Why do people still fly the Confederate flag?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23705803A row has erupted in Virginia over a proposal to fly a huge Confederate flag outside the state capital, Richmond. One hundred and fifty years after the Civil War, the flag can still be seen flying from homes and cars in the South. Why?
.../...
Now plans by a heritage group, the Virginia Flaggers, to erect a large Confederate flag on a major road outside Richmond has drawn considerable fire from critics who say it's a symbol of hate.
That's not true, says Barry Isenhour, a member of the group, who says it's really about honouring the Confederate soldiers who gave their lives. For him, the war was not primarily about slavery but standing up to being over-taxed, and he says many southerners abhorred slavery.
.../...
Others strongly disagree with his analysis. African Americans, especially older ones, are traumatised when they see the flag, says Salim Khalfani, who has lived in Richmond for nearly 40 years and thinks it risks making the city look like a "hick" backwater that is still fighting the Civil War.
Read more:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23705803
Really interesting article from the Beeb.
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Journeyman
(15,026 posts)the major approach to Los Angeles from the San Joaquin Valley (Central California), an enormous Confederate Navy Jack -- perhaps as long as 20 feet in width -- hung for years from a tall flagpole at the base of the pass. It was almost the first sight drivers saw as they entered the Southland -- and imparted a raw edge to that common nickname for the LA Basin and its environs.
It hung there for a number of years and generated, as you can imagine, a storm of controversy. Why it was flown and why it was ultimately removed, I can't say. As I think back on it, I can't remember the last time I saw it, though I suspect it's been gone since the mid '90s. It's not the sort of thing you notice when it's missing, only when it's there.
I could give you a range of reasons why people would choose to fly the Stars & Bars, everything from overt racism and hatred of the U.S. to nostalgia for an era long gone and the discredited antebellum ideal of state's rights. All the reasons would fit, though perhaps never all at the same time. Its display on the outreaches of a major metropolitan area, and in such a provocative manner, was an affront to every citizen who passed it and its removal the only proper resolution.
Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)good-sized contingent of homegrown RWers, libertarians, and racists for whom the Confed flag is a borrowed symbol.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)That has all changed now, of course.
I was born here, we had racists out the wazoo when I was young, and they were not silent about it either. Racist growers harshing on the latinos, racist cops harshing on the blacks, and God help you if people did not know what it was that you were, or if you were some taboo sexual category, or looked like you were safe to bully. And very militaristic post-WWII. John Birch society, some of my friends in HS were big into John Birch society and Welch and all that bullshit. That was when I started to realize just how corrupt US politics really is.
My house still has restrictions on the title about who can live here. They are ignored, but they are there. I live in a mixed neighborhood now: 50% black, the rest white, japanese, mexican, and "not sure" or "don't care".
Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)Fortunately, CA has since gone deep blue over all, with just vestiges of red towns and neighborhoods left. Orange County, where my RW brother lives, is one of those enclaves.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)And do what I can to help it along. It is a great place, all these people did not move here just for the jobs.
darkangel218
(13,985 posts)Or both.
gopiscrap
(23,726 posts)
radicalliberal
(907 posts)Oh, please . . . 
Give me a break! 
Wait, I take that back. Sure, many Southerners abhorred slavery. The slaves, that is.
Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)bit of revisionist history!
WCLinolVir
(951 posts)In Virginia, for being anti-slavery. The guy is delusional.
These guys, and yes it is usually men, with a pickup truck, who drive around without stopping for long, because I think they are defensive, and understand there is a risk to such idiocy. One house briefly had one and it came down quickly. I do not see trucks here in Richmond that are parked with the flags flying. Or the license plates either. They are chicken. Even at a sale of KKK memorabilia no one had a vehicle with the flag just left in place.
I'm real tired of them lying about their motives.
Stuckinthebush
(10,842 posts)As ruthless and abhorrent as the antebellum south was in terms of human rights, many southerners have a nostalgia for the myth of the South. They envision a society that was simple, god-fearing, and where everyone knew their role and "place". In their minds they whitewash slavery as simply a system of production. Without it, the South would never have been as prosperous. The riches trickled down.
The majority do bemoan the cruelty of slavery but then will tell you stories of their great great grandfather who owned a large plantation in South Georgia with hundreds of slaves. You see, their ancestors were benevolent slave owners. They can tell you stories of how the house mammy was a good friend of the family and raised all the children. So, while a handful of slave owners were cruel, the majority were not.
