Tag Archives: white supremacy

Longstreet, by Elizabeth Varon*****

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Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South is a biography that focuses on Longstreet’s military service in the American Civil War, and his political life thereafter. It’s meticulously researched, and the documentation is among the best I’ve seen anywhere. Students, Civil War buffs, and other interested readers won’t want to miss it.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Simon and Schuster for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

James Longstreet was one of the most able and respected generals for the Confederacy, serving as General Robert E. Lee’s right hand officer. Lee called him “my old war horse.” However, a disagreement between them about strategy at Gettysburg has made Longstreet a convenient scapegoat for Lost Cause types that accuse him of treachery, of deliberately sabotaging the deadly three day fight, and thereby causing the rebels to lose a key battle. Varon sets the record straight, and then goes on to explain what he did following Lee’s surrender and the Confederacy’s failure.

When I saw the subscript in the title, I wondered whether Varon might be overstating Longstreet’s postwar behavior in order to draw readers. Having read it, I can say that she has not overstated one single thing. This is a fair and balanced account. In essence, Longstreet recognized that, while the Confederate Army fought long and hard, it had in fact lost, and there was no good to be gained from further destruction at a time when reconciliation was more important. He basically said that having lost the war, the best thing for the South to do is recognize that the war is done, and proceed to obey the laws of the United States and rebuild the ruined Southern states.

I was unaware, before reading this biography, how extensively defeated Caucasian Southerners were inclined to sabotage the U.S. government. Guerilla actions were common, along with the passage of local laws that directly conflicted with Federal ones. Acts of terror against African American former slaves, as well as free Black Southerners, were frequent whenever Federal troops or other peacekeepers were not present to see to their safety and their rights. And though I had not realized it, Longstreet hailed from Louisiana, which seems to have had the ugliest resistance of all, with the White League and the Knights of the White Camelia wreaking havoc against Blacks that occupied governmental posts, became too prosperous for the liking of local Whites, or that in any way displeased any White person of any social standing. Longstreet did his best to shut that down; he failed.

Varon discusses the role played by Longstreet’s personal friendship with U.S. Grant, one which predated the war; he was best man at Grant’s wedding to Julia. She suggests that although the friendship was important, Longstreet was also acting on principle.

Varon doesn’t overstate her case, and is measured and fair in her assessment. She points to the occasions when Longstreet folded and cooperated with the local racists in that well-traveled road of U.S. politicians: I have to do this terrible thing in order to get elected, or I can’t do any good for the former slaves or anything else. This habit, both past and present, sets my teeth on edge, but she doesn’t defend it. She also points out that had the Confederacy won the war, Longstreet would have remained a Dixie racist for the rest of his life, more likely than not.

Those looking at the length of this book—over 500 pages—should be aware that about the last twenty-five percent of it is endnotes, with documentation, bibliography, etc. And while it may be more than a general reader that simply enjoys a good biography might appreciate, those interested in the Civil War should get this book and read it.

Those We Thought We Knew, by David Joy*****

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David Joy is a brilliant writer. His stories, set in the Carolina mountains that he calls home are resonant, visceral, and always about believable characters that hail from the hardscrabble working class. Those We Thought We Knew is his best. My thanks go to Net Galley and Putnam Penguin for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

Sylva, North Carolina is the sort of insular, homespun community that you don’t see much of anymore. Everybody knows everybody, not only by name but by family, religion, and a host of salient details that form their backstories. There’s not a lot of traffic in or out of Sylva, nestled as it is in a hollow of the mountains. Now, however, two newcomers have arrived, but they aren’t together. Surely not. One is a lowlife vagrant, a pencil-necked, mullet-headed, greasy drunk in an ’84 Caprice named William Dean Cawthorne. When the sheriff’s deputies roust him, one of them finds a small notebook that contains some surprising names; he also has a long, white robe in the car, and with it, a conical white head covering with eyeholes in it. Mr. Cawthorne, you see, is a recruiter for the Klan.

Toya Gardner comes to town at about the same time to visit her grandmother and work on her thesis. She’s a graduate student from Atlanta; she creates meaningful African-American sculptures and other art works. But when she finds the statue of the Confederate soldier in the town square, she is inspired to make a different artistic statement than she’d originally planned, and when she does, all hell breaks loose.

This searing story sees two terrible crimes unfold in sleepy little Sylva. The dynamics that exist between the county sheriff, the Sylva police force, and the local citizenry—particularly Toya’s family—are rich and complex, and they showcase Joy’s best character development to date. In the end, we must concede that alongside the horrors represented by overt white supremacists, the more chilling may be that which simmers below the surface of men and women that, yes, We Thought We Knew.

This is brave writing. Joy will no doubt be the subject of some unfriendly attention because of it. My hope is that it draws the accolades that it deserves from those that seek true social justice, and that it will inspire useful, critical introspection and conversation on the part of its readers.

Highly recommended.

Life of a Klansman, by Edward Ball*

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“White supremacy is not a marginal ideology. It is the early build of the country. It is a foundation on which the social edifice rises, bedrock of institutions. White supremacy also lies on the floor of our minds. Whiteness is not a deformation of thought, but a kind of thought itself…

‘The story that follows is not that a writer discovers a shameful family secret and turns to the public to confess it. The story here is that whiteness and its tribal nature are normal, everywhere, and seem as permanent as the sunrise.”

