Edited by author 05-21-2002 02:26 PM
Today was a little frustrating for me in the sense that, for a book that I enjoyed and thought gave me a lot to think about, I felt like I had remarkably little to say when it came time to fishbowl in class. Reading through the book, I guess I was having big time state and regional identity issues, since the Kentucky chapter turned out to be such a pleasant one. Of course my initial reaction to the portayal was, "oh great, we are not all big hicks . . . " (well, you get the idea), but I really wanted that not to be my initial gut reaction. I wondered if it was just a personal thing that I was so stuck on that chapter, as a particularly memorable one, but I was glad to see in class today that it didn't seem quite to be that way, since a lot of people mentioned that chapter. In closer scrutiny, I guess what I would have to say is that, while I wouldn't want to ever imagine something like the shooting happening, I can see how it could, in lots of places in KY (and probably lots of other places . . . as I got from what James had to say about Eastern NC, and other places). As far as people legitimizing their claim to the flag and what it means to them, I have often felt like KY and rural southern OH (yes, OH, that's even a "northern" state I'm talking about here) are two of the worst places, because unlike the "Cats of the Confederacy" or other groups in Horowitz's journey, their actions in putting out the flag, and what they say and do as far as beliefs very rarely seem to give though to one another, as the wife kept saying in the KY chapter, "it just made his truck look sharp." Most people in KY who are carrying around "their X" aren't doing so because they have 10 CS Veteran relatives way back in their family; I've had a lot of interesting convesations with my mom since I've been at Furman, because the concept of "old money" and lineage that people can be so concerned with down here don't even exist in eastern KY--there's coal money maybe, but not old money(Lexington and Louisville are another story, but I can guarentee Todd County is not a hotbed of generational confederate rememberers, as I think we all got from the striking portrayal of the people there . . . ). Compounding this miscommunication, then, is the fact that, unlike the AL and Miss. chapters, I don't think a lot of people are used to growing up racially separate, and it hasn't been my experience that people in the border state from which I hail separate themselves along racial lines in most any circumstances. So, like the kids who did the shooting, those who should be most offended by portrayals of the flag (and whatever it "represents") grow up right beside those who later take it on, and there is little or no communication about just how different those portrayals are, which leads to the sort of downward spiral which ended up with the shooting, I guess.

One other comment--when Dr. Benson mentioned today that Horowitz has been criticized, among other things, for his portrayal of the Kentucky section of the story, I have to wonder where exactly those criticisms came from. It was not my attempt to be one of those people who's gut reaction is to say "that's not what we really look like" when maybe some things an outside observer sees might be more true than we'd like to admit . . . however, I do think there's some creedence to the fact that, unlike other parts of the story, such as the crazy guy living in the trailor in Columbia with the cubbyholes of hate group literature, there wasn't much in the KY story to suggest that this could in any way be an isolated incident; that is the kind of criticism I think is more than valid, accusations against a blanket portrayal of a more complex set of associations.

And that's my diatribe for today, which probably wouldn't have been even nearly this concise, had I started in on this vein in class today . . .