Next time a conservative white southerner talks about southern heritage...

you should respond,

"Oh, you must be Democrat! It was Republicans who burned Atlanta. It was Republicans who let New Orleans drown and it was Republicans who humiliated the South with military occupation after the War Between the States. It was FDR's New Deal programs that brought irrigation, electrical power and economic development to the poorest parts of the south too."

i say this as a non-conservative white southerner with plenty of familial history in the South. generally, when people like you mentioned talk about "heritage" or "it's heritage not hate", they've only absorbed the specifics of the history that appeal to their isolated argument. you rarely or never hear about the economic issues or larger political issues beyond the glaring scapegoat of slavery. what i would say if i bothered to engage is that apparently their "heritage" didn't involve passing on the understanding of nuance or shades between black and white (I would have said gray, but then you have that blue/gray thing).

in a similar fashion, but on the opposite side, you have people who assume that all people from a certain region fit a set demographic and discriminate against them (because apparently discrimination is only REALLY bad when it's against you) OR you find people who decide that their POV is the only one that can possibly be correct (this is not related, but the example that comes to mind are the people who rewrite history backwards so that every broken cross prior to the Nazi's had meaning as a political symbol and is somehow related to things that had not happened yet)


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on a happier note: at least the weather is nice here in NC today.

But the economic issues involved were intrinsically tied to slavery. That fact is well-documented and is specifically supported by the Articles of Secession of the various Southern states.

Perhaps I'm misinterpeting your post, however, so I'll just end this here.

1. you're probably misinterpreting my post. walking around my local wal mart, county fair or other event, i could find plenty of people who could spout about heritage, but none/few would could articulate the larger issues of the war. (note: i don't view ignorance as a Southern trait, it's a common trait many places on earth...pick any walmart and ask 20 people about iraq)

2. yes, slavery was tied to economic issues, which i won't even try to argue against, since i agree with it.

should be the first to defend the rebuilding of New Orleans. I'm still waiting for the outcry from our Southern citizens that a congressman from Illinois (Land of Lincoln) suggested that New Orleans be bulldozed. No conversation about the identity of the South can occur without New Orleans.