S5: Civil Dialogue

E1: If I Can’t Celebrate my (White) History Why Should I Remember Your (Black) History?

In this new season of blogs, I will be writing about something that has touched every area of American culture: civil dialogue, or rather, the lack of it.

 What is civil dialogue?

 It is a structured format of communication between two or more parties towards building bridges between opposing views. Civil dialogue is then extended to the broader audience who are encouraged to respond with their own opinions and questions to assist in the bridge building.

 Therefore, civil dialogue is intelligent, but not in the academic sense. More than anything, it encourages respect for the person by employing thoughtful and courteous vernacular. It could be said that civil dialogue also involves argumentation because any idea, opinion, theory, action, or policy needs supporting logically and reasonably to determine the degree of truth in it. Without argumentation, dialogue is reduced to the fuel of unsupported emotion that turns up the volume of speaking while turning down the ability to listen.

 When this happens, sweeping statements like, “Everyone thinks” “People always say” “Everyone agrees with me” and even “I heard it on good authority from a friend” become weaponized phrases but carry no persuasive ability in civil dialogue. Quite often such phrases lead to verbal chaos where individuals become self-appointed representatives of their culture, gender, political view, religion, or ethnicity just to name a few. 

The decline of civil dialogue and the decaying use of argumentation are frequently observed in the rhetoric of network news. Today, we can assume CNN has a Democrat spin and FOX has a Republican spin. It was not that long ago where Walter Cronkite (CBN) would simply read the news without adding his own spin. Those days are gone, at least for now.

 The decline of argumentation can also be extended to higher education, political parties, social media, religious affiliations, and even at the family dinner table. Who would have thought that families intentionally un-invite loved one’s to Thanksgiving because of opposing views?

Well, let’s challenge that.

Here’s a question that one of my colleagues asked in order to welcome intelligent civil dialogue with a group of Black Lives Matter supporters, “If I can’t celebrate my (white) heritage, why should I remember your (black) history?” The question deals with two dimensions of culture that come into tension: heritage and history. And, ironically, both are intertwined in such a way they cannot be separated. I will qualify this shortly.   

It may sound oversimplified, but what is meant by these cultural dimensions: heritage and history? If civil dialogue is to take place, definitions are crucial even if they appear obvious.

So how do we define heritage?

A common understanding of heritage refers to the background of an individual or community that includes any inherited property or goods. For example, on a large-scale Native Americans would decry the land of the United States of America is their heritage, in part or as a whole. On a much smaller scale, a Dutch family may claim a certain farm in Midwest America has been in their family for many generations. So, heritage is foremost something tangible. It is not something that “he said, “she said” “we said” or “they said”. It is important to remember that property and goods are remembered through symbols, stories (both honorable and terrible), certain characters and so on.     

So, how do we define history?

It refers to the study of past events as they particularly relate to human affairs. In terms of religion, Roman Catholics would view church history from a Catholic perspective, whereas non-Catholics would see the Protestant Reformation of 1517 as the lens for viewing all church history. As a result, Catholics and Protestants tend to interpret history differently. So, the outcome of who studies what and why can appear like a glorious contradiction. However, if we introduce good civil dialogue where real argumentation takes place, the only contradiction that emerges is where opposing opinion cannot be supported with truth. But that’s the point.

I know what you are thinking, “Isn’t truth relative?” I’ll get to that shortly.  

Regarding church history, I like what Catholic theologian Gary Macy wrote, “Before the reformation, Christians were simply Christians - eastern and western Christians sometimes, but mostly simply Christians.”[1] I like it because Macy is Catholic, and yet, he does not impose Catholicism into his view of church history. Macy’s statement is an example of civil dialogue that argues a more unified Christian Church existed in the past compared to the multiple church denominations we have today. Nevertheless, theologian and apologist Timothy Keller argues that contemporary New York is so diverse it needs multiple church denominations to reach all the people. Macy and Keller do not contradict each other, they add perspective towards building bridges between the usefulness of church denominations and the need for unity, at least on some common level.   

Can you see why a definition of heritage and history is needed for civil dialogue to take place? Argumentation needs it to deliver an outcome depending on who is discussing what.   

