Is the Confederate Flag Racist?

[WILDCAT]

Is. There. A. Full Moon: tonight by any chance?

For real?

Which thing or what things are being addressed here right now? (Am I online right now?)

If I eat this chocolate candy bar, where will it be in my digestive system in an hour from now?

WILDCAT

*I only have one tattoo, got it when I was about 20. It is a quarter moon, with the profile of a woman's face in it and it states: VIRGO underneath. (End of derail.)

I don't care much for the confederate flag myself. However, I feel folks who live anywhere should feel good about "that". (Where they live.)



:moonstars::eatinghersheybar:

:ambulance:

?

:hanging:


*PEACE ALL (which is open to any venue...)?!

:byebye:

[Dragonfly]

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKING FUCK. This FUCKING SHIT FUCKING SUCKS. WHat the FUCK! FUCk that FLAg <-- on topic.

[Cyclopea]

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKING FUCK. This FUCKING SHIT FUCKING SUCKS. WHat the FUCK! FUCk that FLAg <-- on topic.

HAhahahaha
It's not in the red zone. lol. Motherfucker.
haha sorry couldn't resist

[WILDCAT]

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCKING FUCK. This FUCKING SHIT FUCKING SUCKS. WHat the FUCK! FUCk that FLAg <-- on topic.

I'm a "semi-closeted" fuckaholic myself. Every other word at home! (And I live alone. Worse - which really means better, around folks who know me.) Every 1533 characters when posting here (average?), give or take a few - and depends of a variety of factors of course. I swear like a "drunkin' sailor". (Just using that old expression...)

Yeah, that fuckin' flag! But, folks have consitutional fucking rights. Big whining babies. (Where are our queer rights though?!) I don't support ANY usage of that flag with governmental buildings - where ALL of the people are supposed to be represented and protected equally (cough!) under the law. (Due to the historical respresentation of said flag affiliated by "ownership", severe violation of rights, harm and death of HUMAN BEINGS.)
__

Good to know I am allowed to "burn it" (like the American flag for example, rights-wise), but would probably get killed at certain "gatherings" while doing so.

Wait, is there another thread to be better posting this? Point me in the right direction, if so... please.

I'm good here, right?

Sincerely,
Wildcat

[Jackhammer]

Admin speaking:

Hey folks, this is not the Red Zone. Okay?

It's ok if folks are irritated or angry or frustrated. We can talk about things with one another with mutual respect and kindness (healthy dialog). I hate to see folks shutting down or walking away in frustration. This conversation is important and needs to happen with all members feeling respected and heard.

All I ask is that folks please try to remain healthy in this discussion. That means each of you need to ask yourself before posting if this is really where you want to come from. Please refrain from name calling, it has a tendency to be counter productive.

Best Regards
Admin

Don't push it folks...

[Dragonfly]

That was my response to saying that using the f word is offensive on THIS "non red zone" thread.

[Dragonfly]

HAhahahaha
It's not in the red zone. lol. Motherfucker.
haha sorry couldn't resist

I just couldnt resist either, hearing someone being censored like that. I am a motherfucker and am not offended by cursing, long posts with too many words, short posts that aren't enough words, or any other personal CHOICE someone has the freedom to exercise. I did not take it as name calling and was more focused on WHAAT is said not HOW the person talks. I really can't believe my eyes... I think it took effort to find something that wasn't there.

Oh and I still hate the pain that flag causes. This thread is proof that it does more harm than anyone can claim it does good.

[evolveme]

After about 50 pages, I lost the ability and the inclination to begin quoting each individual poster...
So instead I added a list of things that I found to be counter productive such as.....
"whose Ms is whose....
Who is playing devils advocate.......
who is exuding white privilege....
Who is being seen as "Angry"."
oh and lets not forget....."check your fucking egotistical Bullshit at the door"

If you personally havent seen the "Personal digs", the "I'm not a POC but grew up with one so i know" the "im Passe blanc so I know" the occasional backhanded racial comments...."LEARY of LARGE POC ppl" or even just some of the random nonsensical information then we have a MUCH larger Problem.....

So I would Like to "clean" my speech up so no one but ME is offended.....I am also going to switch from my relaxed "just kicking it" with friends speaking/writing style and make this
a. Less abrasive.....
b. Less ANGRY
c. Less Slang
d. Less Natural (for ME)
e. Less OFFENSIVE/abrupt/shocking
F. Less ME..........


here we go............

"I find what I believe to be gratuitous profanity offensive. In my mind it serves no real purpose to further the conversation. The substance of the topic at hand. I think gratuitous profanity primarily serves to inflame, cut short, obstruct the substantive message."

I have found that sometimes speaking at a level that is real and honest and true is a fantastic way to further a conversation. (example.....I cussed and ppl talked....and ppl read....and now more ppl, new ppl, or old ppl who have left, or ppl who wish they had the cajones, feel like their voice, and frustration has been heard....) I don't believe that "Gratuitous Profanity" is only used as a means to obstruct, inflame, or cut short anything....
What is GRATUITOUS to you is fairly light to me......I have/can and often make complete sentences using only the word "FUCK"......(its versitile like that) I think that policing an adults right to use profanity.... is a means to cut short, and obstruct a substantive message. (there were a WHOLE lot of other words in between those FUCKS i used that I thought were pretty damn(oops excuse me) DARN important.

"The areas I have highlighted in your post, those are areas I find confusing and verging on offensive if not offensive"

Lets explore those shall we?

this is what was Highlighted:
Seriously.....shit is being misread misinterpreted and it is no longer a discussion......
this is what was SAID:
Errbody(slang for everybody) up in this piece(slang for all of us, myself included) needs to chill the fuck out(again slang for take a deep breath pause reflect and regroup).....Seriously.....shit is being misread misinterpreted and it is no longer a discussion......

So in this context what I actually said was;
Please lovely people of the planet can we relax and calm down, because we are not taking the time to accurately read, or respond or quote or fellow planet inhabitants. AND because of this we are no longer having a discussion but instead an argument in which neither "side" is hearing one another....
If that is OFFENSIVE then I am wayyyyy out of the loop, I thought it was a very logical point to anyone reading the thread.

This is what was highlighted:
I dont give a fuck who reps or reports this shyt.....What I care about is that we dont lose sight of the forest through the trees.

I am not sure what is offensive here....Is it because I am not interested in who says thank you to my post or who hates my post? I thought that was part of my first amendment rights of free speech.....
I then followed up by stating that I DO in fact care that we are addressing the ISSUES just not getting sidetracked by the BS(was that gratitous). I think I mentioned above what I found to be irrelevant BS....

What was highlighted:
YOU WANT TO FIGHT AND ACT STUPID.....TAKE THAT SHIT TO YOUR PM'S.....
I am still at a loss as to why this is offensive......I think it is healthy for adults to hash their private issues out amongst themselves rather than broadcast their issues in a public forum. It has been my experience that "FRIENDS" stick together...even if their friend is wrong.......so instead of the thread derailing into a multiple person, "tift" lets handle our more Heated discussions through PM.....this way ppl can save face, save their egos, and gain clarification without dragging everyone else involved in the discussion into the middle of something they doesn't have anything to do with them....

this is what was Highlighted:
NAME CALLING, PERSONAL DIGS, MISREADING, MISQUOTING, DONT DO ANYTHING BUT MAKE ERRBODY LOOK LIKE AN...........
ASS.....
I think the above paragraph covers this as well.......if not let me know.

"Until then......
Fuck you.....
Fuck you.....
Your Cool....
IM OUT......................."

This is a quote from the MOVIE half baked......In light of all the other "fucks" i felt this was a funny and appropriate closing......(I also have one from Jay and Silent Bob you might like)

"And PS.......*this is to ERRBODY the shoe fits.......
YA'LLS STEREOTYPES ARE SHOWING"

I really hope I dont have to explain one of MY own quotes.....
your stereotypes are showing is a joke to try and alleviate so much of the racial tension we all have/experience.
We have all been inundated with stereotypes for different people and This quote is designed to make you think about what they might be....and also how to laugh at yourself.....
The stereotypes im showing in the original post.....
Loud aggressive woman of color
"Excessive obscene language"
"high uses of slang"
Intentional misspellings and grammatical errors......

*SMH.............
Now that I see I CANNOT just be an educated southern "colored" girl from the HOOD that lapses into REAL speak....it puts my desire to post on a very slim to none chance......
and Its a shame too......cause I think that EVERY voice No matter what the dialect, accent. quirks, or slang used is equally as important.....
guess not.....................................

"Honestly, I do want to know how you are not being respected in this thread?"

To answer this was not to meant ME personally but all of us....if one person is being disrespected we all are....if we dont stand up for our brothers who will....and if we don't stand up even when ITS NOT about us in particular....who will be left to stand up when it IS ABOUT US IN PARTICULAR?

"I am willing to step back and try to figure out what can I do or say to help end racists actions, remarks, thoughts and/or white privilege."

I want to say this.....NOT EVERYONE SPEAKS THE SAME......NOT EVERYONE HAS THE SAME EXPERIENCES OR TRIGGERS.....
I would have appreciated a PM rather to be called out in the middle of this thread over a misunderstanding.....I am seriously appalled and disapointed....
...........
(bowing low......Iz sorry Mastahs......iz do a jig as i exit now........) :|



Thank you so much for whiting this up for us!

Signed,

Motherfucker

[Hudson]

OK here we go....AJ thank you your posts are always intelligent and wonderful.....moving on....

MOTHER FUCKERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
REALLY.....OMG!

This is some fucking bullshit......about 90% of it`......I have read and reread this thread some upteen times......each time I read it all I can think of is SuperFemme's post about this thread SKULL FUCKING ME!

This thread has turned into one of the most counterproductive self-congrajalotory, pity-party, attention seeking, validation seeking posts EVER.....

Errbody up in this piece needs to chill the fuck out.....Seriously.....shit is being misread misinterpreted and it is no longer a discussion......

Here is my Fucking advice........
If your a non-POC, a Non-visable POC A POC or What the Fuck ever check your fucking egotistical Bullshit at the door.

I am so done with all this shit if we cant get this shit together......Who gives a fuck................
whose Ms is whose....
Who is playing devils advocate.......
who is exuding white privilege....
Who is being seen as "Angry"........

I Know I want to open eyes, hearts, minds and mouths.......It ain't gonna be pretty all the damn time.....but i can tell you GOD DON'T LIKE UGLY....and neither do I......

I KNOW some of yall....I respect MOST of yall......but this thread has turned into some seriously childish shyt....

I dont give a fuck who reps or reports this shyt.....What I care about is that we dont lose sight of the forest through the trees.....

NO IM NOT GONNA DO ANYBODY'S HOMEWORK FOR THEM......
NO I AM NOT GONNA APOLOGIZE FOR CALLING SOMEBODY OUT ON THEIR SHYT
NO I AM NOT GONNA JUMP ON ANYBODYS "POSSE" (yep I fuckin said it...now what!?)

I DONT CARE WHAT COLOR YOU ARE, WHAT YOUR RACIAL BACKGROUND IS WHO RAISED YOU WHERE YOU GREW UP..........
THIS SHIT AINT ABOUT *YOU..........NOT PERSONALLY....

LETS KEEP THIS SHIT ON TOPIC.....

THERE ARE 4 OTHER OTHER THREADS ON RACISM.....THIS THREAD IS ABOUT THE FLAG.....
U AINT GOT NOTHING TO SAY ABOUT THE FLAG.....TAKE IT TO ANOTHER THREAD......

YOU WANT TO FIGHT AND ACT STUPID.....TAKE THAT SHIT TO YOUR PM'S.....

I enjoy passionate spirited healthy debates.....

NAME CALLING, PERSONAL DIGS, MISREADING, MISQUOTING, DONT DO ANYTHING BUT MAKE ERRBODY LOOK LIKE AN...........
ASS.....

Like me, love me, hate me........I dont care.........HOWEVER you will respect me....and when this CONVERSATION becomes more RESPECTFUL.....I will be back.....

Until then......
Fuck you.....
Fuck you.....
Your Cool....
IM OUT.......................:fastdraq:


And PS.......*this is to ERRBODY the shoe fits.......
YA'LLS STEREOTYPES ARE SHOWING.........might wanna work on that.....


I really like this version too.


Also like to add that I think it's gross that the two (token?) black people who have been participating, educating and tolerating in this thread have been *compared* (what a novel concept that two black people could have different ways of communicating....and effectively saying the same fucking thing! or...*gasp* different things!)

[Jett]

When a peep is told it's against the rules for anyone to address folks in a thread as "Mother Fuckers" because it might be misunderstood, (and maybe one person said they were felt some offense at the gratuitous use of the word fuck)... that:

It was equated to telling them to "white it up" (and here's the kicker)- as if to say that's just the way all POC people talk. Looks to me like saying expecting any less than that of POC's in the forum is somehow asking them to "white it up"?

Because as far as I see the only things relating the offending language to race, is the implying what was asking someone not to call people Mother Fuckers is basically like asking them to not be POC.

*swears like a mofo but doesn't see what it has to do with skin color*
Metro

P.S. Use of the word fuck was never "censored" in the least except one poster said it felt offensive personally... that's not censorship it's an opinion after being asked.

[Hudson]

Really???........:wtf:
Mother Fuckers.....is a term of endearment...just as I would very likely walk into my homegirls house and exclaim "MY NIGGAS".......(whether POC or Non....cause i like to keep it interesting....) :barmartini:
I dont recall saying and or impliying with the use of "you" or "ya'll"........I think this is some more of those nit picky "PERSONAL" Issues.......IDK
I pose a question.......
Was that all that was taken from my post?
:coffee:



When a peep is told it's against the rules for anyone to address folks in a thread as "Mother Fuckers" because it might be misunderstood, (and maybe one person said they were felt some offense at the gratuitous use of the word fuck)... that:

It was immediately equated to telling them to "white it up" (and here's the kicker)- as if to say that's just the way all POC people talk. Looks to me like saying expecting any less than that of POC's in the forum is somehow asking them to "white it up"?

Because as far as I see those are the only posts relating the offending language to race, are the ones implying asking a POC not to call people Mother Fuckers is basically like asking them to not be POC.

*swears like a mofo but doesn't see what it has to do with skin color*
Metro

P.S. Use of the word fuck was never "censored" in the least except one poster said it felt offensive personally... that's not censorship it's an opinion after being asked.

Again, when are you going to actually read the rest of her post?

You see, I'm not making it about skin color or race but about how she says she personally uses the term.

[evolveme]

When a peep is told it's against the rules for anyone to address folks in a thread as "Mother Fuckers" because it might be misunderstood, (and maybe one person said they were felt some offense at the gratuitous use of the word fuck)... that:

It was immediately equated to telling them to "white it up" (and here's the kicker)- as if to say that's just the way all POC people talk. Looks to me like saying expecting any less than that of POC's in the forum is somehow asking them to "white it up"?

Because as far as I see those are the only posts relating the offending language to race, are the ones implying asking a POC not to call people Mother Fuckers is basically like asking them to not be POC.

*swears like a mofo but doesn't see what it has to do with skin color*
Metro

P.S. Use of the word fuck was never "censored" in the least except one poster said it felt offensive personally... that's not censorship it's an opinion after being asked.

Metro, first, I believe you know that I come from a place of friendship and sincerity when I speak to you. I hope you do.

But language is inherently tied up in not only race, but more specifically class. These things are inextricable; they cannot be teased apart.

I was born into the poverty class. I was taught profanity as a matter of daily language and was not taught that it was uncustomary or indecent to use until my first grade teacher took a paddle to my backside for words that I knew to be quite a matter of course at home. I was damn confused that day, but I sure learned quickly!

In my home and with my mother's family, these words were the norm.

Even today, when I'm settled in, and especially when I'm fired up, I speak like any good goddamn sailor and I make no bones.

When I read Heartbreak, I hear her passion, and yes, her anger. I think I understand her reasons. At no point do I feel even a smatter of offense. I sure as hell don't think I need to worry about whether anyone else does. I think that's on them for mindin'.

If someone *is* offended, then perhaps the reason should be about the meat of what she's said, i.e. "do they need to check their egotistical bullshit at the door," are they participating in "name-calling, personal digs, misreading, misquotings," etc. rather than how she has chosen to speak. As she has stated more than once, she is using the method of speaking that is most comfortable for her (coming from her place of origin/community), and being asked not to do it is offensive to her.

Maybe this isn't the red zone, but I believe the Planet is a place where we can all be adults, where we can all choose wisely, be expected to self-moderate, and where we can (hopefully) intelligently discern one another's intentions and choose not to be reactive, but reasoned in our responses, so that we can learn from one another and continue to grow as the diverse network/community that we are.

[HeartBreak Kid]

When a peep is told it's against the rules for anyone to address folks in a thread as "Mother Fuckers" because it might be misunderstood, (and maybe one person said they were felt some offense at the gratuitous use of the word fuck)... that:

It was immediately equated to telling them to "white it up" (and here's the kicker)- as if to say that's just the way all POC people talk. Looks to me like saying expecting any less than that of POC's in the forum is somehow asking them to "white it up"?

Because as far as I see those are the only posts relating the offending language to race, are the ones implying asking a POC not to call people Mother Fuckers is basically like asking them to not be POC.

*swears like a mofo but doesn't see what it has to do with skin color*
Metro

P.S. Use of the word fuck was never "censored" in the least except one poster said it felt offensive personally... that's not censorship it's an opinion after being asked.

To *ME I felt attacked because of my language...(to be honest I thought we WERE in the red zone)
To assume that all <insert any group/subgroup> acts or reacts a certain way is presumptuous and incorrect....
I Logically understand what your saying, but emotionally I felt/feel stiffiled....I can not and will not ever claim to speak for any race/group of people....I was writing "loosely" and from the perspective that enough people were familiar with me and my sarcastic, cynical writing style.
I broke the rulez (something I seem to do all the time in my life)
So coming from a ME place i felt like I couldn't express myself in a natural way.....I am usually very "well-spoken"<insert eye roll> and I felt the NEED to let it all out....these are not excuses, they are facts.
Next time I will add a disclaimer if I absolutely FEEL the need to be so "Shocking".....
MY discomfort at conformity came into play....and I reacted....
So I WILL say I apologize if my post implied I was calling anyone specifically or in general a MOTHER FUCKER in a negative way....
I am NOT apologizing for the post itself because it was real and from not just my heart but my soul.....
there is more I want to add but it will just derail "this" thread further and so I will take it over to the Racism thread....
sometimes in an effort to make a place inclusive rulez have to be established that "alter" how we interact with each other.....(annoying but a reality)
Sometimes its better to ask forgiveness than permission.......
:pendulum:

On a side and personal note....I am not only offended but deeply hurt at the negative backlash my post has caused and created.....It feels to me like I am not allowed to be MYSELF...that I have to be "white"...or non threatening...I just don't think i am conveying myself properly and it has seriously made me feel like I may need to find a different online community......One in which I can speak and have my WORDS heard.......not my linguistic style... I am not backing down....instead I am publicly admitting that I am just too damn tired to keep trying.....(this is a battle I HAVE fought my entire Life....and now in my free time.....smh)
One Love,
Heart

[Jett]

To *ME I felt attacked because of my language...(to be honest I thought we WERE in the red zone)
To assume that all <insert any group/subgroup> acts or reacts a certain way is presumptuous and incorrect....
I Logically understand what your saying, but emotionally I felt/feel stiffiled....I can not and will not ever claim to speak for any race/group of people....I was writing "loosely" and from the perspective that enough people were familiar with me and my sarcastic, cynical writing style.
I broke the rulez (something I seem to do all the time in my life)
So coming from a ME place i felt like I couldn't express myself in a natural way.....I am usually very "well-spoken"<insert eye roll> and I felt the NEED to let it all out....these are not excuses, they are facts.
Next time I will add a disclaimer if I absolutely FEEL the need to be so "Shocking".....
MY discomfort at conformity came into play....and I reacted....
So I WILL say I apologize if my post implied I was calling anyone specifically or in general a MOTHER FUCKER in a negative way....
I am NOT apologizing for the post itself because it was real and from not just my heart but my soul.....
there is more I want to add but it will just derail "this" thread further and so I will take it over to the Racism thread....
sometimes in an effort to make a place inclusive rulez have to be established that "alter" how we interact with each other.....(annoying but a reality)
Sometimes its better to ask forgiveness than permission.......
:pendulum:

Thanx for this (absolutely no apoligies warranted though)and really thanx for your post(s), something I haven't really had a chance to say. Hopefully at some point I'll get a chance to absorb them a little more...

Metro
(and one "rule breaker" to another I get it... it ain't always easy ;))

[Jett]

Metro, first, I believe you know that I come from a place of friendship and sincerity when I speak to you. I hope you do.

But language is inherently tied up in not only race, but more specifically class. These things are inextricable; they cannot be teased apart.

I was born into the poverty class. I was taught profanity as a matter of daily language and was not taught that it was uncustomary or indecent to use until my first grade teacher took a paddle to my backside for words that I knew to be quite a matter of course at home. I was damn confused that day, but I sure learned quickly!

In my home and with my mother's family, these words were the norm.

Even today, when I'm settled in, and especially when I'm fired up, I speak like any good goddamn sailor and I make no bones.

When I read Heartbreak, I hear her passion, and yes, her anger. I think I understand her reasons. At no point do I feel even a smatter of offense. I sure as hell don't think I need to worry about whether anyone else does. I think that's on them for mindin'.

If someone *is* offended, then perhaps the reason should be about the meat of what she's said, i.e. "do they need to check their egotistical bullshit at the door," are they participating in "name-calling, personal digs, misreading, misquotings," etc. rather than how she has chosen to speak. As she has stated more than once, she is using the method of speaking that is most comfortable for her (coming from her place of origin/community), and being asked not to do it is offensive to her.

Maybe this isn't the red zone, but I believe the Planet is a place where we can all be adults, where we can all choose wisely, be expected to self-moderate, and where we can (hopefully) intelligently discern one another's intentions and choose not to be reactive, but reasoned in our responses, so that we can learn from one another and continue to grow as the diverse network/community that we are.

I agree, unfortunately it is the real world and it doesn't always play out that way. Personally e, I didn't find it offensive, if HBK walked in my living room and say Hey Mother Fucker in the way I know it was meant I wouldn't blink.... but this ain't my living room, nor my rules.

Sometimes just a nudge remind peeps their not in their living room, hell nobody had a problem with X being moderated for calling ppl idiots in another thread... I don't get that but it's not for me to get... I'm just the messenger.

[Jett]

Again, when are you going to actually read the rest of her post?

You see, I'm not making it about skin color or race but about how she says she personally uses the term.
What makes you think I haven't?

[Hudson]

I agree, unfortunately it is the real world and it doesn't always play out that way. Personally e, I didn't find it offensive, if HBK walked in my living room and say Hey Mother Fucker in the way I know it was meant I wouldn't blink.... but this ain't my living room, nor my rules.

Sometimes just a nudge remind peeps their not in their living room, hell nobody had a problem with Timber being moderated for calling ppl idiots... I don't get that but it's not for me to get... I'm just the messenger.

This sounds to me like you're the one racializing the situation. Also, Timber has stated that shi is a POC. I don't get the need for comparison, either way.

[evolveme]

I agree, unfortunately it is the real world and it doesn't always play out that way. Personally e, I didn't find it offensive, if HBK walked in my living room and say Hey Mother Fucker in the way I know it was meant I wouldn't blink.... but this ain't my living room, nor my rules.

Sometimes just a nudge remind peeps their not in their living room, hell nobody had a problem with X being moderated for calling ppl idiots in another thread... I don't get that but it's not for me to get... I'm just the messenger.

What I believe is that the murky lens of white privilege and classism will always mire our way. Knowing outright that the more diverse the community, the more tricky the road to navigate.

We'll need to have our best maps, our brightest lamp, our surest compass. And even then, we must bring our surest thinking - because we will surely sometimes slip. We will surely sometimes fail.

Being willing to do the walk is, still, the most crucial thing.

[Jett]

This sounds to me like you're the one racializing the situation. Also, Timber has stated that shi is a POC. I don't get the need for comparison, either way.

Timber did not say it, it was someone else in another thread, I corrected that in my post.

As to the rest of you thoughts... let ppl be the judge, I know my intent.

[Jett]

What I believe is that the murky lens of white privilege and classism will always mire our way. Knowing outright that the more diverse the community, the more tricky the road to navigate.

We'll need to have our best maps, our brightest lamp, our surest compass. And even then, we must bring our surest thinking - because we will surely sometimes slip. We will surely sometimes fail.

Being willing to do the walk is, still, the most crucial thing.

Agreed e, totally agreed.

[Dylan]

I just can't even believe we're still discussing this

And, Met, if you weren't offended, a) why bring it up? Did/Do the rest of us need savin' from a cuss word? Are you operating in moderator mode? From my me place, I don't need to be protected from people cussin'; b) WHY keep draggin' it out? You said, you 'get' it ('it ain't easy' or however you put it)...yet, it's STILL being dragged out 24hours later. So, seriously, WTF?

If you 'get' it, 'it' isn't a big enough deal to drag it out this long.


Insert Hamlet Quote Here,
Dylan

[Dylan]

I'm sorry. I'm double posting, and I just don't care

So, here we have yet another POC stating they're possibly leaving yet another site, because they can't speak without being corrected, their posts aren't read (except to be chastised...for cursing of all things), because the white privilege is out of control, because the theorizing of white people is just too much (again), because when they try to be real they're reprimanded and given 'proper posting etiquette' from people who weren't even offended, and all the same things that have been said a million times before

And wha wha whaaaaaaaat? We're STILL discussing how a person (of color) *should* post politely for our delicate sensibilities

OMGawwwwwwd, white people get called out on being too privileged and turn it into how offended (or not) they are that someone cussed...and now we have to have yet ONE MORE break down of how white people are being too privileged (pssssst, while another POC is contemplating leaving the site, because too many white people are talking about being white...ironic much?)


Jesus H. Christ Before You Know It Someone's Gonna Be Honest And Say The Site's Too White Again,
Dylan

[Jett]

I just can't even believe we're still discussing this

And, Met, if you weren't offended, a) why bring it up? Did/Do the rest of us need savin' from a cuss word? Are you operating in moderator mode? From my me place, I don't need to be protected from people cussin'; b) WHY keep draggin' it out? You said, you 'get' it ('it ain't easy' or however you put it)...yet, it's STILL being dragged out 24hours later. So, seriously, WTF?

If you 'get' it, 'it' isn't a big enough deal to drag it out this long.


Insert Hamlet Quote Here,
Dylan
We're not still talking about it, it had been about the three hours since the last post (sans yours).

A. I "brought it up" because it's against the site rules (and Admin affirmed this in mod forum) and I'm supposed to mod those things since I'm a moderator (that and being reported three times).

B. It's not been 24 hours... it's been about 12 since my first post on it and every post of mine since has been in response to direct questions to me except for one.


And right back to the beginning... I can't believe it's still being dragged out either... can't take credit for that though.

[QueenofQueens]

I totally understand HBK's congenial intent with her choice of endearments.
That said, I also think that certain endearments are too familiar to use among acquaintances.
If this were a thread comprised of folks I knew well, I'd have no problem rolling in and calling all y'all mother fuckers, big queerz, homos, my bitches and etc.

The problem is, I'm not just speaking to my friends here.
This isn't about race as I see it from over here.
It's about formal vs. familar use of language.

If I worked in an office I wouldn't go into a meeting and say "What's good, motherfuckers?" well, unless I didn't give a shit if they fired me.
I also wouldn't go to a party with people I didn't know in attendance and do the same. I'd scope the lay of the land first.

Maybe HBK would choose those words without exception, I don't know, and I'm not gonna pretend to. It's her choice and she did explain herself, so cool.

What I'm getting is that some people here don't ever want to be called M.F. under any circumstances and perceived it as name calling.

I'm also getting that Met was trying to address that fact as a representative of a site where name calling isn't tolerated.

I'm also getting that HBK was just being familiar in addressing the thread participants.

So, it looks like a dialectical communication breakdown to me, not either subversive or overt racism. Let's not make assumptions about the racial background of the folks it upset, shall we?

Can we all just chill out and cut each other some slack?

And Dylan, can you please stop crying injustice on behalf of POC's?
Not trying to be harsh, I swear to god. I know you mean well, but we all can handle our own shit. Thank you.

AND I agree with HBK, let's get back to burning...er, I mean discussing the confederate flag.

[Dylan]

And Dylan, can you please stop crying injustice on behalf of POC's?


Can you show me where I did this? Because I'm bitching on my own account.

No rescuing to be done, Michelle


So Point It Out To Me Please,
Dylan...thanks

[QueenofQueens]

I'm sorry. I'm double posting, and I just don't care

So, here we have yet another POC stating they're possibly leaving yet another site, because they can't speak without being corrected, their posts aren't read (except to be chastised...for cursing of all things), because the white privilege is out of control, because the theorizing of white people is just too much (again), because when they try to be real they're reprimanded and given 'proper posting etiquette' from people who weren't even offended, and all the same things that have been said a million times before

And wha wha whaaaaaaaat? We're STILL discussing how a person (of color) *should* post politely for our delicate sensibilities

OMGawwwwwwd, white people get called out on being too privileged and turn it into how offended (or not) they are that someone cussed...and now we have to have yet ONE MORE break down of how white people are being too privileged (pssssst, while another POC is contemplating leaving the site, because too many white people are talking about being white...ironic much?)


