Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Freebird? Y’know, the quintessential southern rock anthem? Played first into the ground, then deeper into the earth’s very core by a zillion stoned 1970’s and '80’s teenagers*? As heavily derided and mocked as it was adored, with its interminable multiple guitar solos and embracing of the values of immature drunken adult male musician’s failure to commit to relationships because, hey, endless road pussy? It sits right up there with Stairway to Heaven and Hotel California as one of the most overplayed rock songs in the history of the genre.
How could you not know Freebird and call yourself a good American :D?
Yeah, I was one of them for a little while. Let’s not forget Green Grass and High Tides as well. If you didn’t have multiple lead guitars in your southern rock band in the 1970’s you weren’t worth a damn ;).
Uh…pretty much since the Battle of Appomattox?
Seriously though. I’ve always associated the Confederate Flag with Southern redneck culture. Unfortunately Southern redneck culture is also often associated with being a big dumb drunk racist asshole (as well as in the affable fun loving Dukes of Hazzard, Beverly Hillbillies, Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy sense).
Just one of the downsides of losing a war where you are fighting for the freedom to own other people.
I disagree that it was ever some universal symbol for “social rebel”. Irrespective of its racist connotations, since it’s popularization that flag has pretty much always been only associated with the South. And when I say South, I mean “good ole boy South that doesn’t take shit from no damn Yankees”. It was a symbol embraced by white folks who strongly identify as Southern, often to the extent that they see themselves as Southern first, American second.
Since white supremacy was still very much a significant sociopolitical influence in the South during the rise of this flag, it is not a surprise to me that it was appropriated by racist groups. Slavery after all was the basis for the rebel cause, so to see “rebel” in that flag without also seeing “white supremacy” requires either a great deal of ignorance or willful blindness.
The nation’s consciousness has changed dramatically in the last 30 years. It used to be that when black people found something offensive, they had no expectation that the mainstream population cared enough to listen to their complaints. In my household, it was common knowledge that the Confederate flag was racist. Pretty much every black person I know has always appreciated this. What has changed is that more white people are aware.
Yes, it’s not that the flag suddenly became racist. It’s that racism and white supremacism was such an integral and assumed part of American culture that it was not remarkable to white people that many uses of the flag expressed those values.
To expound on this: Does anyone remember the miniseries The North and South? It came out in 1985 and starred Patrick Swayze. As was typical of miniseries during that time, its release was treated as a big, important, gather-'round-the-TV-in-your-pajamas event. It was taken for granted that the movie portrayed the two sides of the Civil War and all its salacious and political complexities in a manner that any American could understand and appreciate. No side was left out or unfairly maligned, you see. Even if that required that certain unpleasantries be glossed over. And even if that meant all the abolitionist characters were portrayed as abrasive crazies. You got to see bad Yankees and good Southerners. There was some nuance (at least as much as you would expect in a 80’s minisaga).
Except when it came to black people. Black folks pretty much represented nothing but props, plot devices, and side-kicks. A few weeks ago, I watched the first episode of TNS and noticed that at no point in time did black people appear on screen without there being a white lead who was driving the action. Black people didn’t have lives independent from whites, and were not fleshed out or developed. They barely had lines. Their roles were limited by the extent to which they advanced the story arcs of the white characters.
I’m not aware of any uproar about this when it came out, but if the same show came out today, I suspect it would be torn to pieces. TNS is so obviously white-centric that it would be unacceptable to a society that expects black characters to be as fully formed as white characters, especially when the setting is populated with blacks and is ripe for black-driven subplots. In contrast to year’s past, more people are sensitive to racial bias in storytelling. We’re more likely to be squicked out–rather than impressed and charmed–by the regal flamboyance of the Southern aristocracy, because the human atrocities that funded its wealth is no longer an afterthought in the American consciousness. It has come a lot closer to the fore.
The same process is pretty much what happened with the flag.
Of note is that the previous (and now current) flag was based on the Confederate stars-and-bars. So it’s been a Confederate-based flag since 1879. (There was a brief period with a strange multi-flag for a bit before the most recent change.)
As to whether or not it was racist: The newspaper reports of the legislative session makes it quite clear. They were extremely unhappy about school desegregation rules and were openly saying “F.U.” to the feds. The people at the time weren’t mincing any words about it. Of course, history is being re-written like all things Southern. So now they claim it was for the Civil War Centennial. Which was several years in the future. Right.
Strangely, there is no certainty what state flag Georgia units used during the actual war. There was no official flag and different people used different (often vaguely described) flags prior to 1879.
Problem is, isn’t that how it was? That was kinda the point of slavery, to dehumanize black people to the point where they didn’t even have ideas of their own?
To me, North and South is a classic. And Priam was at least fully developed as a character. They could do that because he ran away and married Virgilia.
Abolitionists were often fanatics. As I mentioned in another thread, most of the moral crusades of our history were led by deeply religious people. Virgilia wasn’t portrayed that way, but there’s no question that the abolitionist movement had a lot of religious fanatics, at least the ones in the trenches taking risks. generally, moderates don’t put their life or careers on the line for a cause. That’s what fanatics do, so most of the abolitionists of historical consequences were pretty fanatical.
That was the nice thing about the 80s. It was the “sweet spot” for art. Political correctness wasn’t a dominant factor back then, but neither was racism. So if you wanted to make a history of the Civil War period, you could tell it like it was. Nowadays they’d have to make corrections to avoid an uproar, because that’s more important than telling the truth.
Are there any statues or schools named after John Brown? If not, why not? Yes, he used violence to make a point. So did about a million other ‘heroes’.
In real life, black people actually sometimes drove significant events. In real life, black people had major parts of their lives that were independent from whites. In real life, black people were fully fleshed out and developed human beings.
In real life, most of what was notable about the antebellum South (like plantation culture) was driven by the sweat, blood, and efforts of black people.
Black people were not bystanders of history. Black people helped slaves escape, and helped escaped slaves once they were free. Black people helped to defeat the Confederacy.
I was born in 1967 in New York City, and there was plenty of rebellion and counter-culture, especially in my world, as my parents were professors-- well, my father was, my mother was working on her Ph.D, and a teaching associate. I spent a lot of time around hippies, but I don’t recall seeing the “rebel” flag, ever. I saw the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag at a lot of anti-Vietnam protests, but I don’t recall a single “rebel” flag.
When I came to Indiana the first time in 1981, I started to see the rebel flag, and by then it was already the flag of what my cousin called “racist assholes.”
I hated the TV show The Dukes of Hazzard, so I never saw enough of it to register that there was a rebel flag on the car. I don’t know that I would have recognized it as being associated with the Civil War, but if I did, I probably would have assumed it was racist.
FWIW, I looked to see what flag DW Griffith has the Klan riding with at the end of Birth of a Nation, and it looks like a solid, dark color, but I can’t tell whether it’s blue, red, green, black, or what.
Blacks were treated like blank, uninteresting non-humans to advance the slavery cause, yes. And this was a horrible thing.
And so if the point of the movie was to treat black people the same way in the service of showcasing fascinatingly complex white folks, without any irony, then that would make it an awful movie.
And they often weren’t. You wouldn’t appreciate that if you watched the movie, though.