Then they will tell you about the evils of the Union Army. Don't bring up Sherman. The South was on its knees and that cruel Sherman burned down Georgia. My family can tell you a story about my great great grandfather who was a captain and home will a terrible illness when Sherman came through. My great great grandmother put him in a trunk and sat on the trunk feigning illness. The gentleman officer of the Union troops that ransacked their plantation home ordered his men to leave her be. They mercifully chose not to burn down the home but took everything of value in the place. Only because of her actions I am here today to tell you about them.
Then we will get to reconstruction and how it decimated the Southern economy and humiliated once noble families.
No, you see, the flag flies to remind us that we DO have a heritage in the South and that heritage is largely glorious. The flag reminds us of this glory. It reminds us that there was some nobility in the struggle and it reminds us that we do not have to be shamed for remembering this past. Our ancestors were generally good people and we celebrate them through this symbol.
Slavery was terrible, yes. But we have atoned for this sin of our fathers. We have struggled and paid with blood and riches. We are a beat down, disgraced people. The flag is a symbol of the good - not the bad. A symbol of heritage - not hate. We only wish that others can understand that. Let us celebrate our heritage. If you can't do that then we will defy you and deny you the satisfaction of further demeaning the South. I wish I was in the land of cotton, old times there are NOT forgotten.
.......
See how that works? As I sit rocking on my porch with my glass of sweet tea in the Heart of Dixie, I am telling you truly that this is the mindset.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)"Slavery was terrible, yes. But"
And yes, well said, that is how it is.
Stuckinthebush
(10,842 posts)A perfect word to describe the "but".
bemildred
(90,061 posts)I don't have a lot of use for generic south-bashing any more than generic LA-bashing, a non-racist shit-together redneck is one of the best friends you can have. Willy Nelson. But we all did what we did in the old days and we need to own up so that we can move on.
Stuckinthebush
(10,842 posts)I love the people down here. We are all complex individuals, no?
The question is how do we assist our friends and family members in a critical analysis of this issue without demeaning or shaming them? I think there is common ground and we have to find it some way.
defacto7
(13,485 posts)The word "but" always erases everything that is said before it. Whatever was said before "but" wasn't really what they meant.
I just love that dress, but..... (I don't like that dress).
Slavery was terrible, yes. But.... (I can't stop the sentence there, I must erase what I just said to say something more important.)
bemildred
(90,061 posts)
yurbud
(39,405 posts)you.
defacto7
(13,485 posts)WCLinolVir
(951 posts)Who took part in the selling of humans like rats. What nobility is that? The rapes, the beatings, the pathological self-interest. Oh yeah, such fine families. Anybody tells me crap like that I'd have to puke right back at em. They paid in blood and riches for what they took in blood and misery.
MicaelS
(8,747 posts)And spoken to people that do fly that flag, or have a bumper sticker on their car. I see it as a gesture of defiance for many Southerners. The people that fly it know that it gets some liberal people very upset. They like that fact. They like the fact they are giving some people a figurative poke in the eye.
It's a way of saying "Fuck you jack, I don't care what you think. I'm going to do what I want, and if you don't like it, too fucking bad."
Personally, I think it's stupid. I see people with lots of bumper stickers on their cars, no matter their political persuasion and I automatically roll my eyes.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)and offensive. I've heard that same crud where I grew up, and never believed a word of it.
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)"liberal elite" that Hate Radio says is destroying the country. Sort of like having a crucifix on your license plate or screaming to high heaven whenever anyone says "Happy Holidays"
coldmountain
(802 posts)yurbud
(39,405 posts)Uncle Joe
(58,300 posts)Why do people fly the U.S. Flag, the "Stars and Stripes," "Old Glory?"
There is only one overall answer, identification with a larger group, but the motivation of the individual (s) flying said flag can't be pigeonholed into one monolithic ideal, for perceptions are too varied.
If the answer to motivation could be dumbed down to a simple easy answer, then every person flying the Star and Stripes would be of one political persuasion or belief and obviously they're/we're not by any stretch of the imagination.
Thanks for the thread, Surya Gayatri.
Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)And you're welcome for the thread!
