I had a talk with my 90-year-old mother yesterday about Charlottesville. Her mother, born in Texas, was a member of the Daughters of the Confederacy. I asked my mom what she thought grandma’s views were on the South, and on racism. Grandma Del was by all accounts a proud Southern woman born in 1893, but without any overt racist attitudes or intolerance.

I wondered how this could be, with the primary cause of the South in the Civil War being the preservation of slavery. When I did some reading on the Daughters of the Confederacy I found out that they were the organization responsible for fundraising and activism that led to the erection of many of the Southern Civil War memorials.

Then I thought of post-World War II Germany. I thought of the collective shame that the country felt for its role in the war, having lost, and having been on the wrong moral side. There are no memorials to German war heroes. How did the South escape this same psychological fate after the Civil War?

Apparently there was something called the “Lost Cause.” Revisionist writers morphed the psychological sting of losing the Civil War, downplaying the role of slavery in the conflict, while emphasizing the genteel Southern culture of honor and chivalry. This laid the groundwork for the denial that would allow my grandmother and many like her to be proud Southern women, honoring their relatives who lost their lives in the war, without facing the moral self-judgment of slavery.

Now I can better understand how two groups – Southern blacks and Southern (non-racist) whites – could view Confederate symbols (like statues) from completely different perspectives. Perhaps it’s like how Judaism, Christianity, and Islam each ascribe their own meaning to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, while holding conflicting views on God.