The Racism Discussion thread

[Red Harvest]

Hes saying he felt that way in 62 not now.

That is not clear and based on Lott's past it is doubtful, but without reading the relevant section of the book I can't know the context. CNN Article about Lott's Book

The paragraphs following it are:

Later, as a law student at the same school, he remembered the visiting professors from Yale University, brought in to teach constitutional law.

"Instead of making us more liberal, they helped create a generation of thoughtful, issue-oriented conservatives who grew up to run Mississippi politics," he wrote.

And look at what a great job they've done...Mississippi still ranks last or near last in most measures. This implies that he was not that repentant about his former segregationist views, and that he had *not* renounced them altogether.

In this article
History News Network Discussion of Lott's Early Politics

The article contains some interesting insights into his segregationist character in there. It would be interesting to hear him explain in the book when his "conversion" occurred and why. He wouldn't comment on this earlier when his statements had him in hot water and cost him his position. Rather than his views changing, it appears that he was astute enough to adapt outward appearance, but not necessarily his beliefs. This is the quiet (or polite?) racism that is more prevalent in the South now.

Gawain:
Its also true that if the civil war were fought over slavery than it was a real waste of hunmanity as the slaves would have been set free anyway and much of this bad feelings bettween us wouldnt have occured.

While this is widely used as an excuse for secession, it is too convenient and not particularly feasible when you try to work through it.

First, the South initiated the war because of slavery, true. (Which is ironic, since slavery in Southern States wasn't directly threatened at the time anyway.) The North didn't go to war to end slavery, it went to war to preserve the Union. Yes, the war was about slavery, but it wasn't instigated by the North. Many avowed Southerners had extended the racism inherent in slavery to conclude that it had made them superior to Northerners as well.

Second, it has never been adequately explained how the South was going to deal with the large slave population on its own, had it been allowed to go its own way. If anything, secession only exacerbated its inability to deal with the problem--it would lack the resources of the North in assisting a transition. Slaves were 40% of the Southern population then, and would have probably been an even higher percentage on whatever date it was that slavery ended. Phaseout ideas had been roundly rejected in the past (such as making slaves children born after X date free once they reached adulthood.) I have not studied emancipation elsewhere, but I can't recall any similar population of the time that was emancipated without a struggle or the loss of the former masters as the source of power. The South had very real reasons to fear what effect freed slaves would have politically and labor wise, and they were very concerned about slaves acheiving political majorities in areas. THIS is the reason for the postwar denial of constitutional rights by the Southern whites, fear (combined with generations of racism.) The result was a sort of Apartheid, and I can't find any compelling reason to believe the same would not have happened if the CSA had gone its own way without war.

Third, to make secession workable without sparking a war, it really did need to be done in such a way that security, waterway, fishing, trade/tariff, and future territorial expansion were resolved in a treaty before it became effective. Absent an agreement, the Union had just cause to fear for its security and future, with a divided neighbor, the South, who were likely to fracture again because of their own impractical States Rights. Even R.E. Lee agreed that it wasn't legal to simply secede. Without certain treaties, even had the South been allowed to go, war was quite likely within a decade.

Fourth, Southerners in slave holding regions indeed considered themselves different from their Northern brethren, while the North was divided into more cultures and regions and abolitionists were a minority. This is a clear indication of how slavery had contorted Southern culture--it was an economic dependency that had produced social dependency. Non-slave economic regions of the South were Unionist or neutral.

Finally, at least another 4 million slaves would have lived all or most of their lives in bondage before slavery would have fully ended, had the South been allowed to secede. As such even the horrendous cost of the war, ~625,000 killed, is perhaps not an overly severe price to pay, dear as it was.

[Azi Tohak]

Anybody else amazed this is still civil?

It is nice to know I'm not living in a vacuum thinking racism is not solely restricted to white males.

Does nationalism breed racism? It sounds really odd coming from an American I know (half German, half UK [yes, Brit, Scot, Welsh all mixed in]), but does thinking, for example, the USA (or Canada or France) is the greatest nation on earth, lead people to think of all others as inferior because of race? Or is there another term for that? I don't know how an American could think that being an American is superior to being any European country, because most all of us have more than one nation in our blood. We all look the same! I just don't know if that is 'racism' or has another term.

Azi