The blunt language of history

Georgia seceded from the Union in January 1861, and spelled out the reasons with a statement that's 3,318 words long, including 35 references to "slave" and "slavery." Slavery is the reason Georgia left to join the Confederate States of America - and the Georgians of that era made no bones about it. The statement is refreshingly - and astonishingly - free of euphemisms such as "states' rights." It is devoted to the purported right of white people to own black people. It retains the power to shock.

I read the document because of what Georgia Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland said about the Confederate battle flag. "When you're putting a flag on someone's grave, to me, I think it's a little different than being racist," he said. He added that "the majority of people that actually died in the Civil War on the Confederate side did not own slaves. These were people that were fighting for their states. I don't think they had even any thoughts about slavery."

Maybe so. But I don't think the average German soldier in World War II gave much thought to Jews. Yet he was fighting for a regime that was determined to kill every last Jew anywhere in the world. What the average soldier thought or felt is immaterial. It is what he was willing to do that mattered.

I mention the Holocaust not because I think it and American slavery are the same - although they have racism in common - but because I am forever stunned when anyone explicitly embraces either one. One of the enduring surprises of reading Holocaust literature is to come across passages in which Hitler or some other Nazi leader admits to a quite mad fear and loathing of Jews - as in Hitler's frequent assertions, even in conversation, that the Jews started the war and were so powerful that Germany was fighting them for its very existence. I always half expect that he will admit he's just scapegoating, pandering to the masses.

That same feeling of shock comes over me when I read documents such as the Georgia secession statement. For some reason, the bluntness of the language about slavery - the almost incomprehensible racism - comes with a jolt. It is hard for us - for me, anyway - to appreciate that Americans once thought that way and were so invested in their bigotry that they were willing to die for it.

They had, in fact, erected a vast and complex social structure based on human bondage. Still, it takes some effort to gaze on a portrait of Robert E. Lee - that kindly visage, those clear blue eyes, the military bearing - and see not just a slaveholder of convenience, but someone who chose to turn traitor in order to retain a deeply inhumane system. (What of his name on countless schools, roads and government installations? I leave that for another column.)

It takes a willful disregard of history to appreciate how white Southerners could look at the ol' Confederate battle flag and see states' rights or a way of life or a tradition - and not one human being whipping another, which was a common occurrence. It makes you respect the methodical way the Germans have confronted their own history. Their history is hardly History. It is grandpa's shame.

And I can fathom - but still denounce - the reluctance of Japan to fully own up to its own past. It started World War II. It attacked Pearl Harbor and earlier invaded China, ravaged the country, "raped" Nanking, slaughtered civilians, mistreated and murdered POWs, and, just to finish the sentence, subjected American and other prisoners to hideous medical procedures that once known can never be forgotten. The face in history's mirror can be ugly indeed.

I am glad to see the Confederate battle flag gone from a place of honor at the South Carolina state capitol. Yet, in a way, I will miss it. It served to remind us all that we Americans were hardly morally superior to other peoples, that the God who created all men equal also created the asterisk, that we enslaved black people and murdered "red" people and incarcerated "yellow" people and then turned on a fog machine of lies to make it all seem somehow innocent. So, appropriately and tardily, the battle flag has been taken down. It has been exiled to a museum, where it will be harder to see - and so, I fear, will truth itself.

Richard Cohen's email address is cohenr@washpost.com

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