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)It flies in all of the public buildings, at the olympics, is painted on our airplanes and other military vehicles, and so on. The Stars & Bars group is similar to if a large faction of German decided to fly the swastika.
Uncle Joe
(58,300 posts)I was speaking of the people, individuals or even groups and I would count wearing a flag lapel pin in the same ballpark as flying the flag.
The point of differing motivations and perceptions being too varied to be pigeonholed with the general exception of self-identification to a larger group.
Why do people fly the U.S. Flag, the "Stars and Stripes," "Old Glory?"
There is only one overall answer, identification with a larger group, but the motivation of the individual (s) flying said flag can't be pigeonholed into one monolithic ideal, for perceptions are too varied.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)rape and killed without legal recourse?
The Confederate flag has a very different meaning from our national flag and most other national flags.
It should be considered as embarrassing, inappropriate, and ignorant as flying a Nazi flag or walking around in your Klan dress.
exboyfil
(17,862 posts)The argument can be that we are at least trying to get better over time. The Confederacy died with their constitution saying in part:
4. No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.
3. The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the limits of the several Sates; and may permit them, at such times, and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form States to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.
3. No slave or other person held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the Confederate States, under the laws thereof, escaping or lawfully carried into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such slave belongs; or to whom such service or labor may be due.
CSA Vice President Stephens:
"Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition."
CSA President Davis:
"If slavery be a sin, it is not yours. It does not rest on your action for its origin, on your consent for its existence. It is a common law right to property in the service of man; its origin was Divine decree."
~Davis
"African slavery, as it exists in the United States, is a moral, a social, and a political blessing."
~Davis
"My own convictions as to negro slavery are strong. It has its evils and abuses...We recognize the negro as God and God's Book and God's Laws, in nature, tell us to recognize him - our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude...You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables them to be."
~Davis
Flying a Confederate flag is no different than flying a Nazi Swastika. You need to take the words of this former government seriously.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)I find it redundant. If I were living in a foreign land, and wanted to advertise: "the Yank lives here" I might...
Uncle Joe
(58,300 posts)although I have a U.S. flag in my closet which covered my father's casket.
eShirl
(18,480 posts)
Brigid
(17,621 posts)With slaves around, no matter how poor the whites may have been, and disdained by the planter aristocracy, there was always someone who was lower on the social ladder than they were.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)Hoyt
(54,770 posts)didn't own slaves, yet fought in the war."
The host - Randy Rhodes I think - said, "yeah I can see some poor farmers, who didn't own slaves, sitting around deciding if they should fight to protect slavery. One of them said, 'you know, old Mr. Beaureguard, ain't gonna pick his own cotton.'"
Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)there's somebody below you in the hierarchy, you can hold your own head up while bludgeoning the one lower down.
struggle4progress
(118,237 posts)some excerpts from the Virginia Secession Convention which met in 1861 from 13 February through 1 May: slavery is the major topic
16 February
Mr. WISE She has done it in the whole tier of counties along the Ohio river. You can no more own a slave there than on the other side of the Ohio. She maintains a terminus for an underground railroad within her territory, and she has brought you to test what have been the rights of Virginia at high water and low water mark. You talk about slavery in the territories; you talk about slavery in the District of Columbia—when its tenure in Virginia is doubtful. Are we to be submissive to these wrongs?
18 February
Mr. BENNING: What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North- was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. This conviction, sir, was the main cause ... In the first place, I say that the North hates slavery ... My next proposition is that in the past the North has invariably exerted against slavery, all the power which it had at the time. The question merely was what was the amount of power it had to exert against it. They abolished slavery in that magnificent empire which you presented to the North ; they abolished slavery in every Northern State, one after another ; they abolished slavery in all the territory above the line of 36 30, which comprised about one million square miles. They have endeavored to put the Wilmot Proviso upon all the other territories of the Union, and they succeeded in putting it upon the territories of Oregon and Washington. They have taken from slavery all the conquests of the Mexican war, and appropriated it all to anti-slavery purposes ; and if one of our fugitives escapes into the territories, they do all they can to make a free man of him ...
&c &c
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)is the only reason for secession in the first few sentences.
struggle4progress
(118,237 posts)Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)struggle4progress
(118,237 posts)But it is worth trying to figure out what to say to the mushy thinkers when stuff like this comes up
Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)yurbud
(39,405 posts)Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)jberryhill
(62,444 posts)It is the flag of an enemy of the United States.
