Kentucky teen and Confederate flag prom dress

The BBQ Pit
182

No, in fact that is NOT what happened. If there hadnt been a draft, I doubt the Union could have fielded an Army.

Yes, we had a draft during WWII: STFW?

I consider myself a Southerner, even though I am from Texas (but I hate Texas) and I have lived in California on three different occasions----I didn’t bring any racism or symbols thereof or even a nasty Confederate flag. I am not a racist and I don’t approve of slavery. I also don’t approve of censorship.

I don’t know exactly what this is supposed to mean, but Fuck You, just in case.

183

Many of the kids who would normally be around to remind us that they are flying the Confederate flag to support armed rebellion again the Union are currently serving that Union in Iraq. That is another Southern tradition. Let’s hope they return shortly to give you a Rebel yell brace your spirits. :slight_smile:

Why do otherwise intelligent Dopers fail to acknowledge that for the majority of the time that the South had slaves, the North did also? That is part of your heritage if you are a Yank. We don’t have to look far to find the monsters throughout our history.

We didn’t know we were choosing it. There was no balloting on the issue that I am aware of. No big Get-Out-The Vote drive for options.

BTW, the Confederate battle flag was a symbol of Southern heritage and pride long before the end of Jim Crow laws. As I recall, it wasn’t until then (about the mid 1950’s) that it became identifiable to whites as a racist symbol.)

184

Otherwise intelligent? Why shucks. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m not disregarding that. Remember my post up there? Black slaves were prized in the South AND the North for their distinctive appearance – harder to run away when any black guy you see either has his freeman’s papers or is running away from the law. Probably the only thing that prevented free blacks from getting hassled 24/7 in their towns was the fact that the locals probably knew precisely who they were. And even then, I doubt life was all sunshine and roses for them.

I think I even lambasted the North a wee bit in my post. Being that they were the ones who profited off the sale of slaves as opposed to the Southerners profiting off their work.

185

Well, Zoe, if there are a lot of people who are plastering the Confederate flag all over themselves and their cars without having chosen to do so, they really should speak to whoever dresses them in the morning. And, where the emblem has been incorporated into state flags, there has been public discussion, debate, and sometimes even ballots and everything. Maybe it didn’t make the local papers.

Relax – the question is not who, at this late date, is morally superior to whom with respect to one of the most shameful aspects of American history. The question is why anyone would choose a particular symbol, conceived for and dedicated to that ugliness, to demonstrate pride.

186

This is a fair point. The Confederate battle flag carries a lot of baggage with it. No matter what the Kentucky girl intended with her design, there are those who can’t see it as anything but an endorsement of slavery.

So what’s a person to do who wants to display pride in their southern heritage warts and all without implying an acceptance of slavery? One thing you can do is somehow reclaim the flag from the racists who use it for their own purposes. That’s going to be pretty darn hard to do.

The other thing is to adopt another symbol for Southern heritage. The state of Texas has largely replaced the Confederate battle flag with the Stars and Bars* for all their historical references to the “six flags over Texas” concept. One of the problems with that is that the Battle Flag is a much, much stronger design visually than the Stars and Bars. Years after the shift from the Battle Flag to the Stars and Bars, people still ask “What’s that flag?”

Personally I would like to see some symbol emerge that celebrates the South while explicitly acknowledging the evil of slavery.

  • Remember that the Stars and Bars is not the flag on the girl’s dress. That is the Confederate Battle Flag. This page has examples.
187

Let me try to explain. You asked the question:

Which I, along with DrDeth, interpreted as meaning, “If the cause was so just, why was it necessary to have to draft people? It should have been done voluntarily. Good causes shouldn’t need to draft!” In a perfect, ideal dream world, you would be correct. Unfortunately we live in the imperfect, real world.

DrDeth brings up WWII, where there is very little debate that stopping the Nazi’s was a good cause. No debate about whether WWII was ‘really’ about German Self Determination. Yet we needed to draft people to be able to stop them. I interpreted DrDeth to mean in a perfect world people would do the right thing, but in the real world it doesn’t work that way. Sometimes people have to be forced/urged/pleaded to do the right thing. That does not change fact that it is still the right thing to do. Which I believe is why he made the comment

Not referring to you, but that there were many people who thought the Axis was bad, but not bad enough to volunteer to possibly get killed. So your “Just in Case Fuck You” was out of line.

188

You sir, are better here at saying what I said myself. :cool: Correctomundo.

