The white paternalism of Kevin Levine

Kevin Levine over at http://www.cwmemory.com/ had a hysterical post when he found out that I had started to published a series on the MOC at http://www.blackcommentator.com/. He was so upset that he said some interesting things.

One was:

"The post includes a link to a 4-part essay that was published at the Black Commentator. I am going to leave it to you to read through as I simply do not have the patience to do it. It is an incredibly incoherent rant ... "

This is typical of Levine when he is upset with things he just engages in slander of whomever he is upset with. Levine might be upset with the paper, he might disagree with it, but it isn't incoherent, it isn't a rant. I had editorial review of the paper by a well published university professor before publishing it.

What is interesting is Levine's attitude toward http://www.blackcommentator.com/. Does he think they would publish a rant? Does he think they would published an incoherent paper? They have an editorial board of distinguished academics, and they have editors. I didn't just upload the paper to the website. It was submitted and reviewed by an editor before being published. It is interesting how Levine was, without pause or thought or inquiry, dismissed the competency of Black Commentator. It is revealing of his attitude towards African American scholarship.

Then there is this really revealing commentary by Levine:

"What I find most disturbing about Sebesta’s rant is that it will make the MOC’s job of reaching out to the African American community that much more difficult. They have come so far in broadening their interpretation over the past few decades and getting involved in the community around Richmond."

Are African Americans children that Ed Sebesta is leading astray? Apparently Levine thinks so. I think that African Americans can critically read essays just like anyone else. Perhaps the essay will make it more difficult for the MOC to reach out to the African American community because the article will have alerted the African American community as to what the agenda of the MOC is.

The free guest links to all four installments are at this blog posting:

http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2011/11/moc.html

League of the South hypocrisy

This is a post of the League of the South (LOS) which really shows their hypocrisy.

http://lsrebellion.blogspot.com/2011/11/four-aarp-members-accused-of-plotting.html

It is a complaint that neo-Confederates are considered potentially violent.

However, what "Old Rebel," the LOS blogger doesn't tell you is that leaders in the LOS, like LOS president Michael Hill endorsed a book, "Heiland" written by one of the founding LOS board members Franklin Sanders. The story is about a group of rebels which overthrows the government by murdering all the people in the city. These rebels are considered the heroes in the story. Former LOS board member Rev. Steve Wilkins also endorsed the book.

http://www.amazon.com/Heiland-Franklin-Sanders/dp/0961712430/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320989245&sr=1-1

Then there was an article in Chronicles magazine in which Michael Hill considered the IRA terrorists the equivalent to a medieval Scottish clan.

So it seems these four would be terrorists are somewhat representative of neo-Confederate ideology.

League of the South Rubbish

There are some posts of the League of the South blog which show really what a lot of rubbish they talk.

For example there is this post:

http://lsrebellion.blogspot.com/2011/11/texas-board-rejects-confederate-flag.html

The LOS blogger is trying to say that the Texas NAACP is hypocritical because of what a former Dallas NAACP head had said. What the LOS doesn't tell you is that Lee Alcorn, the former head of the Dallas NAACP who said these things, got kicked out of the NAACP by the NAACP shortly after making these comments for making these comments.

Then there this issue of confusing an ideology with the idea of culture. Is Maoism the same as being Chinese. Is Maoism a culture or an ideology? If I decided to reject Bolshevik symbols, does that mean I am anti-Russian? Of course it doesn't. Neo-Confederacy is an ideology.

The League of the South is composed of ranters that have a weak grasp of the facts if any grasp of the facts.

MOC

I am going to have this blog post to hold links to all four installments. That way I will have just one short link to direct people to all four installments of the article on the Museum of the Confederacy. http://www.blackcommentator.com/ is a pay site and these links provided in this blog posting as follows are free.

1st installment:

http://www.blackcommentator.com/441/441_museum_confederacy_sebesta_guest_share.html

2nd installment:
http://www.blackcommentator.com/443/443_museum_confederacy_2_sebesta_guest_share.html

3rd installment:

http://www.blackcommentator.com/461/461_museum_confederacy_3_sebesta_guest_share.html

4th installment:

http://www.blackcommentator.com/462/462_museum_confederacy_4_sebesta_guest_share.html

All the links to all the Black Commentator essays can be found at this blog posting.

http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2013/08/bc.html

Being published by Palgrave Macmillan in book on the Texas teaching standards.

It is now official, Palgrave Macmillan is publishing a book on the new and notorious Texas teaching standards to be titled, Politics and the History Curriculum: The Struggle over Standards in Texas and the Nation. I contributed a chapter on the new standards for the Civil War and Reconstruction. My chapter will be titled, Neo-Confederate Ideology in the Texas History Standards.

