I for one have no problem with public displays of religious symbols. When it’s a government body displaying the symbol, however, I have a big problem. Please note the difference as it regards the Confederate battle flag. Private display = redneck doofus worthy of contempt and humorous taunts. Government display = apparent endorsement of racial hatred.
Now that is cool! If you find one, drop me an email and let me know where!
You get yourself anywhere near Austin, *Jackmanii, and I’ll show you beef barbecue that’ll make you realize why pork is against other people’s religious beliefs.
Before voting on the flag it was decided to have meetings in several cities in Mississippi. The first meeting was held in Tupelo, which is in the northeast part of the state. At that meeting not one person spoke out against the old flag. The supporters of the new flag assumed that there would be plenty of people that would show up and so didn’t bother to organize, until the second meeting. Still there was no lack of supporters of the old flag at any of the meetings.
Unlike Saint Zero, I voted for the old flag. I have already read what many of you think this means about my feelings on race, but I knew that before hand. I know Mississippians that voted for the new flag because they wanted people to have a better opinion of Mississippi and I relate to that hope. The problem is that it wouldn’t have made any difference if we’d have voted in the new flag, none of you would have changed your opinion and we would be stuck with a flag that is so much like the “Stars and Stripes” that we would have been charged with plagiarism. I notice that no where on this thread was there any mention about what the new flag was like. It could have had a swastika on it for all you knew.
No, kniz; the old flag has the southern version of the swastika.
p.s. Anyone who thinks the Civil War wasn’t about slavery is full of you know what.
To be fair, Pantom, Lee and Stuart were following direct orders from the President of the United States. For them to do otherwise would have been rebellion.
OTOH, it might have been better if they rebelled then instead of waiting a few months. The insurrection would have ended earlier.
Sagusomo
What do you think was the major raw material in Southern economics.
What do you think made a plantation so much more profitable than a farm tended by a landowner and hired, waged labour ?
Sure the civil war was about economics, factor in the low cost of forced labour and it could not be about much else.
National symbols are supposed to be a rallying point of unification for a population, I cannot imagine that the Southern Cross does this at present.
If people want to be individuals and express themselves, that’s fine, but the divisive nature of this symbol means that it already has lost its legitimacy as the symbol of a united nation or state.
Where in Austin (he asked, stomach growling)?
Sagasumono wrote:
There was a South Carolina clothing firm that had the same idea a few years ago, and used just such a symbol as their logo. They were turning out shirts, ball caps, etc. with that design. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the company name (it may have been “New South”), and I don’t think they’re still in business. Haven’t seen their stuff lately.
I always thought that the design you describe would be a good compromise flag. I’m surprised it hasn’t occurred to anyone in officialdom.
On to other things:
I went to my closet and dug up an artifact of my childhood to prove my point that flag sensitivity is a recent phenomenon. I hold here in my hand issue number 196 of The House of Mystery (A DC comic book- National Periodical Publications, 1971).
Just as I described in my earlier post, there is an ad for embroidered patches in the back. And just as I described in my earlier post, there’s the Confederate flag, right next to an “Ecology Peace Flag.” Also included in the ad: a smiley face, a “War is not healthy for children and other living things” patch, a “Woodstock” patch. And then two rows up and two columns over from the Confederate flag is a “Black Is Beautiful” patch.
Hmmmm…Dukes of Hazzard, Animal House, patches sold to kids…What do these things have in common? Uh, rebellion? See, in the seventies, the flag was seen as: 1) a generic symbol of rebellion, and 2) a symbol of the South. And nobody got worked up about it. Nobody was demanding a boycott of Superman.
And does anyone really think John Landis included a shot of the flag in Animal House to symbolize “slavery and oppression?”
Which goes back to my earlier point: symbols mean different things to different people (and apparently, different things in different eras). As Sagasumono pointed out, to you a swastika may represent anti-Semitism. To an Indian, it may be a religious symbol. And similarly, to you the Confederate flag may symbolize racism and slavery. To someone else it may represent rebellion or Southern pride.
sigh We’ve beaten this dead horse in other threads, and I’ve made these arguments before…
A substantial number of northern fortunes were made possible through slavery economics. Boston traders profited handsomely from trading salt cod (which was utilized to feed slaves by plantation owners) for sugar and rum in the Indies, which was then sold to buyers in Europe. Many a northern textile factory utilized slave-grown cotton - - not unlike athletic shoe conglomerates today who may have used (and might still be using) raw and finished materials from forced labor.
