Confessions of a White Southerner

by

As I sit in my office at the United Methodist Building June 26 I can hear in my right ear people singing as they celebrate the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to allow gay marriage to become the law of the land in all 50 states.

In my left ear, I can hear a TV in another office showing the funeral service of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, one of the nine victims of the massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C.

Both in the same day, happening at the same time.

The world is moving quickly. Life is changing. And who would believe that South Carolina is even considering removing the Confederate flag from a memorial in front of its Capitol Building?

15 years ago

I was serving as a pastor in South Carolina in 2000 when a debate about removing the Confederate flag was going on — 15 years ago! I was among the 46,000 — the largest political protest in the history of the state — who wanted the flag removed from the top of the South Carolina statehouse.

I was proud to be among those who were ‘people of faith for change.’

I heard South Carolina United Methodist Bishop J. Lawrence McCleskey call for the flag to come down. I was proud to be among those who were “people of faith for change.”

The Confederate flag is offensive. But I have trouble equating it to the Nazi swastika as some are doing. The Confederate flag is a symbol of hate, but for me it is still a bit complicated.

Born in 1956, I grew up in the South. We lived in Tennessee and Georgia. Even 100 years after the surrender of General Lee at Appomattox, the “War Between the States” was still going on as I grew up. We children kept it alive.

We loved playing war. It was our favorite activity. We would rather fight than eat. And none of us wanted to be the Yankees. This role fell to the very young who hardly knew any better.

Once you got to be a certain age you simply would go home before you played a Yankee. Being a rebel was a matter of pride: Southern pride.

Southern version of history

As I grew older I began to understand more what this was about. All of us learned a particular version of history that had a peculiar Southern spin. Everyone needs their heroes and, in the South, the greatest of these is Jesus, and then there’s Robert E. Lee. He was close to perfect. Never received one demerit the entire time he was at West Point. Lincoln begged him to assume command of the Union Army, but Lee refused to turn his back on Virginia.

All of this was handed down to me.

State’s Rights was the central question, not slavery. The Southern states were ones invaded, invaded by the armies sent from the North. Southerners, we were told, fought harder and often won despite the North having every economic advantage and more soldiers.

The Southern soldiers were fighting to protect their homeland and their families. The Yankees were invaders. We were victims.

All of this was handed down to me, just as it had been handed down to those who came before me, from generation to generation.

Icons of the South

A couple of years ago I was on a trip with a number of interns working at the General Board of Church & Society. We were returning from a visit to New York City. I was telling those in the van about growing up in the South. I said one way you can tell a true Southerner: Ask them if they know the name of Robert E. Lee’s horse.

One of the interns, an African American from Mississippi, said: “I believe that would be Traveller.”

This is how deep our Southern roots go. The war may be waning, but it’s not over yet.

I remember growing up with icons of Southern heritage, not just the Rebel flag. I remember a cartoon character, I think he was called “Johnny Reb.” He was drawn as an old man, short and stocky, dressed in the grey uniform of the Confederacy with his sword held high. He was shouting, “Hell no, I’ll never forget!”

For “young’uns,” this was a strong message: To be a loyal Southerner means we will never forget what the Yankees have done to the South, the brutality of the war, the massive loss of life, the burning of cities, and then, after the war, the period called “reconstruction.”

‘Birth of a Nation’

Reconstruction, that’s when all the Yankee “carpetbaggers” came to the South to help the “Negros” up, and put the white people down. Growing up, I had never heard of the movie “Birth of a Nation,” but I knew full well the horrors it portrayed: black people taking control of the statehouses, running wild in the streets, threatening the purity of young white maidens in distress.

Of course, in such a chaotic world, the Ku Klux Klan makes sense. It is shocking in retrospect that President Woodrow Wilson, a Virginian, actually hosted a showing of this movie to friends in the White House, and afterward praised it.

These fears and prejudices were part of my life. For many young Southern whites today they still have resonance. Even today, many still feel like they are the victims. They trace their problems back to the transformation of their world that came when the South lost the war.

Even in the early 1960s, boys in my neighborhood knew how to make a proper hangman’s noose, and were happy to teach younger boys the secrets of this important skill.

God help me, this is part of my heritage. As hard as it is to admit it, it is true.

Warped thinking challenged

As I grew older, I began to learn more. God sent people into my life who began to challenge some of this warped thinking. Times were changing, we were living through a cultural transformation: Schools were being integrated; the Voting Rights Bill passed; President Johnson signed legislation guaranteeing equal rights for all people, regardless of color. And, eventually, the states began to adjust to a new reality that started filtering down to the local level.

My parents sided with the future. They helped my siblings and me to have courage to live for the future as well. But it was not easy.

Church was also a place where I found messages of love and inclusion that stood against a culture driven by anger and fear. Singing “red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in His sight” was, in many ways, a counter-cultural protest song. Believe it or not

And yet church was also a place where old customs were dying hard. I had become very sensitive to any use of the N-word. My parents never used it. Other relatives did, and it disturbed me greatly.

Racist joke in church

You can imagine my shock when one of the leaders of my church standing behind the pulpit told a racist joke using the N-word. No one said a thing about it. Many just laughed. It was so much the thing to do.

It was done every day in white society, but not by me, not by my family. I expected more from my church.

Yet, the same church, despite its failings, was also speaking up for justice. Celebrating stories of blacks and whites working together. Declaring itself on the side of the Bible, which clearly taught that God loves all people regardless of color, and we as followers of Jesus ought to do the same.

I know Martin Luther King Jr. grew weary with the white churches and their timidity in the face of injustice. Despite their failures, though, the good news of God’s love was still getting out, still changing hearts, even of young boys who had been nurtured in fear and hate.

Saddened and amazed

That is why I must be both saddened and amazed today. My heart is broken because there are still young people being molded by messages of victimhood, white supremacy and hate. But I also am amazed, amazed that Southern politicians — senators, governors, so many others — are willing to take a stand for the future: to recognize the truth that we must move on, we cannot live in the past and be fully a part of the present.

And beyond that, they are willing to take stands that, even in the 21st century, can be risky. God bless them. Politicians risking the wrath of voters is not an everyday occurrence.

Still, it is not enough. Removing symbols is not enough. Moving the Rebel flag to the museum is not enough. We also have to let God work, to truly cleanse our hardened hearts, to give us courage to be honest in our confessions.

As white Southerners, the symbols are only the outward sign, our hearts need to be cleansed as well. Cleansed of all the warped messages we have received over and over, day in and day out, in thousands of ways big and small.

We are not the victims. White Southerners may have suffered during the years of reconstruction, but our suffering can never compare with the centuries of suffering endured by slaves and their ancestors. We are not the victims, we were the benefactors.

And in so many ways we still are. White privilege is still a reality. Until we are honest with ourselves about who we are and who we have been, we are never going to be able to move on. Confession, honest confession, is good for the soul.

The truth will set us free.

The Rev. Dr. Clayton Childers is Director of Annual Conference Relations at the General Board of Church & Society. He also works with the United Methodist Imagine No Malaria campaign as Director of Advocacy. This article is reprinted with permission from the General Board of Church & Society website.