Talk:United Daughters of the Confederacy

Sidney Lanier

For those interested, Lanier is a related topic per [1]. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:56, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Building monuments to the Klan "until recent decades", really?

I think that most readers in the year 2020 would think of "recent decades" as being the 2010s, the 2000s, the 1990s, perhaps the 1980s, possibly even the 1970s. Almost none would think the 1920s. Yet that was when the only UDC Klan monument mentioned in this article was built. Specifically 1926; 94 years ago. That's 15 Presidents ago during Coolidge's administration, the year before Lindbergh's transatlantic flight, and 33 years closer to the time of the Civil War than to 2020. I think we can eliminate the highly misleading sentence in the lead that "Until recent decades, the UDC was also involved in building monuments to commemorate the Ku Klux Klan". Tbobbed (talk) 20:49, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Order of information in opening paragraph

Newimpartial recently reversed a change that I made to the order of the information in the opening paragraph. That order currently is the Southern Poverty Law Center's labeling of the UDC as a Neo-Confederate organization in the second sentence, followed by a brief description of the UDC's activities ( I called it their "self description" in my edit note, but it is really our very brief digest of it), followed by historians' summation of the UDC's historical significance. For me there are a couple of problems in leading off with the SPLC's categorization. First, it makes more sense to tell the reader, quite basically, what the organization does first and then go on from there, so our digest of what it does, currently a 25 word sentence, should come first. Second, the summation of the UDC's historical significance by professional historians should come next. They agree, I'm sure, that the organization is Neo-Confederate, but they should be the sources we most rely on to make that designation, not the SPLC. The SPLC's designation could come next though it is not especially important, because it only concurs with sources who know more about the subject than they do. I find it somewhat bewildering to the extent to which editors defer to this organization which has come in for more than its share of criticism and upheaval in recent years. Also, the way we currently word the SPLC's labeling of the UDC is misleading: "It has been labeled neo-Confederate by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, and extremists". One would assume from this wording that the UDC must be one of the "hate groups" that the SPLC tracks. Yet the SPLC explicitly says that they do not consider the UDC to be a hate group. Check the source. Tbobbed (talk) 04:03, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Once again, I have seen no justification for placing the "stated aims" of the organization first: certainly none has been provided here. Newimpartial (talk) 01:31, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I see the SPLC's label as something peripheral, which is why I agree its assessment should be placed lower down.

By the way, I don't know why we are following WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV by calling the UDC neo-Confederate and attributing SPLC. It's not just SPLC, it's other historians as well. Binksternet (talk) 01:42, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I suppose because the SPLC's description of the UDC comes up later in the article, but I don't see that it has to be previewed in the intro. Tbobbed (talk) 02:16, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

• Looking over the recent versions, one immediate objection I have to your perferred version is that you attribute the consensus of historians (Many historians have described the organization's portrayal of the Confederate States of America (CSA) and the Civil War as a promotion of the Lost Cause and of white supremacy, and have asserted that the elevation of the Confederate tradition has been led by the UDC.), but state their self-description without attribution and without even noting that it is merely their self-description (the organization's activities include the commemoration of Confederate Civil War soldiers and the funding of monuments to them). This is inappropriate. If we were going to state either one of those as fact, it would be the consensus of historians (per WP:NPOV, we should not state facts as opinions; and at least based on the sources in the article, the historians cited here are not a biased source, while obviously an organization is biased about itself), but we absolutely cannot state the consensus of historians as opinion while simultaneously giving the organization's self-description as fact - that is to say, if we're going to attribute their Neo-confederate advocacy and support for white supremacy to "historians",we definitely cannot remove the "stated purposes" attribution for their activities, since that self-description is not commonly accepted as definitive by academic sources. Your version incorrectly implies that it is nearly universally accepted that the primary purpose of the organization is commemorating the Civil War and that a few historians demur and say that its purpose is to defend white supremacy, when in fact the reverse is true. --Aquillion (talk) 19:23, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