The link to the web page about the book is the following:

http://www.keitherekson.com/books/politics-and-the-history-curriculum/

I am looking forward to reaching and communicating with a whole new audience of educators and working with them to influence how the Civil War and Reconstruction is taught to students.

2nd Installment of Expose of the Museum of the Confederacy (MOC) published/ URL corrected Update: See link to all 4-installments

The 2nd installment of the expose of the MOC can be read at this URL:

http://www.blackcommentator.com/443/443_museum_confederacy_2_sebesta_guest_share.html


The 1st installment can be read at this URL:

http://www.blackcommentator.com/441/441_museum_confederacy_sebesta_guest_share.html

I also recommend this web page on the MOC:

http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2009/08/cleansing-history-confederacy-museum-and-trip-advisor-retouch-the-past.html

I am working on the 3rd installment and hope to have it finished this weekend. A lot of issues come up in the review of the MOC which needed critical and analytical treatment. I have been reading books like "Theorizing the Museum" edited by Sharon Macdonald and Gordon Fyfe and "Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe." I must have bought a dozen books or more.

As I was going over the 3rd installment I realized that there were issues beyond explicit and banal nationalism, but other issues on how museums are used to promote nationalism and how the MOC functions as a giant reliquary. Scholars contacted were supportive of my project and willing to make reading recommendations.

Even when my 3rd installment is done it will still need some review and editorial input by a colleague of mine. Then with revisions I will be submitting it to http://www.blackcommenator.com/. The 4th installment I think will be easy to finish up. Of course I never know until I start writing a piece, whether some aspect previously overlooked will be discovered requiring reading further analysis.

UPDATE:

This is the link to the blog posting with links to all four installments;

http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2011/11/moc.html

Another critic of the Museum of the Confederacy.

Eric Muller wrote up his visit to the Museum of the Confederacy (MOC) and discusses the difficulty of deciding what his creepiest moment was while visiting.

http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2009/08/cleansing-history-confederacy-museum-and-trip-advisor-retouch-the-past.html

In talking to Mr. Muller over the phone he told me that the MOC sent him a letter which they labeled confidential so he couldn't reveal what they said to him. This is a pernicious practice of labeling letters confidential so that that contents are covered up.

Eric Muller is the Dan K. Moore Distinguished Professor and Associate Dean for Faculty Development University of North Carolina School of Law.

I have requested that Mr. Muller share the essay with others who might be interested.

Update:

All four installments of the article on the MOC have been published and the free guest links are in this blog posting:

http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2011/11/moc.html

"Civil War News" positively reviews "The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader."

A very positive review of "The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader" by Edward H. Bonekemper III in Civil War News.

http://www.civilwarnews.com/reviews/2011br/febmar/confedreader-sebesta-b021105.html

www.blackcommentator.com publishes my article on the Museum of the Confederacy. UPDATE: See link for all 4-installments

http://www.blackcommentator.com/ has published the first part of a four part article on the Museum of the Confederacy (MOC) I am writing. You can read online without a subscription at:

http://www.blackcommentator.com/441/441_museum_confederacy_sebesta_guest_share.html

This first installment introduces the series and shows how the MOC has reverted to a Lost Cause shrine to the Confederacy headed up by a CEO who is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Though I show in the article it can be questioned if the MOC every really changed that much, but instead had two very differing faces, one for the public, one private.

Of particular interest to African American scholars would be the speech in which African American scholarship and opinion is held up to ridicule in a speech at the MOC right after the "Before Freedom Came" exhibit. In fact in this speech, the exhibit "Before Freedom Came" is praised an an antidote to the "Carol Moseley-Braun syndrome." This speech was by prominent neo-Confederate Ludwell Johnson III at the MOC upon being made a MOC fellow.

I am very pleased to be published on http://www.blackcommentator.com/ since it will allow me to become known by a new audience of scholars and intellectuals. Much of my work is helping out people with research and they don't know that I can help them if they don't know that I exist and what resources I have.

I have been monitoring the MOC for a very, very long time and have a very exhaustive collection of their materials. I just haven't had time to write up the material. Two other book projects and other writing projects have been delayed while I wrote up what I knew about the MOC.

It also turned out once I started writing up the MOC there really was a lot of material that needed to be brought to public light. So it became a very lengthy manuscript, that needed to be broken into installments. I didn't write up everything about the MOC since the manuscript was already over 26,000 words and I needed to get published and a writing project needs to have a finish. I think the four installments do give the reader a good understanding of what the MOC is and what it is doing.

However, like many writing projects, it has been an interesting intellectual journey. I have been reading about museums and their theoretical analyses, in particular nationalism and the museum.

