How "Southern Pride" and prejudice created identity politics

The defense of Confederate flags and monuments in the service of “Southern Pride” has long mystified me. I live in the South — in southern Virginia — and it’s a great place to live. The scenery is gorgeous, the people are (mostly) friendly, and the pace is laid-back. What’s not to love about the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Smoky Mountains and the Shenandoah Valley? There’s beautiful architecture and lots of history, dating back before the founding of our nation.

I love living here. But I’m not particularly proud of it. I didn’t do anything to create any of the natural wonders, intriguing history or architectural styles I found when I moved here. I just get to enjoy it.

That’s why, when I started hearing the phrase “Southern Pride,” I didn’t get it. Yes, I’m a recent transplant (two years now), but I’m pretty sure no one else here was responsible for any of those things, either.

The association with the Confederacy made even less sense. No one living today was around for that, either. But more glaringly, it’s just not something to be proud of: a war defending the abomination of slavery, which left 600,000 people dead ... and which you LOST.

It’s even called “the lost cause” — which is defined as something that never had any hope of succeeding. Why would anyone be proud that the people who once lived in the region they now call home undertook a lost cause?

And why does this pride thing seem to be associated mostly with the South? During my 50-plus years in California, I’d never heard anyone talk about “Western Pride” or “Pacific Pride.” I haven’t heard of Bostonians extol “New England Pride” or Green Bay Packers fans talking about “Midwestern Pride.” They’d rather talk about the Red Sox winning the World Series or the Packers winning the Super Bowl: accomplishments.

Wounded pride

That’s what pride is supposed to be about: accomplishments, not identity. I’m proud to have graduated summa cum laude, to have worked as a journalist for 30 years and to have written 30 books. But I’m not proud to be of Danish, French and English ancestry, or of the fact that I was born in California. I think that’s all cool, but I had no control over any of it. It’s not an achievement, and, hence, nothing to be proud of.

The same is true of shame. I’m not ashamed of my ethnic heritage or where I was born, my height, my eye color or my receding hairline. It’s all beyond my control.

But if pride is about achievement, where does identity-centered pride come from?

I would suggest that it comes from the feeling of being somehow “less than.” Inferior. The Confederacy’s loss of the Civil War was a bitter pill to swallow, and those who lived through it undoubtedly felt that their pride had been wounded. The Union, in victory, enforced its will upon the South, which responded by seeking to salvage its sense of self-respect by reasserting its pride. Hence the seemingly incongruous connection between pride and a “lost cause.”

That doesn’t make it any more reasonable to link your identity to a bloody war that happened 150 years ago in defense of cruelty that’s indefensible. It just explains the psychology of it: why people on the losing end of conflict might develop an exaggerated sense of “identity pride” in an attempt to salvage a measure of self-respect, at least in their own minds.

Shameless

There’s extreme irony in the attempt, even today, to shore up “Southern Pride” after being made to feel inferior after a long-ago military defeat. After all, the entire Civil War was based on the slavery of black people — a practice that sought to make them feel inferior based on their identity.

Karma, anyone?

Is it any surprise that black Americans, who have been treated as inferior for centuries, should respond by asserting that they’re proud of their identity? A poll in December of 2019 found that 75% of black respondents considered their race and ethnicity “very important to their identity,” compared with just 30% of whites. If you’re made to feel ashamed of something you have no control over, it’s natural to push back by asserting pride in that very thing.

That’s why the word “pride” is so closely associated with the LGBTQUIA rights movement, too. If you’ve been shamed for who you are, it’s natural to fight back by declaring that very thing a point of pride.

Have you complained that “identity politics” focuses on race, gender and sexual orientation rather than achievement as a source of pride? I have. I’d love to live in a society where pride is based on achievement rather than identity. But I’m sure as hell not going to blame black Americans, same-sex couples or other persecuted group for taking pride in who they are. They didn’t start this. It was the prejudice that falsely and cruelly shamed them for their identity that began the cycle.

Identity politics doesn’t start with pride, it starts with shame. If you want to blame someone for identity politics, blame the slaveholders, the segregationists, the people who’ve opposed equal rights for women, who’ve discriminated against and demeaned LGBTQUIA individuals. Blame the people who support or apologize for actions that make others feel inferior, based on nothing more than who they are.

Pride misplaced

Confederate slaveholders started all this.

Southerners sought to reassert their pride after it was wounded on the battlefield, but that doesn’t make Southern Pride anything at all like Black Pride. The difference goes back to shame: Black Americans (and gay Americans, trans Americans, American women, Native Americans, and others) had shame unjustly visited upon them by others because of prejudice. The Confederacy brought shame upon itself by its own prejudice.

To put it another way: undeserved shame gave rise to Black Pride. But Southern Pride, as it’s tied to the Confederacy, is born of shame that’s more than deserved. It’s based on cruel and repugnant actions, not identity. Not geography.

Prejudice. Slavery. Brutality.

Those in the modern South who cling to this false pride make themselves responsible for the shame that gave rise to it — and in doing so, perpetuate the prejudice that started the cycle.

Find something else to be proud of.

There are plenty of reasons to love the South, none of which have anything to do with the Confederacy. I live here, and I love it here. But I hate what the Confederacy did and what it stood for. That’s not a contradiction.

It’s the only way toward healing.