White Southern Jewish Convert here. I am not offended by it, but if it offends someone else I think it should not be displayed. I’m not offended by Confederate battle flag front license plates, but I am offended by Christian fish symbols stuck on cars. Go figure.
Yes, I agree. But there is a distinction to be made between insensitivity and racism.
Convert *to * Judaism or from?
I should have made it clear - I’d think twice before entering the bar for fear that I might be killed and eaten by the patrons, rather than because I objected to the flag. I’m not personally offended by it - I’m an English immigrant of Indian ancestry, so beyond my natural tendency to empathise with minorities who have been historically mistreated, I don’t have a dog in that fight.
I think it’s more a case of testosterone poisoning.
I’ve heard “Nigger” spoken twice in Arkansas in nine years. Once when a Black customer hosed our FAX machine, (they fired the Salesman who spoke it) and once at the local country store when a kid had an auto accident with a Black guy. I’ve seen many CSA battle flag displays.
Say I grew up in a place where the word “nigger” meant a glass of water. Happily we while away the hours, getting ice-cold niggers for one another in the summer heat.
Then, I move away from that place and discover, to my shock and dismay, that if I ask a waiter for a nigger to go along with my meal, he is shocked! He is offended! He is hurt!
Aghast and sorrowful, I stop using the word nigger. After all, I never meant to hurt anyone. To me, that isn’t what the word means at all! And yet I stop using it.
Of course, I didn’t grow up in such a place (though I did grow up without hearing a lot of racist terms) but to me the choice would be a simple one. And, frankly, Southerners don’t have the excuse that oh gosh oh golly gee they had no idea it could be offensive.
On the other hand, I was very nearly beaten in Hot Springs for having the nerve to date a white woman- who happened to be the daughter of a local preacher- while visiting her parents with her during Thanksgiving.
And by “nearly beaten” I mean “was getting the crap kicked out of me and bleeding from several places before being rescued by an off-duty cop”.
That constitutes being beaten to me. I am surprised that happened, particularly to an Indian. I thought most red necks here could tell the difference. I regret missing the Jazz festival at Hot Springs and thought it to be Liberal. You have a lot more to worry about that I have from a fish on a car.
Since you asked, I converted to Judaism.
It is worth nothing, yet I apologize that such a thing happened to you in Arkansas.
I didn’t call him a racist. I called him a hick.
I can’t get the over the photo op of him, his wife and sons in their plaid shirts. No, I don’t think this is “first family” material.
I thought the dog looked like a sock puppet.
jsgoddess, your glass-of-water analogy doesn’t, um, hold water. 
People’s emotions and identities aren’t tied up in a glass of water the way they are tied up in a flag.
And yes, I agree that it is insensitive, even rude, to fly a flag knowing that it causes others offense. But insensitivity (and rudeness, for that matter) are still to be distinguished from racism.
I think these days, most people realize that Confederate flags can cause offense. And I think that is the reason very few people display Confederate flags in these parts. Most people (in Georgia, at least) who might feel some attachment to the flag don’t display it because they don’t want to cause offense to others, and they don’t want to be viewed as racists. (There are exceptions of course: people who either don’t give a damn who they offend – but who still may not be racist – and people who actually do mean to use the flag to convey a racist message.)
I was a child in the 70s, and the Confederate flag was really ubiquitous then – and even into the 80s – both as a symbol of Southern pride and as a symbol of generalized rebelliousness. Nobody raised a hue and cry when the flag showed up on The Dukes of Hazzard week after week. Lynyrd Skynyrd famously opened for The Who with an enormous Confederate flag as a backdrop. (Though, these days, when the clip is shown on TV, they digitize the flag out of existence.) I guarantee you that Lynyrd Skynyrd was not displaying the flag to proclaim “We are racists! And proud of it!”
And it wasn’t even just a Southern thing. If you watch the movie Animal House, you’ll see the flag show up on a dorm room wall. Wasn’t shocking at all at the time, because people understood it to symbolize rebelliousness in that context.
Embroidered patches on jeans were popular in the early 70s. I still remember seeing ads for such patches in my old comic books. And there was the Confederate flag, right alongside the peace symbol, the ecology flag, and a Woodstock patch. Again, no one thought to take offense, because the flag was understood in that context to represent a generalized rebelliousness, not racism.
There were Confederate flag bandanas, Confederate flag decals, Confederate flag T-shirts, etc., and they were everywhere.
But times change. In the mid-80s or so and going forward, black leaders and others sympathetic to their concerns began to voice objections to the flag. (And in fairness, I imagine folks had these objections all along, but they only began to get really vocal about it in the 80s.) And as people realized that the Confederate flag was causing offense, most people put the flag away.
However, some people just have too much emotional investment in the flag. Then, too, there is a contrarian streak in the Southern character. It is OK for us to decide to put away the flag, but we don’t want to be told by someone else that we have to do it. And no place is more contrarian than South Carolina. This is the state that flew the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag during the American Revolution, and they’ve had that mindset ever since.
Yeah, there are some people who fly the Confederate flag to convey racism. But for most, I’d say it represents Southern pride, with (these days) a good measure of don’t-try-to-tell-me-what-to-do contrarianism. It’s that latter emotion, not racism, that Huckabee was playing to, in my opinion.
We heard you the first time. Do you think calling someone a “hick” doesn’t display your own bigotry?
You’re comparing the wrong thing. In my analogy it was language, specifically a word, that was compared to the flag. And people’s emotions and identities are absolutely tied up in their language.
No apology required; you (presumably) weren’t involved. I didn’t take it personally, anyway, and I’m not particularly bothered by it anymore.
I have a feeling they thought I was hispanic; I’m not sure they’d have known what to make of me if they knew I was Indian.
By “most,” do you mean a majority of all Southerners? Black and white? Lots and lots of black Southerners embrace the Confederate battle flag as a non-racist contrarian symbol of Southern pride, do they? It’s not just white people, in other words?
Careful, Terrifel. Remember your blood pressure.
By “most” I mean most of the people who display the flag, as I believe my language implied.
I should also say that I believe there is a generational divide on the flag, at least in these parts (can’t speak to other areas of the South). Seems to me that the only people who have any emotional attachment to the flag these days are over 40. Most younger Southerners don’t give a rat’s ass about it, which is probably for the best.
So in another generation, the whole thing may be a non-issue, and we will likely have a consensus that the flag ought not be displayed outside historical settings. At least that’s my take.
(When’s the last time you heard “Dixie”? Same thing.)
Okay… and “most of the people who display the flag,” thereby demonstrating their non-racist Southern pride-- they’re pretty much representative of the South, demographically? Who flies this non-racist symbol? Lots of black Southerners?
Did I say that? No, I don’t think I did.
Did I say that? No I don’t think I did.
Let me know if you have an issue with anything I actually said. Otherwise, I’m going to sit here and watch you kick the shit out of the straw man you’ve constructed.
Which straw man is that? I’m just trying to better understand the concept of this non-racist “Southern pride” that you claim the Confederate battle flag symbolizes to those who fly it. You did claim that, I believe. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding what is meant by the term “Southern pride.”
Perhaps so. Or perhaps you’re being purposely obtuse to try to score rhetorical points.
If you have a real question about what I’ve written, I’ll try to answer it for you.