I've traveled extensively in the US, including the South. I like to go on guided tours of historic sites. In the last 10 years or so, I've gone on a tour of a 19th-century plantation near New Orleans, a paddleboat trip downriver from Vicksburg, a US Park Service-led boat ride out to the old Confederate fort on Mobile Bay, and a bus tour of New Orleans.
All of those tours were a lot of fun as well as informative. However, a few rather peculiar things kept recurring, having mostly to do with the narration of the tour guides and how things were presented:
1. The narrators kept referring to "The War of Northern Aggression." (a)
2. The narrators referred to Robert E. Lee with fulsome, flowery praise ("our great, beloved General Robert E. Lee") (b)
3. Slavery was almost never mentioned, even though these tours included many antebellum sites. (c)
4. Things were often sanitized. For instance, the slave quarters at the plantation and the old slave market in New Orleans were cleaned up and rebuilt so that they looked much more attractive than they ever would have been in real life. (d)
(a) The South started the Civil War.
(b) Lee was a brilliant general; he was also a traitor, and tens of thousands of Americans died as a direct result of his decision to desert from the Federal army and join the Confederacy.
(c) There is no rational way to discuss the history of the South without mentioning slavery.
(d) Plantation tours are all about "ooh, look at the pretty trees and houses," but they are also tours of places where millions of people suffered and died. They should be treated solemnly as memorial sites.
I've always wondered why the South remains so racist and yes, ignorant after all this time. The sad answer seems to be that it's self-perpetuating. Southern whites don't want to face their history, and Southern leaders assist by sanitizing or ignoring it. I don't know how Southern history is taught in schools, but I'll bet that it's taught, um, "interestingly."
And of course, everyone's aware of all the controversies re Confederate flags and monuments (such as statues of Nathaniel Bedford Forrest, perpetrator of the Fort Pillow massacre). It seems as if many Southerners regard the era of slavery as "the good old days," when the black people knew their place, and long for a return to those times. And of course, many are very fine people (I can't recall exactly who said that, but it'll come to me, I'm sure).