189

I quoted this in its entirety because it’s damn near perfect. All Americans have a right to be proud and a duty to be ashamed. Any Southron (pardon the archaic word) has a right to be proud of his/her heritage. This pride deserves an icon by which such pride can be displayed. Pride in one’s heritage in turn deserves an icon that is not irrevocably associated with treason in the service of slavery.

It’s worth remembering that during the Confederate mistake, most Southerners’ pride was rooted not in the Confederacy as a whole, but in their home state. Those states all still exist now. But you’d have a hard time getting anyone (in the whole country, not just in the South) to give an accurate description of their state flag. Thus do modern Southern pride-ists betray the heritage they pretend to honor in favor of the bigotry they pretend to deny. The best part of Southern history is the slow arduous and sometimes dangerous process by which Africans became African-Americans. This history is rich with symbolism, which is rigorously ignored by those who speak of Southern Pride when they mean Southern White Confederate Pride.

190

I see; you mean the world we live in now, with our all volunteer armed forces. The ones which are forcibly extending terms of enlistments because, perforce, we have no draft. If we continue in Iraq, I believe we will see the draft re-instituted. Which is neither here nor there. Surely freeing the people of Iraq deserves the same high-mindedness which seems to be attributed to the Union during the late unpleasantness.

I see that I shouldn’t have said the ‘Fuck You’ bit and I apologize for that.

I still believe the girl should have been allowed to wear the dress to the prom, for the same reasons that I believe any girl attending should be allowed to wear the dress of her choice. For that matter, I believe that IF there wasn’t so much automatic furor over the Battle Flag, its importance would soon dwindle down to nothing. If it were to be laughed at instead of castigated, those who display it for the “wrong” reasons would soon give it up.

For those Americans who find the flag in question to be so distasteful, perhaps you should consider the baggage carried by our national emblem. Perhaps just a little thought about the atrocities committed under the auspices of the flag of the USA would make those committed by the Confederacy to be somewhat less than pure evil.

191

Oh. Lord.

the fact that America as a whole has shameful aspects to it’s history is NOT what is being debated here. In fact, there have been many posts delineating some of those shameful moments. Noone has posted that anybody should display a symbol blindly–in fact, just the opposite, regardless of design/representation.

Like King of Soup and others have said (at this point, repeatedly) is that of all the symbols that could have been chosen–the one that depicts treason and subjugating another race is the favorite.
To many (I would say most) people who see it–the Confederate Flag does NOT represent family, church, small towns, corn bread, peach pie, pecan trees, Spanish moss, and banjo music (stereotyping on purpose). It may indeed “say” that to them, but it also says, slavery, racism, treason, rebellion. And still to others it may say stupid, illiterate, backwoods, cousin-marrying white trash. ( I do not think this way, but the image is commonly acknowledged). Obviously, to those here defending it, it means–I dunno–“honor” , "country (which one? USA orCSA ?),
“courage”, “freedom”. Hell, to some it may mean something as simple as “this is my home.”

Long story short: it means alot of different things to different people. My point is that you cannot pick and choose. If you want it to stand for freedom, you must recgnize that it’s heritage was to DENY freedom to an entire race of people. To do otherwise is disingenous at best and dishonest and hypocritical at worst.

I dont’ see where anyone has said that racism didn’t exist in the North. I also don’t see where anyone has said that there were those against slavery in the South (there must have been a few). That is irrelevant to the conversation. No part of the country holds any type of moral superiority to another–something we should all keep in mind, given the current state of affairs.

192

I wonder if the British find the American flag offensive? I mean it does represent a war in which thousands of British soldiers were killed at the hands of “americans”. Do american indians cringe when they see all those american flags waving over post office’s? I mean that same flag was waving at the front of every army that almost wiped them from the face of the earth.

At what point does a symbol stop being offensive? Slavery was over almost 140 yrs ago. Does the confederate flag still make black people in america think that whitey is going to put them in chains again? In 2060 will the confederate flag no longer be offensive?

I just think attributing so much to a symbol is silly. Symbols dont hurt people, people hurt people.

193

Dress woulda looked fine, from behind, pulled up around her waist. :wink:

194

Rascal!

195

Since the last vestiges of systematic racism were abolished only 40 years ago–I think it is too early for us to say–this is all ancient history. I don’t know at what point a symbol get rehabbed, but I think it is fair to say that as of yet, the Confederate flag is not there yet (if ever).

196

A now-defunct clothing company (black-owned and based in South Carolina, I believe) used as its logo a Confederate battle flag rendered in red, gold and green (thus incorporating the tri-colors of Ethiopia often celebrated in black culture). I thought that was a pretty cool attempt to embrace both black and white Southerners.

