful as I can in responding to your question re: my interest in the Civil War.

    Of course, slavery must be understood on a global level. That said, why are you surprised that someone would focus on one aspect of it. My main historical interest is that of the United States, in large, part because this is where I make my home. That historians make decisions on a particular time and region should not come as any surprise. I personally find that it takes a great deal of time and effort to come to any serious understand of a subject w/o making those kinds of decisions. You are the one who keeps coming back to the "blame" game. My interest in the history of slavery in this country has absolutely nothing to do with blaming or vindicating anything. History for me is a tool to help to better understand the present and my place in it.

    David Brion Davis's history of world survey is well worth your time if you have not already read it: Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (Oxford University Press, 2008): http://www.amazon.com/Inhuman-Bondage-Rise-Slav...
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  • Richard
    When I was in my mid-20s I remember going to Cheraw, SC to help remodel a retail store. I knew the store manager well, he was black. I was standing beside him when he called one of his employees the "N" word. He looked at me and said "I can do that but you can't". I told him that was a slave word and I did not understand why it would come out of the mouth of a black man. My point in telling this story is that slavery has left deep scars in both the minds of blacks and whites. If you are interrested in Race the South is the place to look, thats where the most black/white interaction occured.
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  • Bob_Pollock
    Kevin,

    Jim can correct me if I am wrong, but in reading his comments on your various posts, I don't think he understands "the jump from your experience in NJ to the Confederacy" because he does not believe the Civil War had anything to do with race relations, i.e. slavery.
  • Bob,

    That is exactly why I am interested in the history of the South and the Confederacy. In fact, my ongoing research on the Crater is as much about the history of race relations in this country as it is the story of a battle. One of the points I was trying to make is that because I focus on the South I am not implying anything about the moral character of any other region of this country. As to your suspicions, I suspect that you are right.
  • I can't say I recall the first time I heard the "n-word." Growing up in the South of the 1970's, I was told strictly that the word was off limits, and that proper people just do not use the word. So when I heard it used by people, the context was clearly those using it were not "proper" or "respectable" and considered "small-minded."

    I can say once I in my youth I had a confrontation with an individual over the word. I was working one summer on a neighbor's farm. It was watermelon season. Let's just say those melons don't get to the supermarket by walking themselves. It's hard work, and I was getting paid the standard minimum wage, harvesting them off the vine. (But for a 16 year old who needed gas money, that was a good job!)

    About mid day, the team I was on took a break for lunch. We all clustered around an end row tree, resting. The team was typical for those doing "field work" from my experience - racial makeup across the board, just one thing in common, we were on the bottom heap economically speaking.

    One of the employer's overseers pulled up in a truck and said, "You n----s need to get back to work!" I didn't know what to say. Now one might say I'm "caucasian" but I've got enough native ancestors I guess to have a darker complexion. Amplifying that was a farmer's tan built up over the last four weeks. But surely, I thought, he wasn't talking directly at me. So I looked back at the overseer with a curious look. And he made his point clear, pointing right at me, "Yes I said that to you, white boy!"

    Needless to say, those were fighting words. Two large co-workers (both black as I recall) held me back. While no blows were exchanged, I distinctly recall being threatened over my employment. So I just let it ride for now. Days later, the farm owner came by and asked about things. I told him point blank that my family had worked for him at least for forty years, and they had good things to say about him. But if his overseers were going to act that way toward anybody, I'd have to find other work. With that, I was let go.

    Years later, reflecting on it, the incident underlines one of the base "proximate causes" of what we identify today as racism. I see it more so as a tool for imposing one's will upon another. The skin color may offer a discriminator, but the discrimination need not be tied to one's ethnic background. Even if we remove the racial component, the "racists" would still find some difference to make as leverage to force their will upon others (thus regardless or race, creed or color).

    Maybe saying it more plainly, those rearing me were right, the "n-word" is indeed something used by improper, small minded people, who lack the ability to articulate their suggestions, recommendations, desires, or view of the word.
  • Jim
    I'm trying to understand the jump from your experience in NJ to the Confederacy. Maybe that will be answered in Part 2? As far as your experience, I consider that rather tame though unfortunate.
  • If you expect me to give you a Sparks Note version than you will be sorely disappointed. Of all the things to say in response to this post, you decide to judge me. Well, that says quite a bit about you.
  • Thanks so much for sharing your own personal experiences.
  • Richard
    I share your interest in race and have strived to understand why people behave the way they do. My earliest memories regarding race go back to 1969 when I was 5. I was staying in my grandfathers trailer in New Bern NC. Outside there were several black men under the street light drinking and shouting. My grandfather took his shotgun and blew out the streetlight over their heads. I also remember the first time I was called "white boy". My father would eventually become a deacon in the Catholic Church (unusual for a southerner) and he worked in the slums of Charleston teaching black folks how to read. Its a strange and complex world.
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