Last year I wrote a post responding to a video I saw which asks if we should still be watching the classic movie, Gone With the Wind. A couple days ago I heard HBO had pulled that movie from its new streaming service, saying:
'Gone With The Wind’ is a product of its time and depicts some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that have, unfortunately, been commonplace in American society.
These racist depictions were wrong then and are wrong today, and we felt that to keep this title up without an explanation and a denouncement of those depictions would be irresponsible
This reminded me of my previous post and my failure to write a follow-up to it like I had planned. Given the current atmosphere of our society, it seems like a good time to go ahead and write it. The reason I think this is I think it's important we recognize the North were not the "good guys" of the Civil War.
I don't think the South were the "good guys" of the Civil War either. Like many wars, I don't think one side was "good" and the other "evil." What I think is portraying the Civil War as a simple thing, a war fought by the "good guys" to end slavery by the "bad guys" whitewashes history and invites further wrongdoing.
People can be on the "right" side of a conflict and still be terrible people or do terrible things. Refusing to speak up about them because the people are on the "right side" of a conflict sabotages any effort for genuine improvement. This is true with people's hypocritical support of Al Sharpton, and it's true with people's blind support for the North. The sad truth is, Abraham Lincoln was a tyrant whose abuses of power would make Donald Trump blush.
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