Jesus H. Christ Before You Know It Someone's Gonna Be Honest And Say The Site's Too White Again,
Dylan

Sure thing, Dylan.

The parts of your post I was referring to are in bold.
If you're expressing concern about a manifestation of white privilege that's directly affecting you, I'm not really sure why you have to bring up someone else's thoughts about possibly leaving the site.
Why do you need to use HBK's perceptions and issues with how things were handled as leverage?

[Jackhammer]

Admin Here

What a day!!
Ok folks, heres the deal:

One set of rules for everyone.
There is not a way to mold our expectations of courteous interaction here on the forum based on someones culture, history, comfort zone, heritage, education or personality because of the many differences in styles of posting amongst members.We can only do our best to set a standard of courteous behavior based upon what we think would be the most basic and healthy manner for the community.

We GET that people have different ways of communicating. We GET that what makes us comfortable may not be comfortable for everyone here.

I want to see this thread back on track and having a healthy discussion of the confederate flag and the many components that expand from that discussion. We have had 50 pages of amazing (and hard) dialog. I dont see that as a waste if even one person starts thinking about racism or privilege on a different level than just white hoods and rednecks.

As an aside, we have moderators on this site to deal with reported posts, get discussions back on track, and tap down unhealthy shit. Members should not be acting as moderators, they SHOULD, however, be using common courtesy and thoughtful dialog when interacting in these heated discussions.

We are all adults here and I hope that we all have the same goal of understanding each other, working on the ism's, and helping keep this community healthy.

Finally, HBK, I hope you stick around.
You have really made me think about things in a new way and I respect and admire your voice here. You will have the same set of rules here that everyone else has, and by rules I mean the part where we say "no namecalling". Because when you say "motherfuckers" (which is a word I personally love) or things like "Y'all quit acting stupid", it can feel like namecalling to people who arent familiar with one another.

I believe that all of our Moderators are fair, thoughtful, and intelligent and I respect and trust their judgment. That said, if people have thoughts or questions about moderations, I want them to either ask in the questions thread or in a private message. We want the discussion threads to be discussions on the topic, not how we moderate.
To be clear, we are open for thoughts and comments. This is not a dictatorship, it's a community and every voice counts here.

Thanks,
Jack

[Jackhammer]

Sorry QoQ, it took me a while to write this post and we were posting at the same time.

[Dylan]

Sure thing, Dylan.

The parts of your post I was referring to are in bold.
If you're expressing concern about a manifestation of white privilege that's directly affecting you, I'm not really sure why you have to bring up someone else's thoughts about possibly leaving the site.
Why do you need to use HBK's perceptions and issues with how things were handled as leverage?


How it affects ME directly?

I don't want this site to end up 'too white' like the last site. It bothers ME when I'M involved in space that's too white. It bothers ME on a number of levels. I don't live my personal (off this site) life in all white/too white space. I (me, me, me) don't want to participate in that type of environment again. MY friends won't come to this site, because it's all the same people from the other site, and they don't see the purpose...they don't see how anything will be different. That affects ME, when MY friends who are brilliant and have a lot to contribute on sooooo many topics don't feel comfortable. On an even more personal level, I hate hate hate having to have two conversations about topics I find interesting (one here and one on the phone when I call my friends who won't come here), because MY friends don't feel comfortable coming here.

And yeah, when I (me, me,me) have conversations with white people who are on both of these sites, and those white people are too blind to see that POC HAVE very clearly stated that they're leaving because of the privilege and racism, and those white people argue with me and tell me that's not true (even in the face of very clear statements)...I (me,me,me) feel a need to reiterate (to white people) what kind of environment is being created again. I HAVE had that conversation offline with white people who have argued with me that the site's NOT over-privileged and racist and that POC have NEVER said such things (even tho, it's been said very clearly a number of times...and look, here it is being said again).

So, no, I'm not 'saving' POC (um, HBK seems quite able to speak for herself...I mean, she did start the mother fucker conversation, no?) I'm creating a space in which I (me,me,me) want to participate. I want MY brilliant, smart, funny friends to hang here too (again, so I don't have to have two conversations on the same topic...selfish, I know, but I'm also lazy). I DON'T want to end up in all white space again. I don't live that way in my real life, and I don't see why we have to create that space again. It's uncomfortable for me, me,me. It makes ME feel oogy to participate in that creation. And if this site starts heading that way, I too will take my opinions to a more inclusive area of the lollernetz.


I'm Still Testing The Waters Here, Because I Don't See How The Same Space Won't Be Created Again...Especially If We're Going To Comb Through The Most Pointless Parts Of Posts While Refusing To Examine The Meat Of A Post,
Dylan...also gives kudos to the way this site is moderated over the other site (like calling out 'race card' and other covert statements) and appreciates the way the admin has handled things thus far.

P.S. Thanks for pointing it out. I apologize if it came off as saving. But really, I (me,me,me) DON'T want a re-creation of the last site's 'too white' atmosphere


ETA: Jack, I just saw your post. We were posting at the same time. Sorry if this is too off topic after your admin post.

[QueenofQueens]

P.S. Thanks for pointing it out. I apologize if it came off as saving. But really, I (me,me,me) DON'T want a re-creation of the last site's 'too white' atmosphere




Dylan,

It's extremely important to me that this site remain inclusive and I understand your investment in that as well, though for me, it's for very different reasons.
I wasn't asking IF you had a personal investment, I was questioning your need to use another person's issues to defend that investment.

Now that you've stated them, your reasons for wanting this space to be equitable stand alone, and I'll bet anyone exhibiting privilege in this thread read what you said above more clearly than what you originally said. No need to back your ideas up with another person's argument.

There's no need for you or anyone else (because I realize you aren't the only one to express a similar sentiment) to say "Look, another POC is leaving!" It's not a convincing argument to those that wield privilege and it might be read as dehumanizing to POC, by POC. If you really need to mention it, why not say "another great contributor is thinking of bailing"?
What should matter is what that person's unique contribution to the site is (even in a thread about racism), not that yesterday we were up five POC's and today we're down two.

I'd hope your friends would want to come here not because of the measurable quantities of different skin colors but because of the quality of the people who are here (I know that's not entirely practical and I get why). And yes, I certainly hope those quality people represent all different races, ethnicities and classes.

Anyway, that's what it sounded like to me, hence my question. Thanks for the apology and the clarification.
No further derail, but I felt it was important to clarify this.

[HeartBreak Kid]

First off I want to say.....Im human, I get mad....I cuss and smoke and drink and chase "loose" women :giggle:.............

Metro, I understand what your saying, and after talking to some friends i think some of the problem has been revealed........
I think that it all started because I forgot you were
A. a MODERATOR
B. this is NOT the red zone

I Understand that I am subject to all the same rules that everyone else is subject to, and to treat ME any different would not only be racist but also demeaning...
I have no problem getting my ass handed to ME when I deserve it...because I will SURELY do the same to someone else.

I think it might be better if when moderating, the Moderators clearly explain that they are not speaking from a Personal space but a moderator space....

Hind-sight is 20/20 and we cant change the past....So I submit we all move on.....
I will take my complaints to the red zone and we can hash it out there....

TO EVERYONE:
I am a smart-ass......I say BOLD things....It is part of who I am......I WILL NOT change that.....But I WILL make an effort to keep my (fuckedupedness)(?) to a minimal in the main posts.....
In the future If I say anything that is OFFENSIVE or misunderstood PLEASE come to ME in PM....I will/can/might..........
Modify my post with a disclaimer to try and head off any unnecessary BS.

To the Moderators and Admin:
Thanx for doing your JOB.....I understand how rules work.....I dont like my words or intent being misconstrued but I get that in order to make the planet safe and "inclusive" of everyone....You have to insure EVERYONE'S rights are being respected.....
It sucks I cant be myself, but as someone pointed out.....there is a difference in formal and familiar speech.....
And because 'Yall" don't KNOW me....I have to consider that MY words can be taken in an Offensive way.....

Back to the Flag,
I go both ways with it....I KNOW people who ARE NOT racist that love it, and I see people who use it as a symbol of hate.....
It seems the exact same thing that happened with my "M-F" Post applies to the flag (in this context) as well....
If *you fly the flag, be prepared to be perceived as racist....you* cannot expect a passer-by to KNOW what is in your mind or heart.....
To many this flag symbolizes hate fear and aggression.....
So in closing,
If YOU fly the flag be prepared to be "labeled" as a racist, or at the very least ignorant(NOT NAME CALLING!!!).....If Your "Friends" know you and have accepted the flag as part of *your personality and they KNOW it has nothing to do with Racism then that's fine.......But Formally when people DON't Know you, the perception WILL be negative....
And while I don't condone stifling anyone's right of self expression, At some point WE ALL have to decide if we want our WORDS, or FLAG to be given an intent WE are not trying to give....

Solution:
IF you are so proud of the flag, Why not put it inside your home....that way People can limit the amount of Pre-judging that is done about you. If your a cool person who embraces the flag for reasons other than racism hatred and supremacy(cause really.....the south lost....move on) then Give people a chance to see that.....People are very forgiving and understanding when they don't feel threatened.....That FLAG WITHOUT context or explanation IS threatening.....

Just a thought......(no coffee so maybe a ramble):brainsucker:

[Jett]

.................snip
Metro, I understand what your saying, and after talking to some friends i think some of the problem has been revealed........
I think that it all started because I forgot you were
A. a MODERATOR
B. this is NOT the red zone
.................................................. snip
I think it might be better if when moderating, the Moderators clearly explain that they are not speaking from a Personal space but a moderator space....

Hind-sight is 20/20 and we cant change the past....So I submit we all move on.....
...............snip...

Yep that's on me (I guess I owe you two now) I was cluster fucked yesterday trying to deal here and crazy busy day R/L and didn't make it clear it was a mod mode thing (hence the typos and I swear I really know the dif between their and they're :eyeroll: ).

Also I did it in our PM's but I'm saying my apology publicly for not stating more clearly in my first post that your intent shouldn't be assumed, just that it could be. No excuse, I'm wearing that shit too.

Ok hey, yeah I'm all about moving on and moving forward.

Thanx,
Metro

[dreadgeek]

The structure of "wanting her to be heard" implies that you have the power provide the space for her to be heard. Not saying that is what you were implying, I was using it as an example. sorry if you felt called out.
Another way that could have been read in my world is "that is might white of you" now before I get attack it is a way of point out white privilege not on an individual level but on a system/language level. This all is complicated.
Now Aj may be a good example for you in this tread and I agree informative, I found HBK more to my taste, neither is "better", it is a style thing. comparisons are rarely good.
Language is powerful and how power is assigned to it is also worth un-packing. :)

Okay this is the second or third time this has happened on this thread and although I know this bothers me, it might take a bit for me to hash out precisely *why*. So if this post rambles a bit, I apologize at the outset.

A couple of times now, you've called Apoc out because of her either invoking me or asking me a question. You have done so, I presume, in the most with the most well-meaning of intent. However, there is something--well, just a little bit condescending (toward me, not Apoc)--about it. I guess it comes down to this: if I were REALLY bothered by being asked my opinion about some topic X don't you think I have demonstrated not just a willingness but an ability to say "this bothered me, here's why..."? I believe that I have.

As far as the comparisons--and I didn't really read it as a direct comparison--we all do this. YOU did it in your post, saying that you prefer HBKs' more 'real' (street? hood? 'authentically of color, perhaps') style. Which (and here I'm going to invoke the me, me, me, place) makes me wonder if it's because HBKs' style is more closely aligned with what you think a person of color 'should' sound like. I find that my voice--whether in person or online--can make whites a bit nervous because they have this mental image of how a black woman sounds. Because of the confluence of upbringing, general personal makeup, and experience I make a more-or-less deliberate interest NOT to 'speak hood' in mixed (read: majority non-black) company. I'm not saying that this is necessarily going on for you, I AM saying what my first thought was.

Honestly, this idea that I, as a woman of color, need to somehow be protected from curiosity or questions is, well, offensive to me. I'm not a wilting violet. Black women don't have the luxury of thin-skins or weak hearts, not if we plan to stay sane for any length of time in this country. I can decide, for myself, what offends me and can make it clear that it does offend me. I did not take Apoc saying "I wanted her to be heard" as implying--not even a little bit--to mean that she had any power to make that happen. All I read--correct me if I'm wrong--her saying that "here was an opinion I thought important, I didn't want it overlooked because I thought there were a few good ideas that, perhaps, should be given some bandwidth..." That may NOT have been what she was saying but that's how I interpreted it.

I'm going to make a quick observation that may offend some folks but here goes: treating POC as anything other than *people* is still singling us out for special treatment. Whether that special treatment is dismissing my opinion because I'm black woman or holding me to need some kind of defense against questions for the same reason are both *equally* demeaning. For me, I want to be liked, appreciated and respected for my talents. As a writer, I don't want to be known as a "good writer for a black woman" but a "good writer", full-stop. As a biologist, I don't want to be known as a "good black biologist" but a good biologist. If *either* of those facts, to the degree that either ever become true, makes some racist white person a bit nervous--all the better. If it inspires some young black woman to think "if she can do it, I can do it too!" that's even better. But first and last, I want whatever honors I receive, any accolades tossed my way, any respect I am given to be because I am intelligent, not for a black woman, but for a human being. That I am a talented writer, not as a writer of color, but as a writer. That I am a good theorist/researcher, not as a black scientist, but as a scientist. In other words, I assert my humanity and expect that to be acknowledged.

Please, don't try so hard to be anti-racist that you manage to be racist coming from the other side. We non-whites are, first and foremost, *people*. I feel pretty safe asserting at least that much for ALL people of color--that we're all people. Perhaps treating us as such is the strongest foundation upon which to build genuine anti-racism.

Cheers
Aj




Sorry I did feel a little called out, but thanks for coming back in to explain. I can see what you mean. Probably if I had been more relaxed and just said, yeah, let's take it to another thread it would have been better? I get that sounds like I thought it was up to me to let her be heard and that is not what I meant to be saying, so thank you! :)

HBK is right, we are way off course and it likely would be better to carry on in one of the other threads, so the convo is not so spread out.

I really was not trying to compare and appologize if it sounded that way.

[The_Lady_Snow]

I am over this thread, it has gotten to ridiculous, this Ms has mader her opinions clear how I feel about the flag, racism, my experiences.. I hope you all continue the dialogue, I shall read and learn but right now have nothing else constructive to say..

Good luck!

I hope the white privilege thread is educational and folks participate!

Peace out..

:vigil:

[SuperFemme]

I am over this thread, it has gotten to ridiculous, this Ms has mader her opinions clear how I feel about the flag, racism, my experiences.. I hope you all continue the dialogue, I shall read and learn but right now have nothing else constructive to say..

Good luck!

I hope the white privilege thread is educational and folks participate!

Peace out..

:vigil:

Well, when you are ridiculed (correct me if i am wrong) for even having this discussion as a Ms., then I don't blame you.

[Apocalipstic]

It has indeed been a frustrating thread, but I learned from it.

[SuperFemme]

It has indeed been a frustrating thread, but I learned from it.

Right. I'd like to jump off that a little bit.

I was left feeling a little chastised for discussing anything *other* than the Confederate Flag in this thread.

Umm. Nothing exists in a vacuum. It would be impossible to have pages of simple yes or no answers to the OP.

I AM all for ANY discussion that allows growth and learning and emotions and and and....

In this thread I have watched somebody I love very much be come at from every direction. But she kept coming back. Race cards, angry POC woman and all. She kept coming.

So while some may not care, I do. For sure. Not just on the personal level, but on a global level.

I also think this thread was having some great dialogue even though it veered from the OP specifically. I don't care if we have the conversations in the *I like Fluffernutter* thread as longs as we are having the conversations.

[Sweet]

Admin Here

What a day!!
Ok folks, heres the deal:

One set of rules for everyone.
There is not a way to mold our expectations of courteous interaction here on the forum based on someones culture, history, comfort zone, heritage, education or personality because of the many differences in styles of posting amongst members.We can only do our best to set a standard of courteous behavior based upon what we think would be the most basic and healthy manner for the community.

We GET that people have different ways of communicating. We GET that what makes us comfortable may not be comfortable for everyone here.

I want to see this thread back on track and having a healthy discussion of the confederate flag and the many components that expand from that discussion. We have had 50 pages of amazing (and hard) dialog. I dont see that as a waste if even one person starts thinking about racism or privilege on a different level than just white hoods and rednecks.

As an aside, we have moderators on this site to deal with reported posts, get discussions back on track, and tap down unhealthy shit. Members should not be acting as moderators, they SHOULD, however, be using common courtesy and thoughtful dialog when interacting in these heated discussions.

We are all adults here and I hope that we all have the same goal of understanding each other, working on the ism's, and helping keep this community healthy.

Finally, HBK, I hope you stick around.
You have really made me think about things in a new way and I respect and admire your voice here. You will have the same set of rules here that everyone else has, and by rules I mean the part where we say "no namecalling". Because when you say "motherfuckers" (which is a word I personally love) or things like "Y'all quit acting stupid", it can feel like namecalling to people who arent familiar with one another.

I believe that all of our Moderators are fair, thoughtful, and intelligent and I respect and trust their judgment. That said, if people have thoughts or questions about moderations, I want them to either ask in the questions thread or in a private message. We want the discussion threads to be discussions on the topic, not how we moderate.
To be clear, we are open for thoughts and comments. This is not a dictatorship, it's a community and every voice counts here.

Thanks,
Jack

I hope no one minds that I’m popping into this discussion out of the blue? I’ve been reading and following as much as I can, but had struggled with responding, asking questions and being able to follow everything that’s been discussed. It’s been a long while since I have participated in a heated, substantial, very thought-provoking discussion or thread…(my brain has been on sabbatical far too long! LOL) so I apologize up front for my lack of etiquette or for my lack of “finding the right words” to express myself. I am coming from a “place” where I’m seeking other’s opinions and feelings on what happened to me recently…. I hope I can explain it well enough? (I have not read all 50+ pages, so I apologize if I’ve missed my answers…)

I agree that the Confederate flag is a symbol of racism, can be used to oppress and silence people (as a group of KKK members tried to do in my hometown), I grew up in a very racist and “phobic” region of the Appalachian Mountains (where the schools did very little to educate on such things, but they participated in spreading the “pride” of flying the flag and that it was “an honor to be a part of our region’s past”…), this is only a few of my personal opinions on the flag itself. I think the only place that it belongs is in the Flag Museum where pieces of our Nation’s history are preserved to educate the newer generations…. (I won’t ramble on my feelings on the flag, …I have something else I wish to seek advice on at this time …)

What I’m looking for is feelings, opinions, was this right or wrong of a Manager, Boss or Agency… or please feel free to tell me “this is how I would deal with it if I faced this situation…”

Until recently, I worked with a man (my boss) who is VERY active in the Annual Gettysburg Civil War Reenactments and takes a whole week off work to be a part of the “Living History Village” and activities as a member of the Confederate side… (I’ve never attended these events, as I don’t care for them…but I do see the value in teaching our history and expanding people’s knowledge if it’s done in the right venue and appropriately. I don’t always agree or see the value of certain Department of Ed’s system of education around these subjects. Sadly, this is part of our history, which must be taught in an appropriate manner…not to facilitate or validate more racism, hate or violation of human rights.)

I highly respected this supervisor and I know he has a lot of respect, honor and integrity. Other than my personal struggle with him on gay rights, I did not see him facilitate or portray racism as is discussed in this thread. I struggled with his choice to do the Reenactments on the Confederate side… and asked him “you’re from Pennsylvania, what’s up with that?”… but I guess as a Living History point of view… History was his passion, not racism or oppression. This next part is specifically something I’d like to hear from folks on: I struggled and cringed every day that I walked into his office and looked at a Living History Painting of a group of Confederate Soldiers mounting the flag in the middle of a battlefield. His office was only open to other members of our Management Team…not the public, but he was a Government Civil Servant who worked with Persons Of Color and other diverse ethnic groups (for lack of another word, sorry..brain fade). Now that discussions on BFP have taught me much about white privilege… I feel he didn’t intend to offend ANYONE, but his lack of understanding or being compassionate about what that painting could trigger or make others feel… is very privileged and “close minded”. Can anyone here help me find the words or expressions for what he was doing by displaying such “art” and should this be allowed in such a place (even if it was part of his Living History stuff)??

Also, last Monday, I had a very important, highly complex meeting with the Chief of the Department of Public Welfare, Human Resources / Labor Relations Office… to discuss the mistreatment, workplace bullies, and verbal/mental abuse that is ongoing and “running rampant” in my old office... I was describing how hostile and demeaning it was to work there. How many of the Managers and one Supervisor regularly participate in hostile, dehumanizing, degrading, destructive behavior and how their actions affect the health of employees and how I perceived their actions as a danger to those around them. I was meeting with him to file a very serious, detailed, fact-supported, emotional complaint against my old office. I was there for nearly 2 hours… but partway through it, I saw his coffee mug with a scene of Confederate Soldiers holding up a tattered Confederate Flag. My chest nearly imploded and I found it very hard to concentrate after that. Here was the Chief of Labor Relations brandishing an object that is [often] viewed as racist and an object of conflict for many people. This blew my mind! And I had to sit there to complete my complaint against workplace discrimination, etc. Simply seeing that little coffee mug and being hit with certain implications and “assumptions”… changed the whole space for me and made me think “how would any of his employees feel about this?” “Can this be his display of white privilege and lack of understanding how he is/can impact someone?” I just can’t find the words for what he made me feel. Especially since he holds such a high office.

I’m sorry for my rambles… finding it very hard to find the right words.

Thanks in advance for anyone that can help me with this. I really wonder if displays as such should be allowed? I’ve seen several individuals here at BFP ask for support and suggestions on how can we stop facilitating racism or educate more people about this subject. My opinion: If they can remove “Under God” from the schools and state offices… why can’t they remove all symbols of racism and hate? (I state again that I believe in history education… BUT, I don’t believe in subjecting anyone to the kinds of things I noted above. There’s a time and place for things… but not in a manager’s office or State Agency where ALL people of ALL races should not be subjected to finding these things.)
Thank you!!!

[Apocalipstic]

I hope no one minds that I’m popping into this discussion out of the blue? I’ve been reading and following as much as I can, but had struggled with responding, asking questions and being able to follow everything that’s been discussed. It’s been a long while since I have participated in a heated, substantial, very thought-provoking discussion or thread…(my brain has been on sabbatical far too long! LOL) so I apologize up front for my lack of etiquette or for my lack of “finding the right words” to express myself. I am coming from a “place” where I’m seeking other’s opinions and feelings on what happened to me recently…. I hope I can explain it well enough? (I have not read all 50+ pages, so I apologize if I’ve missed my answers…)

I agree that the Confederate flag is a symbol of racism, can be used to oppress and silence people (as a group of KKK members tried to do in my hometown), I grew up in a very racist and “phobic” region of the Appalachian Mountains (where the schools did very little to educate on such things, but they participated in spreading the “pride” of flying the flag and that it was “an honor to be a part of our region’s past”…), this is only a few of my personal opinions on the flag itself. I think the only place that it belongs is in the Flag Museum where pieces of our Nation’s history are preserved to educate the newer generations…. (I won’t ramble on my feelings on the flag, …I have something else I wish to seek advice on at this time …)

What I’m looking for is feelings, opinions, was this right or wrong of a Manager, Boss or Agency… or please feel free to tell me “this is how I would deal with it if I faced this situation…”

Until recently, I worked with a man (my boss) who is VERY active in the Annual Gettysburg Civil War Reenactments and takes a whole week off work to be a part of the “Living History Village” and activities as a member of the Confederate side… (I’ve never attended these events, as I don’t care for them…but I do see the value in teaching our history and expanding people’s knowledge if it’s done in the right venue and appropriately. I don’t always agree or see the value of certain Department of Ed’s system of education around these subjects. Sadly, this is part of our history, which must be taught in an appropriate manner…not to facilitate or validate more racism, hate or violation of human rights.)

I highly respected this supervisor and I know he has a lot of respect, honor and integrity. Other than my personal struggle with him on gay rights, I did not see him facilitate or portray racism as is discussed in this thread. I struggled with his choice to do the Reenactments on the Confederate side… and asked him “you’re from Pennsylvania, what’s up with that?”… but I guess as a Living History point of view… History was his passion, not racism or oppression. This next part is specifically something I’d like to hear from folks on: I struggled and cringed every day that I walked into his office and looked at a Living History Painting of a group of Confederate Soldiers mounting the flag in the middle of a battlefield. His office was only open to other members of our Management Team…not the public, but he was a Government Civil Servant who worked with Persons Of Color and other diverse ethnic groups (for lack of another word, sorry..brain fade). Now that discussions on BFP have taught me much about white privilege… I feel he didn’t intend to offend ANYONE, but his lack of understanding or being compassionate about what that painting could trigger or make others feel… is very privileged and “close minded”. Can anyone here help me find the words or expressions for what he was doing by displaying such “art” and should this be allowed in such a place (even if it was part of his Living History stuff)??

Also, last Monday, I had a very important, highly complex meeting with the Chief of the Department of Public Welfare, Human Resources / Labor Relations Office… to discuss the mistreatment, workplace bullies, and verbal/mental abuse that is ongoing and “running rampant” in my old office... I was describing how hostile and demeaning it was to work there. How many of the Managers and one Supervisor regularly participate in hostile, dehumanizing, degrading, destructive behavior and how their actions affect the health of employees and how I perceived their actions as a danger to those around them. I was meeting with him to file a very serious, detailed, fact-supported, emotional complaint against my old office. I was there for nearly 2 hours… but partway through it, I saw his coffee mug with a scene of Confederate Soldiers holding up a tattered Confederate Flag. My chest nearly imploded and I found it very hard to concentrate after that. Here was the Chief of Labor Relations brandishing an object that is [often] viewed as racist and an object of conflict for many people. This blew my mind! And I had to sit there to complete my complaint against workplace discrimination, etc. Simply seeing that little coffee mug and being hit with certain implications and “assumptions”… changed the whole space for me and made me think “how would any of his employees feel about this?” “Can this be his display of white privilege and lack of understanding how he is/can impact someone?” I just can’t find the words for what he made me feel. Especially since he holds such a high office.

I’m sorry for my rambles… finding it very hard to find the right words.

Thanks in advance for anyone that can help me with this. I really wonder if displays as such should be allowed? I’ve seen several individuals here at BFP ask for support and suggestions on how can we stop facilitating racism or educate more people about this subject. My opinion: If they can remove “Under God” from the schools and state offices… why can’t they remove all symbols of racism and hate? (I state again that I believe in history education… BUT, I don’t believe in subjecting anyone to the kinds of things I noted above. There’s a time and place for things… but not in a manager’s office or State Agency where ALL people of ALL races should not be subjected to finding these things.)
Thank you!!!

Wow, I have no idea how you should proceed, but I agree with you that these pictures, symbols and mugs have zero place in a work environment, especially a government one.

[Sweet]

Wow, I have no idea how you should proceed, but I agree with you that these pictures, symbols and mugs have zero place in a work environment, especially a government one.

Thank you very much. I found it very hard to deal with... but didn't know - especially from a Living History point - if my feelings were valid?

Does anyone agree that this kind of display should be educated against? I got the impression that these individuals truly didn't know how they could affect others. I would like to see more education in the workplace about this kind of stuff. That's my current suggestion on "how to get things changed"...

[dreadgeek]

I am over this thread, it has gotten to ridiculous, this Ms has mader her opinions clear how I feel about the flag, racism, my experiences.. I hope you all continue the dialogue, I shall read and learn but right now have nothing else constructive to say..

Good luck!

I hope the white privilege thread is educational and folks participate!

Peace out..

:vigil:

Snowy:

I'm sorry that you won't be participating in this thread. I get the frustration.--you KNOW I do! Those few days of being sicker than a dog helped get my frustration level under control and I don't know why, other than sheer bullheadedness, that I'm hanging in here but I am.

Thanks for sticking with it as long as you did. I, for one, am grateful you did.

Cheers
Aj

[SuperFemme]

Thank you very much. I found it very hard to deal with... but didn't know - especially from a Living History point - if my feelings were valid?

Does anyone agree that this kind of display should be educated against? I got the impression that these individuals truly didn't know how they could affect others. I would like to see more education in the workplace about this kind of stuff. That's my current suggestion on "how to get things changed"...

i'd check out my state laws on displaying that flag in a government building. that may give you a starting point if there is a law on the books. eta: check with HR to see if any policy may already exist.

[Sweet]

i'd check out my state laws on displaying that flag in a government building. that may give you a starting point if there is a law on the books. eta: check with HR to see if any policy may already exist.

Thank you.
Because I grew up with it being displayed... I wasn't so bothered if it offended me...that's why I would turn my back in my Boss's office because it was just me being subjected to his "Living History Art"... it's all other persons I worry about and want to protect from such "lack of respect" displays. The Chief is the Second in Command for THE Director of HR... that's one thing that struck me as painful.

[Apocalipstic]

Sweet, to clarify, was it your HR dude who had the flag on his cup?

Snow, you know we miss you when you are not around! Maybe we take you for granted? Agreed that there has been a lot of ridiculous stuff, but good stuff too!

