South Carolina: the Confederate flag is the most tarnished of banners

[struggle4progress]

CHRIS LEADBEATER
Monday 20 July 2015

... "That flag has a lot of different meanings to a lot of different people," said David Stone, who arranged a protest in Ocala, Florida, last weekend. "It doesn't symbolise hate unless you think it's hate – and that's your problem, not mine." Well, I'm (not) sorry David, but it isn't. This is, let's recall, a flag which was brandished by the 11 states that went to war with the rest the Union in 1861 largely to protect the use of slavery as the bloody wheel of their economies. It was waved again with a snarl a century later by those who opposed the de-segregation of schools and the surging tide of civil rights. Why, in 2015, would you want to wrap yourself in such shameful connotations?

The irony is that South Carolina does not need to cling to some out-dated notion of Confederate otherness to be gloriously Southern. I spent a week there, and found a place whose essential Southern-ness sings in many ways, from the grand colonial architecture of oceanside Charleston to the beautiful backwaters of the state's north-west, where the Blue Ridge Mountains rise as forested precursors to the Appalachians – via the inventive, modern cuisine served in the cutting-edge restaurants of Columbia's Congaree Vista district ...

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/south-carolina-the-confederate-flag-is-the-most-tarnished-of-banners-10401277.html

[peacebird]

1. Yes. The "Heritage not Hate" arguement was destroyed by the KKK rally in Charleston

With their Nazi salutes, making knuckledragging gorrilla pantomines at black people. White supremacist racists wave that flag.

[beerandjesus]

2. A friend of mine and I were laughing about that a few days ago.

Here we are, wondering how to persuade people that the flag isn't just benign "heritage", and then before we know it, the Klan goes up and demonstrates on the flag's behalf. I mean, what the hell could we possibly add to that statement? They're doing our work for us!