Why is Southern History so Romanticized?

[The Genealogist]

34. Americans tend to romanticize a lot of history

Look at how the 1950s are romanticized as some kind of pure, innocent time. There are variations on the romanticization, of course. Women stayed home and cleaned house in high-heeled pumps, pearls and full skirts. Dad went off to work every morning cheerful and chipper. There was a Bible on every table, and everyone went to church every Sunday. Nobody got abortions or talked about sex. Yadda yadda yadda. The 1950s, of course, were not all that, as most anyone who has knowledge of the period will tell you. There were racial tensions. Jim Crow was still in full force. Even in northern states like Iowa, Ohio, Indiana there were sundown towns, where one would see signs saying things like "Don't like the sun set on you in Mayberry, N****er." Many people lived in poverty and struggled to get by, and were prayed upon by easy credit scams. Tailgunner Joe and others like him were getting artists, actors and others blacklisted and jailed in an anti-communistic orgy. People were in constant fear of being bombed by the USSR. But so much of this gets swept under the rug or whitewashed by those who want to "return to simpler times."

The same is true of the romanticized South. There are ugly, ugly truths and traditions in the South (as there are in other places too; the US South hardly has a monopoly on ugly truths and traditions) that get whitewashed and downplayed. Perhaps the truth is ugly enough in certain historical cases that it must be sugarcoated to be endured. The danger comes when the sugar coating allows us to forget the bitter truths and traditions that it masks.