[Sweet]

Sweet, to clarify, was it your HR dude who had the flag on his cup?

Snow, you know we miss you when you are not around! Maybe we take you for granted? Agreed that there has been a lot of ridiculous stuff, but good stuff too!

Yes. and now that I think about it, I think his tie clip was a very tiny flag? To [possibly] give him the benefit of the doubt, he may also be a Living History Participant or Gettysburg Reenactor??? I don't know what to make of it?

(I'll be back to the conversation soon... must get FOOD and warmer feet! LOL... but please carry on in my absence? I'll respond as best possible. THANK YOU!!!)

[Apocalipstic]

Yes. and now that I think about it, I think his tie clip was a very tiny flag? To [possibly] give him the benefit of the doubt, he may also be a Living History Participant or Gettysburg Reenactor??? I don't know what to make of it?

(I'll be back to the conversation soon... must get FOOD and warmer feet! LOL... but please carry on in my absence? I'll respond as best possible. THANK YOU!!!)

Reinactor or not, I am horrified.

I have no idea who to talk to if your HR person is all up in it.

[Andrew, Jr.]

I think the Conf. Flag is racist. But I live in a very dangerous area. I have the KKK on one side, and gangs on the other.

[Sweet]

Reinactor or not, I am horrified.

I have no idea who to talk to if your HR person is all up in it.

Thank you for validating my feelings. My thoughts exactly. I really don't think the Chief had any clue as to how his "persona" changed and the space around him changed when other individuals find these subtle, small, but obvious displays. My thoughts were "this man holds such a powerful office, this changes my perception of him and how I will react/interact with him."

My Boss on the other hand... I truly think he has a great love and passion for History and that he's into the Reenactments as an educational tool. But I certainly feel that his display of "Living History Art" is completely misplaced and inappropriate.

Both of these individuals are responsible for hiring and firing, supervision and management of personnel and Public Office. This whole event made me sit back and "put myself in others' shoes" if I were a POC having an interview with the person holding that Confederate Flag Coffee Mug.

I think the Conf. Flag is racist. But I live in a very dangerous area. I have the KKK on one side, and gangs on the other.

Hi Andrew. I am sorry you are in the middle of all that. It must be stressful. If you don't mind me asking?.... does it make you hyper-vigilant of your surroundings? Or have you lived there so long, that it's become the "norm"?

I wanted to share earlier, that I certainly appreciate everyone here at BFP and appreciate the individuals that support and approve of the Confederate Flag - for their own reasons and opinions. I appreciate hearing everyone's points and opinions. My post today was NOT meant to offend anyone who does support the flag. They don't need to agree with me and I don't need to agree with them. But I do respect everyone here that has stepped forward to share their views and helped to educate me.

We all have our own reasons and I am all for sharing the freedom to express our opinions and views in a healthy, constructive manner. Before I posted here today, I recall Medusa posting [someplace] that she wanted the conversation to continue as if we were writing from an "I" or "Me" place... her post helped me construct my post, which I had struggled with before. It helped me express what I had experienced and how it affected Me. It also helped me gain the courage to reach out for other ideas, even if they don't mesh with mine. I am not accustomed to writing from an "I" or "Me" place...as most of my professional writing projects are from an "Agency as a whole" and I was not permitted to inject my opinions or views.

[nowandthen]

Okay this is the second or third time this has happened on this thread and although I know this bothers me, it might take a bit for me to hash out precisely *why*. So if this post rambles a bit, I apologize at the outset.

A couple of times now, you've called Apoc out because of her either invoking me or asking me a question. You have done so, I presume, in the most with the most well-meaning of intent. However, there is something--well, just a little bit condescending (toward me, not Apoc)--about it. I guess it comes down to this: if I were REALLY bothered by being asked my opinion about some topic X don't you think I have demonstrated not just a willingness but an ability to say "this bothered me, here's why..."? I believe that I have.

As far as the comparisons--and I didn't really read it as a direct comparison--we all do this. YOU did it in your post, saying that you prefer HBKs' more 'real' (street? hood? 'authentically of color, perhaps') style. Which (and here I'm going to invoke the me, me, me, place) makes me wonder if it's because HBKs' style is more closely aligned with what you think a person of color 'should' sound like. I find that my voice--whether in person or online--can make whites a bit nervous because they have this mental image of how a black woman sounds. Because of the confluence of upbringing, general personal makeup, and experience I make a more-or-less deliberate interest NOT to 'speak hood' in mixed (read: majority non-black) company. I'm not saying that this is necessarily going on for you, I AM saying what my first thought was.

Honestly, this idea that I, as a woman of color, need to somehow be protected from curiosity or questions is, well, offensive to me. I'm not a wilting violet. Black women don't have the luxury of thin-skins or weak hearts, not if we plan to stay sane for any length of time in this country. I can decide, for myself, what offends me and can make it clear that it does offend me. I did not take Apoc saying "I wanted her to be heard" as implying--not even a little bit--to mean that she had any power to make that happen. All I read--correct me if I'm wrong--her saying that "here was an opinion I thought important, I didn't want it overlooked because I thought there were a few good ideas that, perhaps, should be given some bandwidth..." That may NOT have been what she was saying but that's how I interpreted it.

I'm going to make a quick observation that may offend some folks but here goes: treating POC as anything other than *people* is still singling us out for special treatment. Whether that special treatment is dismissing my opinion because I'm black woman or holding me to need some kind of defense against questions for the same reason are both *equally* demeaning. For me, I want to be liked, appreciated and respected for my talents. As a writer, I don't want to be known as a "good writer for a black woman" but a "good writer", full-stop. As a biologist, I don't want to be known as a "good black biologist" but a good biologist. If *either* of those facts, to the degree that either ever become true, makes some racist white person a bit nervous--all the better. If it inspires some young black woman to think "if she can do it, I can do it too!" that's even better. But first and last, I want whatever honors I receive, any accolades tossed my way, any respect I am given to be because I am intelligent, not for a black woman, but for a human being. That I am a talented writer, not as a writer of color, but as a writer. That I am a good theorist/researcher, not as a black scientist, but as a scientist. In other words, I assert my humanity and expect that to be acknowledged.

Please, don't try so hard to be anti-racist that you manage to be racist coming from the other side. We non-whites are, first and foremost, *people*. I feel pretty safe asserting at least that much for ALL people of color--that we're all people. Perhaps treating us as such is the strongest foundation upon which to build genuine anti-racism.

Cheers
Aj
SO, what i have to say is this, apoc and I pm each other and i made clear both in private and public it was the language i was getting at not her. That my attempt was weak in pulling language out as a tool of separating unconsciously. So yes, I will say it again clearly I did not take the time to CLEARLY do that. So, thanks again for reminding me to take the time to make my point not at the expense of others.

Now to this point,

As far as the comparisons--and I didn't really read it as a direct comparison--we all do this. YOU did it in your post, saying that you prefer HBKs' more 'real' (street? hood? 'authentically of color, perhaps') style. Which (and here I'm going to invoke the me, me, me, place) makes me wonder if it's because HBKs' style is more closely aligned with what you think a person of color 'should' sound like. I find that my voice--whether in person or online--can make whites a bit nervous because they have this mental image of how a black woman sounds. Because of the confluence of upbringing, general personal makeup, and experience I make a more-or-less deliberate interest NOT to 'speak hood' in mixed (read: majority non-black) company. I'm not saying that this is necessarily going on for you, I AM saying what my first thought was.

I never said how you write or HBK writes represented POC, what I said is I had a preference to my style of learning, and sense of humor. Neither of you speak for or do I have an expectation of how POC should or should not express themselves. Again, my example of using one voice over another as a "better" way was the point. I should have used those words instead of using people in the tread, I was using the examples in the post because I had read both. My words are below,
"Now Aj may be a good example for you in this tread and I agree informative, I found HBK more to my taste, neither is "better", it is a style thing. comparisons are rarely good. Language is powerful and how power is assigned to it is also worth un-packing."

No reference to "Hood" or representation of anyone except in style of expression, If I assigned anything it was i enjoyed the humor of one style over the other as an example that we all learn differently. I failed in my example to clearly state that. So thank you I will keep learning how to write from my I place.

[Jett]

Ok not sure how to start but I want to speak personally a bit to the saying this or that right "wrong" or mis-speaks... apprehension on these topics, seems to be a theme lately, and it gets to me on a personal level because I have my own shit to deal with there.

These topics do make me apprehensive to jump into. Personally I'm leary not because I'm afraid of being called out on having white privilege I have it, not afraid of the word racist, the world we live in is mired in it and it's hard to escaped getting dirty... all though I do have some apprehension in hurting people I hold dearly as friends I know they can hold there own and will set me straight, that's good that's ok. . my apprehension lay more in my not communicating ideas with a "proper grace"... apprehension about how I'm going to be read... with reason.

I have Aspergers, and the only why as to that being pertinent here is it's largest difference (and sometimes a short-coming- AS has advantages too) is a lack of social grace in communicating, admittedly I'm likely to lack that certain je ne sais quoi it takes to speak on really sensitive subjects (all hail the edit button). Not lacking intelligence (I have a very high IQ and I say that only because it's assumed otherwise by people uneducated on the subject) and I have no problem explaining clearly the process of a star from birth to red giant etc. etc. just less je ne sais quoi here. It's not an excuse, it's an obstacle I'm always trying to be aware of and work around... it's not a disclaimer.

So, I'm not going into all the details but just that I feel like these are the some of the most important discussions on the forums, and regret that I've feel lacking in them.

If I say something that comes of as insensitive or come off like an ass I hope to for f*cks sake that someone lets me know, not to put them in the position of educate, but to draw my attention to that that I can at least have a chance to correct it.

Point... we all have our own unique place we come from in communications, still we can't forget we have one thing in common none of us would be here if we didn't give a shit and that should be remembered when nailing people and turning them into academic examples. Hope it's not too much of a derail but it's been on my mind and I think it has an affect on how far one ends up getting in these convo's before they just get tired.

Gah, truth, I'm extremely reluctant to put this (AS) out there and open myself up to assumptions and pre-judgements... but in life I think it's better to be out there with who you are come what may, and not just what will be an advantage to let ppl see.

*back to reading*
Metro

*if you think aspergers means lower intelligence, stiff or lack of emotion... then you've just never played a game of chess with me...or beer pong... or sat next to me at Bambi when I was a kid ;) if you're still thinking rain man, I can't help you.

[Martina]

if you're still thinking rain man, I can't help you.

So i take it you want to keep the Aspberger's diagnosis? Subject for another thread, i guess. i actually think that claiming connection to other people on the spectrum might be a good thing.

[AtLast]

Ok not sure how to start but I want to speak personally a bit to the saying this or that right "wrong" or mis-speaks... apprehension on these topics, seems to be a theme lately, and it gets to me on a personal level because I have my own shit to deal with there.

These topics do make me apprehensive to jump into. Personally I'm leary not because I'm afraid of being called out on having white privilege I have it, not afraid of the word racist, the world we live in is mired in it and it's hard to escaped getting dirty... all though I do have some apprehension in hurting people I hold dearly as friends I know they can hold there own and will set me straight, that's good that's ok. . my apprehension lay more in my not communicating ideas with a "proper grace"... apprehension about how I'm going to be read... with reason.

I have Aspergers, and the only why as to that being pertinent here is it's largest difference (and sometimes a short-coming- AS has advantages too) is a lack of social grace in communicating, admittedly I'm likely to lack that certain je ne sais quoi it takes to speak on really sensitive subjects (all hail the edit button). Not lacking intelligence (I have a very high IQ and I say that only because it's assumed otherwise by people uneducated on the subject) and I have no problem explaining clearly the process of a star from birth to red giant etc. etc. just less je ne sais quoi here. It's not an excuse, it's an obstacle I'm always trying to be aware of and work around... it's not a disclaimer.

So, I'm not going into all the details but just that I feel like these are the some of the most important discussions on the forums, and regret that I've feel lacking in them.

If I say something that comes of as insensitive or come off like an ass I hope to for f*cks sake that someone lets me know, not to put them in the position of educate, but to draw my attention to that that I can at least have a chance to correct it.

Point... we all have our own unique place we come from in communications, still we can't forget we have one thing in common none of us would be here if we didn't give a shit and that should be remembered when nailing people and turning them into academic examples. Hope it's not too much of a derail but it's been on my mind and I think it has an affect on how far one ends up getting in these convo's before they just get tired.

Gah, truth, I'm extremely reluctant to put this (AS) out there and open myself up to assumptions and pre-judgements... but in life I think it's better to be out there with who you are come what may, and not just what will be an advantage to let ppl see.

*back to reading*
Metro

*if you think aspergers means lower intelligence, stiff or lack of emotion... then you've just never played a game of chess with me...or beer pong... or sat next to me at Bambi when I was a kid ;) if you're still thinking rain man, I can't help you.


Jumping for joy about this post! And for a very special young man in my life (and for those that belong to other's here or themselves).

There exists a Neuro-Diversity thread here that ought to be required reading for membership!

Take the unidimensional nature of only being able to use the writen word in threads and couple it with possible neurological conditions that exist for a hell of a lot of people and no wonder we end up in blocked communication! So, it seems to me that having some sensitivity about (and educating yourself about it) this and not jumping down someone's throat right off might be a good way to go.

Personally, I have had to worki n keeping this in mind and it has made for much better communication between myself and others. No, I don't want a brownie button... awareness is what I'm after.

[Lusciousblondefemme]

I am taking a Ethics class in college and I have to tell you, I read this thread everyday and in some form write about it in my ethics homework and papers. We are learning about Racism and prejudice. This discussion thread definately fits into my class :)

[Dean Thoreau]

I read the original question that started this thread:
Is the confederate flag racist?" and on what planet is it not racist....

as jack knows I am always up for the dare.



inanimate entities are of no value until a human assigns a human behavior or value to it...therefore a flag is NOT RACIST.....and will never be racist...
A human may say it represents racism or causes them to think of racism..but a bunch of dyed cotton can not do a damn thing except mess up the garbage dump it ends up in.


It is not a living breathing thing it can not possess human characteristics such as racist or act racist or be racist.

It is like people saying a Ouija board is satanical...a Ouija board is nothing more than a bunch of cardboard.

The letter K is not evil Kmart, Kohls, Kroger stores. i went shopping at KKK u may assign a different value to those three K's but alas that is where I shopped today.

a confederate flag is nothing more than a bunch of cotton or polyester that a human must ad the value of something human to evil, racist, rebellious, or whatever....a human designates the value of IT "TO THEM".. the key is "TO THEM"

Or in this case,,TO YOU Jack and people who assign same or similar value to the flag of the confederacy.

inanimate objects are meaningless if u do not place any value on them..

What planet is the confederate, Nazi, french, USA, and every other flag on the planet earth not racist? Any planet that does not assign human traits/behaviors to inanimate objects....

When we only look at humans as having human traits and behaviors then we shall have peace. Till then we will fight wars, and battles over that which is not human and we have assigned human traits to these entities.

Bless you,


Dean and Dean Jr. :twocents:

[Apocalipstic]

I read the original question that started this thread:
Is the confederate flag racist?" and on what planet is it not racist....

as jack knows I am always up for the dare.



inanimate entities are of no value until a human assigns a human behavior or value to it...therefore a flag is NOT RACIST.....and will never be racist...
A human may say it represents racism or causes them to think of racism..but a bunch of dyed cotton can not do a damn thing except mess up the garbage dump it ends up in.


It is not a living breathing thing it can not possess human characteristics such as racist or act racist or be racist.

It is like people saying a Ouija board is satanical...a Ouija board is nothing more than a bunch of cardboard.

The letter K is not evil Kmart, Kohls, Kroger stores. i went shopping at KKK u may assign a different value to those three K's but alas that is where I shopped today.

a confederate flag is nothing more than a bunch of cotton or polyester that a human must ad the value of something human to evil, racist, rebellious, or whatever....a human designates the value of IT "TO THEM".. the key is "TO THEM"

Or in this case,,TO YOU Jack and people who assign same or similar value to the flag of the confederacy.

inanimate objects are meaningless if u do not place any value on them..

What planet is the confederate, Nazi, french, USA, and every other flag on the planet earth not racist? Any planet that does not assign human traits/behaviors to inanimate objects....

When we only look at humans as having human traits and behaviors then we shall have peace. Till then we will fight wars, and battles over that which is not human and we have assigned human traits to these entities.

Bless you,


Dean and Dean Jr. :twocents:


OK, yes, technically it is an inanimate piece of cloth, but we know that Jack meant....does that piece of cloth represent racism for a majority of people in the US.

Is it a symbol of racism?

My answer is yes, in the US (at thew very least) the confederate flag is a racist symbol.

[IrishGrrl]

Mostly I try to stay out of this sort of stuff, but love reading it, because I get to watch it all go down..and learn alot of things I didnt know about others, and my own self.
I enjoy the questioning.
I am however willing to say out loud and in public, that I do have issues around race..in my HEAD. I often wonder what those thoughts mean, or make me? AM I racist? A haunting question. Why? I think it's because I was taught growing up that the word RACIST was a horrible word for horrible, despicable behavior. Nothing you would aspire to be for sure. It feels like the N word for white folks...*to me*.
That being said. I along with millions of other white people have always ascribed to "color blindness". I thought it was where we wanted to be? Part of that comes from propaganda seen/heard as a child..signs like.."we are all human", or "we are all the same","we bleed the same colors". We were TAUGHT to be colorblind. And after priding myself on that, REALLY being color blind?? I find out it's all bullshit. We are NOT the same. A POC has a whole different experience in this world than I do. Yes, I always knew "some" things were/had to be different, but vastly so? No..I had no idea really. Probly because I didnt WANT to see or know. I was happy thinking just how damned great I've been, being so "colorblind". I feel like I did when I discovered (for my personal self)that religeon/god is all bullshit. It's a fucking blow. Now I have to relearn the way shit really is. I"m not happy about I will admit. Right now, and for the last year or so..I've basiclly ignored it..and just dealt with the shock. I will also admit, that I'm not READY to do HEAVY work around this stuff yet. I'm just not. Not if I want to be honest with myself.
I can admit publicly that I get PISSED THE FUCK OFF when someone calls me a racist. My current progression is this. If I'm so pissed off being called a racist? How do POC feel being on the other end? It's fucked up.
Still not going to accept the term racist for ME yet..but I'm getting there.
In the mean time, I'm gonna keep reading and thinking.

Peace!

[Miss_Tia]

Metro,
I have been reading your posts the last few days with diligence. I like to read posts that are carefully thought out, that embrace intelligence with sensitivity and can address the subject without snarky opinions being the momementum behind the posting. I have been your secret admirer. Then I got to this point, and in particular, the part about you having Aspergers. Ahhhh...I said...no wonder I admire his communications! I have found that people with Aspergers, as adults, are some of the best communicators, especially of the written word.

now I am going to go back to the thread....

to all readers of this thread...

I dont understand why there is a debate as to if the Confed flag is racist. Maybe I am making this ultra simple, but if one person sees the flag as racist, why do we argue about the flag? Why is the point being addressed, the racism, and not the symbol of it?

My thinking is if we address the racism, the battle over the flag will eventually become moot...


Ok not sure how to start but I want to speak personally a bit to the saying this or that right "wrong" or mis-speaks... apprehension on these topics, seems to be a theme lately, and it gets to me on a personal level because I have my own shit to deal with there.

These topics do make me apprehensive to jump into. Personally I'm leary not because I'm afraid of being called out on having white privilege I have it, not afraid of the word racist, the world we live in is mired in it and it's hard to escaped getting dirty... all though I do have some apprehension in hurting people I hold dearly as friends I know they can hold there own and will set me straight, that's good that's ok. . my apprehension lay more in my not communicating ideas with a "proper grace"... apprehension about how I'm going to be read... with reason.

I have Aspergers, and the only why as to that being pertinent here is it's largest difference (and sometimes a short-coming- AS has advantages too) is a lack of social grace in communicating, admittedly I'm likely to lack that certain je ne sais quoi it takes to speak on really sensitive subjects (all hail the edit button). Not lacking intelligence (I have a very high IQ and I say that only because it's assumed otherwise by people uneducated on the subject) and I have no problem explaining clearly the process of a star from birth to red giant etc. etc. just less je ne sais quoi here. It's not an excuse, it's an obstacle I'm always trying to be aware of and work around... it's not a disclaimer.

So, I'm not going into all the details but just that I feel like these are the some of the most important discussions on the forums, and regret that I've feel lacking in them.

If I say something that comes of as insensitive or come off like an ass I hope to for f*cks sake that someone lets me know, not to put them in the position of educate, but to draw my attention to that that I can at least have a chance to correct it.

Point... we all have our own unique place we come from in communications, still we can't forget we have one thing in common none of us would be here if we didn't give a shit and that should be remembered when nailing people and turning them into academic examples. Hope it's not too much of a derail but it's been on my mind and I think it has an affect on how far one ends up getting in these convo's before they just get tired.

Gah, truth, I'm extremely reluctant to put this (AS) out there and open myself up to assumptions and pre-judgements... but in life I think it's better to be out there with who you are come what may, and not just what will be an advantage to let ppl see.

*back to reading*
Metro

*if you think aspergers means lower intelligence, stiff or lack of emotion... then you've just never played a game of chess with me...or beer pong... or sat next to me at Bambi when I was a kid ;) if you're still thinking rain man, I can't help you.

[Jackhammer]

I read the original question that started this thread:
Is the confederate flag racist?" and on what planet is it not racist....

as jack knows I am always up for the dare.



inanimate entities are of no value until a human assigns a human behavior or value to it...therefore a flag is NOT RACIST.....and will never be racist...
A human may say it represents racism or causes them to think of racism..but a bunch of dyed cotton can not do a damn thing except mess up the garbage dump it ends up in.


It is not a living breathing thing it can not possess human characteristics such as racist or act racist or be racist.

It is like people saying a Ouija board is satanical...a Ouija board is nothing more than a bunch of cardboard.

The letter K is not evil Kmart, Kohls, Kroger stores. i went shopping at KKK u may assign a different value to those three K's but alas that is where I shopped today.

a confederate flag is nothing more than a bunch of cotton or polyester that a human must ad the value of something human to evil, racist, rebellious, or whatever....a human designates the value of IT "TO THEM".. the key is "TO THEM"

Or in this case,,TO YOU Jack and people who assign same or similar value to the flag of the confederacy.

inanimate objects are meaningless if u do not place any value on them..

What planet is the confederate, Nazi, french, USA, and every other flag on the planet earth not racist? Any planet that does not assign human traits/behaviors to inanimate objects....

When we only look at humans as having human traits and behaviors then we shall have peace. Till then we will fight wars, and battles over that which is not human and we have assigned human traits to these entities.

Bless you,


Dean and Dean Jr. :twocents:


You're entitled to your opinion Dean, but my decision on this matter isn't up for debate. I'm just not insensitive enough to change my mind.
Freedom of speech is something you exercise on a public street, sidewalk or public gathering place. This website is none of the above.
This is a private website, and I have assigned meaning to the Confederate flag on our website as racist. I don't care what its made of, paper, cloth, or tree bark, .....
It depicts violence and hate that is reprehensible.
I have never suggested that people don't have the right to fly that flag, or maintain views about that flag that would be hurtful to other people.
They just cant do it here, or at our BFP social gatherings.


I'm aware that if the South would have won the War that slavery would have continued for longer.
I'm also aware that the Confederate flag symbolizes the South's attempt to leave the country and thus perpetuate the slavery of black persons.

I also don't fall for the extremist argument to remove all flags, it feels deflective and diminishing of the real issue that I am addressing in this decision.
We are not cloth and cardboard, we are only words and symbols on this website.

[Miss_Tia]

........................................

I read the original question that started this thread:
Is the confederate flag racist?" and on what planet is it not racist....

as jack knows I am always up for the dare.

I am kinda getting into this late but I feel a need to address the points you brought up Dean. And forgive me if I am to the point. I also have a wry sense of communicating so dont read me as being snarky to YOU. I will be simply be stating my own opinion about what you brought to this thread...ok? :admin: let me push up my glasses and see what I want to respond to..



inanimate entities are of no value until a human assigns a human behavior or value to it...therefore a flag is NOT RACIST.....and will never be racist...
A human may say it represents racism or causes them to think of racism..but a bunch of dyed cotton can not do a damn thing except mess up the garbage dump it ends up in. you are correct in stating that a SYMBOL (which a flag is) only holds value that we give it. But it IS a symbol of a time, place and people who wanted blacks to remain slaves. To fly it even after "the show was over" is pure defiance to the anti-slavery free people free nation concept that that particular war was fought over...


It is not a living breathing thing it can not possess human characteristics such as racist or act racist or be racist. right again...it itself cant possess human traits...but the humans who fly it, in my opinion, dont either. To me, if a person cannot have empathy toward others, on an individual and group level, then they have lost their sense of humanity.

It is like people saying a Ouija board is satanical...a Ouija board is nothing more than a bunch of cardboard. really? So the crosses that people wear are just pieces of metal and have no function or purpose other than a piece of metal? I am not even xtian and I understand the message and power of the cross that people wear. (And by the way, if you think a ouijia board has anything to do with satanism, then you are showing your ignorance about satanism. The ouijia is part of the occult classics but it has no roots to satanism.)

The letter K is not evil Kmart, Kohls, Kroger stores. i went shopping at KKK u may assign a different value to those three K's but alas that is where I shopped today. I am always astounded when people split hairs in order to make their point sound more politically correct. You are mincing words here and wow...you are so wrong in doing so....

a confederate flag is nothing more than a bunch of cotton or polyester that a human must ad the value of something human to evil, racist, rebellious, or whatever....a human designates the value of IT "TO THEM".. the key is "TO THEM" and how many times and ways are you going to say the same thing? Honey....its a symbol. A symbol by definition carries the value that it is given. Stop bringing up and using the point that literally invalidates your arguement...

Or in this case,,TO YOU Jack and people who assign same or similar value to the flag of the confederacy.anyone can indeed put their own spin on each symbol but the symbol represents the value that the culture it came from, puts on it...

inanimate objects are meaningless if u do not place any value on them.. and again, you state the same thing..we heard it..we are just not buying it.

What planet is the confederate, Nazi, french, USA, and every other flag on the planet earth not racist? Any planet that does not assign human traits/behaviors to inanimate objects.... we are a species that uses symbols to communicate..that is what language is all about. And if not for the meaning behind the symbol, we would merely be sticking twigs into tree openings and pulling out ants for lunch instead of ordering from menues...

When we only look at humans as having human traits and behaviors then we shall have peace. Till then we will fight wars, and battles over that which is not human and we have assigned human traits to these entities. the interesting thing in your last statment is that there was a war that was fought over this flag and all it stood for....and that war is over...we fought it and we won it and yet those who cant let go and accept that THEY WERE WRONG..keep trying to fight it in one form or another, such as in threads on forums in the internet...

Bless you,

and many blessings to you too..

Dean and Dean Jr. :twocents:

[Jett]

I read the original question that started this thread:
Is the confederate flag racist?" and on what planet is it not racist....

as jack knows I am always up for the dare.



inanimate entities are of no value until a human assigns a human behavior or value to it...therefore a flag is NOT RACIST.....

***snip****

But the confederate flag has been assigned meaning (or value as you put it)... quite often racist meaning... therefore by your own logic... it is racist.

Peace,
Metro

[Miss_Tia]

But the confederate flag has been assigned meaning (or value as you put it)... quite often racist meaning... therefore by your own logic... it is racist.

Peace,
Metro

to drive this point even further...and expand upon our stance...

lets look at the N word. Its just a word. It holds no meaning on its own. I have heard some people use that as an arguement for their right to use it freely. They say that whites can be called the N word as well. That it isnt reserved for any one race. Just like the confederate flag has no "intended moral meaning", neither does the N word...

when I have been told this arguement, I always (yes I do) sit back and look at who said this to me and pause and then say, "I cant believe I took you for having any intelligence..or worse, I cant believe you are assuming I have none..."

that N word is a firecracker waiting to explode.

As is the confederate flag.

There ARE differences of distinction between calling a white child the N word and a black child the N word. The white child would laugh at you for calling him or her a word that only applies to blacks. But do you understand how wounded a black child would feel if you hurled that word at him as you drove by (assuming anyone who uses that word would innately be a coward and not speak it to their face and so would holler it out the door of a speeding car...ah but I am getting snarky so I will stop and continue with the discussion)


or hey...what about black jokes...when people have tried to tell me black jokes I immediately stop them and tell them they have offended me. I always get "but you arent black" and secondly "its just a joke..I didnt mean anything by it"

here is the point I need to make loud and clear..everything AND I MEAN EVERYTHING you say and do not say, implicates who and what you are. If you speak a racist joke, you are racist. And if you listen to a racist joke and sit in silence, by god and in my book, you are as racist as the one speaking it...

so...flying the confederate flag might be your perogative in your 2 x 4 space (and I am saying this is general, not to anyone specific here) but it labels you a racist by its PERMITTED silent representation of its value to our nation...

you can split hairs over that flag, over the N word, and over POC color jokes and I will say it to your face..because I DO have courage..that it offends me and is racist and please dont do it again....

ok..I am off to bed...good nite all...

[Nat]

I would really like to see the Confederate flag retired for good.

