The U S Army Will Consider Renaming Confederate Named Army Bases

[Think...]

Considering the high proportion of Blacks and Hispanics in the Services, that seems appropriate. How about Ft Colin Powell, Texas replacing Fort Hood?

The Army Will Consider Renaming Bases that Honor Confederate Leaders

Can't tell if you're being sarcastic.

Do you actually believe this is appropriate?

 

[iluvatar5150]

You younger folks can argue about name changes all you please; no one listens to us old folks, anyway. Yet you forget why the US Army named bases after Confederate officers in the first place: After the end of the US Civil War, we were one nation again. Those officers now despised were also Americans, and some had the respect of those they faced in battle. That their names are removed now says that the US no longer sees itself as a unified nation.

We were? Then why didn't we treat Black folks like they belonged?

No, the naming of those forts wasn't an attempt to unify the nation. Rather, it was an attempt to unify two separate factions of White folks within that nation, regardless of what such honors communicated to Black folks.

What's happening with the renaming is an attempt to unify the nation in a way that includes Black folks. Anyone who supports the original gesture in the sake of unity ought to doubly support the new gesture.

 

[Tuur]

We were? Then why didn't we treat Black folks like they belonged?

No, the naming of those forts wasn't an attempt to unify the nation. Rather, it was an attempt to unify two separate factions of White folks within that nation, regardless of what such honors communicated to Black folks.

What's happening with the renaming is an attempt to unify the nation in a way that includes Black folks. Anyone who supports the original gesture in the sake of unity ought to doubly support the new gesture.

And yet you're quite content to telling White Southerners they don't belong. What's this? Buyer's remorse? You spend 300,000 Yankees to prevent the South from forming their own country, and now you don't want it anymore?

 

[iluvatar5150]

And yet you're quite content to telling White Southerners they don't belong. What's this? Buyer's remorse? You spend 300,000 Yankees to prevent the South from forming their own country, and now you don't want it anymore?

Rejecting the honoring of military leaders from a defunct rebellion 160 years ago tells white southerners today that they don’t belong? How does that work?

For that to be true, either today’s white southerners would have to be confederate sympathizers or affiliation with the confederacy would have to be inherited (like skin color).

Are you alleging either of those?

 

[Tuur]

Rejecting the honoring of military leaders from a defunct rebellion 160 years ago tells white southerners today that they don’t belong? How does that work?

For that to be true, either today’s white southerners would have to be confederate sympathizers or affiliation with the confederacy would have to be inherited (like skin color).

Are you alleging either of those?

Why do you care about what I think? You've already made up your mind. The very questions you posed indicates that you do not get this.

The ones who were there did. Grant's men did, saluting Lee's at the surrender. Sherman did, who, as Secretary of War during the first time the US and Spain almost came to blows, refused N.B. Forrest's offer of service not because he was a former Confederate, but because the crises had passed. When the US and Spain did go to war, they had no problem accepting the service of former Confederates, including Joseph Wheeler. Wheeler was serving in Congress then, voted for the declaration of war with Spain, resigned from Congress and accepted a commission in the US Army and fought in the war he voted for. The Union and Confederate veterans who settled Fitzgerald, Georgia got it, naming streets after Union and Confederate figures and marching together in a single rank in the town's first Independence Day parade. As Nathan Bedford Forrest said at the Jubilee of Poll Bearers in Memphis in 1875: "We have but one flag, one country; let us stand together. We may differ in color, but not in sentiment."

Ah, but N.B. Forrest was a former Confederate officer, and by the reasoning you presented in this topic, his words must be discounted.

You may wish to ponder this. Or not. That is your business, not mine.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Why do you care about what I think? You've already made up your mind. The very questions you posed indicates that you do not get this.

The ones who were there did. Grant's men did, saluting Lee's at the surrender. Sherman did, who, as Secretary of War during the first time the US and Spain almost came to blows, refused N.B. Forrest's offer of service not because he was a former Confederate, but because the crises had passed. When the US and Spain did go to war, they had no problem accepting the service of former Confederates, including Joseph Wheeler. Wheeler was serving in Congress then, voted for the declaration of war with Spain, resigned from Congress and accepted a commission in the US Army and fought in the war he voted for. The Union and Confederate veterans who settled Fitzgerald, Georgia got it, naming streets after Union and Confederate figures and marching together in a single rank in the town's first Independence Day parade. As Nathan Bedford Forrest said at the Jubilee of Poll Bearers in Memphis in 1875: "We have but one flag, one country; let us stand together. We may differ in color, but not in sentiment."

Ah, but N.B. Forrest was a former Confederate officer, and by the reasoning you presented in this topic, his words must be discounted.

You may wish to ponder this. Or not. That is your business, not mine.

Holy cow. I think we’ve got a live one, folks. lol @ the prospect of Forrest speaking for the folks he tried to oppress, both as a Confederate general and as a leader of the Klan.

To answer your question, I don’t really care what you think, but you made a claim that didn’t make any sense to me, so I figured I’d ask you what you were talking about before proclaiming it nonsense. It’s one thing to try to promote unity among two groups who were formerly at war with each other; it’s another thing to maintain those measures after those individuals are long dead. You’ve yet to explain how rejecting confederate symbols today constitutes rejecting White Southerners today unless those White Southerners are either Confederate sympathizers or Confederates by birth. Otherwise, why would those White Southerners identify with those Confederate generals at all?