Miller is mostly right about the psychological underpinnings of the phenomenon. There is certainly an element of defensiveness in it.
Oh but we do get held responsible for the sins of our culture. How many times have we seen the sentiment “You know how racist the South is” expressed on these boards (either expressly or implicitly)?
So yeah, we’ll bear that burden, and we’ll take the good stuff too.
I am a part of my culture. I take from it. It is a part of what I am, and something I can share with other Southerners. And I like to think I contribute to that culture in some small way, if only by passing along this or that tradition or recipe or saying or song to those coming behind me.
If you are disconnected from your own culture, well, you are the poorer for it, and you have my pity.
I’m not going to speak for spoke–I’m a Southerner who has no feelings, good or bad, towards my region of origin–but in his defense, I’ll say that there are two kinds of pride. There’s the pride that one feels when they or people they know have accomplished something of worth. And then there’s the “not ashamed of who I am” kind of pride. I think many proud Southerners are in that last group.
There’s this feeling that Southern-ness carries a stigma. I have to say, as someone who has moved up and down the eastern seaboard over the past decade, this is true. People have laughed at my very subtle Southern accent while ignoring their own regional colliquolisms. Lots of people think that being from the South means you’re an uncultured, overly religious, country hick. So the “not ashamed of who I am” pride that people feel…it’s understandable. It’s like when I say I’m a “proud black woman”, I’m not taking credit for anything special. I’m just saying, “I’m happy who I am, thankyouverymuch.”
All that said, I think Southern pride is something a lot of people force themselves to feel nowadays. There are few things that are uniquely Southern, and some of the things that people latch onto (like family honor) are overstated and romanticized. I also think it comes across as chauvinistic (“Those Yankees just aren’t raised right, bless their little hearts”). But I don’t think it’s inherently a bad thing.
I have a bit of skepticism about the idea that the Confederate Battle Flag, as a symbol, can be used without the tinge of racism being associated with it. That’s the thing. As someone originally from New England, I can relate to the idea of regional pride (in an area outside the South), even if we don’t have a symbol for it. So, yeah, I can see that “Southern Pride” exists, but the Confederate Battle Flag just seems like a terrible symbol to carry around when it’s clearly unsettling (to say the least) to a large segment of the population. There are some things that just shouldn’t elicit pride.
I was going to ask the same question, adding, “especially since it widely thought of as a symbol of, if not racism, a painful and shameful period in this country’s past.”
If pride in that symbol is of the “Well, I’m not ashamed of who I am kind,” why willfully continue to be obstinate about using that particular symbol to show that?
No. I hate it as a symbol. I hate that it flew over my home state for so long and I hate that I still see it stuck on people’s bumper stickers.
Do I automatically associate it with racism? I felt a shiver of fear when I saw it on a truck while I was driving around in New Jersey (in Newark, of all places), and I didn’t feel so good when I saw it waving in front of a house all the way up in Ithaca, NY. So yes, I think racist when I see it.
But I do think that spoke is right when he says that many people fly it not because they’re racist, but because they view it as a symbol of their heritage–one that’s not necessarily racist.
Yeah, but it’s not just defensiveness, though. The South is more culturally cohesive than other parts of the country. From Virginia out to Texas, there are multiple common cultural threads. I don’t know how much common culture there is between, say, Maine and New York and Wisconsin.
The North experienced many waves of immigration after the 1860s, while the South, by and large, did not. That may also be part of the difference. (It’s only in the past couple of decades that the South has seen a large influx of immigrants.)
Southern culture was, in some ways, preserved in a bell jar for two centuries, from the mid-1700s to the mid-1900s.
It’s more suspect now than it would have been in the 70s, simply because a higher percentage of people who are crass enough to display it now may have some racist worldview. But I can assure you that in the 70s, it was (for most folks) just a pride thing, or a rebelliousness thing. Or did you think John Landis was promoting racism by putting the flag in the Animal House dorm?
Is the cohesiveness between Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Michigan much different than the cohesiveness between Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida?
As someone who has met a many people from all of these places, I’d have to say no.
