A question for people in the South.

[pnwmom]

38. I think part of the reason for the disconnect and hurt feelings

between northern and southern DUers is that when northerners visit the south, it's often a shock to see so many visible signs honoring the confederacy and racist figures. So we may make false assumptions about the people who are living there. If they don't agree with these people being honored, why aren't they making a fuss?

From the responses here, it sounds like liberal southerners, at least white ones, basically ignore this stuff in order to peacefully coexist. But what does that do to African Americans living in the south? What is just background noise to white southerners might be a continuing slap in the face to black people. When do we stop honoring people who never should have been honored?


http://web.utk.edu/~dalderma/mlkstreet/mlkschools_urbangeog.pdf

SCHOOL NAMES AS CULTURAL ARENAS: THE NAMING OF U.S. PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.1

Derek H. Alderman2 Department of Geography East Carolina University
Schools play an important role in shaping the collective memory and historical identity of their students and the attendant community. While accomplished directly through school curriculum development and the teaching of history per se, student conceptions of the past are also shaped indirectly through the commemorative activities and symbols woven into the everyday fabric of the school (e.g., school holidays, programs, bulletin boards). The naming of schools after historical figures is a subtle yet powerful way of communicating “the accomplishments of previous generations” and defining a set of folk heroes (Goldstein, 1978, p. 119). By merging history and the physical environment, place names and other spatial commemorations work to reify certain visions of the past, giving them legitimacy and identification with the natural order of things (Azarayahu, 1996).