Long ago on this message board, our Southern posters got together and tried to design a new, non-offensive Southern flag. We came up with barbecue as a unifying theme, and I believe our recommendation incorporated a red-and-white-checkered table cloth design.

Another less-offensive alternative to the Confederate battle flag might be the Bonnie Blue Flag.

197

eleanorigby, the condecension of your opening line suggests to me that you have totally misunderstood my points. Set aside any possible prejudice or bigotry that you may have about me and let’s try again. (The King of Soup seems to have missed it too, so perhaps the miscommunication is my fault and not yours.)

Technically, this is not a debate. It is in the Pit. But many of you seem very unaware of the hypocrisy of the constant comments in this thread about “slavery in the South” and half of the country being monsters. (I shouldn’t have picked on Little Plastic Ninja. There were actually some good examples out there and I will point them out later so that maybe you will understand why it gets a little old that some – not you, perhaps – apparently wear blinders.

Note the passage that I quoted from Little Plastic Ninja which referred only to the indentured servants in the North and to why slaves were easy to spot in the South.

And as I have tried to point out to you, it didn’t happen that way. This flag did not represent treason for Southerners anymore than battle flags in the Revolutionary War represented “treason.” It represented the Southland and a way of life that now seems totally despicable to any human being with a heart. But at one time that way of life seemed quite justifiable to New Yorkers, New Englanders and Southerners alike. The Industrial Revolution brought about a change in the thinking in the North and the loss of the Civil War brought about a change in the thinking in the South. For those who haven’t changed their thinking in either the North or the South, I have little use or patience.

The flag represented the South – not subjugation of another race – when it was first our symbol. (The Swastika represented Germany at one time, not extermination of the Jews. It later came to have that association.)
Please note that I have no problem comparing the Confederate flag to a Swastika.)

Gee. No kidding. Could I possibly be one of those people you are describing?

The image is commonly attributed, not commonly “acknowledged” by educated people. People are not trash.

Obviously and I dunno don’t make much sense in the same sentence. I am 11th generation Southern, but I have never met anyone, to my knowledge, who actually advocates a return to a withdrawal from the Union. These are some of the very states that have a few too many citizens who will hit you with the Stars and Stripes on a flagpole if you aren’t “patriotic.” (But there are more “Blue” people than you might think.)

I can damn well pick and choose. And I would burn that flag in a Memphis minute. I have paid my dues and will continue to do so gladly as long as I have breath. YOU DO NOT KNOW ME.

But I will also speak up when I see Southerners portrayed as monsters and white trash.

198

The King of Soup, in case my point to you was not clear from the above post, the Confederate flag as a symbol of the South prior to the mid 1950’s was not considered a racist, redneck symbol by white people as far as I know. (I don’t know if it had always been viewed by the Black community as a sign of racism and subjugation. I do know that Black leadership led the way in opening our eyes to how offensive it was to them.)

I remember that in the South of the early 1960’s there were schools where the teams were known as “the Rebels” and the cheerleaders and bands displayed large Confederate flags. Old Miss was one of those schools, I think. Does anyone know if they finally changed? If so, it wasn’t without a fight.

199

Well, good for you–but I didn’t say you or all Southerners were “monsters”. I did say that the moniker “white trash” is commonly used to do so—but you “corrected” my semantics. You also ignored that I stated that I did not hold that opinion.

To all, I apologize in advance for my poor Internet skills–I am still trying to figure out how to post replies with quotes etc.

200

This is a weak analogy - an American flying the Confederate flag is like a Englishman flying the Revolutionary War flag. And it does carry the implication that you think the wrong side won.

Nor does the Confederate flag have anything to do with New York or New England; these regions were never part of the Confederacy. If Southerners are so eager to honor their heritage, why do they focus more attention on the four years they were seperate from the United States rather than the 224 years they were a part of it?

201

I didn’t say that you did. I was explaining my frustration with the blindness of many posters.

I infer from your use of quotation marks around corrected that you have some doubts about the justifiability of my disagreement. SDMB is about fighting ignorance. You said that the image of “white trash” is commonly acknowledged in the South. It is a label that is commonly exploited by comics and writers – including those who write some good recipe books. It is a label that is used in general to put down and ridicule economically deprived white people. But I have yet to hear the poor “commonly acknowledge” that they are trash.

Welcome to Straight Dope, newbie. You have a lot to contribute. The “About This Message Board” Forum is really helpful in learning how to use quotes, make links and so forth. Have fun!