The Confederate Flag: Racist or Southern Heritage?

Working and traveling around the south, I encounter the confederate flag in many ways. On bumper stickers, hanging on someone's house, a confederate flag bikini, T shirts. I never asked anyone about why they wear/have this flag, but I'm wondering is there a way for it not to be seen as racist. I'm sure some people have the idea it's a way to show a sense of southern pride, ie where one is from. What are your thought on this?

My thought is that it's racist.

ever seen an Afro-American with this flag on his bumper/or whatever?

How is the rebel flag not a racist symbol?

Is it racist when a bunch of cluelss Scottish twats put it on the cover of their album?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f9/Give_out_but_don%27t_give_up_album_cover.jpg

oh man, people are constantly arguing over this in letters to the editor in my hometown paper. i mean this has been going on for years and years and years. it's them saying it's part of the heritage out there & isn't meant to offend anyone basically. the latest flare up was after the parents of black students at the high school objected to kids wearing it at school, so the schools banned it (good for them), and then a bunch of people freaked out.

Someone's gonna lock this, right?

in about 300 posts, yes

Southern Brooklyn Hertigae, maybe.
http://gothamist.com/2009/07/29/bay_ridge_man_displays_confederate.php

Sorry I should've used the search function.

These choices are not mutually exclusive, btw.

I wonder what George Clinton feels about being on an album with this as the cover.

one time at the boxing matches in Greensboro some guy came in from TN with trunks that had the Confederate flag on them. I don't know how the rest of G-boro feels about it but the boxing public was way not into it, it was hilarious - the whole room did a double-take when this guy got in the ring, he was the most-hated heel of the night.

Chris Troupe, who had come up from Georgia & whom I ran into five minutes later in the men's room as he was unwrapping his fists, knocked him out.

These choices are not mutually exclusive, btw.

This is the pink "DUH" in the room.

Yeah rly, my answer to the thread question is "YES".

Sad about the General Lee, my favorite car of childhood.

Is it racist when a bunch of cluelss Scottish twats put it on the cover of their album?

To be fair though, clueless Scottish twats are responsible for a lot of the "heritage" of the South

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVQ0fvsv1DU

There's little to be proud of here. The Stars and Bars is a terrorist icon; the battle flag of a confederation of states who tried to destroy the Union so they could continue enslaving people in a supposedly free republic. The justification for this through virulently malicious yet completely specious racism would be risible were it not the source of a great deal of pain and evil and the economic ramifications of the South's attachment to slavery were that it lagged behind the North, Britain, Germany and even France as an agricultural commodities backwater. Anyone who fails to see the contradictions in Jeffersonian democracy as practiced in the American South isn't really looking at Monticello too closely.

There are many things about where one is from that should not be embraced. But it seems like I've encountered a lot of people in the south that have a blind sense of allegiance to "where I'm from." And equally strong is a fear of any intrusions into this history and it's preservation. This means keeping out "others", whomever the others are. I've heard a lot of hatred towards yankees and other for foreigners. It's always struck as odd the amount of time spent thinking about yankees and hating them, when I've never heard much talk when I'm north about the south.

well uh... is it really surprising that the losers of a war are more resentful than the winners?

But still??

these sorts of easy-to-blame-somebody-else historical grievances tend to stick around. cf balkans etc

I have genuine sympathy for Southerners in that regard but it has not nor will it do them any good to defend an indefensible past and if they resent being lectured at by 'others' just put two or three good ideas together and reform of your own volition.

http://www.academicearth.org/courses/the-civil-war-and-reconstruction-era-1845-1877

if y'all have 27 hours to kill you HAVE GOT to get into this

ps fuck the south, sherman didn't do enough lol

Everything awful thing you need to know about the American South is there in the lyrics to "Simple Man" by Lynyrd Skynyrd. It's not in "Sweet Home Alabama." No, it's this epic, triumphant paeon to being stubbornly uneducated, stubbornly religious, indeed stubbornly stubborn, that really captures the mood and attitude of the American South.

When you lose a war that bloody and brutal, you really LOSE the war. The South lost the war so badly that generations later, there's no forgetting. I imagine that at some point not too far into the war, it ceased to be about economic and human rights issues, and just became about a big bag of "fuck you." You killed my wife, you burned my babies, you stopped at nothing and left us with nothing, and fuck you. Yeah, they're still angry about it. I almost understand.

