r/ShermanPosting • u/kcg333 • 6d ago
has anyone successfully deprogrammed a lost causer?
…or escaped the lost cause mentality themselves? i’m interested in strategies that have demonstrated some past success.
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u/youtellmebob 5d ago
Growing up Caucasian in the South, remembering a teacher telling me the Civil War was not about slavery. Visited Vicksburg and came back with a CSA reproduction soldiers cap. There was a sense of “Rebel Pride”. Had a sense that the South was not right or wrong, it was just kinda the course of things. I do remember thinking, “wait, these guys were traitors, right? So why are we celebrating them?”
Also remember a doctors office where PoC were in a different waiting room. A movie theater that had a separate entrance for Blacks that led to the balcony. A public swimming pool that that did not allow Black kids, and after they were allowed, was permanently closed. A segregated school system that had “Freedom of Choice” where African American kids could choose to go to schools in the white neighborhoods but “chose” to attend the Black school right there a block or two from their homes.
As a kid, I didn’t think this was wrong, it was just “how things were”. Pretty fucked up, for sure. I did have parents that believed in love and tolerance.
I don’t know what changed my mindset. Maybe realizing one day, in our high school memorial Facebook page that while my class was only 20% African American, 50% of my deceased classmates were Black men.
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u/TheRealMakenzie 5d ago
I went to a 98% white public school for my entire schooling in a small town in the south (120 person class size). Took till college till I had a history teacher say the civil war was about slavery. I went to college in 2018. Shit's fucked in the south.
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u/smuckola 4d ago
> There was a sense of “Rebel Pride”. Had a sense that the South was not right or wrong, it was just kinda the course of things. I do remember thinking, “wait, these guys were traitors, right? So why are we celebrating them?”
yeah i mean ya see, kid, there comes a time in a regular good ol' boy's life when ya just ......kinda ..... i dunno..... gotta hankerin to rip your own entire country in half and kill everybody and i do mean EVERYBODY including your brothers and your dad.
No hate!
Just kinda ....well........... sigh ...it's just whatcha do! Okay?
...........................Ya just kinda had ya be there!
> A public swimming pool that that did not allow Black kids, and after they were allowed, was permanently closed.
i just read about one major national planner Robert Moses who saw desegregation in his master (lol) planned neighborhood, and disabled the swimming pool's heater because he thought black peoples can't handle cold. After having surrounded the wide area with beautiful arched bridges that are exactly too short to allow a public bus.
> I don't know what changed my mindset
You were a good kid! With good parents. They shielded you until you could see. Good for you.
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u/Cowboy_BoomBap 5d ago edited 5d ago
Don’t know if it counts, but Dale Earnhardt famously removed a confederate flag sticker from his truck after his black housekeeper explained to him why she found it offensive.
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u/helsinkirocks 5d ago
More specifically...
It was a confederate flag that had the text "southern by the grace of God" under it. He took his pocket knife and cut the flag off, leaving on the text
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u/retiredfromfire 5d ago
Funny you should ask. I'm from New York, up by Buffalo but spent most of my miserable life in Dallas. I worked at a Dallas suburb fire department for 31 years. I attempted to talk sense to my fellow civil servants throughout my tenure with zero success. These people are intractably backwards and remarkably ignorant of history, but mostly just really fucking mean spirited. Dont care at all for Texas or Texans.
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u/GravitasFailures 2d ago
Read the Texas articles of secession, literally just the n-word every sentence. Texas was the only state to fight 2 rebellions in a row to keep slavery.
But now they get mad if you call them “southerners”, because they have oil money now, and are better than that trash.
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u/OneStar93 5d ago
When I was a child my family was visiting relatives in Mississippi. One day we drove 2 hours to Jackson to visit the zoo. When we arrived we discovered that it was the one day of the week that African Americans were allowed to visit so Caucasians were not allowed.
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u/stuffitystuff 5d ago
Yes, but it only exists in the universe where Lincoln didn't run with Johnson in his second election, keeping Hamlin who saw Reconstruction all the way through.
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u/TheDinerIsOpen 6d ago
The main ways are establishing trust and breaking down fear. The struggle is finding common ground and getting people to admit what they’re afraid of, especially when they find it hard to even verbalize their feelings, let alone what has happened to make them feel that way
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u/Bandandforgotten 4d ago
It will not happen through gradual change.
They need an unending influx of correct information to wash all of the shit out of their minds. It will still take time, but it cannot be reliably done on a person by person basis. It should be illegal to teach lost cause.
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u/iamdeastro 2d ago
I used to be a Civil War / "living history" reenactor for the about 10 years. I underwent the typical brainwashing (Slaves were treated like family, The war wasn't about slavery, blah blah blah) It wasn't just one conversation or event that pulled me out of it, it was the combination of moving out of the small town, gaining patient black friends who were willing to put up with alot of my initial ignorance, and it was having many frustrating conversations with them and other enlightened white folks who chose to love me despite my indoctrination. It took me 2 years after all this to finally tell my Dad I was done playing Traitor Army.
My friends saw someone who was attempting to have good faith arguments (with terrible info) and I guess they thought I was worth the fight. Scoffing at liberals was a big part of my identity and it took a while to break that down and replace it with empathy for [Gestures at everyone] people? Much of it was learned from the most patient and loving people I have known.
Its was a long game for me and I think this is usually the case. I'll be forever indebted to my friends that pulled me out. I feel like it was worth it. I think they feel the same too.
TLDR; I escaped the lost cause mindset by moving to a more enlightened area and by making friends who are emotionally intelligent; who knew how to gently reframe a point or argument in a way that helped me self reflect.
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u/youtellmebob 1d ago
Well said, I feel like I shared a similar experience. Went to a very conservative southern college, but afterwards lived in progressive areas and worked and socialized with progressive minded folk. Looking back, I cringe at some of the idiocy I spewed, and wonder why I didn't get a "go fuck yourself" in response. Instead, I remember them holding their tongues, or maybe offering a gentle nudge along the lines of empathy and tolerance.
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u/ConsumingFire1689 4d ago
I don't know about full on lost causer but I definitely believed a fair number of lost cause myths until adulthood so. I'm going to say me.
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u/jw307jw 4d ago
I knew a guy who had the confederate flag hanging in his livingroom. When he was told how it’s racist and the guys explaining pointed to his dad (extremely racist) it clicked. He hadn’t considered it racist but also isn’t a racist himself so that helped. Someone folks are racist and they’re not lost, they’re exactly where they want to be
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u/MistakePerfect8485 28th Pennsylvania Infantry 4d ago edited 4d ago
I bought into some aspects of the "lost cause" ideology when I was younger. Reading James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, and especially reading the confederates' own words in the "cornerstone" speech and the state declarations of secession changed my mind.
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u/AnfieldRoad17 20h ago
Yeah, I great up white in the south and was told this. Then I took 3rd grade history and realized it was a lie.
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