[Greyson]

The article is not specific to the Confederate flag but it is in the same vein, Racism vs. Cultural Pride/Patriotism. I put this piece into this particular thread to help move this important conversation along, cohesive and easy to find.

I am trying to open all of our minds to evaluating, analyzing our beliefs and actions. I am not trying to "shame" anyone into what I may believe. The LGBTQ Community is living in historical times. I cannot ignore the struggles, wars, debates, and sometimes compassionate actions that our fight for equality is built upon. Many came before us. Hopefully our struggle paves the way for others.


Déjà Vu All Over Again: Secession Fever
By: Andrew J. Skerritt
Posted: December 23, 2010

If at first you don't secede, try, try again. Why this newfound fervor for all things Confederate is dangerous for America.

The triumphant e-mail arrived in my in-box a week or two ago. It announced a re-enactment of the Florida Secession Convention on Jan. 8, 2011, in the old State Capitol building, where the original event took place 150 years before.

"This will be an early event of the Sesquicentennial of the War Between the States as Florida was the third state to leave the Union," wrote the sender.

The Florida Secession Convention event is just one of many such spectacles planned over the next five years as the children of the Lost Cause revive ghosts of the Civil War. In Georgia they will re-enact the state's 1861 Secession Convention. Alabama will hold a mock swearing-in of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. People in Charleston, S.C., have organized a gala ball with period dress.

While the re-enactments will be a chance for folks to sip mint juleps and sing "Dixie," they have sparked a revival of the old debate about whether the most deadly conflict in U.S. history was fought over slavery or states' rights.

But for most historians, the case has long been closed.
"Slavery was the principal cause of the Civil War. Period," Bob Sutton, chief historian for the National Park Service, told the Associated Press.

Although this debate will demand much media attention, it's also a sideshow, a diversion. The latest burst of emotion over the Civil War is not about the past. It's about the present and the future. If you're skeptical, read the e-mail promoting the Florida secession re-enactment event: "There is huge potential for favorable media coverage as many of the same issues embroiling the nation in 1861 are relevant today and covered by many news outlets," the sender wrote.

It is not alarmist to suggest that this is about a resurgent Confederacy -- not the treasonous war machine, but a culture that sees itself as being in the ascendancy and is not the least apologetic for sins of the past.

"These battles of memory are not only academic," Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told the New York Times. "They are really about present-day attitudes."

Potok is concerned about this surge he calls the neo-Confederacy. After all, you don't have to believe in conspiracy theories to be concerned. Many of the re-enactors are the physical, cultural and political descendants of those virulently opposed to granting blacks civil rights 50 years ago. Many of them are some of the same "We want our country back" crowd, whose nationalist streak and desire for "less government" didn't surface until America elected its first black president. The election of Barack Obama has unleashed some of the most racist sentiments we have seen in decades.

"It's almost like reliving Reconstruction. They undermine the government by showing disrespect for it," Abel Bartley, director of Pan African Studies at Clemson University in South Carolina, told The Root.

This isn't merely about President Obama. Think about what happened after Reconstruction-era black politicians were discredited and removed from office in the 1880s: It took generations and another revolution before black politicians returned to elective office in significant numbers. Destroy this presidency, and no progressive of color will aspire to the nation's highest office for another 100 years.

But this is about more than just protecting black politicians -- after all, skin color grants no immunity to incompetence. It is about us as Americans. Who we are and where we're going. Who moves forward and who gets left behind -- again.

My fear is that what's happening is a classic example of history repeating itself. During the Civil War, poor white folks acted against their economic self-interest and waged a war that could only have benefited the landed aristocracy. The race card blinded poor Southern whites from seeking solidarity with their natural allies: Southern blacks.

The regions of the country with the strongest opposition to health care reform are areas with the highest uninsured rates: the states of the former Confederacy. Six weeks ago, many people voted for smaller, less activist government during a time that calls for innovative, daring leadership.

"This last election made no sense," Bartley said. "In a time of economic recession, people voted for people who say they are for doing less for you, not more."

The same people who sacrificed the most and lost the most will do so again. A century and a half later, one thing is certain: The Confederacy was un-American yesterday. It's still wrong for America today. No re-enactment party can change that.

Andrew J. Skerritt is an assistant professor of journalism at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, Fla.

http://www.theroot.com/views/florida-secession-convention?page=0,0

[Greyson]

The "Standards of Learning" use by the State of Virginia referred to in this article can be found here;

http://www.doe.virginia.gov/testing/sol/standards_docs/history_socialscience/index.shtml

Open up the file for U.S. History 1865 to Present. At the bottom of the page is required things to be taught about the Reconstruction Period of history from 1865 - 1877. The American Civil War was from 1861- 1865.



Some Va. history texts filled with errors, review finds

By Kevin Sieff
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 29, 2010; 12:06 AM



In the version of history being taught in some Virginia classrooms, New Orleans began the 1800s as a bustling U.S. harbor (instead of as a Spanish colonial one). The Confederacy included 12 states (instead of 11). And the United States entered World War I in 1916 (instead of in 1917).

These are among the dozens of errors historians have found since Virginia officials ordered a review of textbooks by Five Ponds Press, the publisher responsible for a controversial claim that African American soldiers fought for the South in large numbers during the Civil War.

"Our Virginia: Past and Present," the textbook including that claim, has many other inaccuracies, according to historians who reviewed it. Similar problems, historians said, were found in another book by Five Ponds Press, "Our America: To 1865." A reviewer has found errors in social studies textbooks by other publishers as well, underscoring the limits of a textbook-approval process once regarded as among the nation's most stringent.

"I absolutely could not believe the number of mistakes - wrong dates and wrong facts everywhere. How in the world did these books get approved?" said Ronald Heinemann, a former history professor at Hampden-Sydney College. He reviewed "Our Virginia: Past and Present."

In his recommendation to the state, Heinemann wrote, "This book should be withdrawn from the classroom immediately, or at least by the end of the year."

The review began after The Washington Post reported in October that "Our Virginia" included a sentence saying that thousands of black soldiers fought for the South. The claim is one often made by Confederate heritage groups but rejected by most mainstream historians. The book's author, Joy Masoff, said at the time that she found references to it during research on the Internet. Five Ponds Press later apologized.

The unusual review process involved five professional scholars. The results, said three of those involved in the process, proved disturbing. Some submitted lists of errors that ran several pages long. State officials plan to meet Jan. 10 to review the historians' concerns.

"The findings of these historians have certainly underscored and added urgency to the need to address the weaknesses in our system so we don't have glaring historical errors in our books," said Charles Pyle, a spokesman for Virginia's Department of Education.

Five Ponds Press, based in Weston, Conn., has not disputed that its books have errors, and it said in an e-mail that it plans to incorporate historians' critiques into the next editions of their books.

"Most of the items you reference have been identified, and we sent a notice a week ago to the Virginia Department of Education with our intent to make these edits in the book's next printing," Lou Scolnik, owner of Five Ponds Press, wrote in response to questions.

Five Ponds Press provides books mainly to the Virginia Department of Education. The department is required to find texts that meet the state's stringent Standards of Learning, which includes lists of themes that each textbook must cover. That disqualifies many books produced for the national textbook market.

The department approves textbooks after panels of reviewers, often elementary school teachers, verify that the books cover each of the Standards of Learning themes. Experts in particular subject matters also sometimes review books.

"Teachers are not reading textbooks front to back, and they're not in a position to identify the kinds of errors that historians could identify," Pyle said.

The creation of Standards of Learning requirements helped create niche markets for smaller publishers, including Five Ponds Press. One of its early books was "Mali: Land of Gold & Glory," which, according to news reports, was crafted to fit a newly introduced Standards of Learning theme.

Five Ponds Press gradually expanded to other subject areas, filling a growing portion of Virginia's $70 million-a-year textbook market. Many larger publishers employ professional historians, but all of the books by Five Ponds Press have been written by Masoff, who is not a trained historian. Other titles by her include "Oh, Yuck! The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty" and "Oh, Yikes! History's Grossest, Wackiest Moments."

Scolnik said Five Ponds is in the process of hiring a professional historian from a Virginia university.

School districts choose textbooks from a list approved by the state. Among the factors is price. The books by Five Ponds Press often are less expensive than those produced by larger publishers.

Fauquier County uses "Our America." Loudoun County used "Our Virginia" but pulled it in October, after The Post's report. Fairfax County still uses "Our Virginia," and last week, a review committee in Prince William County recommended both "Our America" and "Our Virginia" for approval.

"They are willing to go to great lengths for our business. Their product is substantially less expensive than the committee's next highest-rated competitor - very appealing in these lean economic times," said Kenneth Bassett, Prince William's social studies supervisor.

He said the textbook was not the only state-approved option with inaccuracies. "Unfortunately, errors are not all that uncommon in textbooks," Bassett said. "For example, one of the other publisher's books we reviewed confused Mount Vernon and Monticello," he said.

Four of the five experts reviewed books published only by Five Ponds Press. The fifth reviewer, DePaul University sociology professor Christopher Einolf, has written a book on a Civil War general. He reviewed Civil War content in nine Virginia textbooks published by companies other than Five Ponds Press.

His review found that one book - from publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt - has particular problems. Einolf took issue with some characterizations, saying, for example, that Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman did not "destroy" Atlanta but only portions of the city. Einolf also said that Pickett's Charge, which the book says involved 5,000 men, actually involved more than 10,000. Calls to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt over the past week were not returned.

Einolf said many of the other books neglect key elements, such as the role of African Americans in 19th-century Virginia.

"Making a mistake is one thing. Ignoring the role that African Americans played in the state is almost as bad," Einolf said.

Historian Mary Miley Theobald, a former Virginia Commonwealth University professor, reviewed "Our America" and concluded that it was "just too shocking for words."

"Any literate person could have opened that book and immediately found a mistake," she said.

Theobald's list of errors spanned 10 pages, including inaccurate claims that men in Colonial Virginia commonly wore full suits of armor and that no Americans survived the Battle of the Alamo. Most historians say that some survived.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/28/AR2010122804332_2.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2010101908028

[dreadgeek]

This does not surprise me in the least. There is a very focused and concerted effort to re-write history in this country so that it is more in line with conservative ideology (and I'm sorry but this is largely coming from conservatives so I'm just going to tell it like it is).

There's the examples given below and, of course, there's the plethora of examples coming from Texas. Some particularly egregious ones are:

1) Blacks fought for the Confederacy in large numbers. (No reputable historian of the Civil War believes this)

2) That the Civil Rights movement was championed by conservatives. (Not Republicans but *Conservatives*) This is manifestly not true. Pick a prominent conservative writing in the 50's and 60's and I will show you an apologist for segregation. Buckley? Apologist. Rand? Apologist. The ONLY figure who bucks the trend is Barry Goldwater and then only in a limited sense (he supported the Voting Rights Act but opposed the Civil Rights Act).

3) That the American Republic was founded as a Christian nation. It wasn't. Most of the Founders were Deists of various stripes and if you read figures like Paine and Locke you find an outright hostility to ecclesiastical authority.

4) That slaves were well treated and considered 'like part of the family'. Not even wrong.

5) That blacks held slaves in large numbers and therefore American chattel slavery was not about race. Again, not even wrong.

And that's *just* the stuff related to American history and only some of the more egregious examples.

This should sober us up real quick. As Orwell presciently wrote: whoever controls the past, controls the future. Whoever controls the present, controls the past.

cheers
Aj


The "Standards of Learning" use by the State of Virginia referred to in this article can be found here;

http://www.doe.virginia.gov/testing/sol/standards_docs/history_socialscience/index.shtml

Open up the file for U.S. History 1865 to Present. At the bottom of the page is required things to be taught about the Reconstruction Period of history from 1865 - 1877. The American Civil War was from 1861- 1865.



Some Va. history texts filled with errors, review finds

By Kevin Sieff
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 29, 2010; 12:06 AM



In the version of history being taught in some Virginia classrooms, New Orleans began the 1800s as a bustling U.S. harbor (instead of as a Spanish colonial one). The Confederacy included 12 states (instead of 11). And the United States entered World War I in 1916 (instead of in 1917).

These are among the dozens of errors historians have found since Virginia officials ordered a review of textbooks by Five Ponds Press, the publisher responsible for a controversial claim that African American soldiers fought for the South in large numbers during the Civil War.

"Our Virginia: Past and Present," the textbook including that claim, has many other inaccuracies, according to historians who reviewed it. Similar problems, historians said, were found in another book by Five Ponds Press, "Our America: To 1865." A reviewer has found errors in social studies textbooks by other publishers as well, underscoring the limits of a textbook-approval process once regarded as among the nation's most stringent.

"I absolutely could not believe the number of mistakes - wrong dates and wrong facts everywhere. How in the world did these books get approved?" said Ronald Heinemann, a former history professor at Hampden-Sydney College. He reviewed "Our Virginia: Past and Present."

In his recommendation to the state, Heinemann wrote, "This book should be withdrawn from the classroom immediately, or at least by the end of the year."

The review began after The Washington Post reported in October that "Our Virginia" included a sentence saying that thousands of black soldiers fought for the South. The claim is one often made by Confederate heritage groups but rejected by most mainstream historians. The book's author, Joy Masoff, said at the time that she found references to it during research on the Internet. Five Ponds Press later apologized.

The unusual review process involved five professional scholars. The results, said three of those involved in the process, proved disturbing. Some submitted lists of errors that ran several pages long. State officials plan to meet Jan. 10 to review the historians' concerns.

"The findings of these historians have certainly underscored and added urgency to the need to address the weaknesses in our system so we don't have glaring historical errors in our books," said Charles Pyle, a spokesman for Virginia's Department of Education.

Five Ponds Press, based in Weston, Conn., has not disputed that its books have errors, and it said in an e-mail that it plans to incorporate historians' critiques into the next editions of their books.

"Most of the items you reference have been identified, and we sent a notice a week ago to the Virginia Department of Education with our intent to make these edits in the book's next printing," Lou Scolnik, owner of Five Ponds Press, wrote in response to questions.

Five Ponds Press provides books mainly to the Virginia Department of Education. The department is required to find texts that meet the state's stringent Standards of Learning, which includes lists of themes that each textbook must cover. That disqualifies many books produced for the national textbook market.

The department approves textbooks after panels of reviewers, often elementary school teachers, verify that the books cover each of the Standards of Learning themes. Experts in particular subject matters also sometimes review books.

"Teachers are not reading textbooks front to back, and they're not in a position to identify the kinds of errors that historians could identify," Pyle said.

The creation of Standards of Learning requirements helped create niche markets for smaller publishers, including Five Ponds Press. One of its early books was "Mali: Land of Gold & Glory," which, according to news reports, was crafted to fit a newly introduced Standards of Learning theme.

Five Ponds Press gradually expanded to other subject areas, filling a growing portion of Virginia's $70 million-a-year textbook market. Many larger publishers employ professional historians, but all of the books by Five Ponds Press have been written by Masoff, who is not a trained historian. Other titles by her include "Oh, Yuck! The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty" and "Oh, Yikes! History's Grossest, Wackiest Moments."

Scolnik said Five Ponds is in the process of hiring a professional historian from a Virginia university.

School districts choose textbooks from a list approved by the state. Among the factors is price. The books by Five Ponds Press often are less expensive than those produced by larger publishers.

Fauquier County uses "Our America." Loudoun County used "Our Virginia" but pulled it in October, after The Post's report. Fairfax County still uses "Our Virginia," and last week, a review committee in Prince William County recommended both "Our America" and "Our Virginia" for approval.

"They are willing to go to great lengths for our business. Their product is substantially less expensive than the committee's next highest-rated competitor - very appealing in these lean economic times," said Kenneth Bassett, Prince William's social studies supervisor.

He said the textbook was not the only state-approved option with inaccuracies. "Unfortunately, errors are not all that uncommon in textbooks," Bassett said. "For example, one of the other publisher's books we reviewed confused Mount Vernon and Monticello," he said.

Four of the five experts reviewed books published only by Five Ponds Press. The fifth reviewer, DePaul University sociology professor Christopher Einolf, has written a book on a Civil War general. He reviewed Civil War content in nine Virginia textbooks published by companies other than Five Ponds Press.

His review found that one book - from publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt - has particular problems. Einolf took issue with some characterizations, saying, for example, that Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman did not "destroy" Atlanta but only portions of the city. Einolf also said that Pickett's Charge, which the book says involved 5,000 men, actually involved more than 10,000. Calls to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt over the past week were not returned.

Einolf said many of the other books neglect key elements, such as the role of African Americans in 19th-century Virginia.

"Making a mistake is one thing. Ignoring the role that African Americans played in the state is almost as bad," Einolf said.

Historian Mary Miley Theobald, a former Virginia Commonwealth University professor, reviewed "Our America" and concluded that it was "just too shocking for words."

"Any literate person could have opened that book and immediately found a mistake," she said.

Theobald's list of errors spanned 10 pages, including inaccurate claims that men in Colonial Virginia commonly wore full suits of armor and that no Americans survived the Battle of the Alamo. Most historians say that some survived.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/28/AR2010122804332_2.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2010101908028

[waxnrope]

I gave up. I don't care about this friggin flag ... just don't shave your head and wave it in my face, my state. With past experiences to lend reason, I almost never travel to the South. When I do, I am anxious and tense until I leave. Just my tired of it $0.02.

[Sam]

Ok, im not getting the political part in all this. Where i am living, i see the flag hung. When i see the folks coming out of that house where the flag is hung, its the land of Dixie, mostly in the south. I have friends who have the flag, they are nice calm rednecks. not that theres anything wrong with rednecks, i live between ga/nc right now.

i just thought it was what we make ourselves believe.

and no i dont own a flag except a good old TN VOLS flag.

i googled to try to understand why ppl would think its racist.

i just dont grasp the concept. just my opinion, no need to jump all over me, i have read everyone elses opinions. we are entitled. i said nothing wrong or against anyone.

[Ebon]

I gave up. I don't care about this friggin flag ... just don't shave your head and wave it in my face, my state. With past experiences to lend reason, I almost never travel to the South. When I do, I am anxious and tense until I leave. Just my tired of it $0.02.

That's funny because I feel that way about going up north.

[Greyson]

That's funny because I feel that way about going up north.


Thanks for posting this. It is true just because one is POC, it does not necessarily mean our self perception or experiences mesh with the stereotype.

I am going to take a small liberty here and state that just because you feel unsafe in traveling to the North, this should not imply that the vestiges of history do not still linger.

[dreadgeek]

Ok, im not getting the political part in all this. Where i am living, i see the flag hung. When i see the folks coming out of that house where the flag is hung, its the land of Dixie, mostly in the south. I have friends who have the flag, they are nice calm rednecks. not that theres anything wrong with rednecks, i live between ga/nc right now.

i just thought it was what we make ourselves believe.

and no i dont own a flag except a good old TN VOLS flag.

i googled to try to understand why ppl would think its racist.

i just dont grasp the concept. just my opinion, no need to jump all over me, i have read everyone elses opinions. we are entitled. i said nothing wrong or against anyone.

Let me try to explain:

1) The Confederacy was formed in defense of slavery. "State's Rights" wasn't about whether or not a state could was Baptist or Methodist, it wasn't about how bridges were built or how local taxes were levied. State's Rights was about the states of the South wanting to preserve slavery.

2) The Civil War was fought over slavery. Had the Federal Government not tried to prevent the expansion of slavery the Civil War would likely not have happened. I understand that there is a myth that it wasn't the causus belli but every reputable historian believes that the war was primarily about whether or not slavery was going to be preserved in the United States.

3) AFTER the South lost and slavery was made illegal, white Southerners decided that blacks were to be 'kept in their place'. That 'place' was defined by segregation. Yes, the rest of America was also largely segregated at that time but long AFTER the rest of the nation decided to act right (or at least less wrong) about black citizens the South stubbornly held onto Jim Crow. The Confederate flag was a symbol of those opposed to integration and it was the symbol they rallied around.

To say that Jim Crow segregation was not about race is to not just ignore history but to reinvent it out of whole cloth (I'm NOT saying you are saying that it wasn't about race, but there are apologists for the Confederate flag who do make that argument). To claim, as Haley Barbour (R-MS) does, that the Civil Rights Era was handled peacefully and was, in the South, a largely multi-racial affair is to, again, replace history with mythology. Again, the symbol that segregationists rallied around was the Confederate flag.

Whether or not Southerners like this or not, long AFTER interracial marriage was legal in the other 37 states it was illegal in EVERY state in Dixie. The justification was entirely racist and nothing else. The arguments put forward against integration of schools, public accommodation, etc. was that it would lead to miscegenation (racial mixing). To argue that this was not racist would be like arguing that anti-Semitism was tangential to Nazism--something like a unexpected side effect or epiphenomena. Except it wasn't, anti-Semitism was inseparable from Nazism and the symbol of Nazism--the flag of the Third Reich--is inseparable from its past. Likewise, pro-Confederate ideology is inseparable from its racist past and the symbol of the Confederacy is inseparable from the ideology. The difference between Nazism and, let's call it Confederate apologism, is a matter of degree not of kind. Both ideologies are based in the premise that there is a group that is superior to all others and that this difference is *inherent* in the members of the various groups. Both ideologies claim to be beleaguered combatants struggling to preserve their genetic and cultural uniqueness against infusions from, less noble groups. Both ideologies claim to be persecuted because large numbers of people reject the ideology. Both ideologies promote their group as being specially in possession of virtue, bravery, loyalty to family and friends, piety, and probity while their chosen targets are singularly in possession of cowardice, malignity, dishonesty and all the other negative traits. Both ideologies believe that *at best* their chosen targets should be constrained in their movements and social interactions.

The difference was a matter of degree, but not of kind. Did the Confederacy put blacks in ovens? No. But there were *numerous* 'race riots' (by which I mean whites rampaging through predominately black areas burning, looting and killing) in the early 20th century. Just as there were numerous instances in Nazi Germany where Jewish stores were burned or vandalized because they were Jewish. Was there random, ad hoc, violence done against blacks by pro-segregation forces? Yes. Was there institutional violence done against blacks by pro-segregation forces operating under the color of law? Yes. In 1960s Mississippi a white man could walk up and shoot a black man in full view of the law and never be charged with a crime. Not 1860, 1960. Within the living memory of a number of posters here. Similarly, in Nazi Germany an Aryan German could kill a Jewish German with utter impunity. Likewise, in every Southern state until the 1970's a black man who did not show appropriate deference to whites was taking his safety in his hands. In Germany in the 30's and until the end of WW II, the same applied to Jews.

Almost without exception, people look at the flag of the Third Reich and recognize it as a symbol of anti-Semitism and insane nationalism. I see no reason why the Confederate flag should be given any special dispensation on that matter just because the former is from Germany and the latter is from America and I am an American and not a German.

Cheers
Aj

[Ebon]

Thanks for posting this. It is true just because one is POC, it does not necessarily mean our self perception or experiences mesh with the stereotype.

I am going to take a small liberty here and state that just because you feel unsafe in traveling to the North, this should not imply that the vestiges of history do not still linger.

Oh absolutely but in my experience I've encountered more racism in the north. I understand that there are idiots every where but in the south I know who and where to stay away from. Up north I get seated in the kitchen then smiled at. Or work with people that straight up tell me that they don't hang out with people like me. That particular incident was a class and race thing but that's a different story. I do understand the history of the flag and the civil war, including the fact that the north was just as interested in keeping slavery but stopped it for their own selfish reasons not in the interest of the actual slaves.

the flag itself I think is racist if you think it is and not if you don't think it is. To me it's a piece of cloth it's the person that owns it that causes the problem.

[dreadgeek]

Oh absolutely but in my experience I've encountered more racism in the north. I understand that there are idiots every where but in the south I know who and where to stay away from. Up north I get seated in the kitchen then smiled at. Or work with people that straight up tell me that they don't hang out with people like me. That particular incident was a class and race thing but that's a different story. I do understand the history of the flag and the civil war, including the fact that the north was just as interested in keeping slavery but stopped it for their own selfish reasons not in the interest of the actual slaves.

the flag itself I think is racist if you think it is and not if you don't think it is. To me it's a piece of cloth it's the person that owns it that causes the problem.

I appreciate your posting this. And no one should think that the North stopped slavery for anything as noble as a love of black people in the same way that no one should think that Britain, France, Russia or, particularly, the United States got involved in WW II for anything OTHER than strategic/geopolitical considerations. We did not fight WW II, particularly the European theater, because America had some great love of Poles, Czechs, Russians, Gypsies or Jews. We fought in Europe because a Fortress Europa completely owned by Nazi Germany was not something the United States could strategically stomach. Likewise, the North had its economic reasons for not wanting slavery to continue, as a happy accident it meant that black people were no longer slaves but that wasn't the motivation. We should accept that nations do not act that way. England didn't pull back its empire because of some love of the people they had conquered but because it was too expensive--in both economic and political terms--to maintain it. The North ended slavery because it was economically unviable and unnecessary, not because of a love of blacks. Nations behave in their own strategic and economic interests and not in any manner remotely resembling human moralities--and chances are they shouldn't try to behave any differently.

As far as North vs. South, having spent significant times in the Deep South and in the West, I can certainly see why you would prefer the South. There is something easy and refreshing about the honesty. Either someone is really a racist--in which case they will let you know about it rather early or someone is really not. In the West it's a guessing game. That said, my zip code is on the West coast which tells you about my preference.

Cheers
Aj

[dreadgeek]

This was a letter to the editor, posted in response to Haley Barbour's claims about how 'peaceful' Yazoo City, MS and how munificent the White Citizens's Council was. It is pasted here in its entirety. All emphasis in the text below is mine:

Haley Barbour was my best friend growing up in Yazoo City.

While he can say that Yazoo missed the violence other towns experienced during the Civil Rights movement, the White Citizens Council did do its part to terrorize those who did not agree with its agenda.

My parents, both physicians, protested attempts by the White Citizens Council and other doctors to turn a federally funded Hill-Burton "separate-but-equal" hospital into a whites only facility in 1955.

Threatening phone calls, dead cats on the lawn and other acts of intimidation combined to run my father out of town for two years.

He lost all of his white patients; my mother, the only pediatrician in town, lost more than half of her white patients.

Yazoo City's blacks continued to die on the nearly hour-long ambulance drive to Jackson, where they could get hospital and trauma care. Blacks with gunshot and knife wounds, burns from kerosene stoves and children with convulsions continued to come to our house for emergency care, and some died because the city fathers on the White Citizens Council didn't want an integrated hospital.

To say, as Haley did, that the White Citizens Council was better than the KKK, is a disingenuous comparison that has more to do with costume than terrorism and organized bullying.

Steve Mangold

San Jose, Calif.

[Greyson]

When I read this article this morning, I instantly thought of this thread and the discussion that took place here. I have been to Shreveport LA. I was also detained at the airport and I was searched along with my luggage that was being shipped but not carried on board with me.

My twin sister who is a femme and meets the criteria of what tradional feminine looks like, was not stopped and let right on through.

After I went through this, two gay men that I did not know, watched this from their seats while awaiting their flight. When I rejoined my sister and sat down, what one of these men said to me was "That is why we have moved out of Shreveport. Both of us are from here and we left. We come back to visit our parents."

What has my personal experience got to do with the Confederate flag? Perhaps not much. My point is that I believe there is a history and institutionalization of racism and homophobia in the South. This does not mean that racism and Queerphobia does not exist in other areas of the country, it does. However perhaps not as blatant.

I do not know the specifics of this case. I think it might be a bit of an overstatement to ask for dismissal because the Confederate flas is flying outside but the flying of this flag does speak volumes. I find it very troubling that the lone African American in the jury was dismissed from jury duty.

I am not posting this to shame and blame people in one broad stroke. I hope that all of us can read with an open mind and critical thinking abilities and then decide to do something with all of this information posted in these threads to make it a better planet for all.

______________________________________________


MAY 9, 2011 Murder Appeal Raises Confederate Flag Issue
By NATHAN KOPPEL And ASHBY JONES


The Shreveport Times

The Louisiana Supreme Court is expected to hear a novel argument Monday in the long-standing debate over the legacy of the Confederate flag: Is it so prejudicial that its presence at the courthouse justifies overturning a murder conviction?

A Confederate monument outside the courthouse in Shreveport, La.

The case involves an attempt to overturn a 2009 death sentence against a black defendant on grounds that flying the flag outside a state courthouse was prejudicial to his case.

Felton Dorsey, an African American was sentenced to death in Shreveport, La., for killing Joe Prock, a white firefighter, during a robbery of the home of Mr. Prock's mother.

Mr. Dorsey claims he is innocent and seeks to overturn the conviction on numerous grounds, including that prosecutors used unreliable accomplice testimony. But race is a central part of the appeal. Mr. Dorsey contends that prosecutors improperly removed most of the prospective black jurors from the case, resulting in a jury of 11 whites and one African American.

He claims to have suffered additional discrimination due to the Confederate flag that has flown outside the Caddo Parish courthouse in Shreveport since 1951.

"The quintessential symbol of white supremacy looms over the courthouse," he said in his appellate brief.

For some in the South, the Confederate flag is a reminder of slavery. For others, the flag serves as a neutral memorial to Civil War veterans, and it has been the subject of many political and legal challenges in the South over the years.