It can't help that they started it, too. It's one thing if the Mongols waltz in and fuck you over, but when you start a war with your cousins and your cousins kick your ass...

I hate it here so much.

It can't help that they started it, too. It's one thing if the Mongols waltz in and fuck you over, but when you start a war with your cousins and your cousins kick your ass...

'cept civil wars are the worst

ever seen an Afro-American with this flag on his bumper/or whatever?

a related question - do you get African Americans from the South going "I love the South", or do they all go "I hate where I am from"? Put another way, is regional pride not an option for them?

When you lose a war that bloody and brutal, you really LOSE the war.

the funnny thing is that there are countries that fought bloody and brutal civil wars where the losing side (and everyone else) just decided to pretend it never happened afterwards. I am thinking here of Finland and Nigeria, to pick two very different examples.

uh dude there are plenty of african americans that love the south

do you get African Americans from the South going "I love the South", or do they all go "I hate where I am from"?

You absolutely get African-Americans from the South saying that they love it there. Conventional wisdom is that even with the legacy of the Civil War hanging over their heads, it's the southern States that have mobilized faster in terms of black-owned businesses and black politicians; generally speaking, the sense of community and support is stronger there, ergo it is easier to succeed. (I can't say whether data backs that assertion up.)

both in the south, and elsewhere.
x-post

My wife, for example, has wanted to move back to Tennessee pretty much ever since she set foot in Massachusetts (at least until she reconnected with some ppl from her high school on Facebook and remembered why she wanted to leave in the first place, lol); her sister moved back there a few years ago and loves it much more than she ever loved living in Ohio or Pennsylvania.

there is also this guy, to answer the confederate flag question:

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5820/830/400/HK%20Edgerton%20and%20confederate%20flag%20asheville%20nc.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._K._Edgerton

(it is possible that i think that he is kind of a nutjob, but just saying the issue is more complicated than you might think. like everything.)

uh dude there are plenty of african americans that love the south

Of course there are. After all the eligible voters and their kids were done killing each other in the Civil War, they still had about a hundred years of fighting ahead of them. But it's like I say; when you fight HARD, you don't take that shit lightly.

xposts

Everything awful thing you need to know about the American South is there in the lyrics to "Simple Man" by Lynyrd Skynyrd. It's not in "Sweet Home Alabama." No, it's this epic, triumphant paeon to being stubbornly uneducated, stubbornly religious, indeed stubbornly stubborn, that really captures the mood and attitude of the American South.

really really hate comments like this, no offense

There's a lot of diversity in the American south, and lots of ambiguity on how to deal with its history. It's not as simple as "all you need to know about the American south"---it's a deep place that in my almost 20 years living there I only began to grasp.

i mean there might be something to the idea that posing the question in terms of "why dont you ignorant cornpone sister-fucking racists just get with the program and ease up on your negative feelings towards northerners?" that might maybe delay the reconciliation vibe, you know?

xpost

really really hate comments like this, no offense

None taken. Broad generalizations about the South are touchy, I know, and I can't imagine it helps to pin them to a Lynyrd Skynyrd song.

simple answer is that racism is the south's heritage

The inconvenient bit is that racism is also the north's heritage.

racism: everyone's heritage!

Racism is the nation's heritage, full bleeding stop.

I've met plenty of African-American Southerners who wanted to go back South or who really identified with various aspcts of their Southern heritage.

Also, humans in being shitty since time immemorial shocker!

folks srsly those paul blight yale lectures are unreal, get into it

I think the original Stars & Bars was not ditched as such, just replaced by the Southern Cross as the Confederate battle flag. The Stars & Bars remained the CSA's national flag.

Did the South's Scots-Irish identify with the 'x' crosses of Saints Patrick or Andrew?

Identifying with St. Patrick = out past unlikely and into the realms of the fantastical

but what about bratwurst in New Orleans?

I can't think of one instance in my 25 years of living there when I had an opportunity to eat bratwurst. Where'd you try it? And was it really so horrible? When New Orleanians want to eat sausage we generally opt for the amazing Boudin.

Pride and heritage and moral regret are not mutually exclusive in the least.

your are wm. faulkner & I claim my five bucks

mmm boudin. fetchboy have you tried cochon/ butcher?