I just re-worded the beginning of the lede, trying to follow WP:Leadsentence and have the most important ideas in the first sentence. Any thoughts ? --Rsk6400 (talk) 20:26, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Responding to Aquillion's point, I think including something like "their stated purposes" before presenting a list of them is fine. I'm in a rush now but I'll say a little more later. Tbobbed (talk) 22:13, 26 January 2021 (UTC) Picking up where I left off: The earlier version of the lead, before Rsk6400's edit, referred to the UDC's "activities", not purposes, and mentioned a couple of the activities it is well known for that are discussed in the article. You can easily get into an argument over whether the UDC promotes white supremacy but not over whether it commemorates Confederate soldiers or funds Confederate monuments. The latter two activities are objective facts. The former requires an interpretation.

As for Rsk6400's edit to the lead, it is well written, but I think that it is also too eager to immediately brand the organization as racist. I wouldn't feel this way if we were talking about the UDC of 1921, rather than a UDC which has evolved a fair amount between 1921 and 2021. Tbobbed (talk) 23:26, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

@Tbobbed: Thanks for calling it "well written". I just finished reading Blight's Race and Reunion, which focuses on the period before World War I, so I certainly view the UDC in the light of their early history. Still, on their website I could not discover any indication that they have "evolved a fair amount". The "History" section ends with the goals of 1919, their "Historical Silver / Gold Medal" is still named after Jeff Davis, the "Statement from the President General" says We are saddened that some people find anything connected with the Confederacy to be offensive. (Do they ever think about the realities of slavery such as legalized child abuse ?) They exclude Blacks (not explicitly, but through the "grandfather clause" of "Confederate descent"), and they totally deny Black historical memory. In order to mitigate the wording of the lede, we would really need a good source claiming that they have changed, not just their own disclaimer. --Rsk6400 (talk) 09:16, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Not sure about all the OR, but yes, we should not take their word for it. We can say (assuming they have actually said it) they say they have changed.Slatersteven (talk) 10:25, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

It's actually worse: I wasn't able to find a single statement on their website claiming that they have changed. --Rsk6400 (talk) 13:30, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

I said it has evolved a fair amount, not gone through a Saul on the Road to Damascus transformation. Here's an example of how it sees itself now [2]. If you go through our article and its sources you'll see that, apparently, its last open defense of the Klan was in 1936. There's not much, if anything, about the organization opposing the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s, when, surely, an inveterately white supremacist organization would have been highly active in opposition. How about the funding of NEW monuments to the Confederacy? How much time and effort does it NOW spend in lobbying against disturbing textbooks? Sometimes one has consider the dog that doesn't bark. Tbobbed (talk) 15:56, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

I just took a look at the sources: The connection between UDC, Lost Cause, and White supremacy seems to be well established. I could easily name two more sources, but I think we already have enough. Maybe they have been less aggressive recently, but they are still teaching what they call a "truthful" version of history to their children. --Rsk6400 (talk) 19:41, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

The number of sources is certainly not an issue. The issue is whether or not the UDC's "promotion of ... white supremacy" should be stated as an objective fact or rather as an interpretation of its activities requiring attribution. I would opt for the latter. Tbobbed (talk) 21:42, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

As long as we have a whole bunch of reliable source stating that UDC is promoting white supremacy, but none stating the opposite, we have to avoid stating facts as opinions, see WP:WIKIVOICE. --Rsk6400 (talk) 08:10, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

No. I think you misunderstand what "reliable source" means in Wikipedia. It means that the source, whether it a be a person, persons, or a publication, is respected enough to be used in Wikipedia. It does not mean that if many reliable sources agree on a matter of opinion; examples: "Trump is a racist", "Reagan was a charming public speaker", "Clinton couldn't control his gonads", we state the opinion, without textual qualification, as an objective fact. Yes, facts should not be stated as opinions. Nor should opinions be stated as fact

