Reading Reflection 5: Smith

These are the instructor instructions for the reading reflection ‘Write two pages on the Smith article assessing his project of confronting and changing the dominant narrative of the Confederacy in American history. What does this struggle tell us about power relations in American culture? What risks are involved in his research and what values drive his effort? What do you make of his analysis of how an understanding of the past affects our present and alters our sense of possibility for the future? How does his project inform your own? How do you view the importance of your own work and how your work could influence the future?’ .
It doesn’t have to be a summary of the reading, it was to be responses to the instructor’s questions that are in the instructions.

ANSWER

Reading Reflection 5: Clint Smith

The struggles of Clint Smith to confront and change the dominant narrative of the Confederacy indicates how power relations in America are still pegged on race. The white race has been dedicated to maintaining their power and advantage over other races in society. The nation that was built and founded on slavery provided white slave owners with numerous advantages that they could not easily relinquish. For the right to own fellow human beings, the Confederacy fought devastating Civil War with the Union yet the very reason why the conflict started is often distorted. The willingness to distort history to make an immoral course appear in good light has been the center of the power struggle in the United States for centuries.

As a black man seeking information in some of the whitest and most racially homogenous groups in the country, Clint Smith faces not only verbal abuse but also the possibility of losing his very life. While visiting the Sons of Confederate Veterans’ function, Clint Smith becomes weary of going to the function alone. He asks his white friend William to accompany him to at least give him confidence in a place that he expects to be isolated. Those who drive these narratives that the confederacy was justified because it fought a war to defend itself against northern aggression rather than to protect slavery are not the best people to hand out with if you are black. At one point in the function, Smith draws attention because of his race and a couple of attendees start looking at him. This even makes him stop taking his notes way of the potential implications that could cause to him. Clint Smith is driven by the desire to achieve racial justice and establish a truthful society that embraces history even when it is inconvenient.

Clint Smith documents the importance of having a truthful understanding of the past because it helps to set one for sober consideration of the future. Smith details how the distorted view of the Confederacy has driven generations upon generations of white people to feel victims of a war of their making. He further outlines how this deliberate distortion of truth to fit the views of a group of people can be very detrimental to the peace and progress of those oppressed by it. Stories of how confederate sympathizers gather to celebrate “a version of history that rests on well-documented falsehoods” prove just how the country cannot move forward to complete racial equality. Stories of people defending confederate statues like the if lives depend on them alienate an entire portion of the country that still feels disfranchised by the system of beliefs that these symbols represent.

This project informs me of key details of the Confederacy that I had not paid attention to. I am informed by this work that thousands of confederate sympathizers still gather to date in various parts of the country to celebrate their ancestors who fought for their right to own fellow human beings. I view my work as an important step in revealing the truth about the confederacy. This work should enable people to understand that the confederacy stood for enslaving black people and for the right to do so they fought a war with the union. This work should also help people understand that confederate monuments in public places intimidate those who were held bondage by the institution and slows the healing of the country and the achievement of racial equality.