Confederate history is about race

By Grace Elizabeth Hale, Special to CNN

Editor's note: Grace Elizabeth Hale is an associate professor of history and American studies at the University of Virginia and author of "Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940 (Vintage, 1999)" and the forthcoming book "A Nation of Outsiders: How the White Middle-Class Fell in Love with Rebellion in Postwar America," to be published this year by Oxford University Press.

(CNN) -- It has been eight years since people in my state of Virginia got a chance to debate the meaning of the Civil War in front of the nation, and the comments posted on CNN and other news Web sites suggest our passion over the topic has not dimmed.

If Governor Bob McDonnell wants his fellow Virginians to think deeply about "how our history has led to our present," then his declaration of April as Confederate History Month has accomplished this goal, if not exactly in the manner he intended.

The problem with the celebration of Confederate History Month, however, goes far beyond McDonnell's "mistake" in not discussing the centrality of slavery in the Civil War in his original proclamation.

Confederate "history" means more than the four years during which Virginia and other states fought a war to form a separate country called the Confederate States of America. It refers to the many uses of Confederate symbols and evocations of Confederate history in the almost century-and-a-half since Appomattox as well.

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