The White Privilege Of Black Confederate Denial

A perfect example of the juxtaposition between the reality of
Confederate heritage defense and regressive anti-Confederate
heritage bigotry.

For the first time in my life, I think I finally understand what the term "white privilege" truly means. 

Of course, to clarify, it doesn't mean what modern-day Regressive Leftists believes it to mean. Much like the mental gymnastics that go into their arguments for why people who are ethnic minorities cannot be racist, their definitions of what they define as "white privilege" practically needs a GPS device to navigate the twists and turns of logic needed to justify the term. 

No folks, the white privilege in question that I want to address today comes from the Don Quixote of History himself, Kevin Levin, author of the historical parody blog Civil War Memory Amnesia.  

Very recently there was a rather quizzical article published by The Guardian by David Smith entitled: Black Confederates: exploding America's most persistent myth. This bizarre article (dated Sunday, October 13th) widely quotes Mr. Levin, is a mixture of the usual debunked Black Confederate Denial historical negationist talking points, mind-twisting conjecture on Mr. Levin's part, and modern-day Leftist political ranting aimed at our current American President on the part of Mr. Smith. 

To say the article is informative on the subject of Black Confederates in general is laughable. I have read so many historical fallacies from the Denier community that their inability to articulate proper historical fact from their own personal political and social biases lost all of its shock value to me long ago. 

Indeed Mr. Levin has used the same exact talking points in this article that he has used since roughly around 2008: mentioning the Confederate monument at Arlington National Cemetery, siting the famous image of the Chandler boys and his own version of their story, and throwing in a few digs at non-white Confederate heritage supporters.

It is the latter that I want to address today. 

One of the people sited in the article, and largely in many articles written by Mr. Levin over the years, is a Southern gentleman and noted Confederate heritage activist named H.K Edgerton. 

Compatriot H.K. Edgerton (pictured on the right with the flag)
at a Confederate Heritage Youth Day event in 2007.

Mr. Edgerton is African-American and a former head of the Asheville, North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, is well know to much of the Southern heritage community. He is also an associate member of the North Carolina Division Sons of Confederate Veterans (NCSCV) and a noted public speaker.

One of his notable achievements, at then 53 years old, was to march across the deep South from Asheville to Austin, Texas back in the early 2001 wearing a gray Confederate uniform and carrying a battle flag. He averaged about 20 miles a day and stopped on occasions to talk to groups of school students and curious onlookers. Many people walked with him also carrying Confederate banners in a show of solidarity. 

Mr. Edgerton was also a notable figure at the 2004 funeral for the final crew of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley in Charleston, South Carolina where he helped lead the funeral procession from Battery Park to Magnolia Cemetery. Several years ago, Mr. Edgerton also attended the funeral of Mr. Anthony Hervey, another Confederate heritage supporter of color from Mississippi who was tragically killed in an apparent road rage incident in July of 2015.

Through all of his actions in respect and defense of both the Confederate dead and the heritage they gave to their descendants, Mr. Edgerton earned the respect and admiration of his peers in the Confederate heritage defense movement. 

I've had the honor of meeting Mr. Edgerton on several occasions over the last decade, or so. Y'all might remember one or two of them mentioned here at Southern Fried Common Sense & Stuff from a couple of years back. In all my meetings with him, I've thoroughly enjoyed sitting under his learning tree and listening to him speak eloquently about his experiences as a pro-Southern heritage activist fighting to help defend the good name of the Confederate soldier -- particularly Black Confederate Veterans. 

His actions standing up for our shared Confederate historical heritage and fellow Southern heritage activists has also resulted in Mr. Edgerton being the target of mockery and hatred on the part of anti-Confederate heritage reactionaries. Much of that mockery consisting of racially charged stereotyping of a nature I won't permit on this blog and will not provide screen shots of -- a simply five minute Google search will provide y'all with more than enough of these obscene examples. 

There are several examples of this sort of stereotyping present at Mr. Levin's blog, and those of some of his most loyal circle-jerkers. Several examples include terms that I would never feel comfortable repeating even as an example. The least of these is a mocking comparison between Mr. Edgerton and the stereotypical character Uncle Ruckus from the Cartoon Network Adult Swim cartoon block series The Boondocks. Again no, I will not post links, nor give that sort of bigotry a voice on this blog.

Mr. Levin and the loyal followers of his personality cult take every effort they can to attack not only Mr. Edgerton, but other Southern heritage activists of color virtually every chance they get. 

