Tennesseans shouldn’t honor the dishonorable
The governor of Tennessee is required by state law to issue an annual proclamation to honor Nathan Bedford Forrest.southern History and Ethical Awareness
Forrest was a slave trader, Confederate general, grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and fierce opponent of postcivil War reconstruction in the South.
The headlines generated in local and national news media when Gov. Bill Lee issued that legally-mandated proclamation for 2019 give legitimacy to the following question: To what degree should informed and moral Southerners honor immoral persons and events of our history?
This is not a question unique to Americans whose history is located south of the Mason-dixon Line. Every culture has to ask this question about its past. To the best of my knowledge, for example, none of the 16 states of Germany requires its chief executive to proclaim Hermann Göring Day. Closer to home, neither does Alabama have a Eugene “Bull” Connor Day among its state-mandated holiday proclamations.
There are, however, people among whom Hermann Göring and Bull Connor are honored and held in high regard. These would be either persons who are members of or people sympathetic to Neo-nazi, Skinhead, KKK or similar white-nationalist groups.
If you would be ethically outraged and/or simply frightened at the thought of living in a state where the likes of Göring and Connor were given public, defiant and state-mandated honor, you have some small glimpse of the reaction of an African American to Tennessee’s annual “white folks only” tribute to Nathan Bedford Forrest.
I am white, so I lived a long time in my skin within Southern culture without getting it. But time has passed, historical events have given more clarity, and my moral compass has reoriented from white privilege to mutual respect.
Put another way, my Christian conscience has repented of personal and institutional racism and is still aligning itself with Jesus’ love-your-neighboras-yourself social ethic.
Southern culture has many distinctive features. Fried chicken, blackeyed peas, okra, cornbread – these are our comfort foods. Church buildings on every street corner allow directionsgiving by means of them. We have music ranging from country to rock to jazz.
Every item on the list is, sadly, tainted by racism. Blacks and whites both enjoy cornbread and black-eyed peas but too rarely eat them at the same table. Churches of all tribes are still largely segregated, with 10 o’clock on Sunday morning still the “most segregated hour” of the American week. The two major political parties do all they can to maintain the established bloc patterns of white and black voters.
Some defenders of Nathan Bedford Forrest Day point to a late-in-life conversion to Christ and a much-moderated view toward people of color – and wonder if people like me are being unforgiving. Wanting to accept the conversion reports as true, surely no Christian convert would want to be remembered – much less honored in
Confederate dress – for his anti-christian exploits against Jesus’ commandment to love one’s neighbor.
Persons of color do not feel affirmed by celebrations of persons and events that dishonor them. White and thickheaded as I can be at times, even I get that. For the sake of my present relationship with a black man, woman or child, I have no praise for anything past or present that was or is done to oppress, belittle or otherwise harm even one African American.
Gov. Lee, please rethink your reluctance to challenge Tennessee’s gubernatorial requirement to honor dishonorable things about our Southern culture. Both black and white Tennesseans would take pride in that action and join to thank you for it.
Rubel Shelly is a philosopher-theologian who lives in Spring Hill.
Editor’s Note: Gov. Bill Lee has announced his support for changing the law related to the Forrest proclamation.