The North outgrew its dependence on slavery economics and then moved to push the South to abandon slavery at a time that would have proven economically disastrous to many planters and farmers in the South. Similar to the U.S. telling Brazil to stop logging the rainforest AFTER we’ve cleared vast areas of our own forests and have profited by converting that land to other uses.
The North then moved to add a tariff on European finished goods that was an effort to force the South to buy only Northern-made goods.
Point: Put all this together (as well as the big chip on southern politicians’ and other prominent southerners’ shoulders) and you get a group of states that secede from the Union. And NO, this doesn’t excuse southerners’ behavior, does not justify slave holding, does not absolve Southern responsibility from igniting the C.W., (other appropriate disclaimers here).
**
Isn’t the mark of a gentleman (and gentlewoman) that he/she doesn’t unintentionally offend others? This leaves the flag waving heritage wielders in an odd spot (since the idea of southerners’ “gentle” manners is a key part of the “heritage” position)… Flying Confederate banners offends many people. Defending the public display of these symbols on state flags means either (1) you don’t realize that you’re offending people (which isn’t the case) or (2) you don’t care that you’re offending them.
Oh yes:
dry rub, ya’ heathens on a pork shoulder
slaw and beans
hushpuppies
Zap’s chips
bourbon (preferably 15 year old Old Rip Van Winkle)
peach cobbler
Well said, Ivorybill.
Waving a Confederate flag these days (knowing that it offends people) is just plain rude. Regardless of what the flag may symbolize to the person waving it, it only takes a little empathy to understand why it might offend others. Show some manners!
Rudy’s is just north of UT on 29th, and it’s a great little dive. The County Line on Bee Caves Road is always solid. There’s Green Mesquite, near Zilker Park, which has excellent meats and a cool courtyard for when the weather’s good. Smokey J’s out near the lake is also great.
And it’s virtually a cliche’ by now, but I just don’t think you can beat the Salt Lick, which is west of town in Driftwood. The ribs are excellent, and the beef brisket is the best I’ve ever had. Plus, the Salt Lick is BYOB, which keeps the tab low and makes the long wait on weekend nights a lot of fun.
Now THAT is some heritage to be proud of, friends and neighbors.
Clarity.
I see several problems with setting up the implicit moral equality between the slave owner and others.
(a) As I understand it, little in non-Slave State economic structure depended per se on slavery. Another system of production – shall we say share cropping – could have been equally well served by the same non-Slave State merchants in relatively similar trade. (As well, Slave State merchants were the commercial culture better developed)
(b) Further in terms of actual production, the South could have made other, non-slavery choices. Economically they were not locked in per se. They were locked in by the ideological committment to black slavery. Political and sociological concerns, not dollars locked them into slavery.
I question this assertion on factual bases. Emancipations as in Brazil, to my knowledge, hardly proved to be “disasterous” in an economic sense to slave holders. Indeed, I believe there were gains. Rather, it would have been disasterous to their ideological system, dependant as it was on black slavery.
Or perhaps, if once more the Southern elite had been less committed to the ideology of black slavery, southern manufactures. Other choices certainly were possible.
Collounsbury wrote:
I think you may be confusing cause with effect. I would argue that the strident ideological commitment to slavery was a rationalization used to justify the situation in which the planters found themselves.
Put yourself in the planter’s shoes for a moment. You have inherited a plantation and the slaves along with it. You have a mortgage to pay, and you have to make the plantation profitable, or you will lose it. As far as you know, there’s no way except for slavery to keep that plantation profitable.
Now let’s assume further that you are a sensitive fellow, and you have some serious moral qualms about the institution of slavery kicking around in the back of your head. Maybe you work out a rationalization that helps you sleep at night. Maybe you tell yourself that, after all, the slaves are inferior beings who need your care, and if it weren’t for slavery, they would be reduced to beggary. And really, you’re doing them a favor by keeping them, and you generally treat them pretty reasonably, all things considered.
See how the economic reality can put you in the position of developing an ideology to support it? You might not be happy with the system created by your ancestors, but you don’t see a way out of it. So you convince yourself that it is morally right.
As Jefferson once said, being a slave owner was like having a wolf by the ears. You didn’t enjoy being in that position, but you didn’t dare let go.
The planters knew that slavery worked economically. They did not know whether a speculative alternative system would work as well or at all. It’s easy to condemn them in hindsight, but harder to say truthfully what you would have done had you been in their position.
None of that is meant to justify slavery in any way. However, I do think you have to consider the perspectives of the parties involved to understand why they acted and reacted the way they did.