Critics say it demeans blacks, while defenders see it as an important historical symbol, and contend it deserves free-speech protection.

Protests followed a decision last month from the board of commissioners in Dodge County, Ga., to fly the flag year-round outside the courthouse in honor of Confederate soldiers. Dodge County commissioner Archie Dupree Sr. declined to comment. In Palestine, Texas, a similar controversy arose last month after a county board of commissioners approved hoisting the flag outside a local courthouse; it was later taken down following complaints.

Several courts in the past decade have dealt with cases brought by students who claimed their free-speech rights were violated after they were suspended from school for wearing clothes adorned with depictions of the flag. Generally, courts have ruled that school administrators can restrict students from displaying the flag, in order to remove the threat of violence.

Confederate flags are located near a small number of courthouses in the South, according to lawyers and civil-rights advocates.

But it is rare, if not unprecedented, to claim that the flag justifies overturning a death sentence, they say, because it is difficult to find case-specific evidence that the flag had a discriminatory impact on a conviction.

Mr. Dorsey's legal team believes it has just such evidence—the transcript of the jury selection in the case.

Carl Staples, a prospective black juror, was struck from the case by prosecutors after complaining about the flag.

The flag "is a symbol of one of the most…heinous crimes ever committed," Mr. Staples said, according to court briefs. "You're here for justice and then again you overlook this great injustice by continuing to fly this flag," he added, calling the flag "salt in the wounds of…people of color."

"When I was screened for the jury, it welled up inside of me and I expressed my feelings," Mr. Staples said in an interview. A part-time radio engineer and announcer in Shreveport, he said, "I don't understand how judges or lawyers allowed that flag to stand."

Cecelia Trenticosta, counsel to Mr. Dorsey, said she previously had considered challenging the Confederate flag in Caddo Parish but had not because she never had a case where someone had complained on the record about the flag. "This flag has been flying for 60 years, and a brave citizen finally spoke up and said the emperor is naked," said Ms. Trenticosta, who specializes in death-penalty appeals.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP's Shreveport Chapter, and a group of university professors filed a court brief supporting Mr. Dorsey's claim that the Confederate flag prejudiced his case and violated his due-process rights.

"This case will give the Louisiana Supreme Court an opportunity to send a message that a Confederate flag on courthouse grounds is intolerable," said ACLU attorney Anna Arceneaux.

Suzanne Owen, a lawyer with the Caddo Parish District Attorney's Office who is defending the conviction, did not return calls for comment.

In an appellate brief, the District Attorney's Office denied that prosecutors discriminated against blacks in assembling the jury. The brief does not address the Confederate flag.

Charles McMichael, a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a Tennessee-based group that seeks to preserve the legacy of Confederate veterans, called it "idiotic" for Mr. Dorsey to try use the flag to overturn his conviction.

"I don't care if there had been the Barnum & Bailey Circus, the Space Shuttle or whatever in front of the courthouse, he would have still gotten the death penalty." Mr. McMichael, a Shreveport civics teacher, said the flag is simply a neutral memorial to soldiers and should not be taken down merely because some find it offensive. "If you got rid of everything that offended someone you would have to get rid of everything."

Write to Nathan Koppel at nathan.koppel@wsj.com and Ashby Jones at ashby.jones@wsj.com

[Cajun_dee]

I am from the VERY Deep South, I am here now as a matter of fact. The place is crawling with *Good Ole Boys*. They make me uncomfortable to say the least but I never put myself in a position to be vulnerable to anyone with any stupid ideas. I have lived in the South, the North, the South and the North again, there is MUCH more prejudice in the South as everyday life here. You should see the looks I am getting walking around with my very tattooed Butch Syr on my arm, (OHHH But I also love it) The good ole boy club takes notice for sure, and the fact that their women are ooohin and ahhhhing over Syr makes it all the better, I mean upsetting. <smirk>

The flag to me represents the South. Dixie. It is part of the heritage here, there is lots more around here to remind me of slavery and the KKK than the Confederate Flag. The flag also represents the good things about the South, and there is lots. I also feel if this is the case, the Native Americans could ask that the American Flag not be waved because to them it represents the annihilation of their people by the hand of the English.

You can't erase history no matter how bleak it is.

[Toughy]

Any flag that represents the Confederacy is a symbol of treason and sedition. As such, it has absolutely no place being flown anywhere in this country. The only exception would be at Civil War re-enactments. Anything that 'honors' those Confederate soldiers should have a plaque or something similiar posted pointing out those soldiers committed an act(s) of treason.

It is appalling to me that anyone would think it's ok to proudly fly any of those flags. I fail to see how anyone can be proud of the fact they, by default, support slavery and the overthrow of the government of this country.

[Greyson]

Any flag that represents the Confederacy is a symbol of treason and sedition. As such, it has absolutely no place being flown anywhere in this country. The only exception would be at Civil War re-enactments. Anything that 'honors' those Confederate soldiers should have a plaque or something similiar posted pointing out those soldiers committed an act(s) of treason.

It is appalling to me that anyone would think it's ok to proudly fly any of those flags. I fail to see how anyone can be proud of the fact they, by default, support slavery and the overthrow of the government of this country.

IMO, you are in fact correct. It was an act of treason. I am pretty sure that many thought they were fighting to save the USA by succession. Sounds like very similar thinking to States Rights extremist.

[The_Lady_Snow]

The confederare flag is a symbol of oppression, racism & a constant reminder of the enslavement, killings, rapings of 1000's of human beings.

[BullRider_Dillon]

Speaking solely for myself,the flag represents the only thing that was good about my boyhood.

The best food I ever had was in the south.Chow Chow,biscuits,okra (which is not served in my native Western N.Y.)sweet tea always perfect without being sickening sweet,collards,fine Christian women,Margaret Mitchells "Gone With The Wind" and Southern Hospitality.It also represents The General Lee to me and that car was my sancturay on Friday nights when The Dukes of Hazzard was on.That short time on the weekend was the only escape I had from a horrendous boyhood.

I dont collect anything,I dont let things mean that much to me because I know it will be taken from me if I care,but the one exception I have is my Dukes Of Hazzard lunchbox and Boss Hogg minature.I bought them as an adult from a guy on e-bay.

God bless the South

p.s.There is nothing satanic about good ol´e boys.I am one of them and we are considerate christian gentleman.

[Greyson]

Speaking solely for myself,the flag represents the only thing that was good about my boyhood.

The best food I ever had was in the south.Chow Chow,biscuits,okra (which is not served in my native Western N.Y.)sweet tea always perfect without being sickening sweet,collards,fine Christian women and Sothern Hospitality.It also represents The General Lee to me and that car was my sancturay on Friday nights when The Dukes of Hazzard was on.That short time on the weekend was the only escape I had from a horrendous boyhood.

I dont collect anything,I dont let things mean that much to me because I know it will be taken from me if I care,but the one exception I have is my Dukes Of Hazzard lunchbox and Boss Hogg minature.

God bless the South

p.s.There is nothing satanic about good ol´e boys.I am one of them and we are considerate christian gentleman.


BullRider, I believe you when you say that the flag represents for you one of the few things that was good about your childhood. This is not a personal attack on people of Southern heritage.

Why I posted the article is to get people to thinking about the broader picture around the flag, racism and such. Can you deny that there are and were some pretty horrible things that took place in the governance and everyday life of the confederate? Even more so, how can we move forward as a nation without bringing racism, intentional and implicit into our lives, decisions, actions, laws and policies?

[AtLast]

There are many positive icons that represent the South- the Confederate flag is just not one of them. Sad to me that a region with some of the finest people of the US, has to deal with those that insist on flying this flag- it casts a long an dark shadow over tye very good in the South.

[Corkey]

Nothing about that symbol is neutral. I agree with Toughy and Snow.

[BullRider_Dillon]

Like I said,it was MY perspective and it will always be something positive to me and that is something no one can take away from me.

Dillon

[Apocalipstic]

Thanks for posting the article Greyson!

I am 100% against the death penalty and the Confederate Flag being flown.

Those two things make it impossible for me to impartially say whether or not I think the conviction should be overturned. It does see predjudicial to have a flag representing racism flying on the building where justice is supposed to be served.

BullRider,
while I agree that there are great people and food in the South, I do not agree that all Southerner's are good, and wonder what being a Christian has to do with it? The KKK was and is full of so called Christians, though I for the life of me can't imagine Jesus flying anyone's flag, much less one which makes so many people feel unsafe.

ps
I do get having fond memories of a childhood show, I feel the same way about Scooby Doo!

[princessbelle]

I really should not post in here. I know better. I just can't seem to help myself. So here goes.....

We can argue all day and night about the causes of the Civil war and it's meanings. I'm not going to get into a debate about it, i am not a historian. I can get online and find facts just like anyone. But what's the point...it's mute.

*My* *position* on the confederate flag is this.....i grew up here of course, that's apparent if you've ever talk to me on the phone. I *personally* don't see the confederate flag as racist and the reasons for this are elementary and basic. Beginning with the fact that i was raised here. My high school was the West High Rebels and our flag was the confederate flag. So to me, more than with the broader ideal...i see it as a high school flag. But, at the same time, if "you" see it as racist then i would recognize that and appreciate that and understand that.

I realize this is a touchy subject for everyone. I realize there are a lot of strong feelings out there and rightly so. I don't and wouldn't fly the confederate flag due from what i've learned being online and the feelings that radiate around it.

I do however fly the United States of America flag (see? i listen and didn't just say American flag) in my front yard...always will. I am not ashamed to say i'm a United States American. I am equally not ashamed to say i'm a southerner. There are many symbols in this world that have respresented very negative feelings. I realize the flag down here is one of them. Can't make that go away.....the flag nor the feelings by those who find it offensive.

North vs. South....think that war has been faught and to the best of my knowledge we lost. The flag, however, doesn't know that.

My dollar and ninety five cents worth of thoughts.

[BullRider_Dillon]

Of all the examples I gave of the south that were positive EXCLUSIVELY from MY perspective,I wonder why it is you jumped on the "Christian" example.

I liked Scooby too but nothing held a candle to Bo and Luke Duke with that cool car,bow and arrows,pocket knives and cool belts.I dont expect you to understand,I was only speaking from my exclusive perspective.We are all different with different experiences that shape us and our opinons.At 39 I have learned that we dont always have to agree with someones opinion but we should respect that they have one even if it differs from ours because we dont know what shaped that persons view.

[Apocalipstic]

Of all the examples I gave of the south that were positive EXCLUSIVELY from MY perspective,I wonder why it is you jumped on the "Christian" example.

I liked Scooby too but nothing held a candle to Bo and Luke Duke with that cool car,bow and arrows,pocket knives and cool belts.I dont expect you to understand,I was only speaking from my exclusive perspective.We are all different with different experiences that shape us and our opinons.At 39 I have learned that we dont always have to agree with someones opinion but we should respect that they have one even if it differs from ours because we dont know what shaped that persons view.

Scooby Doo is the best!!!!! the van and all? Ghosts?
I was quite a bit older than you when Dukes came out and not into cars yet, so we can agree to disagree. lol.

I jumped on Christian, because to me Jesus was accepting of everyone and I cringe whenever I hear Christian used in relation to something I personally see as hurtful to so many people. Not trying to be political, just trite in asking what would Jesus do?

Just trying to understand why Jesus who to me stands for peace gets brought up in so many non peaceful ways....ok maybe that is political...lol....just trying to understand how it all fits together for you. :)

[Apocalipstic]

PS. I live in Nashville and have mostly since 8th grade when we moved here after my parents being baptist missionaries.

[Medusa]

I also grew up in the South and have seen people equate "Southern" with "Christian" quite often, actually.

How many times have you heard someone say "She's a good Northern Christian woman"?

I don't personally equate Southern with "Christian", good values, and a certain brand of patriotism that often sounds very similar to "Amurricah, Fuck yeah!" But I do see a lot of folks doing that.

I get why people cling to the Confederate flag as a symbol of "pride in their heritage", because I think on the surface it looks very much like regional patriotism. The rub for me is that I don't think that pride in where you are from has to be superimposed on a flag that does have racist implications.

And this is a sincere question to folks who think the Confederate flag is not a symbol of racism: How many African American people or Mexican American people or Muslim American or Chinese American or First Nations Native Americans do you personally know who fly this flag as a symbol of their heritage?

If you don't know any, are you willing to ask yourself if it might be because People of Color have a very different experience with the Confederate flag than you do?

Why do you think they might have a different experience with this flag than you do?

Are you willing to entertain that the Confederate flag might be a symbol that represents White heritage only?

[princessbelle]

snip
And this is a sincere question to folks who think the Confederate flag is not a symbol of racism: How many African American people or Mexican American people or Muslim American or Chinese American or First Nations Native Americans do you personally know who fly this flag as a symbol of their heritage?


If you don't know any, are you willing to ask yourself if it might be because People of Color have a very different experience with the Confederate flag than you do?

Why do you think they might have a different experience with this flag than you do?

Are you willing to entertain that the Confederate flag might be a symbol that represents White heritage only?


The flag is everywhere. It is on cars, in stores, in restaurants, on hats, in windows...on and on and on. I have never took a good look at who had them. I'm honestly just used to seeing it. However, in high school, as i said, that was our flag. There were four African American and one Mexican American cheerleaders on our squad and we all carried the Confederate Flag across the football field every Friday night together. Now i know we were teenagers. But, their parents weren't. In other words, in my school, which i'm estimating was at least 40% non white there was never an issue with our flag. It flew in our courtyard. To my knowledge still does. I believe there is a great deal of folks down here that don't see it as racist....just my opinion.

And no *i* don't see it as just white heritage. IMO it's Southern heritage. But as i said in my previous post...i would not fly it because of how it makes a lot of other folks feel. This site and others like it have opened my eyes to the world and changed a lot of my perception and how i act/participate/acklowledge another person's views and feelings.

Thanks for the questions!!!!

[Nat]

I think it's high time to put the confederate flag to rest.

And if it matters, I am a Texan and a Southerner.

I recently ran across civil war letters written by my grandmother's great grandfather (who fought on the confederate side) and though I read every one of those letters with great interest and was grateful they had been preserved, they are a source of contemplation for me rather than pride. He talked so much about heaven and how concerned he was with getting there, how resolved he was to be a good person and then in the next paragraph he would instruct his wife to see about selling a few of the slaves to make ends meet.

I think it's time to end the widely held delusion that the confederate flag should be a symbol of Southern pride. Why not take pride in Southern hospitality instead by putting to rest this symbol of oppression, of genocide, of intimidation once and for all?

[Martina]

i understand Bullrider's feelings and repped him. That stuff is for real. BUT think of what happened to that juror. That happens to a LOT of people.

i believe in free speech. If someone wants the flag on their car, they are doing something hurtful to others and should know it. But it's not against the law.

HOWEVER, it should be illegal to fly that flag at a government facility of any kind. i am not even talking about what happened in that court room. One of the hallmarks of living in a racist society is POC feeling alienated from public institutions, feeling they can't get fair treatment there, that they might be ignored or offended, or just the feeling that they don't belong. i interviewed a lot of Latino parents last year for a project, and only one felt welcome at our school. What if we had some anti-immigration literature or poster somewhere. How much worse would they feel then?

It takes work to change a racist culture. At the very least we should not be doing things that make it worse or maintain the status quo. i believe that even if you personally love that flag, that you shouldn't have it anywhere a POC might see it. If you do, you are potentially doing harm.

Does that feel like you are repressing part of who you are? i imagine it might for some people. But it's not the same as being harmed, as having one's sense of safety put in doubt. i want the involvement of POC in public institutions. i want them involved and active and changing the world to a place that's better for me. i don't want anyone feeling unsafe or disenfranchised in any way -- because it's not the world i want to live in.

[Toughy]

The good things about the southern heritage .....sweet tea on a lazy muggy summer afternoon, manners, awesome food, a slow easy way of living....are rightfully things that should bring pride and joy to all southern people.

There is no way anyone can believe that any of the Confederate flags represent pride and joy for black folk who live in the south. If you don't see it as hurtful and wrong, you (general you) might want to get your head out of your ass.

I agree with Martina (?) that it should not be flown on any government building.

However if you want to proclaim you support the Confederacy (slavery and treason), then by all means, fly that flag. You should have the right to fly it. It makes it clear, to me, what you stand for and I don't want to be around you.

[Martina]

There were four African American and one Mexican American cheerleaders on our squad and we all carried the Confederate Flag across the football field every Friday night together.

To me that is a bizarre image. We all ignore stuff so we can live a peaceful happy life, but at what personal cost? i am not criticizing you at all, Belle, but dang, maybe it's my northerner showing, but that's not a reassuring image to me.

Also re Dillon's mention of Gone with the Wind. i think that film and our country's enthusiasm for it is not a good thing. The whole romantic view of the South with loyal slaves who stayed on after the war, etc. i like southern culture, but i like truth with it.

There are plenty of souther writers who write with open eyes. i think our fantasy of the Old South as peaceful and harmonious is noxious. Admittedly it's possible to end up romanticizing the violence and the depravity in the South too. But i think the Gone with the Wind version of the South is almost as damaging as flying the confederate flag.

[Blade]

I have to agree with Belle, I don't see it as white heritage. I see it as southern heritage.

You can't change history. You can change peoples perceptions. The GLBT community wants the rest of society to perceive us just as just regular ole people. Southerners who believe the confederate flag is a symbol of southern heritage would also like society to perceive us as just regular ole prideful southern people.

I don't fly a flag in my yard or a bumper sticker or anything like that but I do have several hats with the flag on it. a leather vest with a few patches on it, a few do rags, stickers on my helmet, vest chains.

Nothing anyone can say in defense of someone's choice to fly or wear the flag, will change someone's mind that is against it. It reminds me of a T shirt I use to have. "It's a southern thang" If I have to explain it to you, you wouldn't understand.

That is what it seems like here, no matter what anyone says those who don't understand just don't understand.

Do I think the flag should be flying at a courthouse, state house or some other government building. Yes in the south I do think so. Not only is it a symbol of southern heritage, it is a reminder of the past, a troubled and scarred past, possibly a reminder not to repeat the failure, to treat all people with compassion, and respect.

[princessbelle]

To me that is a bizarre image. We all ignore stuff so we can live a peaceful happy life, but at what personal cost? i am not criticizing you at all, Belle, but dang, maybe it's my northerner showing, but that's not a reassuring image to me.

Also re Dillon's mention of Gone with the Wind. i think that film and our country's enthusiasm for it is not a good thing. The whole romantic view of the South with loyal slaves who stayed on after the war, etc. i like southern culture, but i like truth with it.

There are plenty of souther writers who write with open eyes. i think our fantasy of the Old South as peaceful and harmonious is noxious. Admittedly it's possible to end up romanticizing the violence and the depravity in the South too. But i think the Gone with the Wind version of the South is almost as damaging as flying the confederate flag.

Martina, I can honestly see why it would be a hard image to comprehend. I do. But, yeah it happened. It happens daily. My old school is still flying that flag and i'm sure running it across the field every Friday night. That is the point that it doesn't always mean racism to all people. It just doesn't.

As far as romantisizing the South. This Country and others, even across the big great pond, have history that we could certainly have problems with as a conscious evolving people. I hope we are growing and emerging and learning from our mistakes. That's my hope.

Also, my hope is we move forward. The flag is here and i have a strong feeling it won't go anywhere. Again, i won't fly it, but that is not going to stop my neighbor or friends from waving it. It is just a huge part of living down here. I think it *maybe* gets the reputation, if you are not part of this area, that it is only flown or worn by redneck, racist biggots. That's simply not the case IMO....again...the flag is everywhere.

[Martina]

One of the reasons i love the rock band the Drive-By Truckers is that they talk truthfully about Southern Culture, the good and the bad. They might explain that George Wallace wasn't always a racist and tell you that Ronnie Van Zant was actually a Neil Young fan ("Sweet Home Alabama" vs. "Southern Man"), but they also tell you George Wallace is going to hell, not because he was a racist, but because he cynically used the racism of poor white people to gain power and ignored the real pain he caused African Americans.

They call it the duality of that southern thang. Part of that duality is knowing the truth, knowing it better than others. To me the southern thing is living with the truth and not romanticizing it. It's also not taking any shit and standing up strong. It is not perpetuating injustice. It is saying you don't know me, and until you do, stop telling me you know my life and history. It is also not hurting people when you know better.

[The_Lady_Snow]

I'm a Southerner, so I can freely say this with truth. It drives me INSANE when I hear things like *Southern Pride* equates= GOOD Christian women, Sweet Tea, Hospitality, Good food, greens, and good ole boys. As a Southerner I despise having to see it flown so freely with the words:

"White Pride"

"Heritage Restored"

"NEVER apologize for being white"

"Hang 'em"

I live in a city that is racially segregated and the word n***** is used and spit out like it's nothing, I walk in a restaurant and I am certainly not the majority, and I have and sometimes can not eat a dinner without someone asking me what country I am from.

I go home and see my parents and I drive in areas of Alabama where it's NOT safe to be a POC alone. I see Volvo's with flags that scream Southern Pride when all I see and (friends) is a constant reminder how (some) white folk want it back the way it was, when things were nice and white and tidy.

What is Southern Pride when that flag is flown?

1000's of lynching

White's wanting to keep people enslaved

Rape

Segregation

Jailings

Segregated Schools

WHITE ONLY signs

RACISM

Wiping out of Southern Native Americans

KKK

Treason

White Power

White Domination


None of the above things are things we should romanticize or continue to attempt to romanticize, *Gone With The Wind* it's a prettied up romantic vision of a poor white woman having to what?

I think and find it to be a gross representation of The South, it's a slap in the face to POC when a white person wears it, and yeah we may have to carry it around and some pep rally, and have to tolerate it on people's clothing and flag poles but wouldn't it be fucking nice if once in a while the people with all the privelege, their white privilege gave a thought to what happened in the name of that flag?

Is that to much to ask?

I got my answer to that question years ago and continue to do so when I read about "Southern Pride"

[JAGG]

Well I'm not from the south , I'm sure some people will claim it has a certain personal meaning for them. However, when I see it , for me , it has racist all over it. When I was a Marine there were a few guys from Alabama , Tenn. etc who claimed that it had some special pie in the sky meaning to them, but guess what? They were racist. Didn't take too long to figure them out. A few converstaions and their true colors came shining through. So is the confederate flag racist? Well, if the shoe fits....

[The_Lady_Snow]

Rebels Without a Clue: Neo-Confederacy and the Ironies of White Supremacy

By Tim Wise


“Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten…”

We Southerners are famous for wishful thinking. In fact, it’s something of a regional pastime. This should come as no surprise given our interminable heat in the summer, which leaves nearly all praying for rain to cool things down, and yet nearly none satisfied with the results of their heavenly entreaty. It also fits our history as the nucleus of the nation’s affair with white supremacy: one that heightened the desire for freedom on the part of the oppressed, as well as the wish on the part of the oppressors to cling to their advantages for as long as possible. Hoping, often against hope, has long been the name of our game. Thus, it was apt that I should read the following in my local paper:
“South Carolina Governor Jim Hodges signed legislation yesterday to remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse dome, saying it was time the state ended years of racial divisions the banner has caused. ‘Today, the descendants of slaves and confederate soldiers join together in the spirit of mutual respect,’ the Democratic governor said…’This debate is over.”

As hyperbole goes, this is first rate, and like many desires of Southern folk throughout the years, it is also remarkably absurd, as the Governor well knows. The debate is far from over, and how could it be otherwise, seeing as how the flag has merely been moved from the capitol dome to a 30-foot flagpole at a monument to dead Confederates on the capitol grounds. That this is roughly equivalent to the German Parliament flying a swastika above the Bundestag, only to remove it and continue its display at a monument to fallen SS, would be obvious to white Southerners, as it is to most blacks, had we not long ago begun lying about our history. Lying in such a way as to render the comparison incomprehensible. Black Holocaust? What Black Holocaust?

While some may look upon the Confederate flag debate as a purely regional affair, I would suggest that this struggle stands as a metaphor for the larger national denial over the legacy of racism. Much as neo-Confederates exclaim, “Racist symbol? What racist symbol?” so too do white non-Southerners shout, “Racism, what racism?” whenever the broader subject comes up in discussion.

To the extent there are chapters of the Euro-supremacist League of the South in California, New York, Pennsylvania, the Midwest and throughout the Pacific Northwest, and monuments to Confederate war dead in places as non-Southern as Helena, Montana, I think it fair to say the flag and its implications are not merely the problem of me and mine.

Nor is this simply an historical debate. In fact among historians there is no debate at all: the Confederacy was first and foremost about the ownership of human beings, and the notion of white racial superiority. To wit, Alexander Stephens, the Vice-President of the Confederacy who explained: “Our government’s foundation and cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man,” and who went on to admit that slavery was “the immediate cause of the rupture and our present revolution.” Or as Robert Smith, one of the framers of the Confederate Constitution said in 1861: “We have dissolved the late Union chiefly because of the Negro quarrel.”

Not because of Northern tariffs — almost all of which had been eliminated by the time of secession — and not because of a zest for “independence” (which they sought to deny to over 40 percent of their population), nor “state’s rights” (which they were willing to trample in order to extend slavery into territories like Kansas, California and Texas), but “the Negro quarrel,” which was, let’s face it, a property dispute among thieves, seeking to continue using stolen goods.

But, says the Southern partisan, most whites didn’t own slaves: a true statement, yet one that hardly strengthens the cause, either historical or contemporary, for which they fight. For the relative poverty of most white Southerners at the time of secession, and the fact that most didn’t have a direct economic stake in maintaining the slave system, makes these same folks’ fealty to Jeff Davis and Robert E. Lee all the more bizarre. After all, the Confederate leaders were clear as to why they were fighting the war: to maintain their property interests in human chattel. So irrespective of their personal views on the question of human bondage, these piss-poor whites were in fact fighting and dying for the right of others to own a type of property: in this case, property that could be forced to work for free, thereby undercutting the wages that whites would have required as a condition of their own employment. Not too smart, and hardly something to be proud of.

And this is where the debate becomes decidedly national in its implications. For the one thing the neo-Confederate resurgence does is demonstrate the degree to which whites have been tricked into accepting the relative privileges of white supremacy, even as the consequences in absolute terms have been disastrous for most. Just as it was poor whites who had to fight and die in the rich man’s Civil War, since slave owners with twenty slaves or more could avoid service, so too has white supremacy always been about elevating the relative over the absolute: making those of European descent content to have more than them, no matter how little they may actually have.

So Southern workers, more so than in any other region resisted unionization, with the Klan leading the charge against the labor movement at a time when it was growing dramatically elsewhere. And why? First, because unions would have tended to level out wages for workers, black and white, and this would place blacks on too equal a footing for the likes of the segregated South. And secondly, because the unions were seen as “communist,” and it was the “communists” who supported race-mixing and all manner of “mongrelization.” So we accepted shittier wages, benefits, and working conditions, all to stay one step ahead of those whose presence on the bottom was the only thing to give us a sense of worth: the psychological wage of whiteness, as DuBois put it.


Many towns even shut down their high schools, thereby keeping whites undereducated, just to resist desegregation orders; and Southern lawmakers fought most militantly to limit social service and income support programs for poor folks (of all colors) because they feared that too generous a welfare state would reduce the incentive of blacks to sell labor to whites for cheap.
Sadly, we’re still living with the legacy of our shortsightedness today. Southern workers are only half as likely as others to be covered by a union contract, contributing to a multitude of problems: among them, the fact that employees here are considerably less likely to have private health insurance and our children are far less likely to have health insurance at all; or that workers earn much less than those elsewhere, even after adjusting for cost of living differentials, and that poverty rates are fifteen percent higher than the national average; or that working conditions are often less safe, contributing to the fact that Southern workers miss twice as many work days annually due to disability as the national average. These persistent realities have a historical predicate: the willingness on the part of most white Southerners to accept less, so long as there were some required to do even worse than they.

Driving in town this morning, I saw a half-dozen Confederate bumper stickers, all on beat up cars or trucks, and not even one on a BMW or Lexus, despite the fact that it was the Lexus drivers of their day who needed and wanted secession, and whipped the poor into war frenzy on behalf of “their way of life.” My favorite reads: “If I had known this would happen, I’d have picked my own cotton.” Of course, the government this young man defends with what I’m sure he considers a quite hilarious display, is one that never would have allowed him to pick the cotton, precisely because doing so would have made him too aware of the difference between himself and the elite for whom he was toiling: and that was a knowledge the planter class had to deny to white workers at all costs. So he would have been hired to “oversee” the cotton-pickers, given a taste of authority and power just sufficient to make him blind to the fact that his boss was picking his pocket too. Still is.
Yes, the flag may come down from the capitol in Columbia, but it continues flying in the occupied territory of far too many Southern minds: and the cost we pay for such indulgence is enormous. It is the heritage of suckers, and the legacy of fools.

“Look away, look away, look away, Dixieland…”

[princessbelle]

And i certainly hope that *we* all remember that racism is not a southern find, originate in the south, nor do *all* people in the south hang the confederate flag or claim racisim or associate with anyone we know for a fact is racists.

Racism is everywhere. It wasn't even started in our United States. It actually started several thousand years ago. We as a country are quite young. Again, we are learning and evolving.

I promise you, those not from this country, when you come across the boarder someone does not ask if you are racist and if you say yes you are then told you have to live south of the mason dixon line. Honest.

