When Ta-Nehisi Coates was writing for The Atlantic years ago he was basically longform blogging on their site, and part of it he was driving around to Civil War battlefields with his kids, and if any of his commenters noticed what a hilariously stock History Dad thing that was they didn’t mention where I saw

One of the bees in his bonnet was pushing back on reports of loyal black Confederate troops. He linked it to various revisionists but honestly I wonder how much of it was some reenactors being like “yeah this Confederate cosplay brings us together in Southern identity but you know who it leaves out? Our black friends.”

As in I wonder how much the Gingrich/NASCAR 90s created a space for people to hold that southern conservative pride alongside whatever iffy antiracism America canonized after MLK, and I had once had a dream of things going from there, like the Confederate re-enactors would “skirmish” against a black Union troop and be like “yeah well, I get it that they’re on that side” and then afterwards talk History Dad stuff together, like hardtack and where they were stationed in the Navy