This post is based on wild speculation. I agree that what I'm writing about is not the only possible explanation; it's guesswork, and I only hope it's logical
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Please feel free to quote! I feel it's so important to Damon's characterization that he is just this absolutely crystallized moment in time. I'd actually like to see some more vampires of younger ages, such as during the Reconstruction or during the Civil Rights movement, to see how living and dying in that period forms them. I really liked the nod Stefan gave to remember Sheila Bennett as a young civil rights activist and how she was still fierce.
Yes, I mostly feel that Damon was indifferent. He has never shown a need to face up to the reality of any social situation of institutionalized problems, and in his personal relationships, he is quite possessive. I do believe Damon would have experienced a lot of pressure to be a soldier, if not at the beginning of the war then certain towards the end, when so many soldiers had been lost, but really, the reasons for becoming a Confederate soldier ranged quite a bit, and we don't know what Damon's were. I mostly expect it was the pressure of being the eldest son of a hard father, and the need to prove himself somehow.
My expertise is not in American History, so I would definitely encourage looking more into the basics of it (and ontd_political just did a very thorough info post yesterday on it, if you care to learn more. In my opinion and interpretation of history, having grown up in Georgia, the capital of the Confederacy, there are a lot of race, class, and colonial issues that do intersect in Civil War history. The South, in contrast to the industrialized North, was very agrarian and a bit more self-contained socially, even though economically they had global trade. Many of the people in the South were descendants of criminals who had been transported to the Colonies for indentured servitude a century or two before, unlike the more educated and organized entrepreneurs that chose to move to the Colonies up north. As such, the South had more of a culture of decentralization; I generally explain the difference as the South defined the country as united American states, whereas the North defined it as the USA. When the North started exerting pressure to end slavery (despite encouraging similar labor conditions in industrial sweatshops), the South did not believe they had the right to interfere, and split off-- essentially becoming a breakaway colony in the way the entirety of the United States had during the Revolutionary War. While most will say that slavery was the cause of the Civil War, I believe that's an oversimplification, as many in the North and Lincoln himself cared very little for the slaves or for racial equality, or were in fact pro-slavery. At this same period in history America was looking to colonize as Britain had done, and had also been participating in westward expansion wtih the idea of Manifest Destiny-- that God had told them that dominating the lands around them was what they were called to do. As such, I personally think that the cause of the Civil War was the more political stamping down of a colonial uprising, rather than a strike for civil rights, as it took ONE HUNDRED FUCKING YEARS for the Civil Rights movement to happen and in the meantime federal judges from the North instituted Jim Crow laws to segregate the fairly well-mixed post-War Reconstruction population in the South. There were a lot of policies the federal government instituted after the War that were very harsh economically on the South- which, of course, fell the hardest on blacks, and that setback has created economic inequities between races and between us and the rest of the country that exist to this day.
All this long history blabber is basically to say that there were a lot of reasons for what happened during the Civil War and for why people made decisions as they did (and my personal feelings that both sides made a lot of bad and long-lasting decisions). They are very complex and difficult issues, which is probably why TVD doesn't want to deal with them at all, which is somewhat typical for communities in the South: we don't want to live in the past, we want to move ahead. But the problems and complexities from the past, as well as the emotions attached to them, still come out. I've grown up in and around Atlanta, and I'm used to our demographics of ~50% blacks, ~40% whites, and ~10% Hispanic, Asian, and other populations. I love that amount of diversity. I love that Atlanta has such strong opportunities for POC to be in positions of authority where it's kinda a crapshoot elsewhere. And yet, we all check ourselves for trying to eradicate the problems that have evolved over the centuries, like we're looking back over our shoulders for those ghosts.
I'm a former History major (mostly specializing in antiquity, but still, I had to do my fair share of the 19th century) who then became an English major, so I have some general idea about Civil War and its causes. What's more confusing is how it influences what's happening now. The ghosts, as you say it. (Btw, I think TVD referred to that once - Tyler asked Carol about the old Lockwood cellar, and she said sth like "we don't talk about this kind of rooms").
Thank you for the explanation and the additional reading :D. Novel-lenght comments are love ♥
Yes, Carol is very much the type of person who wouldn't talk about Those Kind Of Rooms. There are a lot of types of people who will and won't talk about the Civil War and slavery- someone wealthy, white, and a bit insulated, like Carol, would like to call herself colorblind (despite teh fact that wasn't it her in early s1 who was going to rip the black kid from the caterers a new one for not having the candles lit? And then Bonnie lit them with magic?). On the far other end of the spectrum, you have white people out in the country who will fetishize the South and its glory days- but they're not very good with history, and they ignore the fact that if those days were here again, they would likely be dirt poor, working for someone else, and just barely better than slaves themselves. (I'm sure plenty of men joined the Confederate army just to get a decent meal.) And then many black people WILL bring up the past- I have had discussions where "Your ancestors enslaved my ancestors!" is supposed to end a disagreement, on the basis that white people are too uncomfortable to respond. (My answer is "Uh, nope, they were starving German farmers at the time, sorry." which actually tends to facilitate real discussion instead of division?) At my old office, once, where we had a good mix of women, we were having a discussion of intersectionality/oppression olympics, when one of my black coworkers informed us that "Caucasian people have never been slaves." Which, no, that's not exactly true. But it shows the type of simplified education that most have received- it's very black and white. The North was good, the South was bad. Blacks have always been victims and whites have always been oppressors. There is truth in that, but there is so much more in the history of the world. Even more, said black woman who told us that was a light-skinned woman from California, with no trace of an African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) dialect unless she wanted to have one. This was in strong contrast to my other coworker and close friend, who was very dark-skinned and had a Mississippi accent she couldn't get rid of. Back in the day, yes, she would have been a field slave, and the first woman would have worked in the house. Today, a woman who speaks a Standard American English dialect and is light-skinned is much more acceptable and will see a lot less discrimination than one who is dark-skinned and has an accent perceived as uneducated and poor.
