What you're saying is not really getting to the points I was making. We have a failure to communicate. I'll try this.
Regarding history education: My point about history education is simply that it should be based on sound historical interpretation, but that has not always been the case. I think everyone would agree with that.
Now, this image I cited earlier, from a VA textbook released in 1957, is not based on any sound historical interpretation. In fact, the image is a lie:
View attachment 345421
We need to understand: there is a difference between valid disagreement over historical interpretations, which will always exists among historians; and the creation of historical narratives that are false and misleading. What we see above is not a controversial interpretation; it's a fraud.
Why did I bring this up? I was trying to explain why some Southern whites might be joining the monument protest movement. Recollect, one of the main proponents of this protest has been Mitch Landrieu, the white mayor of New Orleans.
If one was raised with the idea that stuff like the above represents actual history, it would affect his or her world view. For example, one might believe that slavery was a benign and benevolent institution. As these fraudulent interpretations are replaced by sound interpretations, both black
and white Southerners are being raised with a factual understanding of the history. The way that many Southern whites view the current commemorative landscape is probably different from how their ancestors did.
Hence, where we are now. Are these white folks adopting the "black" view and rejecting the "white" view? I think they would say, we are adopting the
right view.
On the one hand you say, "One perspective is no more valid then another IMO, as every perspective has its own biases as to how things should be veiwed interpreted." On the other hand, you say the majority should prevail.
It's really really really hard to respond to this without getting into modern politics. I don't know how to do it.
I would just make the comment that, Alabama had a seminal role in the Civil Rights Movement. Famously, Rosa Parks and Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr were part of the mid-1950's Montgomery bus boycott. When that boycott was conducted, it was the majority view that it was OK for certain people to sit in the back of the bus, among other things. It took federal intervention to overcome the majority's discriminatory policies.
I do not want to imply or infer that things are no better today than back then, or that any actions with respect to monuments are based on any old time bias. I am saying the idea that "the majority view is where one should start", that is not something that resonates with me, when looking at US history and culture, especially that of the South. I will leave it at that.
- Alan