{"id":91,"date":"2017-08-19T22:40:49","date_gmt":"2017-08-19T22:40:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theartfulwren.blog\/?p=91"},"modified":"2017-08-19T22:40:49","modified_gmt":"2017-08-19T22:40:49","slug":"one-southerners-perspective-new-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theartfulwren.blog\/index.php\/2017\/08\/19\/one-southerners-perspective-new-art\/","title":{"rendered":"one southerner’s perspective + new art"},"content":{"rendered":"

It took me a week to write this blog. \u00a0I’ve been wanting to write it for quite some time, but I didn’t expect it to come so soon after my blog’s launch.<\/p>\n

First let me say this: \u00a0White supremacy is unequivocally evil and should have no place in the United States of America. \u00a0There is no way to defend it if you are a decent human being.<\/p>\n

I grew up in Georgia; I lived here until I was 20, and on and off ever since. \u00a0Southerners are invested in the mythological history of place like no other place I’ve lived. It is said that the victor writes history, but the South did pretty well at writing and keeping its own after the Civil War. Stories were told to me as a kid: the hiding of silver candlesticks in the well so that union soldiers wouldn’t find them, the desecration of churches by yankee soldiers, and the courageous rebel soldiers fighting for their homeland. I took them all as history. Of course, I was a kid only a few generations removed from a slaveholder on my father’s side; you can see how the narrative was skewed.<\/p>\n

Pride in family history was fed to me in stories before I even learned to walk from my father and his mother. \u00a0Along with Daniel Boone<\/a> and Elijah Clarke<\/a>, I was supposed to be proud of the great plantation my forebears — the Callaways — owned near Washington, GA. \u00a0My brother, cousins, and I were taken a couple of times a summer as kids to Stone Mountain Park’s Laser Show.<\/a> The show depicted the Confederate generals carved on the side of the granite mountain as heroic in the face of defeat, complete with fireworks and Elvis’ An American Trilogy (it might be as bizarre as it sounds to those who didn’t grow up with it).<\/p>\n

Point is, I’m very well-steeped in the narrative that some white folks in the South have created for themselves. \u00a0I get it. \u00a0Cultures demand hero stories, and we fashion them out of our history and mythology. \u00a0The problem is the heroes that have been fashioned out of Confederates are heroes that committed treason and fought to uphold the violent economy of slavery<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We have to quit with the story that focuses solely on us, and listen to the stories told by people of color in the South. \u00a0That history includes slavery, three versions of the KKK, Jim Crow laws, and institutional racism. \u00a0The South has a rich, complex and sometimes painful history; don’t flatten it by refusing to listen to other perspectives on it.<\/p>\n

And the Confederate monuments? \u00a0Take them down and put them in museums. \u00a0Because it isn’t the statues themselves, necessarily, that cause the hurt, and of course we shouldn’t “erase history”; it is their place of honor in public places and our idolatry of them that do the hurting. Find new heroes to replace them, ones<\/a> that<\/a> fought<\/a>\u00a0against<\/a>\u00a0white supremacy<\/span>, and put them in places of honor instead. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If we truly love and have pride in the land on which we live, we should develop an understanding that encourages us to hold space for stories other than our own, stories of all the residents of the land. \u00a0You were not the first to live here. Indigenous, colonizers, enslaved and their descendants — who were they and what are their perspectives on historic events? On recent events? \u00a0There’s a larger story here. \u00a0I find that exciting.<\/p>\n

I made another set of bird watercolors. \u00a0Here are the other two.<\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It took me a week to write this blog. \u00a0I’ve been wanting to write it for quite some time, but I didn’t expect it to come so soon after my blog’s launch. First let me say this: \u00a0White supremacy is unequivocally evil and should have …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":98,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/theartfulwren.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/img_6952.jpg?fit=1080%2C1080&ssl=1","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p90R70-1t","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":57,"url":"https:\/\/theartfulwren.blog\/index.php\/2017\/08\/03\/why-a-blog\/","url_meta":{"origin":91,"position":0},"title":"Why a blog?","date":"August 3, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I paint, and I enjoy painting, but I'd like a little more dialogue with the world than selling my art. I'm an environmental educator in coastal Georgia. \u00a0I grew up here, and earned a BS in Biology from AASU in Savannah. \u00a0I've spent a lot of my life being educated\/educating\u2026","rel":"nofollow","context":"With 1 comment","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/theartfulwren.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/img_6739.jpg?fit=1200%2C1194&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":81,"url":"https:\/\/theartfulwren.blog\/index.php\/2017\/08\/06\/a-wren-in-the-hand\/","url_meta":{"origin":91,"position":1},"title":"a wren in the hand. . .","date":"August 6, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The wren, in hand, is a squirmy, slippery beastie. \u00a0Something about it allows it to slip out of even the most experienced bird bander's grasp. \u00a0It's happened to anybody that works with wrens: you think you have a good hold on the bird, and then the bird is flying off.\u2026","rel":"nofollow","context":"In "art"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/theartfulwren.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/img_6771.jpg?fit=1080%2C1080&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theartfulwren.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theartfulwren.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theartfulwren.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theartfulwren.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theartfulwren.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/theartfulwren.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110,"href":"https:\/\/theartfulwren.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions\/110"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theartfulwren.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theartfulwren.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theartfulwren.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theartfulwren.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}