I don’t believe that is correct. I believe that question was taken up in a thread which has long since faded into the mists of time. IIRC someone pointed out that several old Warner Brothers cartoons with southern themes featured the Confederate battle flag. Those cartoons would have pre-dated the Civil Rights movement.
Long before the Civil Rights movement, southerners were obsessed with the Civil War. Gone with the Wind is an example of the phenomenon. The Civil War has been romanticized as “The Lost Cause” in the South from the moment the damned thing ended. I’m quite confident that the battle flag has been a prominent part of Civil War nostalgia from the very beginning.
I agree with the posters who have raised the point that we Southerners are unhealthily focused on that one narrow aspect of southern history. We’ve got over 400 years of history, but you’d never know it.
As an example, most folks in the South (today such a conservative region), have no clue that the South was the cradle of the People’s Party (the Populist movement) in the late 1800’s-- one of the most progressive, liberal movements this nation has yet produced. My own state, Georgia, elected several People’s Party representatives, including a Senator. Mention Georgia’s liberal past to most folks today, and you are met with glazed eyes or utter incredulity.
VAHermit…of course we are friends, why not?
You don’t actually think that you’re the only person I know that collects Civil War memorabilia do you? My brother-in-law loves the stuff, he metal detects all the time. He’s already dug up my yard! For his birthday last year I gave him a couple of reproduction pictures of Lee and somebody else. That stuff is big business around here. I have a can with bullets and arrowheads (Lots of indians used to be around here too.) that we picked up in my grandmothers yard years ago. She lived at the bottom of a hill and for years everytime it rained the stuff would wash down into the yard. I gave some of it away to my friends that collect. My family has been big on antiques all my life. I used to go “junking” with my great aunt when I was a kid. My mother instilled a sense of history into all of us, and I thank her for that. My sister went on to earn her degree in historical preservation at Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg. (Battlefield there too.)
I just think that by using that flag as a symbol of what we stand for is bad business for us Southerners. It offends a lot of people. And if it doesn’t outright offend them, it conjures up images of toothless, tobacco chewing, rednecks with a gun rack in their truck and a bumper sticker that says “Nigger don’t let the sun set on your ass in this town!” And even though I know everyone is prejudiced to some extent, there is almost no avoiding it, most people do not want to be associated with that kind of thinking anymore. I never did. For me the brainwashing simply did not take, thank the Lord. Yet everyday I have to deal with African Americans and whites who both carry this kind of baggage. Anyway, I have very little else to say about the subject other than, that flag does not represent me, a Virginian, a Southern woman, and a person proud of their home soil and it’s heritage.
Sadly, this is true. VaHermit, while you and I might look at the flag and think about heritage, and brave fighting men, and southern culture, I think we have to be honest with ourselves and admit that when a great many others look at the flag it conjures up images of slavery, racism and hatred.
I say it’s sad, because I know that most people who fly the flag mean no harm by it. Most people who fly the flag do not mean to express racism or hatred. They mean only to express their southern identity and their pride in that identity. Unfortunately, the vocal minority who do use the flag to express racism and hatred have corrupted that symbol beyond redemption.
It would be nice to have a symbol of “southern-ness”. Something we could display to express pride in being southern without also unintentionally conveying an impression of hatred. Maybe we should adopt the Bonnie Blue Flag. It was, I believe, a symbol of the South even before the War, and has not (yet anyway) been imbued with the same negative associations as the battle flag.
I’ll have you know that I make a northern style clam chowder that will make your taste buds writhe in ecstacy, and my baked stuffed lobster aint half bad either!. So don’t go putting down northern cooking. I won’t necessarily dispute “manners” thing with you though. Them there is fighting words!
Pardon that last post. I apparently don’t have the best self-editing skills. It should have read as follows:
I’ll have you know that I make a northern style clam chowder that will make your taste buds writhe in ecstacy, and my baked stuffed lobster aint half bad either!. So don’t go putting down northern cooking. Them there is fighting words! I won’t necessarily dispute the “manners” thing with you though.
So Confederate Flags aside, I want to know what the deal is with all the anti-Yankee propaganda? Bumperstickers with slogans like “The Only Yankee Is A Dead Yankee”, or “Yankee Go Home!”. Why so much animosity and the need to display it openly?
Guitar…Don’t know about the anti-Yankee propaganda…I live in VA and there are probably more of you guys here than us! I am interested in that clam chowder! I’d love to try it. Don’t temp a chubby girl who thinks Emeril is the sexiest guy on television.
I’ll try it if you’re will to try my oyster stew, fried green tomatoes and sweet potato pie.
'Cause you shot my great-granddaddy, you blue-bellied bastards!