It is everywhere...in every country. Flag or not. It truely hurts sometimes to be labeled racist just because of where i live or have been brought up....or be accused of being a redneck because i'm down here or i'm (insert here). Honestly, there are MANY good people here that are not racist. I realize there is racism of course, i see it everyday. i also believe in the truth and logic. But, logic and truth will also equate to the fact that the confederate flag does not make people racists. No more than flying a rainbow flag will make me gay. No more than carrying a gun will make me a murderer. On and on....ya know? But, an extension of this thought...if it makes people feel icky, especially people i know have every right to be offended? That's enough for me to steer clear.

More dollar ninety five cent thoughts.

[Martina]

i agree with Tim Wise re the class issue, but i hate the inaccuracies. There were plenty of white people picking cotton in the south. Whites with few if any slaves, whites hired by plantation owners, white slave owners themselves and their children. i am not saying this means anything. But white folk picked cotton.

[The_Lady_Snow]

i agree with Tim Wise re the class issue, but i hate the inaccuracies. There were plenty of white people picking cotton in the south. Whites with few if any slaves, whites hired by plantation owners, white slave owners themselves and their children. i am not saying this means anything. But white folk picked cotton.


This is a historical truth, a lot of the white cotton pickers where people who did it to get extra money to buy their children school clothes, and enough groceries for the spring. Sadly classism infiltrates(still does) The South, the other sad truth is it was rare if EVER a person of color was *allowed* to own land, learn to read, or write. Unions for tenant farmers were not started till deep into the Depression and still NOT welcomed in Southern States.

[Kätzchen]

i agree with Tim Wise re the class issue, but i hate the inaccuracies. There were plenty of white people picking cotton in the south. Whites with few if any slaves, whites hired by plantation owners, white slave owners themselves and their children. i am not saying this means anything. But white folk picked cotton.


True.


My grandmother's family were sharecroppers in Texas on a cotton plantation, lived in a one room shack with eight siblings - all of them worked the fields.

[Martina]

This is a historical truth, a lot of the white cotton pickers where people who did it to get extra money to buy their children school clothes, and enough groceries for the spring. Sadly classism infiltrates(still does) The South, the other sad truth is it was rare if EVER a person of color was *allowed* to own land, learn to read, or write. Unions for tenant farmers were not started till deep into the Depression and still NOT welcomed in Southern States.

Your post inspired me to look up the tenant farmers' union. i had heard about it, but didn't recall anything. Anyway, some interesting stuff --

http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/southern-tenant-farmers-union

http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=35

[JustJo]

True.


My grandmother's family were sharecroppers in Texas on a cotton plantation, lived in a one room shack with eight siblings - all of them worked the fields.

And tenant farming isn't just a Southern phenomenon either...my grandparents were tenant dairy farmers in Upstate New York....no money, tiny house, lots of kids and not a lot of food to go around.

I don't have an opinion on the Confederate flag...I'm not from the South and don't understand the deeper meaning that some here have referred to.

I do think often that class is far more the issue than race....but I have white skin, so no doubt that colors my perceptions. I simply feel like I have more in common with people who grew up poor in (crappy) single parent families than anyone else, regardless of skin color.

[The_Lady_Snow]

Your post inspired me to look up the tenant farmers' union. i had heard about it, but didn't recall anything. Anyway, some interesting stuff --

http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/southern-tenant-farmers-union

http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=35



Another interesting link is

http://www.civilrightsteaching.org/

[Kätzchen]

And tenant farming isn't just a Southern phenomenon either...my grandparents were tenant dairy farmers in Upstate New York....no money, tiny house, lots of kids and not a lot of food to go around.


conversely,

my mother was sole owner of our dairy farm. The memory of her mother not having anything is what motivated her to seek full ownership of the diary ranch I grew up on in Idaho. We didn't have more than most who ranched where we lived, but by the same token, we had more than enough to live on due to her critical business savvy.

I agree with you Jo that class plays a larger part in some scenarios but untying class from racism is not always simply distilled to sets of ideas or facts - in my opinion - where it concerns historical US issues.

[The_Lady_Snow]

Originally Posted by princessbelle http://www.butchfemmeplanet.com/forum/images/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.butchfemmeplanet.com/forum/showthread.php?p=335724#post335724)
There were four African American and one Mexican American cheerleaders on our squad and we all carried the Confederate Flag across the football field every Friday night together.

I know you aren't racist but your statement is ooozing with racist connotations. Here is why:

Your white privilege allows you to not have to acknowledge how those students may feel or their parents.

Do they have a choice? Were they even asked how this makes them feel? Why isn't the school system taking into consideration HOW this may make children of color feel?. Do they have a choice to go to another school that doesn't practice this ritual? I guarantee not a single white person asked themselves how that made those children feel. That's the beauty of white privilege one can keep their white washed world intact without giving anyone else consideration, sad but often true.

I want you to know I hem hawed when it came to posting this, but when I read it I cringed and it made me sick not because I think you did anything but because it's always super hard to have these conversations with the white people you have come to love.

[Cajun_dee]

I am reading, listening and learning, thanks for all of the info.

I think (guessing) that for us that grew up here in the south, that flag was flown among the other flags, and symbolized what we love about the south. It was not seen for us, the derogatory way the rest of the world sees it as. I do find it sad to read that it means such horrible things to others, because it has not for me. For the ones who still love the flag, it's our way of trying to preserve what we love about it. Unfortunately, it seems out of our control. Flying the flag would appear that I also have the disparaging thoughts that come to mind when it is seen by the world. This is very sad to me.

The heated controversy over the flag is relatively new, so those who see it now didn't see all the good things it once represented for so many of us. They are seeing it in the big debate.


I feel it has evolved into this ugly thing over time in ways I was not aware of.

I equate this to the swastika, which the Nazi party took on to symbolize what they were doing,(and it became the German flag) using the fact that there were people who treasured that symbol, to their advantage. This is what the KKK and others have done, knowing it's loved by so many people, flying it for the *Southern Pride* racist symbolism lumps us all in there without our consent.

[cara]

It once represented good things?

News to me.

[Corkey]

If I see that retched rag flying, my immediate thought is racist, whether one is or not, just the image alone says racist to me. You may not be one, but how are we to know that if you fly that rag? (you general not specific)

[Cajun_dee]

Yup actually it did represent good things. My family was not a bunch of KKK members and lynchmen, it was a southern thing not a racist thing.

Thanks Corkey, It's sad to learn and hear this but it's also a huge eye opener.

[princessbelle]

I know you aren't racist but your statement is ooozing with racist connotations. Here is why:

Your white privilege allows you to not have to acknowledge how those students may feel or their parents.

Do they have a choice? Were they even asked how this makes them feel? Why isn't the school system taking into consideration HOW this may make children of color feel?. Do they have a choice to go to another school that doesn't practice this ritual? I guarantee not a single white person asked themselves how that made those children feel. That's the beauty of white privilege one can keep their white washed world intact without giving anyone else consideration, sad but often true.

I want you to know I hem hawed when it came to posting this, but when I read it I cringed and it made me sick not because I think you did anything but because it's always super hard to have these conversations with the white people you have come to love.


[/COLOR]


[/COLOR][/I]

Lady Snow,

I appreciate your honesty in how my post made you feel.

I do not know how the other students felt back then and i don't pretend to know no more than i can decide what anyone feels today. It was a school of mostly upper class students. There are always choices in a public school, given the right circumstance to change schools. Most of the families of these kids had money and could easily have went to private schools if wanted. Not all...but most. There is always student counsels and school boards and principles and TV and other forms of media to go to if someone finds something so upsetting that local or national attention needs notified. To my knowledge, this has not ever been done there. Also, i feel 100% certain that the Confederate flag flies in more schools down here than just mine.

I was 17 when i graduated. Sherry was my best friend, was a POC and her dad was a Surgeon who also happened to be on the school board. However, I certainly don't see things like i did when i was 17...who does? Back then it was just our flag...it meant nothing more than that. I was certainly more interested in where we were all hanging out after the game than how the flag may be offensive. I didn't ever *see* any problems. It was felt to be our school flag, southern flag and not once did i even think about it being offensive or heard anyone say it was offensive.

I guess i would question myself...that if i had the knowledge that i do today would i be as eager to run across that field with POC carrying said flag? No, i don't think i would. How would i handle that? Not sure to be quite honest but now i would at least have eyes and heart open and not think of it quite the same as i did back then. I would possibly bring this up with my friends and ask them how they feel and go from there.

How did i come to that conclusion? Because i have friends who are POC whom i love and adore that speak their mind and, inturn, it opens mine. :)

[cara]

Oh, I see...It represents good things to the people who may not have been affected negatively by the image of the confederate flag.

[The_Lady_Snow]

Yup actually it did represent good things. My family was not a bunch of KKK members and lynchmen, it was a southern thing not a racist thing.

Thanks Corkey, It's sad to learn and hear this but it's also a huge eye opener.




Historical FACT this is what the confederate flag represented, this is why this flag was flown:

the Confederacy was first and foremost about the ownership of human beings, and the notion of white racial superiority. To wit, Alexander Stephens, the Vice-President of the Confederacy who explained: “Our government’s foundation and cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man,” and who went on to admit that slavery was “the immediate cause of the rupture and our present revolution.” Or as Robert Smith, one of the framers of the Confederate Constitution said in 1861: “We have dissolved the late Union chiefly because of the Negro quarrel.

I can't comprehend how you think this is a good thing? You think the killing of many many many people of color is a good thing? Did you think that it was a good thing to rape these people for sport? Is lynching a good thing?

You think keeping young kids without an education, working in hot weather with little food and drink as the white man whipped them if they did not pick enough product a good thing?

Can you explain to me how dehumanizing someone for profit is ever a good thing?

These aren't good things to me, then again I don't have your privilege.

[Kätzchen]

True.


My grandmother's family were sharecroppers in Texas on a cotton plantation, lived in a one room shack with eight siblings - all of them worked the fields.

I want to add to my post, mainly so that some might be able to make a mental connection to why the Confederate Flag is highly offensive (even the Supreme Court makes rulings today on issues connected with choices people make to fly this particular flag):

My mother's side of the family is Cherokee. My grandmother was one of eight siblings of a marital arrangement between her mother (half Cherokee) and her husband (mixed heritage of Scotch/Irish - appearing to others as white). Because of governing laws back then in Texas, they were not granted the right to own a cotton plantation outright. The Confederate Flag has historically been associated with the oppression of people who are not within the parameter of what constitutes 'white'.

For the record: The Confederate Flag always has and always will represent oppression of my peoples and people who are not 'white' and all the hate baggage that comes with it socially and culturally.

[June]

The best book I ever read, with regards to gaining a better (not perfect) understanding of how racism has affected our country is called "The Warmth of Other Suns" by Isabel Wilkerson.

It is about the African American migration from the South. She interviewed dozens of people to find out why they left. Most left for better opportunities in the "less" racist North and West. They often had to leave without saying goodbye to family and friends because, especially later, if their "boss" found out they were leaving, they might arrange to have them arrested, or worse. Many of them left because they lived in fear that someone would accuse them of something, and there was literally no legal recourse and no protection under the law, because, guess who was in charge? Any opposition often left them swinging from trees and worse. This happened in the USA until the mid to late 60's and continued to happen even after that, to a lesser degree.

The civil war ended in 1865. Radical Reconstruction lasted from 1865-1877 (12 years). In 1867, African American men were granted the right (but often not the ability) to vote. (See 13th, 14th & 15th Amendments to the Constitution) (http://www.ambrosedigital.com/component/page,shop.getfile/file_id,988/product_id,1291/option,com_virtuemart/Itemid,59/index.php?page=shop.getfile&file_id=988&product_id=1291&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=59&vmcchk=1)

I never knew the sequence of events surrounding Jim Crow laws (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws). I thought they happened concurrently with the emancipation. They did not. For a time, even though it was still hard, African American men did try to vote, schools were built and things were a little better.

Then systematically, towns, counties and states began to pass laws enforcing stricter segregation including but not limited to curfews, where you could live, who you could talk to, where you could gather, where you could work and what kind of work you could do, who you could marry and so on. They called it "Separate but Equal".

You might have the "Legal" right to vote, but the white, male establishment put up so many barriers, asking for proper identification (If you were previously a slave, you wouldn't have that). And then there were the "Literacy Tests" (http://www.crmvet.org/info/litques.pdf) designed to be so difficult that even if you could read (and many folks could not, due to a lack of school facilities) you were unlikely to pass. I have read these, and honestly, even with my current level of knowledge, I would not be able to vote if I had to answer these questions, which were also subject to change.

If you were driving and you were tired, even if you had money, if you were an African American, you could not just pull into any Motel for the night. If you were hungry, you had to find a restaurant that would serve you. This was still happening with great frequency 45 years ago.

There's more, of course. But if you've gotten this far without your eyes glazing over, you're pretty likely to be interested enough to do some self education as a white person.

When I see someone sporting the Confederate flag on their person, home or vehicle, I don't see it as Southern Pride. I see it as blatant racism and insensitivity. It is no different to me than someone displaying the flag of the Third Reich, which is also synonymous (for me) of murder, oppression and hatred. I would not date, or even consider a friendship with someone who thought either were okay, because it would show a distinct lack of awareness for the feelings of those around them, and the tainted history of something some refer to as "Just a piece of cloth".

It is true that guns don't murder people, people murder people. It is also true that flags don't hurt people, they are only bits of cloth, but the symbolism behind them and the sentiments often expressed by most of the people who display and revere the Confederate flag fall well outside my personal value system.

[Cajun_dee]

I agree, if the flag represents so much crap for the world why would I want to be associated with it? I wouldn't. It's natural to want to defend what we see as false accusations. Just like Corkey said, it's assumed you support the racism or makes you question it if you show that flag.

When I lived in New England and people learned (heard me talk) I was from the south, they immediately assumed I was an uneducated redneck whose family owned slaves and attended KKK meetings. They seemed shocked that we are college graduates, have indoor plumbing and teeth. My family came here after they were kicked out of England in the 1700's. My roots are in Nova Scotia somewhere, my Cajun heritage is one I am very proud of, no matter what the rest of the world thinks of us. My family has had a hard struggle to survive here. We were not plantation owners with slaves working the fields. That thought is very gut wrenching to me. So the fact that the good people who also waved that flag have to give it up since the white supremacist decided it was theirs to wave is just hard to swallow, but it is what it is.

[The_Lady_Snow]

FACT: South Carolina's Confederate flag was only raised above the statehouse in 1962 and it was to show "defiance" to the civil rights movement and to proclaim white superiority and it's still there for that reason.

South Carolina is the only state that refuses to recognize Martin Luther King Jr's birthday as a holiday, YET it's one of the eight Southern states that continues to celebrate Confederate Heroe's Day on Janurary 19th if that alone isn't a BLATANT racist reason, I don't know what is. Therefore reason # 3546 why it is NOT a good thing.

[The_Lady_Snow]

Those good people enable racism sassy girl, by continuing to turn a blind eye at the historical content of that flag, they're facts.

That's just as harmful if not more than the blatant racism of a burning cross in someone's yard.

[Corkey]

To those who's eyes are opening to the facts that that rag is offensive and why, thank you for having the courage to look at this from our point of view. It isn't easy to own racism in our families past, but it is essential to growth.

[Cajun_dee]

Historical FACT this is what the confederate flag represented, this is why this flag was flown:

the Confederacy was first and foremost about the ownership of human beings, and the notion of white racial superiority. To wit, Alexander Stephens, the Vice-President of the Confederacy who explained: “Our government’s foundation and cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man,” and who went on to admit that slavery was “the immediate cause of the rupture and our present revolution.” Or as Robert Smith, one of the framers of the Confederate Constitution said in 1861: “We have dissolved the late Union chiefly because of the Negro quarrel.

I can't comprehend how you think this is a good thing? You think the killing of many many many people of color is a good thing? Did you think that it was a good thing to rape these people for sport? Is lynching a good thing?

You think keeping young kids without an education, working in hot weather with little food and drink as the white man whipped them if they did not pick enough product a good thing?

Can you explain to me how dehumanizing someone for profit is ever a good thing?

These aren't good things to me, then again I don't have your privilege.

Snow I get what you are saying, and believe me I am not above learning and changing my POV, (which seems to be happening). I am trying to explain why some of us don't see that flag as the rest of the world does. This is a huge lesson that I am trying to get. I am reading and learning as I said before, not defending the horrors of what happened.

I grew up in a very small Cajun community, my world consisted of boats, shrimping, and trying to get by on whatever my father could muster up for us. My grandparents barely spoke English. We were taught to never speak Cajun in public for fear of retribution. The flag was flown about by people like us, we didn't have the history of the "white privilege" in school. The people like us who were not racist, and would take a hand or help whoever needed it regardless of color. We were completely oblivious to whatever was going on out there in the world. Did racism and all of the horrible things you talked about happen? YES of course they did, as kids, we had no idea. My parents did not teach me racism. This IS taught among many many families, I was not one of them. We had POC and white friends. We were completely oblivious to all of the hate. You see around here they don't go around with billboards explaining how horrible some of the people of this area were, they do what they can to sweep that under the rug. They do a good job. It seems the rest of the world was being taught these lessons.


So learning at middle age what this meant to people is an eye opener. The flag represented the south. Thats all we knew.

I never once said those things listed are good, I said we didn't see that as anything to do with a flag, as we were growing up. The good things I know about the south don't have a thing to do with anything you listed. It has to do with an honest, quiet way of living in our (MY family) own corner of the world. That's not white privilege, it's being naive and unaware of the history.

I was not raised a racist, otherwise maybe I would BE aware of the history.

[Cajun_dee]

To those who's eyes are opening to the facts that that rag is offensive and why, thank you for having the courage to look at this from our point of view. It isn't easy to own racism in our families past, but it is essential to growth.

Thank you that is exactly what I am trying to do, you see in no other place but the internet can you see the POV from others elsewhere. Thanks.

[Cajun_dee]

Those good people enable racism sassy girl, by continuing to turn a blind eye at the historical content of that flag, they're facts.

That's just as harmful if not more than the blatant racism of a burning cross in someone's yard.

But do you see that it could be unintentional or just plain stupidity? I can tell you I don't own this flag and I don't see a 1/100th of the ones I used to in this area. I did see it over the welcome center in Mississippi when we stopped on the way here. Back in the day there were very common.

[Martina]

Southerners got a lot of shit for a lot of years. i think the attitude of defiance lingers. It's part of the culture and, honestly, a part i admire. When it takes the form of flying that flag, i think it's more than regrettable. It does send more of a message than just fuck you, i am who i am, or whatever. At the very least, it says to African Americans, i don't care if i remind you of a painful part of the past. At worst, it announces that the person shares a racist ideology.

But as PrincessBelle points out, they are everywhere. i have seen them a lot in Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky. i really don't get the Kentucky thing. Kentucky was not part of the Confederacy. And i think a lot of the Ohio and Michigan folks are of Appalachian descent. For them it is not about Southern Pride. It is a white thing and a rebel thing. Maybe it's about redneck pride. i don't know. i do know that not all of these folks are heavily invested in a racist ideology. Still, i think it is a callous act to put that flat on your truck or fly it from your RV. i have said as much to people, particularly at bluegrass festivals where you see a lot of them. They are all, "What, what? It doesn't mean THAT." Yeah, well, i never once took my best friend to a bluegrass festival because i didn't want him to have to see those. i told a few people that too. And they just said, "Bring him down. He can sit with us. He's welcome" and "Tell him to ignore them. It's not what he thinks" yadda yadda. Well, yeah, it is what he thinks. Sigh.

[The_Lady_Snow]

sassy there are good honest hard working people of all races and genders, they aren't flying that flag or any other flag representing oppression. That's what I mean about your privilege, you can remain clueless to it because in reality it's not affecting you. It makes those good people blind to it and how you remain that way since we all have the same history lessons I dunno.

I mean do all these good people not read the same history books I read?

Hard work does not equate a piece of cloth that signifies historic racist thoughts. Hard work is not just a southern thang. Quiet honest living is not just a southern right.

[June]

I think what Sassy and Belle have talked about is really valid, how we often don't know until we get older and get around different kinds of people. I grew up thinking a lot of words were "normal".

My family on both sides had a really racist name for Brazil nuts.

Knowing that the N word is wrong, but not seeing how calling a nut by a bad name is hurtful or just plain ugly until later. That didn't make me a bad person, especially as a child, but had I continued to use that term, or others after I gained more awareness, then it becomes deliberate and in my opinion, insensitive and racist.

[Martina]

i just remembered a story. A woman i used to work with, a secretary originally from southern Indiana, had that damn thing on her SUV. She drove it around Ann Arbor although she didn't live there. She lived out in the sticks. Anyway. i am not sure why she never got the car vandalized. And she did seem occasionally racist at work. If an African American colleague bothered her, one felt that she associated the bad behavior with race. Just the way she phrased things.

HOWEVER, when an interracial couple moved into her area, right behind her, she welcomed them. AND when a neighbor came around trying to organize some sort of gathering to complain about the new Black neighbor, she totally bitched the woman out. i don't know. She is racist in the way that many white people are, thoughtless and carrying many unexamined stereotypes. i am not excusing her in any way. But when a real injustice presented itself, she took the right side. i imagine there are a fair number of people like that.

[Cajun_dee]

Oh, I see...It represents good things to the people who may not have been affected negatively by the image of the confederate flag.

I know this is a sarcastic comment, but it's very true. I have never been denied because of my color. I have been belittled and ridiculed because of my people, the Acadians, but the comparison to racism is completely minute. I also didn't wake up one day and order "white priveledge" in order to use it to promote oppression. I think what people feel is that if you are born white and from the south you should be ashamed of yourself.

There are many Buddhists and other practices that honor the swastika, and for others it represents complete horror. As people learn they change, I am not above doing that, I was just explaining where the feelings come from.

It saddens me greatly that the flag means what it does to so many. I had no idea how widespread this is.

[princessbelle]

Southerners got a lot of shit for a lot of years. i think the attitude of defiance lingers. It's part of the culture and, honestly, a part i admire. When it takes the form of flying that flag, i think it's more than regrettable. It does send more of a message than just fuck you, i am who i am, or whatever. At the very least, it says to African Americans, i don't care if i remind you of a painful part of the past. At worst, it announces that the person shares a racist ideology.

But as PrincessBelle points out, they are everywhere. i have seen them a lot in Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky. i really don't get the Kentucky thing. Kentucky was not part of the Confederacy. And i think a lot of the Ohio and Michigan folks are of Appalachian descent. For them it is not about Southern Pride. It is a white thing and a rebel thing. Maybe it's about redneck pride. i don't know. i do know that not all of these folks are heavily invested in a racist ideology. Still, i think it is a callous act to put that flat on your truck or fly it from your RV. i have said as much to people, particularly at bluegrass festivals where you see a lot of them. They are all, "What, what? It doesn't mean THAT." Yeah, well, i never once took my best friend to a bluegrass festival because i didn't want him to have to see those. i told a few people that too. And they just said, "Bring him down. He can sit with us. He's welcome" and "Tell him to ignore them. It's not what he thinks" yadda yadda. Well, yeah, it is what he thinks. Sigh.

You are quite right Martina. I believe a lot of times down here people don't realize the hurt that the flag causes. I honestly believe that. I sure didn't till i started reading and was politely educated on this subject.

As far as Kentucky, if i remember correctly, it started as a neutral state with both confederate and union soldiers, however ended up on the Union side. . It was like the state of Tennessee and i'm sure other neighboring states.....as a matter of fact, East Tennessee, which i reside and was raised, was the Union Army. The hospital that i started my nursing at has a huge glass counter that listed the Union solders that resided here during the war and after. There is mixed union and confederate history all through the South.

It's just like anything else ..... we aren't one group of anything. We are diverse. With diversity comes hopefully knowlege, understanding, compassion and a broader view of all people. That is what i pray for ...not just for the South, but for all of us.

[cara]

But as PrincessBelle points out, they are everywhere. i have seen them a lot in Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky...

True. I have seen them in the Pacific Northwest, too. You will find a number of people in the more rural and farming communities flying the flag or sporting a sticker on their truck. I don't know what it means to them, but I do see the act of displaying the confederate flag one of ignorance. When I was in high school (mid 90's), it was even kind of a trend with some of the guys. Still doesn't make it right...the blind leading the blind sort of thing...

[Cajun_dee]

sassy there are good honest hard working people of all races and genders, they aren't flying that flag or any other flag representing oppression. That's what I mean about your privilege, you can remain clueless to it because in reality it's not affecting you. It makes those good people blind to it and how you remain that way since we all have the same history lessons I dunno.

I mean do all these good people not read the same history books I read?

Hard work does not equate a piece of cloth that signifies historic racist thoughts. Hard work is not just a southern thang. Quiet honest living is not just a southern right.


LOL I am sure the chapter on how the white man treated the slaves was left out of our history books here in the deep south. I had no idea who the great Dr Martin Luther King was until I was and older girl. My mother helped explain to me the truth of the matter, and not once was the flag brought into the conversation.

You see to you it automatically represents oppression, we never saw it that way. Not that we don't now, we just didn't.

My southern good stuff comes from long hot summers in a sprinkler, Dixie beer, fried shrimp, swimming in bayous, rolling in the clovers for a cool feeling on your skin, and lots of struggling around not having enough to eat or wear. We didn't know we were poor! We are very hospitable people who will invite you in for iced tea if you are lost or need a hand changing getting your nets back on the frames. If your boat is broken beyond repair we will have a fundraiser for you..We (in my tight circle) didn't talk about slaves and the horrors of oppression or flags. We sat on the porch talking about the heat, the gumbo and the catch of the day. I went to school with POC and my teachers were POC. In fact a few times I was the minority.

yes June said it exactly right. The N word, and others like the term *jew em down* were commonplace, I chose to not repeat them because I learned what they meant and how they made people feel. Until then I had no idea it meant all of that. This is no different.

[Toughy]

There are many Buddhists and other practices that honor the swastika, and for others it represents complete horror. As people learn they change, I am not above doing that, I was just explaining where the feelings come from.


There is a difference between the original Hindu swastika (thousands of years old) and the Nazi swastika (80 or so years old).

http://www.iearn.org/hgp/aeti/aeti-1997/swastika.html

to see the differences look on the right side of this Wiki entry....you may have to scroll down a bit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika

-------------------
I am still befuddled that ANY person could not understand or see what the Confederate flags represent and none of it has anything to do with the good parts of southern pride or heritage.

If you fly that flag or have any representations of it on your clothes or hats or car or whatever and I see you...........you are a racist as far as I am concerned. If you want to change that opinion stop wearing or flying that flag and please stop defending it as a symbol of some misguided sense of pride about the south.

[Medusa]

I think what Sassy and Belle have talked about is really valid, how we often don't know until we get older and get around different kinds of people. I grew up thinking a lot of words were "normal".

My family on both sides had a really racist name for Brazil nuts.

Knowing that the N word is wrong, but not seeing how calling a nut by a bad name is hurtful or just plain ugly until later. That didn't make me a bad person, especially as a child, but had I continued to use that term, or others after I gained more awareness, then it becomes deliberate and in my opinion, insensitive and racist.


I thought this was poignant.

Ignorance is the cornerstone of racism. Hell, it might be the keystone.

I think we all have encountered ideas that were handed to us by our parents or friends in school, etc. that we later found out were not really true when we started thinking for ourselves and figuring out that being an adult requires critical thinking and not just blind acceptance.

I'm embarrassed to admit this but it's funny - When I was in elementary school, one of my friends told me that if you put a bar of soap under your arm and hold it there for an hour, it will give you a fever. I tried it multiple times when I didn't want to go to school and just figured I was doing it wrong because my fever never happened but a big ugly rash did.

Because I didnt know what I didnt know.

I have a (overly-simplified) sort of diagram in my head about how white folks who are racist operate:

The Ignorant Racist - A person who is racist by sheer ignorance and has little to no concept of the "bigger picture". They often have little to no experience with actual People of Color, say very ignorant things, know enough not to say the 'n' word or 's' word in a Person of Color's presence but might use it behind their backs. They are generally just fine not doing any work around their racist tendencies but might read a book or watch a movie (minimal energy expended) but take great exception to being called a racist or being confronted with their shit. They will often categorize People of Color as "angry", "whiners", or any other number of words that puts all of the responsibility for their racist acts on the People of Color whom they hurt.


The Unapologetic Racist - A person who is obviously racist and has ZERO desire to do any work around it. They will freely use racist words, reinforce ridiculous stereotypes, have no experience with actual People of Color but take everything they see on television as "the truth" about POC.
They will often use symbols of white superiority (and yes, this can mean the Confederate Flag) to display their pride in their racism and also seek out people who are also racist. They also will often say incredibly racist things in the presence of other white people, thinking that all white people are racist like themselves. They tend to view their racism as "superiority" no matter how lazy, uneducated, intolerant, mean-spirited, and ignorant they are and tend to think that People of Color who are doing better than they are in life got there because of "Affirmative Action" or some other ridiculous notion because they refuse to believe that anyone could "out-excel" a Honky.