In addition, the article had existed for a long time with the idea of the UDC promoting white supremacy stated as the opinion of many, so it is really up to you and those who agree with you, to establish a consensus that it should it should be stated as a simple fact and not an opinion. Otherwise the wording should return to what it was before. Tbobbed (talk) 14:45, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

I firmly disagree - promoting the pseudo-historical Lost Cause ideology and the idea that the Confederacy was somehow good (because slaves were happy and better off in chains and raped and forced to have kids who would be stripped away and sold at auction like cattle!) is the end of the story here. So long as the UDC celebrates and promotes the existence of a government founded upon the idea that black people were subhuman, they are objectively white supremacist. There is literally nothing about the Confederacy worthy of commemoration - it is deserving only of scorn, oblivion, and solemn remembrance of the victims of its pernicious ideology. The soldiers who died in its uniform died for a horrendous cause, one of the worst in human memory, and just like Nazi soldiers, should simply be forgotten.

If there was a United Daughters of the Schutzstaffel, we'd see this comparison much more obviously. But Germany had the decency to realize its military history is unworthy of memorialization. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 19:19, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes, anyone who promotes the Lost Cause is objectively white supremacist. Binksternet (talk) 19:24, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

@NorthBySouthBaranof: Wonderful ! Let me add that they are far from being harmless. What will a child "educated" by them now do after becoming a lawmaker or law enforcement officer in 2061 ? --Rsk6400 (talk) 19:29, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Wow! Lot's of virtue signaling going on here. This is not a forum for the general discussion of the article's subject but rather a forum for improving an encyclopedic article. The "promoting white supremacy" accusation in the lead of this article has been attributed to "historians" for years Tbobbed (talk) 19:50, 28 January 2021 (UTC) From WP:WIKIVOICE: * Prefer nonjudgmental language. A neutral point of view neither sympathizes with nor disparages its subject (or what reliable sources say about the subject), although this must sometimes be balanced against clarity. Present opinions and conflicting findings in a disinterested tone. Do not editorialize. When editorial bias towards one particular point of view can be detected the article needs to be fixed. Tbobbed (talk) 19:59, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Ah, now we've reached the point where you pull out the phrase "virtue signaling," which in and of itself, is virtue signaling.

There is no editorial bias here. There is no mainstream point of view that the Confederacy was not a white supremacist government. Such a viewpoint is indisputably fringe and rejected by mainstream historical scholarship. Wikipedia policy does not state or imply that every minority view or extraordinary claim needs to be presented along with commonly accepted mainstream scholarship as if they were of equal validity. We must not do so here. An organization which promotes the belief that the Confederacy's cause was just, that its soldiers died heroically defending that just cause, and that we'd be better off if the Confederacy had won, is inherently and objectively promoting the same white supremacism which underpinned the entire rebellion and the Confederate nation. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 20:18, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

I haven't researched this at all, but can you find any sober quote from the UDC or a principal spokesperson in the last 50 years or so, saying that we would better off if the Confederacy had won? or even that the Union was wrong? Tbobbed (talk) 20:45, 28 January 2021 (UTC) Incidentally, one of the problems with the body of the article is that it says very little about the organization in the last 70 or 80 years. Tbobbed (talk) 20:54, 28 January 2021 (UTC) [3]

Our job is to summarize WP:SECONDARY sources, not examine primary sources to see what the group is saying. Binksternet (talk) 06:24, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

@Tbobbed: I think the most important point here is what NorthBySouthBaranof said about mainstream historical scholarship. As far as I can see, there are no mainstream historians saying that the UDC are not promoting the Lost Cause. I agree with you that Trump is a racist cannot be said in the voice of WP (i.e. cannot be stated as fact). But the results of historical research are more than simply "opinion". Therefore I think "Trump lost the election" is a better example. We cannot state that as opinion, e.g. we cannot write "Many officials and judges say that Trump lost". We have to say "Trump lost" as well as "UDC are promoting the Lost Cause". --Rsk6400 (talk) 07:47, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Addressing Binksternet's point, I did not recommend that the linked You-Tube interview of the Florida UDC president should be used as a direct source in the article but rather something that editors might take a look at for perspective. What reporters might call "on background". I would note that the only Encyclopedia that we use as a source for the promoting white supremacy accusation, The New Georgia Encyclopedia, says it this way:

Some critics, such as historian James M. McPherson, have accused the UDC of being an organization of white supremacists and Neo-Confederates.

