Re-imagined nation

Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities argues that communities exist only with their imagining. We imagine ourselves to be Americans, Christians, Southerners, etc., and pledges of allegiance, myths, and symbols follow to make the imagined community a reality.

Colonists imagined their community in relation to Indians who occupied the land for which they lusted and Africans whose labor they exploited. White supremacy was basic to the formation of an imagined “American” community.

In the industrializing era following the Civil War, the North affirmed white supremacy in the West by relegating Indians to reservations, while the South subordinated freedmen to the laws of Jim Crow. Yet industrialization in the North led to an influx of European populations that barely touched the South. The North had to begin re-imagining who belonged to the “American” community. (Irish Catholics? East European Jews?) The South didn’t.

During two world wars, Southern blacks moved north to industrial centers, took advantage of new freedoms, laid the basis of high culture, served in the military and returned demanding liberty and justice for all. The North moved reluctantly toward re-imagining an “American” community that included blacks. The Democratic Party under Lyndon Johnson effected the change, so the South moved to the Republican Party.

Ethnic tensions continue to rise because whites are slow to acknowledge that traditional “American” institutional and cultural forms affirm (and sustain) white supremacy. Someday we’ll have to begin the process of re-imagining “America” as multi-ethnic. As Einstein reportedly observed: We can’t solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them.

DAVID SIXBEY

Flippin I might add. I will spare the details of how it became the much larger state school with the cumbersome name of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

To be honest, I was never happy with the name change.

Let’s change the name back to Little Rock University and join such prominent state and private universities as Clemson, Auburn, Boston, and St. Louis.

You may say, “But we’ve already changed the logo to emphasize Little Rock.” This is a move in the right direction, but it is only a Band-Aid on the problem. The problem is having the word “Arkansas” in the name. Until we remove it, we are seen as a distant step-cousin of the U of A at Fayetteville.

You may also say, “what’s in a name?” I say a lot, and perhaps this will help stir some input, pro and con. Go Trojans and Hogs!

P.S. I suspect that being in the U of A system will have an effect on this suggestion. JERRY SAMONS Little Rock