Sadly not, will. I gave up meat before I ever really had the opportunity. But my ex-gf's hometown hosts the legendary Cochon De Lait Festival.

i respect your convictions, but man that is really sad.

Not as sad as not being able to find decent nachos. (haven't yet exhausted every avenue, tbh)

Hooray! As always, all roads threads lead to Rome food.

http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_t3#/video/us/2012/04/25/dnt-girl-denied-prom-rebel-dress.wmc

rip proms

My middleaged coworker, whos from and lives in North Carolina, wears a grey rubber bracelet that said "Deo Vindice" and which I did not notice til heading on a service trip with him this week. Mentioned he really doesn't really like change, used to hang out with neo-confederates, lives in a small town.

Great stuff.

dayo vindice

- do you like change?

- do you live in a small town?

- how do you ignite the crosses?

I still see this image on a daily basis, and south east texas is such a racially mixed part of the state that I feel like maybe people don't even see it anymore?

I was behind a guy in line at a Burger King in the Florida panhandle a couple years ago wearing a t-shirt with the Stars n Bars on the back of it and the words "If this flag offends you, you need a history lesson." It took every ounce of restraint I could muster to lecture this guy on how that flag stood for the preservation of a way of life that enslaved human beings, broke apart the United States of America, killed thousands and thousands of earnest young men on both sides of the argument and finally resulted in the assassination of a president.

So yeah, that flag offends me.

to *not

hahaha

"oh my god, it's taking every fiber of my being to give you this Civil War lecture"

I hate confederate flag so much. Mostly because I've never lived anywhere near the south and whenever I see it it's on the giant pickup truck of some backwoods good old boy in Michigan or Idaho who also has never lived anywhere near the south and sports it specifically because of the racist connotations while still giving them the "IT'S HISTORY" cop-out if necessary.

There's no doubt that the Confedrate flag is a racist symbol. The major causus belli was the enslavement of blacks, and no amount of denial can change that fact. And we must not forget that Jim Crow and virulent racism was the dominant note of society in the ex-Confederacy right up to a few decades ago, and that flag was flown as a defiant banner of triumphant racism for a hundred years after the Confederacy ended.

The complication arises when you understand that a symbol can be and often is complex, bearing many meanings at once. In this case, it is also a symbol of many hundreds of thousands of men who died under that flag. If the southern states were to repudiate that flag, it would be required to reject that massive sacrifice of its sons.

This emotional attachment will die very hard, even as the harshly violent brand of racism it upheld slowly fades into something less cruel. Southerners are probably going to feel protective (and conflicted) about that flag for at least another century. But eventually, it will become a hollowed out symbol with very little emotional power left in it. Hasten the day, O Lord.

Yeah I'm not particularly well traveled but I've been to both Pennsylvania & Missouri and seen two different trucks with confederate flag paraphenalia, both with in-state license plates.

Did mention that he thought "1000 year of Anglo-saxon tradition was changing so fast" and I restrained myself from letting him know how much of appalachia and bits of the south were settled by scots-irish who'd spent generations actively doing whatever they could to kill as many anglos as possible.

But I held off. I'm a proud drunk socialist protestant pac-nor'westerner now; I'm fine in my position.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/24/lynyrd-skynyrd-confederate-flag_n_1909135.html

What a poorly written article.

I saw more confederate flag bumper stickers when i lived in New Jersey than I do here in Atlanta.

scots-irish who'd spent generations actively doing whatever they could to kill as many anglos as possible.

Saxons, maybe, but Scots-Irish have an extensive Anglish heritage.

My thought is that it's racist.

― pon de floor (HI DERE), Tuesday, August 4, 2009 8:43 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

who the fuck flies a confederate flag at a 4th of july parade in NEW MEXICO

(obvious answer: a racist asshole)

anyway, that's as far as I got into the article before I ragequit

Scared Anglos who feel the need to reaffirm their tribal identity and wave their totem pole in the face of their minority status

I just wiki'd it & I guess there were some battles fought there as part of the western campaign but honestly who gives a flying fuck. hey racists: CUT IT OUT

Also, I found out that one of my remote coworkers wears a grey rubber bracelet says "Deo Vindice" on it. Says he got it b/c he was pretty involved in the Neo Confederates in NC some years back. Openly cops to hating change.

