Slaves and lemonade

You're organizing the senior prom, and you can't think of a theme. Where on the list of ideas would you rank a Confederate theme, complete with people who darken their skin to play slaves? Assuming the other 58,731 ideas don't pan out, would you have a "skit" about the capture of a runaway slave? Or a lemonade stand, run by faux slaves? Or run a caption under the picture of the lemonade stand that says, "The slaves served lemonade- it was a riot"?

In short, it takes a monumental collapse in judgment to do what the Riverdale, CA school run by the local chapter of the Assembly of God, a Pentacostal sect, did recently. And that's the generous interpretation.

To be fair, the information about this incident is scant. There's this post from a local blogger, who included the photographs and captions. There's also the web site for the Riverdale Assembly of God church, which is currently down. Finally, there's also the picture album of an Assembly of God parishioner, which is currently unavailable to anyone who's not on his friends list. No one from the local media, including the Fresno Bee, has yet covered the event.

What on earth were they thinking? Sadly, no one can say at this point. (I'd welcome anyone from the Riverdale Assembly of God, if you're reading, to post a comment here. Please, please, tell us that this is all a horrible misrepresentation or misunderstanding.) Possible explanations range from an astounding ignorance of American history to something a lot more sinister. I sincerely hope ignorance is the culprit here.

If not, we're left to speculate about the politics of this central California church. Certainly, the appearance of a substantial contingent from the Riverdale Assembly of God at a Free Republic rally says something about the political leanings of some members. Many Christian conservatives, including Assembly of God members, have been very cozy with Confederate revisionists. The pictures from Riverdale suggest the sort of "the slaves were happy in the bucolic South" blarney that revisionists like the Council of Concerned Citizens and many backers of "Confederate Heritage Month." However, that's just speculation at this point.

It's well past time for the people who won the Civil War--i.e., all Americans--to set the record straight, once and for all. "Respect" for the prickly opinions of some Confederate revisionists allows unforgivable ignorance of our own collective history to flourish. Even if not a single person in the Riverdale Assembly of God is a Confederate revisionist, the Confederate revisionists have fostered ignorance and confusion about the defining conflict in American history, leading to collective stupidities like this senior prom. People who are too polite (or afraid) to object to the revisionists are just as culpable.

Comments

[Keith]

The media are on this. A Fresno news station ran a feature story,http://www.cbs47.tv/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=6b53a1d4-2163-427b-84ea-643efc5fe864, and the Fresno Bee just released a front page article on this incident, www.fresnobee.com.

We have never seen anything this disturbing in our entire life. Shame on these people and our hearts should ache for the poor children who are under their teachings.

[Steven Taylor]

I was quite surprised that this was a California church.

Sadly, my own recent experience on my blog with a cadre of white supremacists has only underscored (see here and here, if you can stomach some of the comments) that there are indeed some scary folks out there with, to put it kindly, retrograde views on race.

[Lily]

Crazy...
I think that this whole situation is overblown. I do not support what this church did, I think it was certainly not in good judgement. And I'm even more sure that they do not consider themselves "White supremists" (spelling).
As you said, I really do think that ignorance is the culprit in this situation.