What’s the Difference Between ‘Racism’ and ‘Heritage?'

Racism: the unfair treatment of people who belong to a different race; violent behavior towards them.

Heritage: something transmitted by or acquired from a predecessor: legacy, inheritance.

Some people try to differentiate between racism and heritage, implying that if something can be claimed as heritage, it isn’t racist. That can be true, but in almost every case where heritage is used as an excuse that a thing isn’t racist, and it’s damn sure racist.

In America, this mostly comes up when discussing our history of enslavement and the era after the Civil War, particularly in the South. There is a history that is definitely racist and a heritage that tries to justify the same.

Racism isn’t inherited; it is learned. Even enslaved children and those of their owners played together until they were taught their respective places. The “heritage” many Southerners (along with Americans all across the nation) claim as their culture is also racist, and we shouldn’t pretend it isn’t.

Many statues and monuments created for Confederate soldiers and traitors, some called war heroes, weren’t constructed until long after the Civil War. The vast majority were erected between 1890–1950, coinciding precisely with the largest spurt of Jim Crow laws. It was part of the “Lost Cause movement” designed to make the Confederacy the heroes fighting for their way of life instead of the right to oppress others. It can be claimed as heritage, but little about it wasn’t racist.

I find myself in discussions with those who claim the Civil War wasn’t about enslavement but “state’s rights.” They say that with a straight face, as if state’s rights weren’t all about slavery, as was much of the Constitution. States’ rights have almost always been used in the context of oppressed people instead of protection from the federal government. The current battle over abortion sounds no different than the discussion of whether to allow enslavement. Citizens of many of the same states that fought for slavery now have fewer rights than people in other parts of the nation. Maybe it’s heritage, after all?

The racism deniers point to the small percentage of Southerners that owned slaves as opposed to the number that fought in the war. In their notices of secession, the states told us exactly why they were leaving the Union. Here are portions of the documents from several states telling us the war was about slavery. It was racism, not heritage:

South Carolina

A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. . . .

Mississippi

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

Florida

“At the South, and with our People of course, slavery is the element of all value, and a destruction of that destroys all that is property.”

Alabama

Whereas, the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to the offices of president and vice-president of the United States of America, by a sectional party, avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions and to the peace and security of the people of the State of Alabama, preceded by many and dangerous infractions of the constitution of the United States by many of the States and people of the Northern section, is a political wrong of so insulting and menacing a character as to justify the people of the State of Alabama in the adoption of prompt and decided measures for their future peace and security

Virginia

The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention, on the twenty-fifth day of June in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under the said Constitution, were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression; and the Federal Government having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slaveholding States.

Georgia

The people of Georgia, after an equally full and fair and deliberate hearing of the case, have declared with equal firmness that they shall not rule over them. A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia. The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. While it attracts to itself by its creed the scattered advocates of exploded political heresies, of condemned theories in political economy, the advocates of commercial restrictions, of protection, of special privileges, of waste and corruption in the administration of Government, anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose. By anti-slavery it is made a power in the state. The question of slavery was the great difficulty in the way of the formation of the Constitution. While the subordination and the political and social inequality of the African race was fully conceded by all, it was plainly apparent that slavery would soon disappear from what are now the non-slave-holding States of the original thirteen. The opposition to slavery was then, as now, general in those States and the Constitution was made with direct reference to that fact. But a distinct abolition party was not formed in the United States for more than half a century after the Government went into operation.

I think we can safely establish that the rationale for the Civil War was protecting the institution of slavery. That only a tiny portion of people actually owned slaves is of no matter. A relatively small portion of people today want no background checks on gun purchases or assault weapons in any home, yet the minority prevailed. The “heritage” claimed as the right by which people wave their Confederate flags in the faces of those who know better is blatantly racist. It may not be illegal, but is it moral? Is it right?

Today, several Southern states celebrate the Confederacy as official state holidays. Confederate Decoration Day, Robert E. Lee Day, and Jefferson Davis’s birthday. It may be heritage to commemorate this particular past, but it’s also racist. Those pretending it isn’t either know better or are obtuse. Whenever I see a white pickup truck with a Confederate flag and a gun rack. I don’t applaud the driver for their heritage. I mark them as a racist and govern myself accordingly.

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This post was previously published on The Polis.

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