The Apologetic Racist - A well-meaning White person who does not want to be racist and who has done what they believe to be "the work" around their racism. They may have read a lot of books to learn about the experience of People of Color, they may have a lot of actual friends who are People of Color, and they might pride themselves on having "overcome their racism". They will still often hold People of Color to different standards and "expect less" from them or make excuses for a Person of Color who is displaying bad behavior. They won't use racist words and work hard to erase racist ideology from their minds but might look for racism in situations as a way to "protect" their POC friends and family that may or may not exist. They want to do the "heavy lifting" when talking to other white people but will still end up erasing or stereotyping People of Color.

Again, this is overly-simplified and I have read other people write about categories of racists. I don't personally waste my time trying to educate the Unapologetic racist and often become frustrated with the Ignorant racist and Apologetic racist. I think there are many other categories for racism and I have fallen into all of them at various times in my life.

I have come to accept that there are things that I know today that I didn't know 10 years ago and that there will be things I will know in 10 years that I don't know today.
Unlearning racism, IMO, can never be a completed process for a white person. That doesn't make us all bad people, but it sure as hell means we are complacent and arrogant if we are happy celebrating racism because we are too arrogant to listen to someone talk about how it affects them.
I think that we are raised to believe that we are the only human beings that matter -

And I'll say this, racism doesn't just hurt People of Color. Racism robs white people of rich experiences as well. While we don't have even close to the same level of pain that POC experience in this world, we are not doing ourselves any favors by trying to live our lives in a (white) vaccuum.

[atomiczombie]

I have run into a couple recently people who absolutely deny that the civil war had anything to do with slavery. I have argued with someone til I was blue in the face, and even looked up the Confederate Constitution and recited the part about slavery, and still was told that the Southern states seceded purely because they didn't want to be controlled by the Northern states, and it was about states rights. The more I argued, the more I was told that I am talking down to people as if they were children, and that I have an attitude problem. (I never intend to make someone feel like a child, I just get worked up when talking about issues of justice.) Now these people with whom I have argued are not from the south. One is from Arizona and the other from the Mid-west. Anyhoo, I am sure they don't see the confederate flag as racist either, given their views on the role that race played in the Civil War. I really don't know how to talk to these people and end up giving up. *shrug*

[Corkey]

I have run into a couple recently people who absolutely deny that the civil war had anything to do with slavery. I have argued with someone til I was blue in the face, and even looked up the Confederate Constitution and recited the part about slavery, and still was told that the Southern states seceded purely because they didn't want to be controlled by the Northern states, and it was about states rights. The more I argued, the more I was told that I am talking down to people as if they were children, and that I have an attitude problem. (I never intend to make someone feel like a child, I just get worked up when talking about issues of justice.) Now these people with whom I have argued are not from the south. One is from Arizona and the other from the Mid-west. Anyhoo, I am sure they don't see the confederate flag as racist either, given their views on the role that race played in the Civil War. I really don't know how to talk to these people and end up giving up. *shrug*

Those are the worst kind of racists Drew, they argue they are in the right, blame the victims and loudly proclaim they know history. Fools and braggarts often don't see anyone but themselves. One can't teach an unwilling pupil.

[Martina]

there was a great time magazine article a few weeks ago or more about the history of this ideological shift toward denying the war was about slavery. it was fascinating.


link
(http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2063679,00.html)

I have run into a couple recently people who absolutely deny that the civil war had anything to do with slavery. I have argued with someone til I was blue in the face, and even looked up the Confederate Constitution and recited the part about slavery, and still was told that the Southern states seceded purely because they didn't want to be controlled by the Northern states, and it was about states rights. The more I argued, the more I was told that I am talking down to people as if they were children, and that I have an attitude problem. (I never intend to make someone feel like a child, I just get worked up when talking about issues of justice.) Now these people with whom I have argued are not from the south. One is from Arizona and the other from the Mid-west. Anyhoo, I am sure they don't see the confederate flag as racist either, given their views on the role that race played in the Civil War. I really don't know how to talk to these people and end up giving up. *shrug*

[Random]

I have run into a couple recently people who absolutely deny that the civil war had anything to do with slavery. I have argued with someone til I was blue in the face, and even looked up the Confederate Constitution and recited the part about slavery, and still was told that the Southern states seceded purely because they didn't want to be controlled by the Northern states, and it was about states rights. The more I argued, the more I was told that I am talking down to people as if they were children, and that I have an attitude problem. (I never intend to make someone feel like a child, I just get worked up when talking about issues of justice.) Now these people with whom I have argued are not from the south. One is from Arizona and the other from the Mid-west. Anyhoo, I am sure they don't see the confederate flag as racist either, given their views on the role that race played in the Civil War. I really don't know how to talk to these people and end up giving up. *shrug*


When you have this conversation think about it this way.. your blood pressure will come down...

It's wasn't about slavery, it was about states rights... The right to have slaves and to protect their way of life...

It's exactly the same thing... just worded differently and your head will not blow up trying to get a southerner who is in denial to say that the war between the states was about slavery...

just a hint...

[Sweet]

I am *hearing* points stated here from every side of the conversation....

I also am a Southerner; one side of my family claims heritage and culture as Irish Immigrants who... [after leaving their native land because their families were being enslaved, slaughtered, their freedoms and dignity being stripped, forced to live in squalor while their "Master's" lived in mansions, their homes were burned to the ground, evicted from the land their family had lived and worked for generations, and they had to watch their families starve to death while they worked the crops for "Royalty" and their "Masters" to have plenty, their women and young girls were raped and forced to "serve" their "Masters" and the government's soldiers, and faced many other atrocities, hardships and inhumane treatment]... made their way from Ireland to the North East (where they were made to live in squalor again in "the Irish Slums" and forced to work in near-slavery conditions) to the South where they were able to own their own land, to build a beautiful community, to provide for their families by farming the land with their own calloused hands, sunburnt backs and aching bones and muscles from back-breaking work to feed their families, build their own modest homes, provide for their community members as a WELL-knitted community (NO ONE went without) and to LIVE an honest life and to celebrate their culture and heritage. My Irish Great-Grandparents were recorded as official immigrants AFTER the Civil War was well over with.

The other side of my family are German/Austrian Immigrants who faced insurmountable, inhumane, savage, cruel, horrible, hard-to-speak-about atrocities, murder, rape, starvation, slavery and genocide. They were recorded as official immigrants in the late 1700's after fleeing their native land because of the atrocities and religious persecution... YES! Genocide, German Slavery and all those other horrible things happened well before Hitler took his tolls and made his mark. My German/Austrian Great...Great...GREAT Grandparents started out in the North East (Pennsylvania) and worked till their hands bled and backs were bent over to provide for their community and families, to BUILD their homes and RE-BUILD their modest, humble heritage and culture. They found a place where they could be *free*.... yet they were still "othered" because they were immigrants and NOT of a "higher class". My Great-Grandfather and his wife (the Lady that raised me), in their retirement moved South - to join other members of their families - to build another community, more homes for those that needed it, and to open their own home and hearts to EVERYONE, regardless of their class, race, religious belief or background. However, when my Great-Grandfather was a "young feller", he was DRAFTED into the military to serve in World War I. He, and every member of his family and church were Conscientious Objectors who refused "to take up arms" and who were opposed to all war regardless of its cause. Yet they were made to serve after being drafted. The stories of how he and other CO's were treated BY THEIR OWN TROOPS because they refused to murder another person makes me sick to this day. You can't imagine the torture and sick way he was treated because he refused to murder another person or take active part as a soldier. It was through learning of his status and treatment as a CO that I learned every one of my *ancestors* that were living *here* during the Civil War were also Conscientious Objectors and EACH one of them served to care for, feed and give medical treatment to any victim of the war....there are even family stories and family Heritage of Southern Members of my family being a part of the Underground Railroad and Medical personnel. It was through learning his story and history that I learned BOTH sides of my family were Conscientious Objectors, BOTH sides of my family ancestors "served" their "Masters", faced slavery or near-slavery conditions and eventually came out the other side of hardships to CELEBRATE their Culture and Heritage..... as SOUTHERN FARMERS AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS who would NEVER let ANY ONE PERSON go without and would NEVER inflict the hardships they had faced on another person.

Yes, I have a couple *ancestors* who may have served in the Civil War...maybe/maybe not some on each side of the war. But they served as Conscientious Objectors and were forced to serve.

Each side of my family CHERISH and talk about with PRIDE of the life they lived as SOUTHERNERS .... many of my Irish family went on to be coal miners and farmers. Many of my German/Austrian family went on to work the land as farmers and work as Government employees in agencies such as the Interstate Commerce Commission.... EACH SIDE PROVIDED FOR WHOLE COMMUNITIES AS HARD WORKING FARMERS and loving, caring, compassionate, HUMBLE members of their communities. They had SOUTHERN PRIDE... and rightfully so....because they were proud of the hardships they had faced, losses they had suffered, and atrocities they had survived... but I have NEVER heard a family history story of Southern Pride or Immigration History painted in the light of *negative* connotations that I hear all the time, from stereotypical, hateful Real Time and online sources. They were Redneck Farmers.... if you trace the word Redneck to it's TRUE creation.... it came from farmers and their families getting sunburned every day in the fields or other "work houses" to the point where their skin was continuously red... their necks were always burned. My MOTHER can attest to this because she was made to work the fields at 8 years old. WHOLE COMMUNITIES of Rednecks FED their Communities and their Nation. They PROVIDED for their Communities. The term Redneck, in our family and in our Heritage and Culture does not mean *that redneck jackass that's a bigot, hate-monger, lyncher, foul-mouthed, foul-mannered, white-privileged, male-chauvinist pig, etc, etc*... They built and provided for WHOLE Communities. They provided Medical treatment where they were needed. They provided a safe-haven for ANY person that had no haven. Yet they were/are othered and forced into the box of "Southern Jackass Rednecks" because they dare have Southern Pride.

Not a single one of my family were traced to having owned slaves or partaken in any kind of atrocities against another race. But because *we* are "WHITE PEOPLE" and especially "proud SOUTHERN white people", we are forced into a gray box of Southern Bigots and along with that must be forced to wear the Scarlett Letter of any number of stereotypes and negative labels often pinned on Southern White People. BEFORE someone starts to pin that negative stereotype or label on Southern White People...or begin to "other" any group of persons.... they should remember that many "white people" or "whites" have a Heritage and Culture rooted in a different *world* where they also suffered at the hands of "their Masters" and buried their children and wives.

Because I claim and OWN my Southern Heritage, My Irish Heritage, My German/Austrian Heritage and Cultures....because I am PROUD that I had family members that gave of themselves and provided for their Communities.... I am instantly labeled a Southern Redneck Bigot BEFORE anyone bothers to learn what my Culture, Heritage and History is all about. You're damn right I am a Proud Southern Redneck.... if you (general you) bothered to learn what that means to me, you would LEARN that it means I am Proud my family fed, clothed and housed WHOLE Communities and I am Proud of my Heritage of Irish/German/Austrian White People that worked damn hard to make sure their families never starved again, were never raped again and were never murdered again in the name of religious wars (or what ever the cause) and that their children never died from lack of medical care because their "Masters" considered them worthless wretches...etc....

I have a Heritage and Culture rooted in Ireland and Germany/Austria.... I also CLAIM and OWN my Southern Heritage and Culture in the Appalachians, Blue Ridge and Allegheny Regions. I know and am proud that many of my family members built Communities by their own bare hands.

I can show you Irish Flags and European Flags (before Hitler) that were used as symbols of "their cause" and "their pride". Many of the flags throughout history were used as symbols of either pride, cultural history or sometimes oppression. There's a particular Irish Flag that still brings chills to my bones to think of the THOUSANDS of families that were slaughtered and oppressed by the hands of the "soldiers" that attempted genocide and cultural/religious oppression. The Confederate Flag was not the ONLY flag that "changes the space" and is seen in such a negative way filled with hate from both sides of the conversation/war. The Confederate Flag is not the only Flag...piece of cloth and thread... that may represent murder, rape, slavery and atrocities. I have mixed feelings about the flag.... but I do have STRONG feelings against any person, race or class that inflicts any kind of grievous physical or mental harm on any other person, race or group of individuals for ANY cause that they feel the *right* to justify such grievous harm.

However, this is my question to *you* tonight: Instead of focusing on slamming around the subject of the Confederate Flag.... How do you feel about the Living History Displays and Teaching Events that take place in this day-in-age at places like Gettysburg? I personally believe and feel that the Living History Events and Reenactments are a very important part to teaching our new generations about BOTH sides of the story.... minus the negative stereotypes and hate.

My challenge to *you* tonight: before *you* lump me into the gray box of *you white people* or *you Southern white people*.... bother to learn *my* Culture and Heritage before you slap a Scarlett Letter on my chest as bigot and jackass redneck. Before anyone talks to me of "white privilege", stop and think of atrocities *my white people* faced as well and let me share with you about how *my white people* along with many other people from various other races served and fed a nation as Redneck Farmers and humble medical staff that instead of taking up arms, they saved lives.

[Corkey]

No one has intimated not to be proud of your heritage, I think where there is a difference is that while *white* people who immigrated here were not considered *white* enough, until they and their cultures integrated into *white* society, POC will never have that opportunity, (hopefully one day) because of the color of their skin.

If one flies that rag of a flag, they are perpetuating hurt to POC, and are actively doing so. That is racist.

I have no issue with historical accurate teaching done at Civil War battlefields. I do have issue with white people trying to say they are oppressed in this day and age. Classism has its own set of horror shows, but it isn't institutionalized racism.

[BullDog]

I don't understand the connection between sweet tea and Southern hospitality with the Confederate flag. Southern African Americans also drink sweet tea and have gracious Southern manners. I haven't heard of any of them flying the Rebel Flag with pride. What do people need the flag for to be proud to be Southern?

The explanations sound like a very insular white view. If it's only whites flying the Rebel Flag doesn't that say something?

Also, when was this flag not associated with racism? When was this time?

There should be no such thing as White Southern Pride separate from and hostile to African Americans and other Southerners who have also lived in the south for centuries and have proud heritages as well.

I already wrote about this earlier in the thread, but when I first encountered Confederate flags while driving through the south, as a visible white butch lesbian I did not feel safe. I also didn't feel safe for my ex-girlfriends' two dogs who were traveling with me. To me it is a symbol of racism and hate. I also do have an appreciation for Southern culture and hospitality and don't associate that with any flag or one particular race of people from the South.

[Sweet]

No one has intimated not to be proud of your heritage, I think where there is a difference is that while *white* people who immigrated here were not considered *white* enough, until they and their cultures integrated into *white* society, POC will never have that opportunity, (hopefully one day) because of the color of their skin.

If one flies that rag of a flag, they are perpetuating hurt to POC, and are actively doing so. That is racist.

I have no issue with historical accurate teaching done at Civil War battlefields. I do have issue with white people trying to say they are oppressed in this day and age. Classism has its own set of horror shows, but it isn't institutionalized racism.

Thank you Corkey.

I didn't intend to ask anyone to be proud of my heritage or to imply that I am oppressed in this day and age. I was asking for individuals to get to know me and my heritage before they *lumped me into a negative stereotype* of "those white people". I do grit my teeth every time someone tries to make me feel "like a low-life" for being a Proud Southern Redneck.... or slapping a Scarlett Letter on me before they know my story. Call me "White"....don't lump me into "white people" in a negative, hateful way.

Thank you for addressing my question about historical accurate teaching done at Living History Events.
I don't have an issue with the Living History Events.... I did have an issue with a previous boss of mine that was a Gettysburg Reenactor that had an artist's painting of the Battlefield of a group of soldiers who were holding up the Confederate Flag... I was shocked to learn that he didn't understand how that would change a space when/if any POC or other individual that's opposed to the flag would/could visit his office for Professional State-Policy Office business.....and I had an Human Resources Director with a coffee mug with the same symbol... My boss got a blank look on his face and simply said "but I do Living History for the Confederate side, that's a painting of my troop." He didn't understand the implications....especially in a State office.

[The_Lady_Snow]

I dont get how this turned into a "scarlet letter" issue. It's always interesting to me how these conversations go from facts to someone supposedly attacking "southern pride" and it's ice tea. Let's not forget THE FACT no persons of color could OWN land like other immigrants who CHOSE to come to the new world. Most slaves were KIDNAPPED and enslaved and died NEVER having the freedom that white immigrants had.

Facts are the south wanted to own humans for hard labor and to do with humans as they pleased, how that fact is overlooked when flying that flag I'll never know. I would be weary of ANY person who was flying it or wearing it.

There's nothing pretty, sweet, romantic about what it stands for or stood for it's a racist symbol.

[Martina]

i agree that the flag is pretty much indefensible. i hope those who fly it take a long look at the effect they are having on others.

But i do think the conversation about being Southern and dealing with the history of slavery is a useful one. i also think it's worth talking about the way southerners are perceived by others.

Personally whether we Americans are Southern or not, whether our ancestors arrived in this country before or after the Civil War, we all have the inheritance of slavery to live with. We live in a nation that was built on the labor of slaves. We benefit from that still. We also live with the heritage of a racist ideology developed in support of the exploitation of African Americans. That is part of us no matter how responsibly our parents raised us or how hard our own lives have been. We have learned its assumptions whether we wanted to our not. The only way to dig them out is to work at it. We need to listen and to stop being so defensive. Neither of those things is easy.

[AtLast]

I have run into a couple recently people who absolutely deny that the civil war had anything to do with slavery. I have argued with someone til I was blue in the face, and even looked up the Confederate Constitution and recited the part about slavery, and still was told that the Southern states seceded purely because they didn't want to be controlled by the Northern states, and it was about states rights. The more I argued, the more I was told that I am talking down to people as if they were children, and that I have an attitude problem. (I never intend to make someone feel like a child, I just get worked up when talking about issues of justice.) Now these people with whom I have argued are not from the south. One is from Arizona and the other from the Mid-west. Anyhoo, I am sure they don't see the confederate flag as racist either, given their views on the role that race played in the Civil War. I really don't know how to talk to these people and end up giving up. *shrug*

Just like some people don't think the holocaust happened.

What in hell do these people think the Emancipation Proclamation was about? And "States Rights" has always been "code" for wanting to own slaves.

I bet you do get frustrated with these people!! Yikes!!!

[The_Lady_Snow]

“Confederate History Month a Set Back?” CNN Newsroom (http://www.timwise.org/2010/04/confederate-history-month-a-set-back-on-cnns-newsroom/)


(http://www.timwise.org/2010/04/confederate-history-month-a-set-back-on-cnns-newsroom/)>video link< (http://www.timwise.org/2010/04/confederate-history-month-a-set-back-on-cnns-newsroom/)

[The_Lady_Snow]

Virginia is for Liars: Neo-Confederate Mythology, Racist Realities and Genuine Southern Heroes (http://www.timwise.org/2010/04/virginia-is-for-liars-neo-confederate-mythology-racist-realities-and-genuine-southern-heroes/)


Am I the only one who finds it a bit too coincidental that in the midst of a political season in which conservative whites can be heard screaming that they “want their country back,” the Governor of Virginia should declare April “Confederate History Month?” Or that others would be clamoring for the inclusion (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/03/eye_opener_group_wants_souther.html) of a “Confederate Southern American” identity box on the decennial census forms? I mean, damn, waxing nostalgic for the 1950s is one thing, but the 1860s? Quite telling, to say the least.


And yes, I know, the Governor’s proclamation wasn’t really about desiring to fondly remember everything about those days, and certainly not the less palatable aspects of the period such as the enslavement of African peoples. Slavery, after all, wasn’t even mentioned (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/07/bob-mcdonnell-leaves%20out_n_528733.html) in the proclamation. Rather, Governor Bob McDonnell was just trying to remind all good Virginians (the white ones at least) that they should deign to honor their ancestors who fought so valiantly for a cause they believed in. That the cause in question was, well, ya know, slavery, is but a minor quibble, which “doesn’t matter for diddly,” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/11/haley-barbour-defends-bob_n_533358.html) in the immortal words of self-proclaimed (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/07/haley-barbour-im-a-fat-re_n_528321.html) “fat redneck,” and Governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour.


For this last sentence–specifically the part where I note the centrality of slavery to the southern cause–I can now expect to receive literally hundreds of angry and rambling e-mails from neo-Confederates insisting that I have committed a “heritage offense.” To suggest that the Confederacy’s purpose was in any way the maintenance of slavery is, to these folks, a vicious and untrue calumny, placed upon the heads of their brave forefathers unjustly by leftists and liberals, beholden to Yankee propaganda, and unwilling to see the finer nuances of antebellum ideology.
But aside from the fact that so-called Yankees are perfectly capable of doing first-rate historical research on the period and discerning the true causes of the North/South conflict at the time, the fact is, I am no such breed of animal. I am a southerner, and most of my family has been in the South, going back at least 250 years, and in some cases, all the way back to the Virginia of the 1630s. In other words Bubba, and as Flo used to say on that TV show, Alice, you can “kiss my grits.”


Several of my family members served the Confederacy in battle. Whether or not they understood the battle to be about slavery (and let’s not kid ourselves, most all southerners at the time knew full well that maintaining the institution of enslavement was the point of their breakaway government), their leaders made clear that this was the very purpose of the confederacy. So, if we are to remember history, we must surely begin with this fact: that whatever sacrifices confederate soldiers made, they made them for an underlying mission that was evil; a mission that cannot be sanitized, scrubbed clean of all inculpatory evidence, and turned into something valiant and worthy of positive commemoration.


What the Confederacy Was Not About
To suggest, as the neo-confederates do that the seceding states left the Union to preserve “state’s rights” as a principle–separate and apart from the right to maintain slavery in those states, specifically–is absurd. After all, the rights that southern leaders felt were being impeded were specifically those rights tied to the maintenance of the slave system, and its extension into new territories in the West, recently added to the nation as a result of the war with Mexico. Because the Republican Party and Lincoln were “free soilers”–dedicated to banning slavery in the new territories–the slaveocracies of the South were convinced that their economic systems would be crippled over time, as they became outvoted in the Congress, and as the nation moved to a free labor system, as opposed to one deeply reliant on enslavement.


That the only “state’s rights” being fought for were the rights of said states to operate a slave system was attested to by southern leaders themselves. In December of 1860, Alabama sent commissioners to the other slave states to advocate for their secession. One of the commissioners was Stephen Hale, whose job was to persuade Kentucky to leave the Union. In his letter to the Governor of Kentucky, he asked and answered the question as to which “state’s rights” were being violated by the North.
“…what rights have been denied, what wrongs have been done, or threatened to be done, of which the Southern states, or the people of the Southern states, can complain?” he asked. In the very next paragraph he offered the answer, clearly and unmistakably:
“African slavery has not only become one of the fixed domestic institutions of the Southern states, but forms an important element of their political power, and constitutes the most valuable species of their property…forming, in fact, the basis upon which rests the prosperity and wealth of most of these states…It is upon this gigantic interest, this peculiar institution of the South, that the Northern states and their people have been waging an unrelenting and fanatical war for the last quarter of a century. An institution with which is bound up, not only the wealth and prosperity of the Southern people, but their very existence as a political community…They attack us through their literature, in their schools, from the hustings, in their legislative halls, through the public press…to strike down the rights of the Southern slave-holder, and override every barrier which the Constitution has erected for his protection.”


So too, the conflict was not about trade and tariff issues, as often claimed by the revisionists. Although the South had long opposed high tariffs on goods from England–which had a disproportionate impact on the South because they raised the cost of goods the region needed and which were not locally produced, and also made it more costly for Britain to purchase southern cotton–by the time of secession, the tariffs had been cut dramatically. Alexander Stephens, who would become Vice-President of the Confederacy noted as much when he spoke to the Georgia legislature in 1860, explaining:
“The tariff no longer distracts the public councils. Reason has triumphed…The present tariff was voted for by Massachusetts and South Carolina. The lion and the lamb lay down together–every man in the Senate and the House from Massachusetts and South Carolina, I think, voted for it…(the duties) were made just as low as Southern men asked them to be, and those are the rates they are now at.”
The fact is, the worst of all tariffs ever imposed–known in popular lore as the Tariff of Abominations–had been most harshly enforced during the Presidency of Andrew Jackson, a Southerner. Yet no state save South Carolina ever threatened secession over this “mother of all tariffs,” suggesting that it alone (or others like it, even less harsh) would hardly have been a significant contributor to the rupture of 1860-1861.


Wearing Their Racism On Their Sleeve: The Real Reason for Secession
Not state’s rights, not tariffs, but slavery and the desire to maintain and extend its reach was the reason for southern secession, for the creation of this putrid confederacy the Governor of Virginia (and the legislatures of several other southern states) would have us commemorate. CSA Vice-President Stephens explained as much in crystal clear detail when he noted that the Confederate government’s “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 moral condition.”


In this address, delivered in Savannah in the spring of 1861, Stephens went on to distinguish the centrality of racism and slavery in the South, from that of all past governmental systems, including the United States:
“This, our newer Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. Those at the North…assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights, with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just; but their premises being wrong, their whole argument fails.”


Then in April, 1861, after Virginia lawmakers had initially voted 2-1 against secession, then changed their mind to support it (but before secession had been agreed to by the voters of the state), Stephens traveled to Richmond and laid out the case for dissolving the union in blatantly racist terms. He noted:


“One good and wise feature in our new and revised Constitution is that we have put to rest the vexed question of slavery forever…On this subject, from which sprung the immediate cause of our late troubles and threatened dangers, you will indulge me in a few remarks as not irrelevant to the occasion.”
He went on to articulate the principle of white supremacy as being central to the ideology of the Confederate government:
“As a race, the African is inferior to the white man. Subordination to the white man is his normal condition. He is not equal by nature, and cannot be made so by human laws or human institutions. Our system, therefore, so far as regards this inferior race, rests upon this great immutable law of nature. It is founded not upon wrong or injustice, but upon the eternal fitness of things. Hence, its harmonious working for the benefit and advantage of both…The great truth, I repeat, upon which our system rests, is the inferiority of the African. The enemies of our institutions ignore this truth. They set out with the assumption that the races are equal…hence, so much misapplied sympathy for fancied wrongs and sufferings. These wrongs and sufferings exist only in their heated imaginations. There can be no wrong where there is no violation of nature’s laws…It is the fanatics of the North, who are warring against the decrees of God Almighty, in their attempts to make things equal which he made unequal.”
Additionally, we know that secession and the formation of the Confederate system was about the desire to maintain enslavement of blacks, because of the proclamations made by various leaders of the southern states at the time. Four states issued explicit “Declarations of Causes” for their secession, and in each case their stated reasons specifically spoke to the fear that the slave system upon which they had grown dependent was imperiled. Mississippi, for instance, listed its grievances with the North as follows: the failure to uphold the Fugitive Slave laws, enticing of slaves to run away, the desire to prohibit slavery in the territories, the desire to exclude new slave states from the union, and the desire, ultimately to abolish slavery in all the Union.


When South Carolina’s legislature voted for secession, it reported out two documents from its convention. The first was a Declaration of Causes, which spoke exclusively about the increasing “hostility” of the Northern states to the institution of slavery. The second was an address to the other slaveholding states, written by Robert Barnwell Rhett.
In Rhett’s document – an exhortation to the other slave states to secede – he argued:
“The fairest portions of the world have been turned into wildernesses, and the most civilized and prosperous communities have been impoverished and ruined by Anti-Slavery fanaticism. The people of the North have not left us in doubt as to their designs and policy…they have elected as the exponent of their policy one who has openly declared that all the States of the United States must be made Free States or Slave States…if African slavery in the Southern States be the evil their political combinations affirm it to be, the requisitions of an inexorable logic must lead them to emancipation. If it is right to preclude or abolish slavery in a territory, why should it be allowed to remain in the States?”
And when Alabama Commissioner Stephen Hale wrote to the governor of Kentucky in late 1860, after Lincoln’s election but before his inauguration, seeking to persuade him to leave the union he argued similarly:
“The Federal Government has failed to protect the rights and property of the citizens of the South, and is about to pass into the hands of a party pledged for the destruction not only of their rights and property, but…the heaven-ordained superiority of the white over the black race…Will the South give up the institution of slavery, and consent that her citizens be stripped of their property, her civilization destroyed, the whole land laid waste by fire and sword? It is impossible; she cannot, she will not…”


Hale’s fanatical commitment to the notions of white supremacy and African savagery was made clear later in the letter when he argued:
“…this new theory of Government (as articulated by the Republicans) destroys the property of the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassinations, and her wives and daughters to pollution and violation, to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans…”
He continued by conjuring up the fear that whites and blacks would be made social equals under Republican rule: a fate that, to hear him tell it, was worse than death,
“If the policy of the Republicans is carried out,” Hale explained, “according to the programme indicated by the leaders of the party, and the South submits, degradation and ruin must overwhelm alike all classes of citizens in the Southern states. The slave-holder and non-slave holder must ultimately share the same fate-all be degraded to a position of equality with free negroes, stand side-by-side with them at the polls, and fraternize in all the social relations of life; or else there will be eternal war of races, desolating the land with blood, and utterly wasting the destroying all the resources of the country. Who can look upon such a picture without a shudder? What Southern man, be he slave-holder or non-slave-holder, can without indignation and horror contemplate the triumph of negro equality, and see his own sons and daughters, in the not distant future, associating with free negroes upon terms of political and social equality, and the white man stripped, by the Heaven-daring hand of fanaticism, of that title to superiority over the black race which God himself has bestowed?”


