Yes, because when I see the flag displayed in a window, on a bumper sticker, or on a T-shirt the symbol says to me the following.
The Confederacy had a just cause.
The Confederacy will rise again.
All was good and pure in the world when white men were called Master and niggers knew their place.
Them Yankees might try to take away my guns, my God-given right to hang a nigger that steps out of line, or my Bible, but they will not take away my right to display the badge of my heritage!
The last statement is not so much offensive as it is just irritating and ignorant.
One day in Virginia at a gas station, I saw a guy with a pick-up truck that bore two large decals of the flag. And as if that wasn’t enough, his T-shirt depicted some blond hoochie mama with her legs spread at an obtuse angle, wearing a Confederate flag over her breasts. Now perhaps I was wrong to prejudge this man, but I found his whole presentation ugly and I would’ve been mighty hesitant to hitch a ride with him if my car broke down. Let’s call it a negative gut reaction.
Depends on the context. In a historical setting, fine. Confederate museums or historic sites are also appropriate just as it is appropriate to fly British flags at Michigan’s Fort Michilimackinac.
On a pickup truck, it sends the wrong message. It’s possible many that display the flag are good and decent people, but to me it says racism. As part of a state flag design, it is entirely inappropriate. But I also think as a graphic design, it is one of the best if not the best designs ever made into a flag.
But, I also think that IF it ever were a benign symbol, that it has been usurped by a nasty group of folk. I would get a new symbol if I were one of those “heritage” loving Southerners. BTW, my ancestors were small farmers in KY and VA–slave owners on both sides.
To me, the sight of it on a pickup says: Hey there! I’m an uneducated, proud to be so, narrowminded, bigoted redneck! How the hell are y’all!
Why? As was mentioned earlier the flag became popular during the time when legal inequality based on race was being challenged. What else could it mean but, “We got a* right* to keep those people in their proper place you carpet bagging SOB?”
No, as I stated the flag, and the CSA is not about race as far as I see it. If you want to know my opinion I feel that slavery and finally segregation would have gone the way of the dinosaur in the CSA shortly after the split as the industrial revolution hit them (segregation a bit later as it did in the USA). I feel the CSA had the right to succeed and the USA overstepped it’s rights to deny that by force in (to borrow a modern term) an illegal war (again my humble O).
This emboldened the Fed gov’t and we are paying for it in many ways today with fewer rights.
I see the Confederate Battle Flag as a symbal of the south, not as a symbal of slavery or racism. I perfer the Stars and Bars (First National Flag, not the CBF or Navy Jack as everyone is calling it) to be the symbal, I think it is a very nice flag…
Since the CBF has such a bad rep to it, I am here-by proposing that all the Southerners here on the SDMB start to fly the Stars and Bars (again, the First National Flag) outside their homes. I’m sure a lot of people around you won’t even know what the flag is.
I was actually the first to point that out in an interest in heading off a post like yours, only 6 posts down from my first one. Whenever I’ve ever heard the term “Stars and Bars,” the Confederate Naval jack was the flag that they were talking about (albeit erroneously). I do, in fact, know the difference between the flags. Thanks.
Not offended by it. Would never display it. I would consider it rude, even if it were being displayed without ill intent.
My experience is that the flag has become more of a hot-button issue over the past twenty years than it used to be. You saw it all over the place in the 70s and on up through the early 80s and no one seemed to take offense.
It was featured prominently in the previously-cited Dukes of Hazzard. Lynyrd Skynyrd used a huge one as a backdrop at their concerts, and I don’t think they intended to express anything other than pride of place and a rebellious spirit. You even saw Confederate flag decals and patches for sale in children’s comic books (along with peace signs, ecology flags and black power emblems). In the early 70s you could find a lot of hippies wearing Confederate flag patches on their jeans. There’s a scene in Animal House featuring a Confederate flag displayed on a dorm wall, which was common enough back in the day (again, as a symbol of rebelliousness).
Now it may well be that people were offended by the flag all along and just said nothing about it until the past few years. And it may be that the flag has been seen so often at the head of KKK rallies that it has gradually become anathema to the majority of people.
Whatever the reason, I think that perception has shifted. If you fly the flag today you do so with the foreknowledge that it will cause offense. Now you may not intend offense, but I don’t think you can plausibly deny knowing that it will cause offense.
For that reason, I think that displaying the Confederate flag in these times is rude. And what could be more un-Southern than such a terrible breach of etiquette?
Nope. Not even on the back of a pick-em-up truck. I’ve seen too many damn good folks without a racist bone in their bodies decorate with it to make any such assumptions. What it represents to those folks is…not exactly rebelliousness, although I could see where you’d interpret it that way. It’s more of a “ain’t nobody coming in here and telling me how to live” kind of attitude. A fierce, sometimes almost pathologic, determination to live by their own lights, I guess you’d call it.
Oh, and Dukes of Hazard was supposed to be set in rural eastern Kentucky. There just plain aren’t that many black people in eastern Kentucky, and especially not in the really rural areas. Never have been. With so little arable land, slaves weren’t economically feasible, and there’s really not anything to draw anybody, black or white, to relocate out in the hind end of nowhere. We’re talking about an area where there’s often one or two black families in the whole county. I suppose it’s possible the lack of black characters is racially motivated, but it seems far more likely that it’s just a reflection of the place they’re depicting.
nitpick - the show was supposed to be set in a fictional county in Georgia, but there is a real-life Hazard, Kentucky. Sorry, just can’t hold my tongue on such an important matter!
Yeah, my husband pointed out the same thing, Ravenman. I could have sworn it was supposed to be around Hazard, but he says they talk about running up to Atlanta for stuff. I guess that’s what I get for talking about shows I haven’t seen in twenty years. Oops. And I’m well aware of the real-life Hazard. We may be moving up there this summer, actually.
I dunno about the black population of the more mountainous areas of Georgia, but it seems like they’d have the same sort of factors in play as the mountainous areas of Kentucky (less arable land, etc.). It wouldn’t terribly surprise me if the black population in such areas was significantly lower than in the flatland areas of the state.
Actually many of those people with the “aint nobody coming in here and telling me how to live” stems from their feeling of damn Yankees coming in and saying they have to let colored go to school with them and to let the colored vote. That is where the attitude comes from. That is where it started. They also probably feel that way now to those who say that we should let gays marry. It’s not that they are rebelling against diet and exercise tips.