Tbobbed (talk) 19:09, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

I read that article and also "New Georgia's" article on "Lost Cause Religion", which sent me rolling on the floor, laughing bitterly. In spite of a tendency to whitewash both the UDC and the Lost Cause, even they state clearly that UDC worked "to maintain the beliefs of the Lost Cause", and they are not able to produce anybody who opposes the view that UDC are white supremacists. BTW: They also state that "the ideals, activities, and purposes of the UDC remain the same", contradicting your claim that the UDC "has evolved a fair amount". --Rsk6400 (talk) 19:53, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Yet, the claim that UDC currently supports white supremacy is hard to square with the organization’s own official website. What was historically true is not necessarily what is currently true. The description of the organization today seems to be based on citations describing the organization’s history rather than contemporary fact. Bobby Lawndale (talk) 13:05, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

MAybe, but we would then need RS saying they are not longer it. Slatersteven (talk) 13:56, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

Reference Inappropriate

I find it misguided that you would allow use of a reference by at least one antagonist to the United Daughters of the Confederacy (in fact, to all things Southern), as well as someone who, by very nature of the fact that he is from far distance regions certainly does NOT understand the events related to the founding, activities or continuation of the UDC. That is Professor Fitzhugh Brundage, who specializes in POST Civil War history and in lynchings. He is not the proper person to make statements on this page unless you as writers have a hate agenda to do harm to this organization. The fact is, hate speech has already inflamed a mob to violate their building and libraries and to damage their materials. Why do you find it necessary, through means of an online encyclopedia which is supposed to be objective truth to use it as another forum to bring havoc onto an organization which is NOT out there promoting hate or destruction or violence of any kind? LisaRudisill (talk) 22:55, 28 March 2021 (UTC) Lisa Carol Rudisill

The UDC is by definition a post-Civil War organization. Brundage is one of the acknowledged experts in this era, the Lost Cause mythology and the role of the UDC in promoting that mythology. (And this ol' cracker boy is from Tennessee, in case you're wondering; but of course, my family gave two of its three sons fighting against the Slaveholders' Treason.) --Orange Mike | Talk 23:14, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

W. Fitzhugh Brundage is a distinguished American historian and tenured professor at the University of North Carolina, with extensive academic writing on the issues at hand. That you don't like what he writes about the UDC is irrelevant. We aren't here to write something you like, we're here to write an encyclopedia article based upon reliable sources, and W. Fitzhugh Brundage's writing is an indisputable reliable source on this topic. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 23:37, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Orangemike, you're into COIs--how about this? And there's this, which someone else had a hand in. And I think the user page is pretty NOTHERE also. Drmies (talk) 00:18, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

@Drmies: Your comment confuses me. Did you mean to address LisaRudisill instead of Orangemike ? --Rsk6400 (talk) 05:39, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

No. Drmies (talk) 15:18, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Which statement is correct?

Both are in the article:

"In the early 1900s the organization often applauded the Ku Klux Klan and funded the building of a monument to the Klan in 1926." -or-

"A local chapter of the UDC funded a now-vanished memorial to the Klan erected in 1926 near Concord, North Carolina."

The UDC organization has hundreds of chapters. -Topcat777 (talk) 15:17, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Well both can be, as a local chapter is part of the UDC.Slatersteven (talk) 15:25, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

@Topcat777: Why is it so important to you that it was only a local chapter ? The whole organization has been falsifying history, promoting white supremacy and defending the honour of slaveholders, many of whom were child abusers. --Rsk6400 (talk) 13:58, 10 May 2021 (UTC)