The Confederacy was a con job on whites. And still is.

[TexasTowelie]

By Frank Hyman

I’ve lived 55 years in the South, and I grew up liking the Confederate flag. I haven’t flown one for many decades, but for a reason that might surprise you.

I know the South well. We lived wherever the Marine Corps stationed my father: Georgia, Virginia, the Carolinas. As a child, my favorite uncle wasn’t in the military, but he did pack a .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun in his trunk. He was a leader in the Ku Klux Klan. Despite my role models, as a kid I was an inept racist. I got in trouble once in the first grade for calling a classmate the N-word. But he was Hispanic.

As I grew up and acquired the strange sensation called empathy (strange for boys anyway), I learned that for black folks the flutter of that flag felt like a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. And for the most prideful flag waivers, clearly that response was the point. I mean, come on. It’s a battle flag.

What the flag symbolizes for blacks is enough reason to take it down. But there’s another reason that white southerners shouldn’t fly it. Or sport it on our state-issued license plates as some do here in North Carolina. The Confederacy – and the slavery that spawned it – was also one big con job on the Southern, white, working class. A con job funded by some of the ante-bellum one-per-centers, that continues today in a similar form.

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/article135987178.html

[safeinOhio]

1. Only one Confederate Flag matters.

On April 9, 1865 Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, surrendered..

The one they flew on April 9, 1965.

[vkkv]

10. Yep, the last flag of the Confederacy was the white flag of surrender.

THAT, is the "official" flag of the Confederacy.

[vlyons]

2. That's correct

Southern poor white men remained poor, because work jobs were done by slaves. White people were sent to the battle fields to protect white plantation owners use of free labor of slaves. Poor whites were sold the BS that at least they were better than inferior black people. They are still sold that BS to this day.

[brush]

3. Yep, and many of them are still buying it.

[GeoWilliam750]

5. The larger slave owners were specifically exempt from having to join the Confederate Army

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty_Negro_Law

Rich man's war, poor man's fight.

Ever has it been thus.

[elleng]

4. 'You dont have to be an economist to see that forcing blacks a third of the Souths laborers

– to work without pay drove down wages for everyone else. And not just in agriculture. A quarter of enslaved blacks worked in the construction, manufacturing and lumbering trades; cutting wages even for skilled white workers.

Thanks to the profitability of this no-wage/low-wage combination, a majority of American one-per-centers were southerners. Slavery made southern states the richest in the country. The South was richer than any other country except England. But that vast wealth was invisible outside the plantation ballrooms. With low wages and few schools, southern whites suffered a much lower land ownership rate and a far lower literacy rate than northern whites.

My ancestor Canna Hyman and his two sons did own land and fought under that flag. A note from our family history says: “Someone came for them while they were plowing one day. They put their horses up and all three went away to the War and only one son, William, came back.”

Like Canna, most Southerners didn’t own slaves. But they were persuaded to risk their lives and limbs for the right of a few to get rich as Croesus from slavery. For their sacrifices and their votes, they earned two things before and after the Civil War. First, a very skinny slice of the immense Southern pie. And second, the thing that made those slim rations palatable then and now: the shallow satisfaction of knowing that blacks had no slice at all.

to work without pay drove down wages for everyone else. And not just in agriculture. A quarter of enslaved blacks worked in the construction, manufacturing and lumbering trades; cutting wages even for skilled white workers.

Thanks to the profitability of this no-wage/low-wage combination, a majority of American one-per-centers were southerners. Slavery made southern states the richest in the country. The South was richer than any other country except England. But that vast wealth was invisible outside the plantation ballrooms. With low wages and few schools, southern whites suffered a much lower land ownership rate and a far lower literacy rate than northern whites.

My ancestor Canna Hyman and his two sons did own land and fought under that flag. A note from our family history says: “Someone came for them while they were plowing one day. They put their horses up and all three went away to the War and only one son, William, came back.”

Like Canna, most Southerners didn’t own slaves. But they were persuaded to risk their lives and limbs for the right of a few to get rich as Croesus from slavery. For their sacrifices and their votes, they earned two things before and after the Civil War. First, a very skinny slice of the immense Southern pie. And second, the thing that made those slim rations palatable then and now: the shallow satisfaction of knowing that blacks had no slice at all.'

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

6. Good write up

Everyone should read then linked to article.

Reading the comments it looks like the author ruffled a few feathers.

[Rhiannon12866]

7. I somehow missed this the first time through. Well written and important analysis

This should be required reading for everyone who supports flying that flag - and who votes.

[dalton99a]

8. Great article.

[vkkv]

9. Wow, enlightening!