Lady Antebellum and the glorification of the pre-Civil War South | Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture

Lady Antebellum and the glorification of the pre-Civil War South | Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture

• america
• antebellum
• glorification
• history
• language
• music
• slavery

I cannot imagine a book set in Germany at the time of World War II that would fawn over the charm and appearance of defenders of the Third Reich or mention how members of the Nazi Party thought their cause noble. We would not draw those opponents as anything but villains for the evil they committed against humanity. Yet, mention the antebellum South or the Confederacy, and some Americans grow starry-eyed. No one thinks of the more than 10 million enslaved Africans who died in the Middle Passage or on some plantation or small farm. No one thinks of the people who were denied their freedom and humanity so that the Southern economy could rise, and that all those Rhetts and Scarletts could sit in their fine houses, showing off their fancy clothes and manners. That America forgets my ancestors, while longing for the “glory days” that their enslavement made possible, is offensive.