I read this book free and early; thanks go to Net Galley and Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux for the review copy.

Edward Ball writes about his ancestor, Constant Lecorgnes, known fondly within his family as “our Klansman.” The biography is noteworthy in that it is told without apology or moral judgement, as if Ball wants whites to feel okay about the racism, the rape, the exploitation, the murders, the terrorism that membership in the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, and any and all of the other white supremacist organizations have carried out, and will continue to carry out, in the United States. Relax, he tells us, it’s normal.

Well, let’s back up a moment. The “us” in the narrative is always Caucasians. It apparently hasn’t occurred to him that anybody else might read his book. In some ways, the “us” and the “our” used consistently and liberally throughout this biography are even worse than the explicit horrors detailed within its pages. It’s as if there is a huge, entitled club, and those that don’t belong are not invited to read. Further, it’s as if all white people are of a similar mind and share similar goals.

Not so much.

Ball won the National Book Award some years back for Slaves in the Family, a title currently adorning my shelves downstairs. I have begun it two or three times, but it didn’t hold me long enough for me to see what he does with it. And this book is the same, in that the late Lecorgnes is not particularly compelling as a subject, except within the framework of his terrorism. He was not, Ball tells us, a key player; he was just one more Caucasian foot soldier within the Klan. And so, the reading drones along, and then there are the key pronouns that capture my attention, those that give ownership to his terrible heritage, and a couple of paragraphs of the history of the period, particularly within Southern Louisiana, follow; lather, rinse, repeat.

As I read, I searched for accountability. As it happens, I have one of those relatives too; but my elders, though not beacons within the Civil Rights realm by a long shot, understood that such a membership brings shame upon us, and consequently I was not supposed to know about him at all. I overheard some words intended to be private, uttered quietly during a moment of profound grief following a sudden death. My mother spoke to someone—my father? I can’t recall—but she referred to her father’s horrifying activity, and I was so shocked that I left off lurking and spying, and burst into the room. I believe I was ten years old at the time. I was told that the man—who was never, and never will be referred to in the fond, familiar manner that Ball does—was not entirely right in the head. He truly believed he was helping to protect Southern Caucasian women, but he was wrong. It was awful, and now it’s over; let’s not talk about it anymore. In fact, this topic was so taboo that my own sister didn’t know. She is old now, and was shocked when I mentioned it last spring. She had no idea.

As I developed, I understood, from teachers and friends more enlightened than Mr. Ball, that the best way we can deal with ugly things in our background that we cannot change, is to contribute our own energies in the opposite direction. I’ve lived by it, and so I was waiting for Ball to say something similar, if not in the prologue, then surely somewhere near the end; but he never did. If Ball feels any duty whatsoever to balance the scales of his family’s terrible contribution, he doesn’t offer it up. There’s no call to action, no cry for social justice. Just the message that hey—it’s normal, and it’s fine.

I’m not sure if I want to read his other work anymore; but I know that what I cannot do, and will not do, is recommend this book to you.

We Were Eight Years in Power, by Ta-Nehisi Coates*****

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WeWereEightYears Ta-Nehisi Coates is pissed. He has a thing or two to say about the historical continuity of racism in the USA, and in this series of eight outstanding essays, he says it well. I read it free and early thanks to Net Galley and Random House, and I apologize for reviewing it so late; the length wasn’t a problem, but the heat was hard to take. That said, this is the best nonfiction civil rights book I have seen published in at least 20 years.

Coates started his writing career as a journalist, and became the civil rights columnist for The Atlantic. For those Caucasians that advise Black folk to just get over this nation’s ugly history because slavery has been gone for 150 years, he has a response. Pull up your socks and be ready. To Bill Cosby and Patrick Moynihan and anybody else that wants to blame the high poverty level on the demise of the Black family, look out. And for anyone that seriously believes that the election of Barack Obama to the presidency is proof that America’s institutional racism is dead and gone, step back a minute.

When Coates sets out to make a point, he comes armed for conflict. Not only is he searing eloquent, his research is hard to dispute. Regarding white folk that hold themselves blameless for what their ancestors have done, he wonders why we feel so free to claim our veterans every May and November and yet pretend that our white bedsheeted predecessors have nothing to do with us.

He has a point.

For those of us that are persuaded that the election of Donald Trump to the White House is more about economics and the unemployment of poor white people or the abrasive nature of Ms. Clinton than about white supremacy, Coates has some cogent arguments that run in the other direction. It’s enough to make you stop and think, and that’s why I am tardy with my review. I read in small bites, and then I had to reconsider some of my own conclusions. And although it stings, great writing does this. If we are paying attention, we have to realign some of our own thinking in order to meet the reality this book presents.

Coates is bemused by Caucasian readers that love his work. I understand his bewilderment; nobody likes to hear bad news about the characters of their ancestors, let alone about themselves. But if a thing needs doing, it needs to be done right, and in that respect, Coates is undeniable.

Highly recommended to everyone genuinely interested in civil rights in the USA.