UPDATES:

All four installments as they are published will be at this blog posting:

http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2011/11/moc.html

Michael Lind on the Tea Party Caucus in Congress and the former Confederate states

Michael Lind on http://www.salon.com/ had this analysis of the Tea Party caucus in Congress.

http://www.salon.com/news/tea_parties/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/08/02/lind_tea_party

Lind is paying attention to the geography of politics.

See this blog on Michell Backmann and her neo-Confederacy.

http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2011/08/michelle-bachmanns-neo-confederacy.html

I think the public is becoming aware of the mainstreaming of neo-Confederacy into the American conservative movement.

Obama considers Fort Monroe as a national monument

Politico has the following article about Obama considering Fort Monroe as a national monument. It is online here:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/61247.html

A quote form the article:

"There are few more significant sites in terms of African-American history anywhere in the country, and using the Antiquities Act to preserve this special place makes sense after the Army hands over the site next month,” Warner said in a statement.

Built between 1819 and 1834, Fort Monroe was one of the few Union military installations in the South never occupied by Confederate forces during the Civil War.

Gen. Benjamin Butler made the "Contraband Decision" there in 1861 that kept slaves from being forced to return after they crossed Union lines. Thousands of slaves came to the site, which became known as “Freedom’s Fortress.”

Another excellent article about Ft. Monroe and the effort to make it into a national monument is online at the "News and Observer" here:

http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/07/17/1347261/freedom-shrine-at-highways-end.html

Michelle Bachmann's neo-Confederacy detailed in "The New Yorker."

This article in the "New Yorker" about Michelle Backmann covers her interests in neo-Confederate ideology, but I am not sure they recognize it as being neo-Confederate per see.

The article is at this link:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/15/110815fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all

Here is a quote from the article:

"While looking over Bachmann’s State Senate campaign Web site, I stumbled upon a list of book recommendations. The third book on the list, which appeared just before the Declaration of Independence and George Washington’s Farewell Address, is a 1997 biography of Robert E. Lee by J. Steven Wilkins.

Wilkins is the leading proponent of the theory that the South was an orthodox Christian nation unjustly attacked by the godless North. This revisionist take on the Civil War, known as the “theological war” thesis, had little resonance outside a small group of Southern historians until the mid-twentieth century, when Rushdoony and others began to popularize it in evangelical circles. In the book, Wilkins condemns “the radical abolitionists of New England” and writes that “most southerners strove to treat their slaves with respect and provide them with a sufficiency of goods for a comfortable, though—by modern standards—spare existence.”

African slaves brought to America, he argues, were essentially lucky: “Africa, like any other pagan country, was permeated by the cruelty and barbarism typical of unbelieving cultures.” Echoing Eidsmoe, Wilkins also approvingly cites Lee’s insistence that abolition could not come until “the sanctifying effects of Christianity” had time “to work in the black race and fit its people for freedom.”

If you want the background about Christian Reconstructionists and neo-Confederacy read the following article:

http://gis.depaul.edu/ehague/Articles/PUBLISHED%20CRAS%20ARTICLE.pdf

Contributing Chapter to book on the Texas Teaching Standards

I have been working very hard the last 8 months on completing a chapter for a book on the new and notorious Texas teaching standards. I was assigned to work on the neo-Confederate elements in the standards.

Last weekend I completed the revisions to the chapter and last Monday our editor sent the whole manuscript to the publisher. The chapter still goes to a reader and will come back for further revisions, but these will be minor revisions, work on footnotes, etc. My editor has been very happy with the chapter.

The working title for the volume is currently Social Studies Circus: Politics and Education in Texas and the Nation. The publisher is Palgrave Macmillan. We hope to have the volume published in time for the April 2012 American Educational Research Association conference.

Hopefully, my chapter on the Civil War and Reconstruction on the new extreme right Texas teaching standards will be a point of departure to a larger general discussion of how the Civil War and Reconstruction is taught in America. More immediatly it should help people understand how crazy the Texas State Board of Education teaching standards are and block their implementation.

Additionally, I am going to partner with an educational expert to write up lesson plans for the Civil War and Reconstruction for school teachers. I plan to sell the plans for 99 cents on Amazon.com. It will be very inexpensive for teachers.

It is sort of a relief to have gotten the Chapter done. I had been working hard at work and on two writing projects. Now I can concentrate on the Museum of the Confederacy paper. Euan Hague has been doing editorial work and the first two installments are nearly completed. I will be going over Euan's editorial inputs today and have the next to final version sent back tomorrow, Sunday evening and off to the publisher early this week.