Lint Head
(15,064 posts)
David__77
(23,341 posts)They were common rednecks I suppose - racists almost certainly (this was early 80s). Now these days I think you have to be a more conscious racist to fly such a thing.
Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)have their fair share of rednecks, too, so I gather.
And Orange County, where my RW brother lives, is reputed to be one of the reddest counties in CA, per capita.
David__77
(23,341 posts)In northern California. They were registered Democrats, but Reagan swept the area. The area then become more Republican, and now is trending left as it diversifies and the old timers flee the state. It's better now.
Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)
Turbineguy
(37,296 posts)I wanna go back to dixie,
Take me back to dear ol' dixie,
That's the only li'l ol' place for li'l ol' me.
Ol' times there are not forgotten,
Whuppin' slaves and sellin' cotton,
And waitin' for the robert e. lee.
(it was never there on time.)
I'll go back to the swanee,
Where pellagra makes you scrawny,
And the honeysuckle clutters up the vine
I really am a-fixin'
To go home and start a-mixin'
Down below that mason-dixon line.
Oh, poll tax, how I love ya, how I love ya,
My dear old poll tax.
Won'tcha come with me to alabammy,
Back to the arms of my dear ol' mammy,
Her cookin's lousy and her hands are clammy,
But what the hell, it's home.
Yes, for paradise the southland is my nominee.
Jes' give me a ham hock and a grit of hominy.
I wanna go back to dixie
I wanna be a dixie pixie
And eat cornpone 'til it's comin' outta my ears
I wanna talk with southern gentlemen
And put my white sheet on again,
I ain't seen one good lynchin' in years.
The land of the boll weevil,
Where the laws are medieval,
Is callin' me to come and nevermore roam.
I wanna go back to the southland,
That "y'all" and "shet-ma-mouth" land,
Be it ever so decadent,
There's no place like home.
exboyfil
(17,862 posts)
madrchsod
(58,162 posts)
Historic NY
(37,449 posts)Sorta like them morons twits their Palin bumper stickers made by cutting out McGrumpys name.
Igel
(35,282 posts)Everything's up for grabs after that until you know who'se using it to express a meaning. Take the word pronounced /bak/.
It's a set of sounds that serve as a symbol for some object.
If you speak English, you spell it "Bach." It stands mostly for a Lutheran composer. For others, it's a family of composers. Even for English-speakers, it's either Johann Sebastian or his family--that one symbol has two different meanings. JS Bach? WF Bach? JS Bach? CPE Bach? Some other Bach?
If you speak French, you spell it "bac" and it's what school kids call their diploma.
If you speak German it's Bock, and, IIRC, we're talking goat. Just not speaking goat.
If you speak Russian it's the word for a tank, as in "gas tank".
Saying /bak/ is a symbol for any of those is meaningless. I know the meaning I want to give it when I hear it. But I also know I have to figure out what the other person means. I don't get to define it for everybody else.
It's the same when I was teaching Russian. We had to teach the word "shit'", meaning "to sew." It was nearly impossible for the American students to stop assuming that the one true meaning of the word was "crap." It's what they believed it meant. It's what the sounds meant to them. Learning that they didn't define the referent for that set of sounds for all people was difficult. It didn't help that sometimes when I or the other Russian teachers said "shit" (as far as they could hear a difference) I really did mean "crap".
It's harder when you have a vested interest in believing that the word can have more than one meaning. It increases complexity and uncertainty. It makes snap judgments less clear.
This is especially true in a lot of Western modern thinking, in which authorial intent is blasphemy and all that matters is the meaning that listeners and readers construct. Then to the extent there's an "authentic" meaning it's not what the speaker means; power is invested in the ears of the hearer.
Populist_Prole
(5,364 posts)A sneering tribalism taken so far it has a life of its own. 'MicaelS's' post above is closest to my own observations.
Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)Can't think of any other reason.
Defiance of authority, defiance of Fate, defiance of an inferiority complex...defiance of equality of all.
Not exactly the same as the Guy Fawkes mask, which implies open rebellion of the entire Security State and Wall St. Not as insightful and directed a rebellion. Not as serious, either. To go with Guy, you gotta mean it. Confederate flags aren't serious threats to the status quo. They are threats to minorities, uppity women, etc....