This is of course leaving out economic and class factors resulting from generational poverty because ex-slaves had no opportunity to build wealth, due to lies from Congress about how they would receive forty acres and a mule. Google generational poverty with that context, you might get some more quality articles than I can explain.
It's all very complex and requires some social negotiation and sensitivity. My generation is a lot more accepting of things like multiracial relationships. But we still have to deal with our parents and grandparents, who often say unfortunate things, and that can be a strain. I know that I am a white girl and I have the privilege that comes along with that, and that means that sometimes I will say the wrong thing, or will have an incomplete perspective, but I know that I am surrounded by enough of a wonderful community of people, many of whom are black, who will tell me when I'm in the wrong. And I'm grateful to have the opportunity to expand my understanding of the world that way.
Yes, I mostly feel that Damon was indifferent. He has never shown a need to face up to the reality of any social situation of institutionalized problems, and in his personal relationships, he is quite possessive. I do believe Damon would have experienced a lot of pressure to be a soldier, if not at the beginning of the war then certain towards the end, when so many soldiers had been lost, but really, the reasons for becoming a Confederate soldier ranged quite a bit, and we don't know what Damon's were. I mostly expect it was the pressure of being the eldest son of a hard father, and the need to prove himself somehow.
My expertise is not in American History, so I would definitely encourage looking more into the basics of it (and ontd_political just did a very thorough info post yesterday on it, if you care to learn more. In my opinion and interpretation of history, having grown up in Georgia, the capital of the Confederacy, there are a lot of race, class, and colonial issues that do intersect in Civil War history. The South, in contrast to the industrialized North, was very agrarian and a bit more self-contained socially, even though economically they had global trade. Many of the people in the South were descendants of criminals who had been transported to the Colonies for indentured servitude a century or two before, unlike the more educated and organized entrepreneurs that chose to move to the Colonies up north. As such, the South had more of a culture of decentralization; I generally explain the difference as the South defined the country as united American states, whereas the North defined it as the USA. When the North started exerting pressure to end slavery (despite encouraging similar labor conditions in industrial sweatshops), the South did not believe they had the right to interfere, and split off-- essentially becoming a breakaway colony in the way the entirety of the United States had during the Revolutionary War. While most will say that slavery was the cause of the Civil War, I believe that's an oversimplification, as many in the North and Lincoln himself cared very little for the slaves or for racial equality, or were in fact pro-slavery. At this same period in history America was looking to colonize as Britain had done, and had also been participating in westward expansion wtih the idea of Manifest Destiny-- that God had told them that dominating the lands around them was what they were called to do. As such, I personally think that the cause of the Civil War was the more political stamping down of a colonial uprising, rather than a strike for civil rights, as it took ONE HUNDRED FUCKING YEARS for the Civil Rights movement to happen and in the meantime federal judges from the North instituted Jim Crow laws to segregate the fairly well-mixed post-War Reconstruction population in the South. There were a lot of policies the federal government instituted after the War that were very harsh economically on the South- which, of course, fell the hardest on blacks, and that setback has created economic inequities between races and between us and the rest of the country that exist to this day.
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So I hope that gives you kind of a feeling for the culture and history and reasons. LOL, I just remembered a blog post I wrote ages ago about how bipolar the South is (after a class on Film Adaptations of Georgia Literature). It's quite the cultural mixing bowl, and I'm not sure I've seen my experience living here quite represented by any tv show or movie yet, though I see shadows here and there.
Fuck, I've just written a novel of a comment.
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I'm a former History major (mostly specializing in antiquity, but still, I had to do my fair share of the 19th century) who then became an English major, so I have some general idea about Civil War and its causes. What's more confusing is how it influences what's happening now. The ghosts, as you say it. (Btw, I think TVD referred to that once - Tyler asked Carol about the old Lockwood cellar, and she said sth like "we don't talk about this kind of rooms").
Thank you for the explanation and the additional reading :D. Novel-lenght comments are love ♥
Reply
This is of course leaving out economic and class factors resulting from generational poverty because ex-slaves had no opportunity to build wealth, due to lies from Congress about how they would receive forty acres and a mule. Google generational poverty with that context, you might get some more quality articles than I can explain.
It's all very complex and requires some social negotiation and sensitivity. My generation is a lot more accepting of things like multiracial relationships. But we still have to deal with our parents and grandparents, who often say unfortunate things, and that can be a strain. I know that I am a white girl and I have the privilege that comes along with that, and that means that sometimes I will say the wrong thing, or will have an incomplete perspective, but I know that I am surrounded by enough of a wonderful community of people, many of whom are black, who will tell me when I'm in the wrong. And I'm grateful to have the opportunity to expand my understanding of the world that way.
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