I disagree. We all suffer the after-effects. Slavery begat racism. Racism begat animosity. Animosity begat division. Division projected confusion. Confusion projected weakness. Weakness invited Putin's invasion of Crimea. One could say Obama Derangement Syndrome caused the Crimea invasion. : )
I don't know about the "suddenly" part, though I may not understand exactly why you used quotes. But it is nice to have at least a couple of people who know something about history. The period from 1780 to 1860 is especially interesting with regard to how we got where we got to when Lincoln took office. None of it just "happened". That particular pot had been simmering ever since Jefferson et al cut a deal with the reps from the Deep South during the writing of the Declaration of Independence. I wonder if the wingnuts down here are still laboring under the delusion that today's Republicans are the same as those who were around during Lincoln's day.
And the only periods during which we've been able to pull together have been those when we've gone to war. But then all of that changed with Viet Nam.
So now statues, street names, and flags are the root of racism? This coming from the same people who tell us that violence in movies, racist, violent and hate filled lyrics littered throughout rap music...these things have no impact at all, but a street name? Yep, that's the problem. Is there no limit to leftist hypocrisy? Every time I think, okay, we're at the absolute limit of stupidity, they push it farther. Astounding. What's more astounding is tat half the damn country buys it.
The rural Democrats in the South are still running KKK members for state and local office in 2010 and 2012. This is no different than the Democratic Party of 1910. I wonder if lefties elsewhere are laboring under the delusion that anything has changed about the Democratic Party.
I know it wasn't sudden; it eventually reached a tipping point where something was done about it. I also don't think that the general dislike of the Confederate flag was sudden; it just reached a tipping point where something was finally done about it. Tsing used the word, inappropriately, and I lobbed it back.
Those streets, statues, and flags are built with tax payers money and are on government property. The movies and music are privately funded efforts and are not upheld as official government items. See the difference. I don't want to see the flag of a bunch of defeated slaveholders which my ancestors fought to wipe off the earth flown officially above my state capital.