"Religious Dispatches" carries article about neo-Confederate Christianity

The article by Sarah Posner is online at:

http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/sarahposner/4858/neo-confederates_and_the_revival_of_%E2%80%9Ctheological_war%E2%80%9D_for_the_%E2%80%9Cchristian_nation%E2%80%9D/

The paper by Euan Hague and me referred to in the article is online at:

http://gis.depaul.edu/ehague/Articles/PUBLISHED%20CRAS%20ARTICLE.pdf

The word is getting out about the neo-Confederate movement.

www.salon.com runs article about Texas Gov. Rick Perry's Confederate past

The online news and commentary website http://www.salon.com/ has an article on Texas Gov. Rick Perry's Confederate past online at:

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/07/13/rick_perry_sons_of_confederate_veterans

I supplied the documentation for the story. The letter to Rick Perry asking him to oppose a Confederate license plate for the Sons of Confederate Veterans wasn't mentioned. You can read the letter online at the History News Network at this link:

http://hnn.us/articles/140292.html

To find out what the views of all the presidential candidates regarding the Confederacy and neo-Confederacy we are going to be sending them a questionnaire. We are still writing some background papers which we hope to have completed in July. You can read the questionnaire at:
http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2010/10/questionnaire-for-2012-presidential_15.html

We have a paper on the neo-Confederate issues that are coming up in mainstream politics, a paper on the presidents and the Confederacy, and we have a lengthy background paper on the neo-Confederate movement. These will help provide background information to journalists.

However, right now we are going to focus on the letter to Rick Perry.

History News Network Publishes Letter to Texas Gov. Rick Perry

The History News Network has put online the letter to Rick Perry asking him to oppose Confederate license plates. You can read it at:

http://hnn.us/articles/140292.html

Reader co-signatures for the letter are being solicited in the History News Network introduction to the letter.

This letter campaign is being tracked on the blog http://confederatelicenseplate.blogspot.com/.

Letter to Texas Gov. Rick Perry asking him to oppose the proposed Sons of Confederate Veterans license plate.

We have written a letter to Texas Gov. Rick Perry asking him to oppose a proposed Sons of Confederate license plate.

We are currently gathering signatures. We have a blog about the letter and the campaign at:

http://confederatelicenseplate.blogspot.com/

One significant online media is going to have the letter online July 4th. We will have more details then.

Origin of Memorial Day by David W. Blight

There is this very interesting article by David W. Blight about the first memorial day in Charleston, South Carolina. I strongly recommend reading it. It is a very powerful essay which I think will have important ramifications.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/opinion/30blight.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all

The following is a quote from the story:

After the Confederate evacuation of Charleston black workmen went to the site, reburied the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery.They whitewashed the fence and built an archway over an entrance on which they inscribed the words, “Martyrs of the Race Course.”

The symbolic power of this Low Country planter aristocracy’s bastion was not lost on the freedpeople, who then, in cooperation with white missionaries and teachers, staged a parade of 10,000 on the track. A New York Tribune correspondent witnessed the event, describing “a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the
United States never saw before.”

The procession was led by 3,000 black schoolchildren carrying armloads of roses and singing the Union marching song “John Brown’s Body.” Several hundred black women followed with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses. Then came black men marching in cadence, followed by contingents of Union infantrymen. Within the cemetery enclosure a black children’s choir sang “We’ll Rally Around the Flag,” the “Star-Spangled Banner” and spirituals before a series of black ministers read from the Bible.

So what is Obama doing today, sending a wreath to the Arlington Confederate Monument.

The History News Network did run the 2009 letter today, but not the 2010 or 2011 letters. http://hnn.us/articles/12140.html.

I suggest people read Blight's essay in the New York Times then read our letters to Obama at: http://arlingtonconfederatemonument.blogspot.com/.

Postings on neo-Confederate homophobia in new blog. UPDATED

I have started a blog to reach out to the Lesbian, gay, bi, and transgender communities about neo-Confederate homophobia at this blog.

http://neo-confederatehomophobia.blogspot.com/

It will happen that I will read about some homophobe and recognize their involvement or connection to neo-Confederacy and I need some convenient way to make this information available.

Also there are those in the LGBT community who have "Gone With the Wind" attitudes towards the Confederacy and I think with education will give up the Confederacy.

UPDATE: 5/28/11

I have gotten three different posts published on the blog now. One documents neo-Confederacy in the conservative wing of the Anglican church in the United States.

Incidentally, if you see something of interest for this new blog let me know.

"How the Lost Cause poisoned our history books," by Joan Waugh.

Excellent article about President Grant at:

http://www.salon.com/books/history/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/05/01/joan_waugh_grant