I say that jokingly but there is an element of truth. My family had kids very late in life, the result being that, though I am only in my 30’s, I had two great-grandfathers in the War (including the one that y’all shot at Antietam – you bastards!!).
So if you look at it from, say, my father’s perspective (he is 80), his grandfather was shot by “Yankees”. Not hard to understand the resentment he actually does feel (and which I jokingly mimic). Add to that the resentment caused by Reconstruction, which lingered looong after the troops went home, and there used to be a lot of hatred for northerners. It fades a bit with each generation. (With my grandfather, it was real hatred; with my father, a simmering resentment; with me, a mild annoyance sometimes. ;))
Another factor contributing to resentment is that there are so many folks from up north moving into the south these days, so southerners have some sense that their culture is slowly (or even quickly) being subsumed). (It’s hard to find a good barbecue place these days among all the Burger Kings.)
Finally, there is a strong resentment of outside criticism, which I don’t think many northerners pick up on. Yes, there are problems with southern culture. But that doesn’t change the resentment felt when someone from outside the region comes in and says “Look, you are wrong and evil, and you have to do things this way.”
(I can sort of understand the resentment the Chinese must feel, even though they may recognize the faults in their own system, when we come in from outside and try to dictate to them the way they must behave.)
The only thing that bugs me about the Yankees, my boss for one, is that they complain about the heat. I like the heat and humidity. Give me good old Virginia dog day to 10 below anytime! Oh yeah and they make fun of us eating collard greens when they eat mince pie! I fail to see where eating cooked greens is any worse than eating rotting orange peel!
This is kinda cute…I once worked with a black woman from Ohio. It was Christmas and we were in the break room talking about what we were fixing for Christmas dinner. When I said that I was cooking up a pot of collards she was shocked! She said…White folks up north don’t eat greens! I laughed and told her…Well fooled you…All this time you thought you were eating soul food when you were really just eating southern food!
I agree with you on the heat. I’d much rather be too hot than too cold (Although cold weather does promote snuggling in front of cozy fireplaces). I also have no problems with collards, but okra is another matter. As for the sweet potato pie you mentioned in your earlier post - sounds pretty good. We’ll have to cook for eachother sometime.
Still trying to get a better handle on the underlying anger of the seething anti-Yankee bumperstickers I’ve seen though. Trust me, we don’t have any anti-southern bumperstickers up north and we too actually lost loved ones in the Civil War. I can see how Reconstruction could have promoted a lot of animosity that may have trickeled down through the generations though.
well guitarmax southerners lost like 3x in civilian casualtys of their armys casualties. And theres of course the fact that the North started the war:P
In america we dont kill the other persons army we devistate their people.
Good points. Guess I just should learn not to take those bumper stickers so personally. I’m from the north, but my ancestory did not participate in the Civil War, so I guess that I’m not deserving of the sloganistic scorn that adorns a few southern bumpers.
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724 cigarettes not smoked, saving $90.61.
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I haven’t seen one of those stickers in years myself. I would imagine though that if you all did pack up and go home half of Virginia would be empty and 3/4 of Florida!
Oh yeah and okra isn’t so bad, especially in a nice chicken or seafood gumbo. But then I’ll eat just about anything that doesn’t eat me first. Except catfish, can you believe that!? I hate catfish! Not very southern of me is it? Maybe it’s because most of the men I’ve known were a bunch of bottom feeders and they’ve given me a real aversion to their kind.
Well, first off, I haven’t seen any of those bumper stickers around since maybe the 70’s. Maybe there are some; I don’t know.
Secondly, in addition to the civilian casualties, there were other factors. The Union Army purposefully conducted a campaign of destruction, you will recall. They burned houses and crops. Women were raped (as will happen in all wars). An entire mill full of working women in Roswell, Georgia were shipped off and not heard from again. You might not hear about these things so much in history class, at least not in great detail, but they linger in the collective memory down here.
And yes Satan, it’s been 150 years, but hey, I’m in my 30’s and still only 3 generations removed from the conflict. Granted, that’s exceptional but there are plenty older people around who are keenly aware of their personal family histories. The resentment fades over the generations, as I said. But if you’re a Confederate soldier, and you come home to learn that your house has been burned, your livestock are gone, and your wife killed herself because she was pregnant from a Union soldier… Well, you can understand how the anger that might engender could be sustained for a while.
The resentment was much more palpable in the 60’s and 70’s, when I was a kid. It’s hardly there anymore today. Today what goes on between northerners and southerners is more good-natured ribbing than anything. There are a few vocal folks who genuinely resent northerners just for being northerners, but I would say that’s a tiny minority these days. We’re pretty much over it.
Well we might as well get over it, cause they’re locating down here in droves! Wonder why that is if so many of them think we’re all a bunch of racist hayseeds! The Carpetbaggers!