Hale then explained that a Southern triumph over the Union would allow the maintenance of slavery as its principal (and only mentioned) benefit, and would serve as a bulwark against black barbarism.


“If we triumph…we can…preserve an institution that has done more to civilize and Christianize the heathen than all human agencies beside-and institution beneficial to both races, ameliorating the moral, physical and intellectual condition of the one, and giving wealth and happiness to the other. If we fail, the light of our civilization goes down in blood, our wives and our little ones will be driven from their homes by the light of our own dwellings. The dark pall of barbarism must soon gather over our sunny land, and the scenes of West India emancipation, with its attendant horrors and crimes, be re-enacted in our own land upon a more gigantic scale.”

[The_Lady_Snow]

Praising Villains and Ignoring Real S/heroes: The Real “Heritage Violation”

Aside from a mere historical dispute however–and truthfully, as the evidence above indicates, there is no real dispute among actual historians–neo-confederate mythology is disturbing for another reason. Namely, it forever tethers the history of the South to the history of a four-year breakaway government, as if the latter can and should speak for the former. It conflates the South and the Confederacy, and in so doing suggests that this is what makes the region special, and that this is what we in the South should be proud of.


Yet, such a purposeful distortion does historical violence to the memory of the brave southerners who fought against racism, enslavement and the subordination of peoples of color. It suggests that the South is better represented by Jefferson Davis than Martin Luther King Jr. or Fannie Lou Hamer, or any of the leaders of the civil rights struggle, almost all of whom had southern roots that ran every bit as deep–deeper in fact–than most of the folks running around in confederate costumes re-enacting long-ago battles. To venerate the confederacy as a proud part of southern heritage is to elevate it to an equal or even superior position vis-a-vis that struggle, and to suggest that one should be just as proud of an ancestor who believed in owning other human beings as with an ancestor who stood up for freedom and justice.


Even for white southerners we surely can point to better role models (http://redroom.com/note_redirect.php?note_id=377280664503&h=f540fd07042b3fb448829daa07c0d6d8&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FInside-Agitators-Southerners-Rights-Movement%2Fdp%2F080185234X) than this. Why turn to Johnny Reb for sustenance when we have Moncure Conway (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22595-2004Aug21.html), Duncan Smith (http://www.texasescapes.com/WTBlock/Great-grandpa-wasnt-popular-in-the-South.htm), William Shreve Bailey (http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/%7Ekycampbe/williambailey.htm), John Fee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gregg_Fee), Virginia Foster Durr (http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1574), J Waties Waring, (http://www.whiteantiracist.org/waring.html)Anne Braden (http://books.google.com/books?id=Aew6vD-C7awC&printsec=frontcover&dq=anne+braden&source=bl&ots=L_ptdWJPAx&sig=M-LlGFA0clt_T4V8GndSpIOkFqM&hl=en&ei=jYrES-WtHMP38AaTjrW_Dw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false), Bob Zellner (http://books.google.com/books?id=sHVk_01PBQQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=bob+zellner&source=bl&ots=_p6dmRBO9r&sig=bcswrgE5_PaLJBKgN_CEOCIT0Nc&hl=en&ei=vorES5KTIsT38AaEzYihDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=17&ved=0CDIQ6AEwEA#v=onepage&q&f=false), and Mab Segrest (http://www.whiteantiracist.org/segrest.html) from whom we might draw inspiration?


Why identify with an ignoble cause led by bigots when we have genuine heroes and sheroes, black, white and all shades between, whose efforts on behalf of human dignity and equality lasted far longer than the lifespan of that wicked confederacy? Why confirm every unjust stereotype about white southerners–which is what neo-confederate nonsense does–by cleaving to a tradition that is forever bound up with racism and white supremacy? In the greatest irony of confederate revisionism, then, those whose apologetics have come to define the movement, do a great disservice to the many antiracist legends whose stories are as southern as their own, and in the process, do a disservice to the south.
It is time for those of us who are proud southerners to reclaim our land, and our story, and our heritage: a heritage that includes all of us. A heritage that is as much about Tuskegee as the University of Alabama, as much about Jackson State as Ole Miss. A heritage that is as much about Medgar Evers as it is about George Wallace. And a heritage that, if we are prepared to fight for it, can be as much about justice in the present and future, as it was about injustice in the past.

[cody]

I Believe....
Two people can look at the exact same
Thing and see something totally different.

[weatherboi]

i think it is important to recognize how lucky that the white people here can actually trace ancestral roots back generations. Many people of color do not have that privilege. Back in the day when racism wasn't as institutionally covert as it is now, the value of a white persons history was far more protected than that of the POC. So as white people when we start going on and on about our historical heritage there are POC that ache to know just a tenth of the information that we as white people have access too. Personally it is because of arguments that revolve around defending white heritage that i find where the most racism work needs to be done.

[Ebon]

i think it is important to recognize how lucky that the white people here can actually trace ancestral roots back generations. Many people of color do not have that privilege. Back in the day when racism wasn't as institutionally covert as it is now, the value of a white persons history was far more protected than that of the POC. So as white people when we start going on and on about our historical heritage there are POC that ache to know just a tenth of the information that we as white people have access too. Personally it is because of arguments that revolve around defending white heritage that i find where the most racism work needs to be done.

Wow thank you for posting this. I don't think people realize that. I can't stand that ancestry.com website. lol

[apretty]

After reading the article posted by Greyson (post 824) I followed a few links and ended up on the SoCV blog. (Which is gross, by the way--Sons of Confederate Veterans: A nonsensical place where they label the NAACP a hate group.)

And because I found the term 'neutral symbol' problematic and I wondered about it's origins--Either way, I came across this article on people exposed to the confederate flag:

http://www.alternet.org/news/149612/study%3A_confederate_flag_unleashes_racist_attitud es


A flag isn't 'racist'--It's a piece of cloth. Those that fly the confederate flag aren't concerned with "appearing" racist which means that the logical conclusion is that they "appear" to be that which they are to everyone else: a proud racist.

[Greyson]

After reading the article posted by Greyson (post 824) I followed a few links and ended up on the SoCV blog. (Which is gross, by the way--Sons of Confederate Veterans: A nonsensical place where they label the NAACP a hate group.)

And because I found the term 'neutral symbol' problematic and I wondered about it's origins--Either way, I came across this article on people exposed to the confederate flag:

http://www.alternet.org/news/149612/study%3A_confederate_flag_unleashes_racist_attitud es


A flag isn't 'racist'--It's a piece of cloth. Those that fly the confederate flag aren't concerned with "appearing" racist which means that the logical conclusion is that they "appear" to be that which they are to everyone else: a proud racist.

Thanks for posting the link. The final paragraph offers another way to frame the discussion.

“We argue that the debate over whether it is appropriate to display the Confederate flag in positions of prominence should include a discussion of how exposure to the flag might promote negative judgments of, and behavior toward, black individuals, by virtue of its association with racial bias.”

[The_Lady_Snow]

It's a no brainer guilt by association. If you don't care what POC say or how it makes members of your community feel, don't be offended or pull the white victim out if you CONTINUE to wear, fly, stick or paint a symbol of racism. It's pretty sad that doesn't sink in.

[Apocalipstic]

I just wanted to say how glad it makes me that we can have this discussion calmly and with respect.

I don't get the iced tea thing either, its a drink. Period. It's not even a drink that everyone Southern drinks. Yet somehow it is being linked to both the confederate flag and hospitality.

I live and have lived in Nashville for many years and I cringe every time I see the confederate flag. There is a shrine to Nathan Bedford Forrest, founder of the KKK, just south of Nashville on private property which can be seen clearly from
I65. I almost choke every time I see it. It is a very amateur looking statue surrounded by confederate flags. It gets attacked over and over by guns, paintballs, etc., but no one is ever actually arrested. It makes me wish that the Federal Government had more power to regulate what can be seen from the Federal Interstate System...

I do completely get that many people really don't think about the effect the confederate flag has, which is why I am so glad we can discuss it and learn. Really think about our collective past. No, the Civil War and slavery is not the only bad thing to have ever happened in the world. Slavery was not just a Southern thing....the largest slave markets in the US were in New York City. Not even redneck heritage is Southern. But flying the confederate flag does seem to be seen way more in the South and areas with large Southern migration like Michigan. Kid Rock uses one as a backdrop.

Kids in the South are sometimes STILL taught about the "War of Northern Aggression" instead of the Civil War.....Which is why it is so important, even though its uncomfortable, to have these discussions and learn. Learn learn learn about peace and kindness love of fellow human.

Flying the confederate flag makes many people afraid. Period.

I would hope that the last thing anyone would want to do is make people afraid. I know, idealistic of me.

:) (f)

[Nat]

i think it is important to recognize how lucky that the white people here can actually trace ancestral roots back generations. Many people of color do not have that privilege. Back in the day when racism wasn't as institutionally covert as it is now, the value of a white persons history was far more protected than that of the POC. So as white people when we start going on and on about our historical heritage there are POC that ache to know just a tenth of the information that we as white people have access too. Personally it is because of arguments that revolve around defending white heritage that i find where the most racism work needs to be done.

The reason I ran across the letters from my grandmother's great grandfather is because a historical society in mississippi posted them online. I know my own family's records include photos of African-American servants and sometimes a first name. I think an awesome way to honor the Southern past would be to connect this information up as much as possible so that maybe the dots can be connected. So much has been erased, but there is a lot of info lurking in the attics of old Southern white families. Restoring the factual past would be such a great endeavor even if it's painful.

[Kätzchen]

i think it is important to recognize how lucky that the white people here can actually trace ancestral roots back generations. Many people of color do not have that privilege. Back in the day when racism wasn't as institutionally covert as it is now, the value of a white persons history was far more protected than that of the POC. So as white people when we start going on and on about our historical heritage there are POC that ache to know just a tenth of the information that we as white people have access too. Personally it is because of arguments that revolve around defending white heritage that i find where the most racism work needs to be done.

Thank you for sharing this important distinction.

My grandmother spent hour upon hour reciting story upon story concerning our family history.

Storytelling is crucial to transmission of ones narrative,
much like what we as a community are doing in this forum discussion.
My family's heritage is largely told in storytelling form
and I cherish and privilege infomation given to me in this format
because indigenous peoples of color were barred from instituational
and conventional forms of access. Even the stories we share together as a sub-culture within the LGBTQ umbrella of identy is sacred to me.

Thank you Grant for articulating your perspective!

Would anyone like a cup of coffee this morning???
If so, please help yourself...

*Good Morning*

http://www.beyondthebean.com/assets/latte-art.jpg

[Toughy]

The reason I ran across the letters from my grandmother's great grandfather is because a historical society in mississippi posted them online. I know my own family's records include photos of African-American servants and sometimes a first name. I think an awesome way to honor the Southern past would be to connect this information up as much as possible so that maybe the dots can be connected. So much has been erased, but there is a lot of info lurking in the attics of old Southern white families. Restoring the factual past would be such a great endeavor even if it's painful.

The bolded part........Servants or Slaves???? There is a big difference.

[Martina]

Wow! That's a hell of a study!

Displays of the flag, the researchers assert, “may actually provoke discrimination -- even among those who are low in prejudice.”

And they concluded that strong identification as a Southerner did not make one more or less vulnerable to the effect. So one can be a strong and proud Southerner, low in prejudice, and still be affected negatively by the flag.

Wow. Taking one of the unconscious racism tests that Greyson linked to and reading this reminds me of how deeply embedded racism is in our minds and hearts. It's an argument for doing everything one can do that is easy or obvious, like not flying the flag.

That racist attitudes can be so easily activated too . . . . wow.



After reading the article posted by Greyson (post 824) I followed a few links and ended up on the SoCV blog. (Which is gross, by the way--Sons of Confederate Veterans: A nonsensical place where they label the NAACP a hate group.)

And because I found the term 'neutral symbol' problematic and I wondered about it's origins--Either way, I came across this article on people exposed to the confederate flag:

http://www.alternet.org/news/149612/study%3A_confederate_flag_unleashes_racist_attitud es


A flag isn't 'racist'--It's a piece of cloth. Those that fly the confederate flag aren't concerned with "appearing" racist which means that the logical conclusion is that they "appear" to be that which they are to everyone else: a proud racist.

[Cajun_dee]

A Confederate flag flying near the Caddo Parish Courthouse, 150 years after the start of the Civil War, will be an issue in a state Supreme Court hearing today in the case of a black man sentenced to death in 2009 for killing a white firefighter.

Times-Picayune archive
The Louisiana Supreme Court, 400 Royal St.
The flag flies at a monument -- statues of four Confederate officers and a flag -- that was erected in 1902 on a small piece of land that Caddo Parish donated to the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
The organization says the flag honors Southern heritage and is not a symbol of racism.
The American Civil Liberties Union will argue that the flag should be removed.
"We will be arguing, along with Mr. Dorsey's attorneys on May 9 in the Louisiana Supreme Court that the flag presents an intolerable risk that African-Americans may be intimidated to serve on juries, may be excluded from juries like Mr. Staples for having strong feelings about the flag," says ACLU attorney Anna Arceneaux said.
On Tuesday, the NAACP led a protest against the flag. Protester Carl Staples said he was dismissed from Dorsey's jury pool in 2009 for expressing concerns about the flag.
"This is where justice is made available to everybody. Yet we see in the 21st century, in the year 2011 there are still reminders of a vicious, ugly, degrading, racist, and incomprehensible past," said professor Charles Ogletree, director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School.
"That's not equal protection. That is offensive, derogatory, and demeaning to a whole generation of people," he said.
Chuck McMichael, with the Sons of Confederate Veterans said the flag represents "men who answered the call of their state to protect their state from a hostile army," not racism. "Some people have incorrectly used it that way," he said.

[EnderD_503]

I'm not American so I probably have a lot less insight into the Confederate flag than people who actually live in the American south, but reading people's posts about the use of the Confederate flag and the link to romanticizing the history and image of the American south reminded me of something.

In one of my American literature classes our prof. played the Billie Holiday song Strange Fruit to try to emphasize the tendency in southern literature to romanticize the south with seemingly insignificant references (to the non-southern or perhaps non-American reader) to the landscape, smell of magnolias and so on.

I think that song really highlights the nostalgia and romanticism for a kind of utopic south that never actually existed beyond the minds of white southerners, by coupling the pastoral and hospitable imagery often used in southern literature with the brutal imagery of southern lynchings. Thought it was interesting and perhaps worth sharing.

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh!

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

[Cajun_dee]

I've been driving across the country for the last 10 days, and I for the first time intentionally looked for the Confederate flag.

I could not find a single one in Louisiana. Not that I went everywhere but there were none, except for on a strand of beads being sold by a vendor in the French Market, they were among 10,000 other beads and I happened to see them. I did not see any in Tennessee or Kentucky either.

In Mississippi, one flying over the State Welcome Center along with the other flags of the country, state, county.

In Alabama, as soon as we entered the state, there was a HUGE Confederate flag flying by itself, on side of the interstate. I quickly looked to see where it was monumented from and it seemed to be someone's back yard. It was a clear and present sign that set off all of my alarms, since having read this thread. It did not give me a good feeling upon seeing it.

Another one flying deep in Alabama, flying alone in a parking lot located on the interstate. I actually took a picture of it. Again all my alarms went off.

During my duration in the states I thought long and hard about the flag, and having learned first hand what it means to people because of this thread. I do not wish to be associated with any sign of racism of any kind, and this flag represents that to many, many people. It had never represented that to me, but it does now.

My version of Southern pride does not include reference to anyone, and I still stand firm that not everyone that is from the south and loves it there, is a racist.

[dark_crystal]

what about this one? Racist or clueless?
http://www.29-95.com/files/imagecache/comicFull/5432127034_99718b1b80.jpg

[nowandthen]

it is. It represents both the ideals of chattle slavery and Jim crow laws here in the US.

[LeftWriteFemme]

I graduated from High School on a little island off the coast of North Carolina and every time I would speak against what I call the confederate thought process, which includes flying that damned flag I was told that I couldn't understand because I was born in New Jersey quickly followed by a chorus of Yankee girl go home.......I have to say I think I understand just fine. To me this is a long history of sick people justifying sick behavior and refusing to take any responsibility past, present, future.....but that is one Yankee girl's opinion.

[EnderD_503]

what about this one? Racist or clueless?
http://www.29-95.com/files/imagecache/comicFull/5432127034_99718b1b80.jpg

I think it was probably ignorance combined with the desire to shock. When I think of the album Rebel Yell I don't think it was, at its root, thinking about condoning the racism and slavery of the American south.

Unfortunately, since Billy Idol, the confederate flag has been used by a few rock and metal bands (many who aren't even from the American south or even espouse anything it represented) as a symbol of rebellion in general. I think that's largely based on sheer ignorance or perhaps the desire to simply see it as a symbol of rebellion and non-conformity, instead of specifying what one is rebelling against, specifically. I'm not sure Billy Idol was supportive of slavery or racism...

I've even seen some bands do that with certain Nazi symbols or Satanist symbolism. Take 80's Slayer, for example. Tom Araya is Chilean, Roman Catholic and has a strong Aboriginal South American heritage. He has never espoused Nazi ideology or Satanist ideology (he is actually a very devout Christian, despite that he wrote lyrics inspired by Satanism for the shock value)...yet the logo used for the first few Slayer albums was inspired by the eagle/swastika emblem used by the Nazis. Does that make Slayer themselves racist?

I think it meant that they were really young at the time and didn't get the entire meaning of it. They really just wanted to shock people in a sub-culture that sought to push conventional boundaries, that also saw pushing gender limitations (guys wearing makeup, nail polish etc.), religious limits (lyrics about paganism, satanism, atheism and other non-monotheistic view points) and moral limits (excessive sexuality, examining death, the gruesome and gory, the sinister etc.).

In a way I'm not sure I'd say the same for Billy Idol...though punk rock does have a history of pushing convention the same way metal does. At the same time, I think maybe he was just ignorant of the flag's deeper meaning, and saw it as a symbol of rebellion in general. I don't think punk rock, or Idol's brand of punk rock, is something that was ever politically supportive of racism unless you start looking into RAC and other forms of "Nazi punk" (Or as the Dead Kennedys put it: "Nazi punks, Nazi punks, Fuck off!" :p)

I do think what Billy was doing was counterproductive to the punk mentality, but whether I'd call him outright racist, I don't know. Ignorant at best, maybe. And perhaps unknowingly supporting something he didn't mean to...which is no excuse.

[dark_crystal]

I've even seen some bands do that with certain Nazi symbols or Satanist symbolism. Take 80's Slayer, for example. Tom Araya is Chilean, Roman Catholic and has a strong Aboriginal South American heritage. He has never espoused Nazi ideology or Satanist ideology (he is actually a very devout Christian, despite that he wrote lyrics inspired by Satanism for the shock value)...yet the logo used for the first few Slayer albums was inspired by the eagle/swastika emblem used by the Nazis.

I guess the "is the swastika (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika#Hinduism) anti-semitic?" question would be considered a derail?

[EnderD_503]

I guess the "is the swastika (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika#Hinduism) anti-semitic?" question would be considered a derail?


Well, the Slayer emblem doesn't actually include the swastika. Instead, it includes the eagle sitting atop an inverted pentagram instead of a swastika, that is a direct reference to the Nazi emblem of the eagle combined with the National Socialist swastika.

Link to image (http://images2.layoutsparks.com/1/139743/slayer-eagle-logo-design.jpg)

Edit: For comparison of what I mean with the early Slayer logo:

Link to next image (http://local1488.com/catalog/images/german-eagle.gif)

Link to next image 2 (http://s2.hubimg.com/u/26197_f260.jpg)

I think it might be a bit of a derail, but as far as my opinion on the swastika: As someone who has spent way too much time on the pre-Christian European past and who adores the subject, I do not think that the swastika outside its modern National Socialist context is anti-semitic. The suncross or "swastika" is found all over pre-Christian European art work, from Ancient Greece, to Russia, to Scandinavia, to Britain, to Iberia and to Rome. You've also noted that it has a place in Hindu religion. Overall, the suncross has been a symbol of life and rebirth throughout Europe and East India. Hitler revived many pre-Christian Germanic symbols, not only the suncross, but also the Sowilo rune (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sowilo You might recognise it from the SS symbol) and incorporated them into his own agenda...that doesn't mean the suncross or Sowilo rune are "racist symbols"...it just means that some idiot decided to use them for those purposes even though they were never racist symbols in the past.

But comparing them to the confederate flag is tricky...since the confederate flag, unlike the suncross or the runes, does not have a non-racist history. The Nazi swastika coupled with the eagle banner as well as the Nazi SS symbol were racist symbols, but the suncross/swastika on its own and the Sowilo rune on its own are not racist and do not stem from racist ideology, but from pre-Christian Heathen spirituality as symbols of life, rebirth and fertility.

The confederate flag as a flag has no history beyond the confederacy and a positive stance on slavery and racism. They were not borrowing an ancient symbol for their own purposes. They used a combination of symbols which, on their own my not be racist, but combined them into a flag that represented their values and the purpose of the confederacy, which was pretty much inextricable from fighting to maintain their slave states against abolitionists.

[The_Lady_Snow]

Ya'll do know these symbols you are posting are rather insensitive to those of us who are affected by them right?

[EnderD_503]

Ya'll do know these symbols you are posting are rather insensitive to those of us who are affected by them right?

I do recognise that. At the same time I was stuck with the issue of how to describe the similarity of a symbol used when the defining aspect of that symbol (the swastika) was removed. In the 80s it was more obvious to people that Slayer were referring to the eagle/swastika combo and replacing the swastika with the inverted pentagram... When dark_crystal responded to my post asking if the swastika was anti-semitic, I took that to mean that she was talking about my reference to it with the Slayer example as a reply to her Billy Idol example using the confederate flag...an example that did not use the swastika, but the motif of the eagle/swastika symbol itself. If that wasn't coming across with words, the best way to show how certain racist symbols can be emulated even when you take out the blatant obvious stuff like the Nazi swastika, was to actually demonstrate it through a comparison.

Yes, certain symbols are offensive and can cause people a lot of distress. At the same time, sometimes they need to be talked about. If 200 years from now there were still wikipedia entries on National Socialism and the American Confederacy, people would be faced with the dilemma of being rather far removed from those events. Time may have faded memory. People might not even be familiar with those symbols anymore. Images would be the only way to convey what those symbols were. And I think we do need to discuss them sometimes.

This also makes me think maybe there should be a topic on the use of offensive symbols, language etc. in actually raising awareness of them and combatting them. I'm thinking of artwork that incorporates these things, but with the purpose of speaking out against them.

[The_Lady_Snow]

I do recognise that. At the same time I was stuck with the issue of how to describe the similarity of a symbol used when the defining aspect of that symbol (the swastika) was removed. In the 80s it was more obvious to people that Slayer were referring to the eagle/swastika combo and replacing the swastika with the inverted pentagram... When dark_crystal responded to my post asking if the swastika was anti-semitic, I took that to mean that she was talking about my reference to it with the Slayer example as a reply to her Billy Idol example using the confederate flag...an example that did not use the swastika, but the motif of the eagle/swastika symbol itself. If that wasn't coming across with words, the best way to show how certain racist symbols can be emulated even when you take out the blatant obvious stuff like the Nazi swastika, was to actually demonstrate it through a comparison.

Yes, certain symbols are offensive and can cause people a lot of distress. At the same time, sometimes they need to be talked about. If 200 years from now there were still wikipedia entries on National Socialism and the American Confederacy, people would be faced with the dilemma of being rather far removed from those events. Time may have faded memory. People might not even be familiar with those symbols anymore. Images would be the only way to convey what those symbols were. And I think we do need to discuss them sometimes.

This also makes me think maybe there should be a topic on the use of offensive symbols, language etc. in actually raising awareness of them and combatting them. I'm thinking of artwork that incorporates these things, but with the purpose of speaking out against them.

Personally I would of used a link that dark_krystal could of looked at, reason being I think it's against the TOS to have that particular symbol, hence the start of this thread.

I'm all about talking and dismantling what the meaning behind the confederate flag and any other symbol of hate, do we have to keep viewieng them no, I see them enough in my everyday life and am reminded of people's ignorance and racist views. It may not be a part of your every day life Ender but for me it's an every day thing living where I do and having to come up in here is distressing. I hope you understand that.

As for Billy Idol I think it's plain stupidity and privelege hence why he felt he could use it. Is he racist? I'm not sure yet he's white so that tends to be something that is part of his life as a white man? Not sure I would have to ask him

[EnderD_503]

Personally I would of used a link that dark_krystal could of looked at, reason being I think it's against the TOS to have that particular symbol, hence the start of this thread.

I'm all about talking and dismantling what the meaning behind the confederate flag and any other symbol of hate, do we have to keep viewieng them no, I see them enough in my everyday life and am reminded of people's ignorance and racist views. It may not be a part of your every day life Ender but for me it's an every day thing living where I do and having to come up in here is distressing. I hope you understand that.

As for Billy Idol I think it's plain stupidity and privelege hence why he felt he could use it. Is he racist? I'm not sure yet he's white so that tends to be something that is part of his life as a white man? Not sure I would have to ask him

I was going to do as you suggested and just turn the photos into links so that people could opt on whether they wanted to click it or not instead, but seems my editing window has timed out.

While I certainly don't see the Nazi swastika every day, I definitely know how distressing it is. There are still members of my family alive who lived through WWII and many of which fled persecution for anti-Nazi (then called "un-German") sentiments, some even winding up in concentration camps and never seeing brothers and sisters again. So I really do get that it is distressing, and I'm sorry you were distressed by the Nazi symbols I posted to try to make my point about hate symbols used by bands for shock value. Thanks for your link suggestion. I hadn't thought of that, and agree it would have been better to do that instead, but like I said I can't edit my post anymore to change it to links.

[The_Lady_Snow]

Ender thank you! for understanding:) and getting it. It's appreciated.

[MissRoni]

I just want to say, in reference to "what do people think?" when they see this entering Nashville....they think " Good Gawd, where the F$%$#$ am I?" Here in Morgantown, WV, we certainly see our share of rebel flags(ack)....but 2 years ago, one of the Student Rows, had a house that flew a rebel flag off of the balcony....and many community members decided that was NOT what they wanted visitors to see first thing when they drove into our town. They asked the University, and WVU responded in kind, and asked that the flag be removed...the landlord then asked them to remove it, and they did...but it was all under the guise of " Is THIS really what we want to represent us to people who visit our community??" It was a proud moment for this WV transplant from San Siego.

[Linus]

I was going to do as you suggested and just turn the photos into links so that people could opt on whether they wanted to click it or not instead, but seems my editing window has timed out.

I modified the post. If you ever run into where you need to edit something and run out, let me know.

[atomiczombie]

When I was 14, I didn't know anything really about the confederate flag or what it means. I had some friends who liked that flag and wore it on their clothing, and they described it to me as the "rebel" flag. I thought it was just a symbol of rebellion, and that is how my friends presented it. I was so ignorant back then, and this is an example of how ignorant people can fly that flag and have no clue what it really represents and how it affects others.

[Apocalipstic]

I just want to say, in reference to "what do people think?" when they see this entering Nashville....they think " Good Gawd, where the F$%$#$ am I?" Here in Morgantown, WV, we certainly see our share of rebel flags(ack)....but 2 years ago, one of the Student Rows, had a house that flew a rebel flag off of the balcony....and many community members decided that was NOT what they wanted visitors to see first thing when they drove into our town. They asked the University, and WVU responded in kind, and asked that the flag be removed...the landlord then asked them to remove it, and they did...but it was all under the guise of " Is THIS really what we want to represent us to people who visit our community??" It was a proud moment for this WV transplant from San Siego.

Just so you don't think all of Nashville is Racist. The statue and flags in I65 is actually not in Nashville which is predominantly Democrat, it is in Republican, wealthy Brentwood to the South and is on private property owned by an attorney who consistently contacts the TN Bureau of Investigations every time someone shoots at the statue and confederate flags with paint balls and actual bullets.

I sincerely don't think there is anything we can do about it...and I HATE IT.

No, we don't want that statue and flags representing us and I applaud WV for taking a stand.

ps. to date no one has been arrested, so maybe the TBI is not looking too hard.

[BullRider_Dillon]

In the movie "To Wong Fu:Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar" Ru Paul wears a confederate flag evening gown and rocks it completely.


Regards,
A good Ol´e Boy

[HowSoonIsNow]

In the movie "To Wong Fu:Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar" Ru Paul wears a confederate flag evening gown and rocks it completely.


Regards,
A good Ol´e Boy

Hi Dillon,

What is a good Ol'e Boy?

Signed and thanks in advance,

Clueless Canadian

[The_Lady_Snow]

In the movie "To Wong Fu:Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar" Ru Paul wears a confederate flag evening gown and rocks it completely.


Regards,
A good Ol´e Boy

When you see Ru Paul wearing the flag upon her body in this manner what is the message you get by this visual?

[cinderella]

every time I see it I cringe. Besides, isn't that flag a fantasy - I mean, the Conferercy doesn't exist anymore...so what's the point? Trying to remind us of the horrors of the Civil War? If you know your history, it's nothing to be proud of - brother against brother...so sad. But then, I think that about all wars. Such a waste.