I don’t think were necessarily in disagreement, Collounsbury - - I might just need to clarify my post, however.
I was not attempting to set up moral equality between slave owners and others. I was pointing out that many folks in the North profited from slavery economics and that fact, combined with their efforts prior to the C.W. to push the South to abandon slavery, got the politically powerful people in the South a tad bit upset.
Yes, the South could have made other choices, and long-term, they were not locked-in to slavery economics. Short-term, however, the average slave holder would have lost not only the value of the slave through emancipation, but also would have faced increased labor costs (less the food, lodging, and clothing that no longer needed to be provided to the slaves).
I’ll stick with “disastrous” though I don’t have any factoids handy to support my claim. In an economic system where land is the basis for wealth, and agricultural commodities the main output, and slave labor the main input to produce the output, immediate emancipation would have had major negative economic consequences, at least for the people whose fortunes were most directly tied to slavery economics. (And as those people were the ones with the majority of the political power, and would have been most severely impacted economically, it was that economic disaster they were trying to avoid - - of course they got a different disaster.) Land values would have dropped, the cost of labor would have increased, and with the exception of timber (and possibly coal in Kentucky and Tennessee), there were few natural resources to fuel an economic recovery following an industrial model.
You’re right. If the southern elite had been less committed to slavery economics, there might have been southern manufacturers.
And as long as I “have you on the line,” there’s a real dichotomy between pork and beef barbecue, wet sauce and dry rub, and integrating fixin’s that by all rights should be segregated… (insert smilie here).
Boy, have we wandered far afield or what?
Alright, Minty, here’s the premise. Was everyone that voted for the old flag supporters of slavery, racism and insensitive to the feelings of those offended by that flag?
Evidence: it has been reported that many blacks voted for the old flag.
Conclusion: that the premise is not supported by the facts since it is hardly possible that blacks would be for slavery, racism and were supposedly the ones that were offended by the old flag.
Here’s another. Is it possible that there was another reason for voting for the old flag that had nothing to do with the Battle Flag?
The fact is that we were voting on a state flag, not voting against one. I imagine that few (except Saint Zero and any other Mississippians who posted) know anything about the other flag. One poster was proud of the Virginian flag and rightfully so. It is a flag that means something to Virginia and is not a copycat of another flag. That is not true of the other choice that we had for a state flag. It simply replaced the Battle Flag with 20 stars in a circular pattern on a blue background. So the other flag looked like any other Fourth of July banner mimicking the Stars and Stripes.
I believe that we were supposed to vote for anything besides the old flag and so there was little if any thought given to offering a state flag that Mississippi could call it’s own.
Should we vote for something just because it is different from something that has been around for over 100 years? I didn’t.
Mississippi’s insistence on patriotically representing itself as a national embarrassment and international joke never ceases to give me a chuckle. Way to go Bubba – don’t let your traditions die!
Part of the planters’ problem was often lack of capitalization. Most had their land as their primary asset, and its value was pretty much determined by its yield which required either slave or low wage labour. Breaking out of this mode was extremely difficult, for it would mean trading a sure thing for the unknown.
What was known by the major American planters was that for the most part emancipation in other regions led directly to financial ruin of planters. Yes, there were occasional examples in the world where this did not happen, but the closest examples, both in terms of geography and familial relations, took place in the Carribean, where the British termination of slavery destroyed the planters’ economic base and way of life, and led to a diaspora.
Richard Culpeper
No, of course not. But I absolutely guarantee you that for many voters, racism was a factor in their vote for the old flag. It’s awful hard to measure the incidence of racism and bigotry in a given population, but I would guess that at least 20% of white voters in Mississippi are significantly prejudiced againt African Americans. Just a guess, based on my own experiences here in Texas.
Conveniently overlooking the fact that around 2/3 of black voters voted against the old flag, eh kniz? Sounds like a pretty definitive landslide to me.
Sure. But if you look at the groups that were supporting the old flag, you have to admit that they were dominated, virtually to the exclusion of all others, by those focusing on the connection with the Confederate battle flag. Such groups also tend to be composed of varying degrees of racists who camouflage their bigotry in harmless-sounding platitudes about respecting the honor and bravery of their ancestors. If you doubt that characterization, I refer you to Tony Horwitz’s excellent Confederates in the Attic.
No. You should vote for something new when the alternative is a symbol of hatred that makes Mississippi look like, as Muffin so concisely put it, “a national embarrassment and international joke.”
Most state flags are pretty uninispired.