Do you have any evidence for your assumption that relatively few of those who show the confederate flag intend it as a display of racism? Or is that just wishful thinking on your part?
First off, my scorn for peckerwoods that sport the rebel flag hardly amounts to oppression. Freedom of speech doesn’t confer freedom from the consequences of your words. I take abuse for being liberal; this type takes their lumps for being reactionaries. Think of it as the marketplace of ideas in action. And, let me state again that there is no uncertainty on my part that they fully deserve the derision. I don’t know they are bigots, true. But if not they are irresponsible assholes for spreading racism anyway.
Your DWB analogy, which I didn’t quote, fails to accurately represent the situation here. I’m not judging someone because of who they are ( whites ) but rather something they are doing ( displaying the rebel flag ). I didn’t prejudge anyone. I judged them after I saw the symbol.
I thought I was being pedantic enough about why the flag is a racist symbol but I’ll try one more time. There is a difference between a thing and a symbol. The thing is the actual thing. The symbol just represents the thing; it’s not the thing itself. Q: What does a symbol represent? A: Anything you want it to. There is no inherent meaning for any symbol. They only hold whatever significance we attach to them. ( Now pay attention because this is the part you are missing. ) Lots of people see the rebel flag as a sign of racism. You keep trying to avoid the point by claiming that they are wrong, that it doesn’t mean what they think it does. But it does. Q: Why? A: Because they think it does. Now there are a number of reasons why people make that connection but they are immaterial here. A symbol means what people think it means, no matter why they think it.
So, to them, it is a symbol of racism. Thus irresponsibly flashing the flag signals racism. It divides us along racial lines. Is that what you want?
Lots of people see the American flag and the star of David as symbols of racism. Lots of people see the peace symbol as a symbol of Satanism and Communism. And lots of people * don’t * see them that way, and you have failed to explain why their way of seeing those symbols can fairly be dismissed out of hand without discussion or consideration. All you’re doing here is shouting over and over again that your way of viewing the Confederate battle flag is the only legitimate way of viewing it, and anybody who disagrees is either a fool or a monster.
Using your warped logic, whenever I see a black kid wearing baggy pants, a backward baseball camp and lots of bling-bling, I am not obligated to try to understand why he * as an individual * chooses to dress in that fashion. I am perfectly justified in assuming that he deserves my scorn and loathing because he is either an actual “gangstuh” or he is through contemptible ignorance helping to propagate the “gangstuh” mentality. In short, there is no need to examine my own visceral response to his style of dress; I can just go ahead and spew hatred at him. I don’t have to think about anything except the fact that his clothing and jewelry offend me. I don’t have to consider what his style of dress means to * him * ; I only have to consider what it means to * me. * Open your mind just a wee bit here, okay?
Of course not. Do you have any evidence that relatively most of those who show the conferderate battle flag or naval jack intend it as a display of racism? Of course not.
Perhaps you could illustrate, then, what nobe virtues the Confederate battle flag is supposed to represent. “Southern Pride” doesn’t count, unless you wish to actively tie in Southern Pride with a rebellious uprising resulting in a war of which no one on either side ought to be proud.
Quite so, and quite irrelevant since that’s not what I’m saying. My point, since you’ve still missed it, is that to mistreat someone based on a flawed understanding of their motivations is morally wrong; where does freedom of speech even come into play? Worse, though, is to use that flawed understanding to hurt someone.
So if I see you wandering down the street wearing pink and I think “he’s one of those evil pinkists!” I’m perfectly okay. If I wander on up to you and start railing at you for being a pinkist, I’m (a) an idiot and (b) morally in the wrong, but on the good side of the law (up to a point, anyway). If I go spreading it around that you’re one of those damned pinkists and everyone should avoid you at all costs, I am, I think, oppressing you even if I’ve done nothing legally wrong. And if I try to deny you a job, or work to ban your ability to wear pink, or the like… then not only am I a stupid idiot, I am a criminal. Do you begin to see how this works?
If one were to buy this argument, then I don’t see how you can avoid being tarred by your own brush. After all, you’re advocating hatred, and if spreading racism is bad, spreading hatred is equally so.
Personally, I think this argument is utter tripe: you’ve still not managed to even begin to suggest a mechanism by which person A, seeing the confederate flag, all of a sudden decides “hey, I should go beat me a negro.” Or anything along those lines. Which would constitute spreading racism.
So what? You take an external characteristic that admittedly correlates with an internal characteristic and assign the latter to those who possess the former.
That’s prejudice. Just like saying someone must be stupid because they’re three times your size and have knuckles which drag on the ground. Or saying that someone must have no self-control because they’re as big around as they are tall.
I can only conclude that you’ve been paying no attention whatsoever. I’ve admitted, more than once, that different people attach different meanings to the same symbol. I realize that lots of people see the rebel flag as a sign of racism. And I don’t see why in the living hell that makes it okay to assume that someone flying the rebel flag is a racist.