The only difference I’ve noticed is that Southerners are more likely identify themselves as belonging to a culture that starts and stops within specific boundaries–seeing more kinship with someone who lives 1000 miles away than to someone who lives across the state border. Everyone else is more likely to identfy with the people who live nearby, irrespective to their placement above or below the Mason-Dixon line.
See, that sort of refusal to be ashamed strikes me as something very different. I’m from Appalachia. My father had a strong hick accent. When he’d travel overseas or even just up into Canada people would always try to guess where he was from because of how strong and odd (to their ears) his accent was. I’m not ashamed of being from dirt poor roots. But I’m also not proud of it. It’s just there.
That’s the part I don’t get, though-- that there are many people who aren’t racist, and yet choose to fly the thing anyway. This does not compute. It’s not like any Southerners are going around unaware of the flag’s history.
“What? The flag was flown in defense of slavery? It’s been repeatedly raised in opposition to civil rights and embraced by every racist group in the South? I had no idea!”
So even if a Southerner is super-ultra-proud of their own personal family history, when they fly the Confederate battle flag, they are also choosing to disregard that banner’s own intimate history of racism-- saying, in effect, that slavery wasn’t important enough to matter. “Southern pride” at the expense of other Southerners seems like a lousy choice for a cultural emblem.
It’s not like it’s impossible to choose another symbol without such a crappy history. There’s no law against it. At this point even the Bonnie Blue Flag would be an improvement, in my opinion. The magnolia’s another good choice. Or maybe Coca-Cola.
You grew up in the south and when you see the flag you think racist.
Others who grew up in the south see the flag and don’t think racist? That would seem to go against the theory advanced in this thread that there is a cohesiveness about the southern experience/culture.
Or they do think racist but they think other things, too, and decide that the racist thing is less important? To me, that would be pretty inexcusable.
I don’t think a lot of people know that the Confederate flag we know is very different than the Confederate flag flown during the Civil War. They also don’t know that the flag didn’t gain popularity until the 50s, when the civil rights movement was taking off. So there’s some ignorance there.
Also, there are a lot of people who have been deluded (or have deluded themselves) into think the Civil War wasn’t about slavery. So it’s not racially charged for them.
Then, there are people who think it’s hypocritical to point out the KKK’s usage of the Confederate flag without pointing out their usage of the US flag. We’re not decrying the US flag, they say. It’s a double standard.
You know, apologizing for racism is tacitly joining the racist team, and just feeling guilty about it. No, I don’t apologize for racism. I didn’t do it. I didn’t support it. None of my ancestors in the US ever owned slaves, and I wouldn’t feel guilty if they had. See, I didn’t own any. So, apologizing for slavery implies I thought it was a good thing, and now have realized the error of my ways. Well, that ain’t so.
And if you are an American black person to whom I should apologize for the racism of my ancestors, you should in all statistical probability be apologizing to yourself for the racism of your ancestors. But the fact is that you didn’t own any slaves. No one now living owned any slaves in the US. In Britain it’s been longer.
On the racism issue, in all my life I have never seen evidence that any race, or in fact any other arbitrarily divided group of humans shows less tendency toward prejudice than any other. So, why not just fuckin’ give up on the high ground and get down here in the mud and try to shore up the tiny shreds of dignity we have left. Be sure you have a reason to despise what others have done. Be sure that they did it. And then try to reach across this imaginary divide we create ourselves and change each others minds.
And by the way, the Battle Standard of the Army of North Virginia, commonly called the “Stars and Bars” was never used outside of Virginia until long after the Civil war. It was not, but has become a standard of active bigotry, and perceived racial superiority. Loose it. I learned to respect it as a child, because of its military significance, but that honor is forever lost to the entrenched bigotry that usurped its true history. The Swastika was not always a symbol of genocide, and tyranny, but you and I cannot reclaim its former meaning. It goes in the trash for at least another millennium.
It would serve us better to spend less time reviling bigots, and try to concentrate on spending less time emulating them.
However, it is fair to note that the flag was used as a symbol of defiance during the civil rights era. And in fact Georgia changed its flag to incorporate the Confederate battle flag in 1956, implicitly to symbolize support of segregation in defiance of federal law.
