When one of the nation’s ablest governors, Georgia’s Gov. Barnes, was defeated in part because he advocated shrinking the Confederate emblem which had dominated the state flag, voters said: “Don’t touch that flag!”That is the voters in white rural counties. Republican Sonny Perdue carried 95 of 96 counties which are at least 65 percent white, where popular T-shirts shouted, “Change the governor, keep the flag.”
Yankees, all-business Chamber of Commerce leaders, hard liberals and Civil Rights activists deplore, misinterpret or fail to understand what is in the minds and guts of those rural Georgians.
Europeans who have had a tragic history would understand. The Balkans come to mind, specifically Serbia. Rural whites in the Deep South have cultural memories and resentments similar to what might be called, the Confederate State of Serbia.
Defeat and scorn are two of the bitter but bearable legacies of a hard history shared to some degree by Serbs and Southerners.
The South is the only part of America that was once a separate nation and, until Vietnam, could say that the former Confederate states had exclusive knowledge of what it meant to suffer defeat, without dishonor.
If memories of Confederate defeat in 1865 die hard, the victory of Turkish Muslims at Kosovo Field in 1389 has an even more tenacious grip on the emotions of the Serbian people.
The double-barreled emotional punch of defeat with dignity is powerfully evoked by the man chosen by Union commander Grant to receive the surrender of arms and colors on April 12, Gen. Joshua L. Chamberlain.
At his command, Union troops saluted as the general recalled the scene:
“On they came, with the old swinging route step and swaying battle flags.., the proud Confederate ensign. Each captain taking pains for the good appearance of his company, worn and half-starved as they were ... Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood; famished but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours ...
“They fix bayonets, stack arms; then hesitatingly, remove cartridge-boxes and lay them down. Lastly, reluctantly, with agony of expression they tenderly fold their flags, battle worn and torn, bloodstained, and lay them down ... And only the flag of the Union greets the sky.”
Those of us who believe the Confederate cause was wrong, and who agree with Rhett Butler that it was foolhardy for an agricultural nation to attack a great industrial power, even we are moved as the general from Maine was by the nobility of Confederate troops in defeat.
Serbian suffering was even greater.
Much of the Serbian aristocracy, its best and brightest, perished on Kosovo Field and the Serbian Orthodox Catholic people were occupied and dominated for four centuries by Muslim Turks.
Old injuries and humiliations lie close to the surface in Serbia and the South. The historic pain of the Serbs was whipped into a frenzy of hatred against the Albanians of Kosovo by the demagogic appeal of Slobodon Milosevic. Sonny Perdue had George Wallace’s sense of how to unleash old resentments in the South.
Once anger is aroused, however, the demagogue’s dilemma must be faced: What do you do with a population of people seething with white-hot anger? It takes statesmanship greater than Milosevic’s or Perdue’s to channel negative currents in useful directions.
Milosevic reaped the whirlwind of war, and another defeat. Governor-elect Perdue seems to be torn between an embarrassing, divisive referendum or breaking his word and being a one-term governor.
Cultural symbols such as Dixie and We Shall Overcome are revered as anthems of a civil religion and they are mutually exclusive. They shouldn’t be, but they are.
Personally, my blood rises when I hear the merry tune, Dixie, because it evokes powerful memories of people, place and history. So, too, I am moved by the nobility of We Shall Overcome, which says for all humanity, we are not afraid, we will overcome.
Despite the human wish to impose their beliefs on others, we do honor freedom of religion. Where are the leaders — black and white — to teach us how to honor freedom of culture?
