David Blight is an eminent, Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian interested in the role of race in American history. Many think that American attitudes about race were “solved” by the Civil War and the emancipation of slaves. Those battles were won by the Union and not the Confederacy, right? This book seeks to chronicle how in the 50 years after emancipation (until around World War I), southern states and the promotion of “Lost Cause” ideology won a place in American society, north and south. Americans were more concerned with reconciliation among the whites than peace among all peoples. This attitude laid the necessity of further social action in the Civil Rights movements, up to today.
When I was ten years old, I moved from St. Louis, Missouri, to upstate South Carolina. I noticed a cultural difference in attitudes about the Civil War. My community in St. Louis was quite proudly multicultural while my community in South Carolina was predominantly white. Southernisms abounded, like the word “y’all” and sayings like “The devil’s beating his wife” when it rained. Likewise, conversations about the Civil War were less about the end of slavery and more about family who fought.
I have since lived in northern, western, and southern states and currently live in urban Tennessee. I’ve seen a lot of attitudes about the Civil War and racism: Northern pride over “uneducated southerners,” southern regions with a pro-Union history, southerners celebrating frank ignorance, and a Nashville pride of birthing the Civil Rights movement. Often forgotten are the victims and survivors of slavery and white supremacy. Blight’s book indicts all white history with abundant, carefully reasoned evidence. Our ancestors almost universally favored white reunion over racial reconciliation. Civil rights movements, past and present, try to overturn the remnants of such structural racism. White supremacy lingered far past 1863 or 1865. Indeed, some is still with us, north and south.
I appreciate this book for correcting my common tendency to overlook racial injustice. I’ve tried to fight it in protests, professional advocacy, and personal relationships. Yet anywhere in America, it’s easy to fall prey to forgetting historical inertia. And I remain a complicit part of that forgetful inertia. Blight’s work clearly corrects that tendency in a dispassionate, erudite, and reflective manner. By enlightening me and healing my own unknowing biases, I hope it will help me have better relationships and construct a better society. The American experiment is not done yet, and Race and Reunion can help put up a few more supporting flanks in its house.
Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American History
By David W. Blight
Narrated by David Colacci
Copyright (c) 2001, 2019
Tantor Audio
ASIN B07MXP2VQ4
Length: 20:27
Genre: American History
Sponsored link to www.amazon.com