In other words, I recognize that there’s no inherent meaning to the symbol. You pay lip-service to this, then say that it means racism. No, it bloody well doesn’t. It means racism to you. It means racism to monstro. It means racism to lots of people. But it doesn’t mean racism; it means nothing by itself, and the meaning is in the eyes of the beholder.
No, flashing the flag signals whatever the flag-flasher intends it to signal. That other people read the signal differently is beside the point. You are free to associate the flag with racism; you are not free, morally, to accuse those who flash the flag of racism, because you’ve no proof of your accusations. Your other alternative, you say, is that if they’re not racists, they’re assholes, because they interpret a symbol differently than you do and aren’t afraid to use said symbol. You’ll pardon me if I find this a distinctly unconvincing rationalization.
No, it divides people who fail to impute their interpretation of a symbol to others from people who don’t. The latter are basing their opinions in prejudice, ignorance, or both. And what I want is a society where prejudice, ignorance, and the like
are not catered to.
Really, what I want is a society where prejudice, ignorance, and the like are eradicated, I suppose. So here I am, working towards my goal. It’s always nice to see one has a firm opposition.
Yes: what noble virtues are you illustrating, here, exactly? And what do they have to do with the Confederate battle flag? So Lee was reluctant to take up arms against the Union Army, but did so nonetheless. That doesn’t make the cause of the rebellion any more noble, nor does it render the Confederate battle flag representative of Lee’s apprehension. And, given that he, with his army, invaded the North on more than one occassion, his claim of “save in defense of my native State… I hope I may never be called on to draw my sword” rings a bit hollow anyway.
Sure there were brave and/or noble souls on either side in the war. I don’t see how the Confederate battle flag is any way representative of those. And that quote by Lee fails to make the connection. The flag represents firstly, the army of the CSA, and secondly, the purpose for the formation of that army in the first place: to rebel against the North, and a major component of that rebellion centered around the institution of slavery.
See here’s the thing: the rebellion, and its symbols, take on a very different light for that very reason. Defending one’s homeland is noble. Defending a way of life that includes slavery as a major component of that way of life is not.
Lee invaded the North with the sole purpose of pressuring the Federal government to surrender, not to conquer land and incorporate it into the Confederacy. The Confederate troops would have been withdrawn after a Union surrender. The South was making no territorial claims against the North, and was very much fighting a defensive war.
Wage slavery could be and often was every bit as bad as chattel slavery. Many a Southern plantation owner could have fairly claimed to have treated his slaves more humanely than many a Northern factory or mine owner treated his so-called “free” workers. And it wasn’t the St. Andrews cross that flew over the corpses of American Indians at Wounded Knee. I am immensely skeptical that the North was morally superior to the South.
Wage slavery? Is that the kind where the factory owner had the right to take your children and sell them to someone in another state and you’d never see them again? No matter how “kindly” a plantation owner treated slaves, he still had the right to do that. And no slave could ever be free of that hanging over his/her head.
I guess my history books left out reference to that type of slavery.
It was a defensive war fought on behalf of the Confederate States of America, not on behalf of his “native State”. All of which is beside the point, of course…
I, for one, have said nothing about moral superiority. I said (or implied) that there is nothing noble about the South’s primary motivation for rebellion, and I believe that by extension, there is nothing noble about the primary symbol of that rebellion, the Confederate battle flag. As such, I have no difficulty at all in seeing why many are offended by that symbol, but I have much difficulty in seeing what there is to revere about it.
If I am mistaken, I am mistaken in very good company. Throughout the nineteenth century there was an ongoing debate as to whether or not wage slavery was as bad as (or even worse than) chattel slavery, and by no means was it only Southern planters who maintained that it was. Marcus Cunliffe’s * Chattel Slavery and Wage Slavery: The Anglo-American Context 1830-1860 * offers an overview of that debate, and the arguments of those who maintained that wage slavery was an abomination on a level with chattel slavery are not to be sneered at.
If you were one of these wage slaves, were you still considered human?
Could you be taught to read and write?
Were you regularly raped by your bosses? Were the resulting children taken from you because they made Ms. Boss uncomfortable?
Were you inculcated with the belief that you deserved your lot because the bible says so.
Could you walk the streets on your own volition?
Could you save money to move to a different part of the country?
Did you have any belongings?
If you worked on your own time, at a totally different job, could the boss from your other job take all of your wages, without giving you a cent?
If someone wronged you, did you have any legal recourse?
If you managed to escape your wage slave existence, did you have to constantly carry proof of your “freedom” or risk being tossed back in the factory or mine?
Could you vote?
Could you protect your children?
Did you have the freedom to name your children? Did they have a last name?
I repeat: Were you considered human?
The conditions of the North back then were horrible enough to stand alone. Don’t make yourself look foolish by drawing comparisons between “wage slavery” vs. the perculiar institution of the South. The difference goes way beyond wages.
