Responding to the Sept. 9 story “Frankly, my dear, you’re a racist,” “Gone With The Wind” is a classic of Southern antebellum, Civil War and Reconstruction era literature. But that doesn’t seem to matter. It includes a topic that offends some people: slavery and the nonchalant attitude of Southern whites.
How many times will we go through this stupidity before we learn that it is stupidity? We had the Salem Witch Trials in 1695, the Yellow Peril in the 1940s, the Red Scare leading to the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s, and now we’re covering statues and suggesting we ban books because they refer to slavery, a part of America’s history of which we’re rightfully ashamed. But those events are part of our story and draping them in cloth or laws won’t change that. After all, why not then outlaw the names Robert, Edward and Lee. Forbid the word “stone” because of Stonewall Jackson. Punish those named Virginia.
No one is erecting statues to Benedict Arnold, a true traitor. Somehow, the Confederate leaders are in a different category, possibly because allegiance to a state more than to the nation at that juncture was understandable if not pardonable. But let’s not resurrect our worst fears as a people over this issue.