Rossington would do well to remember what Ronnie Van Zant said about the flag in 1975: "That was strictly an MCA gimmick to start us off with some label. It was useful at first, but by now it’s embarrassing except in Europe, where they really like all that stuff because they think it’s macho American."

Also, Tom Petty used the flag on his 1986 tour; R.E.M. publicly gave him shit for it (along the lines of, "We're proud to be from the south too, but we're not racist shitbags about it.")

in NEW MEXICO

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6b/Confederate_States_of_America.svg/250px-Confederate_States_of_America.svg.png

Van Zant always seemed a lot smarter than the rest of the band (Ronnie Van Zant that is).

Wow, people like that stuff in Europe? My experience with Europeans is mainly through tourists and exchange students (obv they have money and education), who ask me lots of questions about black people - what is life like for black people, what are white people really like in USA, etc.. Used to drive some people NUTS. But I'm not the expert here.

Racist Southern heritage!

http://gawker.com/5952285/tough-guy-pulls-gun-on-elementary-school-students-after-they-make-fun-of-his-confederate-flag?post=53574731

funny to see texas, of all places, being put in the position of turning down confederate flag license plates:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/supreme_court_dispatches/2015/03/confederate_flag_on_texas_license_plates_supreme_court_considers_free_speech.html

re op question why can't it be both?

otm

maybe "both" would kinda mean "they are the same thing"

anyway according to my mom, our longtime neighbor across the street in my hometown (who lowers his Packers flag to half mast when they lose and has occasionally left threatening signs to those who have knocked over his mailbox, which unsurprisingly has led to a noticeable increase in his mailbox getting knocked over), has raised a confederate flag alongside his american flag in his driveway.

notherners who pull this shit make me especially furious but it's not w/o a long history

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copperhead_%28politics%29

http://www.journalnow.com/news/local/southern-comics-tears-up-battle-flag/article_7fb49252-3589-11e5-95e5-835bcea30608.html

The Beverly Hillbillies are next. pic.twitter.com/FUvbE3N8N6

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) August 17, 2017

....odd:

This pro-Confederate group's statement on Snooty the Manatee is one of the weirder things I've read this week. https://t.co/dxVkSRxk47 pic.twitter.com/17kuSMZrGG

— Antonia Noori Farzan (@antoniafarzan) August 17, 2017

Didn't want to start a new thread about it, but: I've got about a week and a half to go till I graduate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where the Confederate memorial that I used to spit on each time I passed it was pulled down by student demonstrators back in August. Last week, just as final exams were beginning, the administration* responded with an enormously unpopular proposal to 1) erect a $5 million freestanding 'campus history center' that will securely house the statue, and 2) head off future student actions by spending $2 million annually on a "mobile police force" for the UNC system. This has brought existing tensions between under-resourced graduate students & administrators to a boil, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 grad student TAs have gone on a grading strike.

(For reference, the statue at the heart of this debate was erected during the Jim Crow era; you can read a speech from the dedication ceremony here.)

-----

*Admittedly, this decision was really taken out of the university's hands by the North Carolina General Assembly**, which went on the defensive in 2015 after a decade-long campaign of pressure on said university administrators succeeded in getting the name of Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan leader William L. Saunders removed from a place of honor on campus; the NCGA responded by passing a new law "that prevents removing, relocating, or altering monuments, memorials, plaques and other markers that are on public property without permission from the N.C. Historical Commission." Re-installing it in a place of comparable honor somehow gets through a loophole here; otherwise the university would be forced to put it back up in its original site, where it would just be torn down again with maybe some unnecessary bloodshed into the bargain. BUT ALSO: several people, including the state's (Democratic) governor, have taken the position that the law on the books is probably not enforceable against the university, so their hands may not be quite so tied as they want to pretend.

**... who you may remember from such news stories as "NC voter ID law struck down by judge for 'target[ing] African-Americans with almost surgical precision'"

Shit's fucked up, is what I'm trying to say; and I need to vent about it here, in semi-anonymity, because I can only get so much pleasure out of wading into local news comments sections and telling "law and order" types who are working themselves into a lather over a grading strike's potential impact on students that I support the strike even though it directly affects me.

that is so fucked up

ps fuck the south, sherman didn't do enough lol

yup