As many families had no choice other than to send their children to labor under horrid conditions in factories and mines, I don’t see how it makes much difference as to whether or not the government legally recognized those children as the property of the factory and mine owners. As I see it, what mattered was the immense imbalance of power between the bosses and the workers. (Christ, I almost sound like a commie here, don’t I?) And bear in mind that untold numbers of families simply disintegrated under the crushing weight of poverty, so I don’t see that wage slavery did more than chattel slavery to preserve families. And in at least one respect, many chattel slaves were clearly better off than many wage slaves. Society imposed both a moral and legal obligation on the masters of chattel slaves to provide them with food, clothing, shelter and medical care. The masters of wage slaves had no such obligation.
If your history books left you with the impression that millions of workers in Europe and North America did not lead lives of degradation and powerlessness in many ways comparable to that of outright slavery, then you either did not understand your books or your books were sadly lacking.
I strongly encourage you to open a thread to debate whether or not wage slavery was as bad as real slavery in the 19th century US. I would be extremely surprised if you could find even one person on this board to agree with you on that. Don’t hijack this thread for that purpose. Put your idea out and see whether you are in good company or not.
Chattel slaves were definitely considered human. Their masters would hardly have bothered to convert them to Christianity if they thought they weren’t.
A great many wage slaves were deprived of even the most basic education.
Sexual abuse of wage slaves was common. And while the resulting children may not have been taken away by force, many were abandoned or sent to orphanages because the mothers could not afford to raise them or could not face the shame.
Yes. Poverty was commonly believed to be the moral fault of the poor. And if that didn’t work, there was a cute little theory known as “social Darwinism” which explained that the system was the inevitable result of the workings of the Universe, and there was no point in rebelling against it.
Well, if they had any energy left after working twelve hours a day six days a work under brutal conditions, yes, they could. A bit of drunken debauchery on Saturday night was often the only “freedom” that a wage slave could look forward too. On that point, I’ll concede that wage slaves were marginally better off than chattel slaves. Marginally.
It was not at all uncommon for chattel slaves to earn and save money of their own. I understand quite a few managed to buy their freedom this way.
Not many, no. A few clothes, some cookware and tools, a few pieces of rickety furniture perhaps. When every cent you make goes to food and rent, and when at the end of the week you often find yourself deeper in debt to your boss’s company store than you were at the beginning, you don’t generally have much opportunity to accumulate property. A wage slave’s apartment was often as wretched as a chattel slave’s cabin.
LOL. I doubt that many wage slaves who spent pretty much every waking moment six days a week laboring for subsistence wages had much time and energy to moonlight. And it was not at all uncommon for chattel slaves to earn money of their own elsewhere once they had discharged their duties at the plantation. In New Orleans, for example, slaves often earned money of their own working as porters in the harbor. And it should be noted that through such practices as “the company store,” the masters of wage slaves often gave with one hand and took away with the other. Many a wage slave, having completed a brutal and exhausting month at work in his master’s factory or mine, found himself deeper in debt to his boss at the end of the month than he was at the beginning.
If you have no money for a lawyer, little or no knowledge of how the legal system worked, and the certain knowledge that your employer would retaliate should you bring legal action against him, I don’t see how this right was much more than a legal fiction in many cases.
No, they didn’t. However, as the alternative to a wage slave existence was often slow starvation in the street, and as the bosses could always find some other desperate soul to take your place, the bosses had little or no need to control the movements of wage slaves who had for one reason or another managed to slip beyond their grasp. They had plenty of other raw meat to exploit and brutalize. You see, that was one of the beauties of the wage slave system for the bosses. Unlike the chattel slave, the wage slave was disposable.
Often a wage slave couldn’t vote. Property reguirements and other restrictions often denied them the right to vote. And even when they did have the right to vote, political corruption often made it meaningless.
From who? Wage slaves certainly couldn’t protect them from the bosses.
Yes, they had they the freedom to name their children. So, yes, I’ll concede that the wage slave was marginally better off than the chattel slave. Marginally. I’m sure it was a great comfort to them while they were watching the children die.
(shrug) I repeat: Chattel slaves were definitely considered human, and unlike the wage slaves they at least had a definite place in the social order. As noted earlier, their masters were recognized as having both legal and moral obligations to their slaves. The masters of wage slaves had no legal or moral obligation beyond paying them their pitiful wages.
Don’t make yourself look foolish by denying the horrors endured by millions of wage earners in North American and Europe. Slavery in North America was by no means unique and unparalleled, and the gap between wage slavery and chattel slavery was by no means nearly as wide as you imagine it to be.
I’m with John Mace. I don’t want to hijack this thread, Lonesome. You should really start a new one. That way, I and others can engage you in a more productive way.
But I will reply to this:
Don’t create strawmen to bolster your weak argument. By acknowledging the differences between “Northern” and “Southern” slavery, one is neither denying the horrors of one or citing the uniqueness of the other.
I know a typical free person living in North American had it much better than a typical slave. I can’t think of anything you could say that would change my mind about this. But you’re welcome to try, in another thread.