It’s like he thinks SC taking that flag down happened years ago. It happened as a result of people getting into other people’s faces and demanding that it come down.
All of which has fuck all to do with the point I was making.
Evidently no accomplishment counts if you once did something bad, so why not wallow in the bad and wave the stars and bars?
Just to be clear, this is the Stars and Bars, the first national flag of the Confederacy — Flags of the Confederate States of America - Wikipedia
.svg){kind=link}
This is the Confederate battle flag, which was never a national flag — Flags of the Confederate States of America - Wikipedia
You want to know what has worked down here? Shaming. From fellow Southerners.
It can be as subtle has one lady whispering to another how “trashy” a house looks with a Confederate flag hanging from it. In the Southern mind, the flag has come to be associated with trashiness. Nobody wants to be one of the Ewells from To Kill a Mockingbird.
And that it why it has been so easy for conservative Republican politicians from good families to step up and denounce the flag, or remove it from capitol grounds. No amount of yelling or insults does this.
I will tell you a more specific story about how the flag came down back in my small hometown in north Georgia. The mayor spoke out, calmly, about how it bothered him. He didn’t scream about racial injustice, or lynchings from 60 years ago, or the horrible carnage of slavery, or what a bunch of rednecks and “slavers” everyone was. He just said he thought it was inappropriate. (This was before the events in Charleston, by the way.) And the County Commissioner, hearing that (and no dount having it reinforced by constituents), began taking steps to get the flag, and the attached Confederate monument, off the lawn of the Courthouse. It did not require yelling, or noisy protests, or placards, or editorials in the New York Times.
The mayor, by the way, is black, in a town with a 12% black population.
The idea that them damn Yankees shouldn’t speak up is a terrible idea.
Yes, shaming has worked brilliantly in Georgia.
“Once did something bad”? That was American slavery? But the Southerners are revisionists, right?
No, if you “once did something bad,” it doesn’t negate all other accomplishments. But if you set up a country that legalizes slavery, count slaves as 3/5 of a person in your Constitution, allow slavery to spread across new states in your country, have your Supreme Court declare that negroes CANNOT be citizens, pass laws to ensure escaped slaves get returned, maintain slavery for generations, and then only end slavery AFTER a civil war, you lose the moral high ground to point your finger south and scream, “Racists!” It rings hollow and hypocritical. Especially when Northern cities continue to be hot beds of racism and segregation.
Them damn Yankees are as racist as anybody, in my experience. Maybe they should look in their own back yards while they are looking for injustice, as comforting as it may be to pretend that racism is a Southern problem.
Yep – and for doing them, the US should be criticized (as it is and has been), and for ending them, the US should be praised. By ending them, the US has shown itself to be far, far superior to the Confederacy.
That’s nonsense. If them damn Yankees are doing a specific racist thing–and they are, no doubt–then speak up about that, too. Your voice would be really helpful when NYC cops are stopping and frisking black men at a high rate, for example. You can say something like, “Listen, assholes, I’m a white Southerner, and even I can see you’re being racist!”
Speak up, dude. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
The slave states probably did, but you keep ignoring the other states.
And I pointed out several other differences.
No they weren’t – in many Union states, they weren’t slaves.
It didn’t exist in Massachussets at the time (and in many other states), so that’s much less atrocity a-happening in the Union.
Perhaps some racists, but not all, and not Dylann Roof (and many others). And the Confederate flag, unlike the US flag, was resurrected to prominence in the mid-20th century explicitly to oppose Civil Rights and integration. And the Confederate flag, unlike the US flag, never flew over the overturning of racist and oppressive laws and practices.
Of course the Yankees are racist. The difference is that they didn’t create a symbol specifically to celebrate racism, use it for a century to terrorize minorities, and then all of a sudden try to pretend it was about some nebulous heritage.
I’m not pointing fingers and screaming “Racists!”. I’m a Southerner, in fact. I’m saying “you shouldn’t fly the Confederate flag”, and “it’s reasonable for black people to view the flag as a symbol of oppression”, and “if you choose to fly the flag while knowing this you are being rude, obnoxious, and a poor neighbor”. I’m saying that flying the Confederate flag is, in fact, profoundly un-Southern in that it is extremely rude and un-neighborly to fellow Southerners.
And the US flag is incomparable, for the many reasons I’ve listed plus perhaps the most important that I’ve left out – the vast majority of black Americans do not see the US flag as a symbol of racist oppression, while they do see the Confederate flag as this.
As always, I trust the vast majority of black Americans when it comes to the reality of anti-black racism – they’ve always been correct on this topic.
Toy versions of the General Lee for sale on eBay are a threat to justice everywhere? I think there might be bigger fish to fry.
This question–are there bigger fish to fry?–is a new subject, and I’d thank you not to shift focus like this. I’ll assume that the shift in focus means you agree that, just as you should speak up about racism up north, northerners should speak up about racism down south.
And yes, if I had a choice between catching the small fish or the big fish, I’d go big. But that’s not the choice we have right now. We have a chance to fry a small fish, and the choice is to fry it or not. I say fry, minnow, fry!
There are a number of factual errors in the above. Correct them before addressing the tenuous issue of moral high ground.
I don’t think controversial topics have to be handed over to a racial subset of the population. But I love your commitment to democracy and majority rule.
So here’s a poll that shows 70% of respondents DO NOT find the flag racist:
http://www.debate.org/opinions/is-the-confederate-flag-racist
Whew, I’m glad that’s settled.
Hee. The comments down the right side of that page are hilarious. My personal favorite: “Yes slavery did get brought into the Civil War but that was after it started.”
Of course, not as hilarious as thinking a random internet poll actually somehow wins a debate against someone who says that the opinions of black Americans matters when determining what is racism, but funny nonetheless.
That’s right, Lamb, the Wolf gets an equal say in what’s for dinner :rolleyes: