The Confederate Flag - from a descendant of the creator

No, Adam B apparently couldn’t tell who was writing what because of their accent while typing ;)

Zut alors!

Some of the stranger bedfellows of 20th century historiography were Lost Causers and Marxist historians. Circa 1935 both found themselves arguing in parallel tracks that the Civil War was unneeded because slavery would have withered away naturally - the Marxists saying it was an inefficient vestigial remnant of the feudal system destined to be swept away by capitalism, the Lost Causers saying that surely the South would have worked out its little idiosyncrasies on its own if only those impertinent Yankees hadn’t butted in.

(There’s no real signs that slavery was dying out in South c. 1860, and indeed plenty of evidence to the contrary. Nonetheless you still often see it asserted in popular histories, e.g. the first episode of Ken Burns’s Civil War series.)

A CNN poll shows 57% of Americans seeing the flag more as a symbol of Southern pride than as a symbol of racism basically unchanged from 15 years ago.

This is a prime example of a badly worded poll question (or more accurately a poll question designed to provide a memorable headline instead of good insight.) The whole point of the Confederate flag is that it does double duty as both a symbol of Southern pride and a symbol of racism; it allows people to have their cake and eat it too. But there’s no “both” option in the poll.

Well, there sort of was.

  1. Do you, yourself, see the Confederate flag more as a symbol of Southern pride or more as a symbol
    of racism?

They offered five options; Southern pride, racism, both equally, neither, no opinion. I get that it’s a forced choice situation, but I’m pretty sure most people think it’s at least somewhat of a racism symbol (as implied in the question - “more”) and only allowing that response when it’s equal to Southern pride seems odd.

The divide between the answers given by blacks and the answers given by whites is indicative of a real issue that’s not going away anytime soon.

That’s for darn sure. The whole “post racial” bit that was peddled by some after Obama took office just drove me up a wall.

Another tidbit from the poll article:

Among whites, there’s a sharp divide by education, and those with more formal education are less apt to see the flag as a symbol of pride. Among whites with a college degree, 51% say it’s a symbol of pride, 41% one of racism. Among those whites who do not have a college degree, 73% say it’s a sign of Southern pride, 18% racism.

The thing is, there are tons of racist people who would SAY that it’s a symbol of southern pride, when in reality, they are basically just using that term to pretty up their own internalized form of racism.

This is why there is a definite FU part of the flag. I know that when I first went up north I got really pissed at the questions and comments I got(how many shoes do I have. Ever work with cotton? being 2 I remember decades later). I would guess that most white southerners have been typecast as a backward hick at some point. Which leads to some self loathing or at least loathing of their roots captured by Faulkner. And then others will stick up more for sothern culture because they are annoyed at assumptions about them. (Also some positive stereotypes based around manners and food but more typical is the idea that you are backwards if you have a drawl

I think the flag should 't be on state buildings. Think that some names should be changed and probably some schools. Don’t like taking down monuments to th dead though. Jeff has pretty much summed up my feelings.

Source

I love TTDB.

This point cannot be made often enough.

57% of Americans?

Well probably not all of them, but I’d bet a decent percentage of them.

If they want a symbol of Southern Pride, I don’t get why they don’t use the actual fucking Confederate Flag. You know, the one that wasn’t dug up by racists as a symbol of racism? The one that was the actual fricking flag of the Confederacy? Instead of the ad hoc flag they had to use to avoid friendly fire incidents, that was later used by the Klan.

But I think that would require a history lesson and no one wants any of that book learnin round here.

How do you know this?

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/07/01/it-turns-out-white-support-for-confederate-flag-really-is-about-racism-not-heritage/

If racists have often used Confederate symbology to bolster their cause, it stands to reason that supporters of the flag would be more racist as a whole. They include a sub-group of avowed racists, no?

What you can not conclude from that article is what percentage of those 183 million Americans are motivated by crypto-racism.

Or what percentage are proud and racist. Or proud to be racist!

Judging from the events in Charleston, very few.