Every person I’ve known that defends that flag, save one, is also a racist, even though they pretend not to be in public, they’ll love to tell you all about “niggers” if it’s just white folks and they’ve had a couple beers.
My personal anecdote trumps your general one.
How about you present a counter/whatever or the like? Or is this like Fox News where we ignore anything we don’t agree with?
What makes that experience representative?
My personal anecdote trumps your general one.
My anecdote?
How about you present a counter/whatever or the like?
How do you know what you know? If you can’t substantiate it, do you actually know it? That’s my point.
Secondly, you can’t see inside someone’s heart. You can’t know what they really think. You can only evaluate their words and actions. When we assume intent, we make assumptions that may or may not be valid and are impossible to test for.
As Clay Travis said, if the clan shows up waving the banner and denouncing mixed marriages - you can justly assume the flag is being used as a symbol of white power. If it’s a crowd of old white men dressed up as confederates talking about Gettysburg? It’s probably exactly what they say it is, a token of their heritage. A symbol of their pride, and a link to St. Robert E. Lee.
NY Times - A Georgia County Where the Rebel Flag Is Still Revered
Just across the county line, the Georgia Peach Oyster Bar has operated as a scandalous open secret. Its website features two Confederate battle flags, the description, “The Original Klan, Klam & Oyster Bar,” and a stunningly virulent collection of racist signs. Patrons are confronted with a selection of crude cartoons and graffiti, and a menu that declares, on the appetizer page, “We cater to hangins’.”
Mr. Heath acknowledged the existence of such sentiments here. But he also noted that this overwhelmingly white place, so committed to the flag, also elected a black man, H. Allen Poole, as chairman of its Board of Commissioners in 2004, and has re-elected him twice. Last year, voters elected the state’s first Asian-American Superior Court judge, Meng Lim, a Cambodian refugee who grew up in the Haralson County city of Bremen.
“It’s complicated,” Mr. Heath said.
It isn’t simple.
The author interviewed alumni of the local high school, where the flag is displayed prominently.
But not everyone is so comfortable. Angelica Griffin is also an African-American, and also played sports at the high school. She said that she was “terrified” to criticize the flag while she was there.
Ms. Griffin, 28, recently completed law school at DePaul University in Chicago and is studying for the bar exam. After the Charleston shootings, she said, she posted her displeasure with the flag on social media, sparking debate and pushback from white friends back home.
“People were so apt to defend it, without even thinking about other people and how that flag makes them feel,” she said.
But Ms. Griffin also spoke about the time, in 2008, when her mother lost her job. White Haralson County neighbors showered her mother with money and gift cards so that she could afford to drop her off at college.
“You know what? It doesn’t make sense,” Ms. Griffin said. “It’s the great conundrum of the South.”
We’re a complicated people.
Why? Because those people couldn’t be nice people without the racist symbols? They’re part and parcel? “We’re complicated” is a lame excuse for holding on to those symbols. If those people truly are nice people (which I’m sure they mostly are), they can be even nicer people if they drop those symbols.
“But we elected a black man” is stunningly close to “but I have black friends”.
Humans often hold contrary positions. We can be both tolerant and kind - and we can cling to symbols like the battle flag.
Or. . . they could just not hold on to their racist symbols and just do the tolerant and kind bit. What’s your point?
The flag has multiple meanings, and while we prize comity - southerners aren’t willing to relinquish that good with the bad. To give up the flag would be to forget who we are, and the positive elements of our heritage.
There is an element of ignorance as well though. Many whites do not see the flag as a symbol of racism, and thus struggle to understand opposition to it. We’re also an insular people, and we tend to reject efforts by outsiders to improve our nature - for better or for worse. In this case, efforts to label the flag as racist have provoked a backlash from white southerners who see it as an ignorant attack on their culture.
Consider the administrations efforts to restrict gun sales over the last few years, and the corresponding uptick in gun sales. Southerners are reacting in a similar fashion to efforts to ban the flag.
No, it wouldn’t. The two are not inextricable. Keep the good and ditch the bad. And I say this as someone who lived in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Louisiana, so I’m not some ignorant outsider clueless about southern culture.
Does the south exist without the war? Without that shared sacrifice, without Louisiana Tigers dying at Cold Harbor, what would we be to each other? What does a Cajun actually have in common with a Scotch-Irish uplander? Our communal bond, such as it exist, is a legacy of the war.
And if that is true, how else do we express pride in that bond? What other symbols do we have?
[I]
Why are white southerners such special snowflakes that they need these symbols? They are the same group that, stereotypically, is at the forefront of bemoaning a “PC country” when groups want to be called, say, “African American” instead of “American.”
Accepting all of this for the sake of argument, isn’t there something qualitatively different about displaying the Confederate flag at a NASCAR race or on the top of the General Lee and having it officially displayed as a political statement by a state government?
isn’t there something qualitatively different about displaying the Confederate flag at a NASCAR race or on the top of the General Lee and having it officially displayed as a political statement by a state government
Yes
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Or why not use the actual Confederate Flag? The Klan didn’t dig that one up to protest Civil Rights.
Wait, you mean it’s not all actually about ethics in flag displays?
Let’s be honest. The actual Confederate States flag (pick any of the three) looks weak. The “Stars and Bars” looks like the old Betsy Ross circular, the second one - the so-called “Stainless Banner” - was rejected by everyone because it was too easily confused for the white flag of surrender, (how embarrassing!) the third one is just a mish-mash of the other two. Say what you will about the Southern cause for independence, but their flags were lame.
Lee’s battle flag? That’s a good looking flag. Striking. Easy to identify. Too bad about the history, though.
I think the Stars and Bars is a decent looking flag. Agree on the others and on the battle flag for that matter. It’s an objectively good looking flag.
Because of the Dukes of Hazzard, there’s a part of my mind that always pictures the backdrop of the battle flag as orange instead of red.
Americans? Except without, you know, the history of treason in defense of slavery.
I mean, I’m sure there’s several cultures out there that wish Germany hadn’t fairly recently ruined their symbol of good luck, etc. But sometimes you just got to let it go, man.
You are objectively good looking.
Sen. Lee Bright opens S.C. flag debate with gay marriage rant.
…I heard our president sing a religious hymn and then Friday night I watch the White House be lit up in the abomination colors…
…If were not going to find some way to push back against the Federal government like our forefathers did, or push back against a tyrannical government like the founders of this nation did…
-Todd