In fact just recently a friend from facebook posted a screenshot from Mr. Levin's Twitter account (dated Sunday, October 20th) making another slightly passive-aggressive attack against a Confederate heritage supporter of color. The image shows two friends of this blogger standing together to pose for a photo. On the left in the photo is Mr. John "Zak" Zakrzewski, a fellow SCV member from my home state of South Carolina, and the lovely Southern lady is Miss Teresa Roane, a member of the Virginia Division, United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and former archivist with the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia. The caption written by The Don Quixotie of History himself is, of course, his own warped interpretation of what he is seeing.

BTW I replaced the image of Mr. Levin's obscenely
ugly mugshot with something a little bit less
unpleasant to look at. Once again the Don Quixote of
History is tilting at windmills.

Now I often refer to myself "The Man Deniers Fear The Most" largely as a running gag and a means of sticking it to Black Confederate Deniers. Even though it was a moniker given to me by several heritage activists after delivering a humiliating defeat to Mr. Levin on his own blog once upon a time -- and then being subsequently banned for it. Still one of my greatest accomplishments to date.

That and the fact most of these Deniers largely avoid coming to this blog and debating me only reaffirms the title. All the same, I'm not here to toot my own horn. Like Confederate General Thomas Jackson when folks called him "Stonewall" for his brigade's stand at the 1st Battle of Manassas, I feel the term belongs to people far worthier than myself.

One of those people is Miss Teresa Roane.  

As an archivist who worked for decades with the Museum of the Confederacy, she has had access to all the source materials available there in her study of Black Confederate Veterans and their service during the War. Her conclusions and the beautiful way she articulates their stories in her own presentations across the South on the subject of these largely forgotten veterans also makes her a frequent target of Black Confederate Deniers. Not just because she proudly tells the story of Black Confederates, but because she is a proud Confederate descendant and African-American Southern woman who does.  

Miss Roane is a truly beautiful Southern lady and a fashionable woman who seems to own hundreds of outstanding and impeccable hats; an outstanding and courageous woman that I have had the great pleasure of meeting on several occasions documented here on this blog. I respect her and proudly call her my friend and fellow Southerner and Confederate descendant.

So with Mr. Edgerton and Miss Roane, you have two outspoken people singled out for attack by our Denier friend for standing up for other Confederate heritage supporters, and defending the memories of Confederate veterans of color.

Now an interesting little fun fact about Mr. Levin's loyal blog posters: with a couple of exception, all of them are white -- the Don Quixote of History himself included. 

In fact, from a demographic standpoint, virtually all Black Confederate Deniers and outspoken "historians" who oppose the memories of Black Confederate Veterans are both white and politically Leftist. Almost every one of them has, at one point or another, used some stereotypical term, or racist comparison, to describe a Southern heritage supporter who doesn't share their particular skin tone. 

Despite being among the so-called "tolerant" and "sensitive" people, these self-described white knights feel comfortable being as racist and bigoted towards someone of another racial ethnicity who does not share their views of American history and racial identity. More so their particular brand of bigotry is tolerated by traditionally Leftist organizations and institutions controlled exclusively by non-white activists, so long as one of them doesn't actually get bold enough in their zealotry to actually cross over into using the n-word -- though a few have on occasion. 

In both the article and in his weird twitter post, Levin makes the point that modern-day non-white heritage activists and members of Southern heritage groups are just props, or tokens, used by Confederate heritage organizations to play some ridiculous shell game. It is a consistent theme in his blog, and in his recent book, argued over and over again. 

All the while, he indulges his largely white fanbase as they throw around new twists on old stereotypes to describe people who don't share their ability to easily burn in long-term exposure to sunlight. Ugly, racist stereotypes that your average Christian conservative would be crucified over the internet for using, yet seem to be tolerated and encouraged by the "woke" crowd. 

Y'all want to know the real definition of "white privilege" folks, there it is. A bunch of virtue-signaling, lily-white knights comfortably using soft racism and passive-aggressive bigotry from the safety of their "safe-spaces" online towards people who reject their racial identity political views on history and heritage.  

Mr. Levin and his Denier cult can only mock them. For all of their current influence in academic circles none of them could ever measure up to, or show an ounce of the strength of character and moral courage shown by these two proud defenders of Southern identity and truth. 

Not only do I consider Mr. Edgerton and Miss Roane my friends, I consider them both -- as well as those tens of thousands of other proud descendants of color worldwide who proudly proclaim their Confederate ancestry -- to be the bravest people among us for standing tall against the forces of hatred and reaction who would continue to divide us for their own personal political and financial gain. 

I am proud to share a unique part of my own Southern identity with them, and I could only hope that, through my own contributions here on this blog, I could live up to being even a tenth as courageous as both of them put together. 

God bless all of you.