Let’s get back to Black Lives Matter. What heritage is being celebrated and what history is being remembered, and why do they clash? Among many examples, heritage has been (as is) celebrated contextualized in the Confederacy and its cultural symbols. The southern states of America view their property and goods with their accompanying symbols as an emblem of regional heritage and pride; that is, until 2015. 

On June 17, 2015 nine African Americans were killed at their church in Charleston, South Carolina by a white man. This terrible massacre sparked a national movement to remove Confederate flags, monuments, and other symbols from the public square. The movement also wanted to rename roads, schools, parks and other municipal works that point to the heritage of the Confederacy, something that the southern states view as an emblem of pride.

Look at some of the arguments. Some will argue that southern pride is exclusively white filled with terrible stories of slavery, while other black communities reflect fondly on the richness of black history and what emerged from it that led to the Civil Rights Movement.

Look at the action that has been taken to date. The current figures can be ambiguous (are they Confederate or not?), but there are 1,861 Confederate symbols in some form in the southern states. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, 114 have been removed.

Among all the Confederate symbols, the flag is a significant one.

Prior to the horror of 2015, General Robert Lee’s Confederate flag from the Army of North Virginia was propelled into the cultural heights of southern heritage and pride. Ironically, the iconic 1969 Dodge Charger used in the satirical TV show The Dukes of Hazard (1979-1985) was called by his name: General Lee. If you recall, the Confederate flag was displayed on the exterior of the car roof.

Admittedly, white supremacists like the Ku Klux Klan adopted the Confederate flag along with other neo-Nazi fraction groups. As divisive as these fringe groups are, their use of the Confederate flag was tolerated, even excused. Then 2015 happened. Former presidential candidate, Mitt Romney insisted that all five states that flew the Confederate flag remove it along with any government seal that carried the same emblem. He managed to get over 400,000 people to sign a petition to this effect. However, Florida, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, and Louisiana are protected by the First Amendment, and still fly the Confederate flag.

So, some emblems of cultural significance have been removed, while others have not. The demands of some have not been fully met probably because heritage and history are intertwined; something I mentioned earlier.

How Black Lives Matter view the Confederate flag is different than how white people in the southern states view it. Removing it completely impacts the heritage of white people and the history of black people. In short, if Black Lives Matter have their way over the Confederate flag, they erase part of their own history. We need a unified view of heritage and history that carried with it the principle that Gary Macy employed in his view of church history.

I also mentioned earlier that people tend to default to an “all truth is relative” posture, especially when intelligence gives way to emotion. So, the statement that all truth is relative is more of a deconstructive device that un-builds the bridge between opposing views. If truth is relative, then all opinion can be validated.

So, let’s put the idea of validating truth to the test. Should Confederate symbols of cultural heritage be removed from the public square?

Well, Frederick Douglas, the American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman objected to honoring the Confederates immediately after the Civil War (1861-1865). He famously wrote, “it would seem…that the soldier who kills the most men in battle, even in a bad cause, is the greatest Christian, and entitled to the highest place in heaven.”[2]

Here, we discover an important truth. Removing Confederate symbols did not originate with Black Lives Matter, but over 130 years ago. If the debate has endured this long, what arguments became persuasive enough to honor the Confederacy, and once displayed, to not remove them? What were people saying and why? How has that opinion changed? Were the events of June 17, 2015 and what followed a cataclysmic event or something else? These, and more, are questions that need to be asked in civil dialogue.

One thing is for sure, removing Confederate emblems of heritage by rioting and violence is not the intelligence of civil dialogue. For the record, I cannot support actions like this.

So, the purpose of this blog was not to resolve the argument about Confederate symbols, but rather, introduce the subject for a series of blogs that will follow.

My colleague asked the question, “If I can’t celebrate my (white) heritage, why should I remember your (black) history?” The logic of this blog assumes white heritage and black history go hand-in-hand. Cutting out one is to eradicate the other.

In the next blog, I will approach civil dialogue in Scripture: how it was used, who used it, and what was the outcome.       

 

[1] Macy, Gary. 2005. The Banquet’s Wisdom: A Short History of the Theologies of the Lord’s Supper. Akron, OH: OSL Publications. Page 9-10. 

 

[2] Douglas, Frederick. 1991. Frederick Douglas’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee. Louisiana State University Press. Page 229.