Yes, it was. Stupid activity. Hell, Helsinki has statues of Lenin. So does India. Who cares? Does a statue of Lenin make the country’s turn (or return) to be communist?
Stupidity squared. No one is “whitewashing” history. History’s intensity fades. The “racism” of the symbol fades. Hell, even atrocities fade. That’s just a simple fact.
Trying to remove the Confederate flag or rename army bases etc. just reminds me of when during Stalin times people were retouched/removed from historical photographs when they fell out of favor/were executed, and yearly people who had encyclopedias would receive a packet of pages with instructions of which pages in their encyclopedias to add, remove, or replace.
Because you don’t get 27% of blacks agreeing with having the flag fly on their state’s public grounds, or 12% of blacks viewing the flag positively without that dilution.
So I guess the widely celebrated image of Iraqis tearing down Saddam’s statue was also just “stupid activity”.
Ayylmao. Putting up the Confederate flag on government property (ie essentially endorsing such actions) is more equivalent to Stalinist propaganda-this isn’t acknowledging the existence of the Confederacy or not but rather implies that the Confederacy was a worthy cause that deserves to be honoured by having its flags on government property.
Again, stupid. The flag is at the South Carolina’s Confederate Dead memorial. See that “Confederate Dead” part? What OTHER flag are they supposed to fly? THAT’s the flag that the “Confederate Dead” fought and died under. How is it not appropriate to have that flag at the memorial?
Ladies and gentlemen, let’s step back for a moment and ask ourselves: who shall be the voice for African-Americans?
The answer is obviously late-middle aged Russian immigrants who live in Texas. Such individuals are uniquely qualified to authoritatively tell us that three-quarters of black Americans are full of shit if they think the Confederate flag is racist.
Yep. This is the key – the majority of black people know about anti-black racism, and anti-black symbolism, and not others. I trust them (the majority of black people), and I don’t trust Terr, regarding anti-black racism and anti-black symbolism.
I know what you’re thinking: “Oh my, everyone has got me wrong. I’m making a nuanced point that for some people, the Confederate flag isn’t about racism.”
I know you’re trying to make a nuanced point. But your nuance amounts to the same bullshit that the Council of Conservative Citizens attempt: oh no, the flag isn’t about racism, it’s about heritage. Oh no, the Confederacy was just about states’ rights and unfair tax policies, it wasn’t about slavery. Oh no, we’re not saying that anyone is unequal, it’s just that blacks could advance more economically if they focused on building their communities rather than integrating.
I don’t know if you’re actually racist or just clueless. But to attempt to argue that the Confederate flag is not a racist symbol because of some poll is about the level of analysis that I would expect of David Duke.
If you don’t like being associated with David Duke, open your fucking eyes.
Southern opposition to desegregation, civil rights and the repeal of Jim Crow laws started before 1951. You knew that, right? I mean, you must have heard of the Dixiecrats, right?
However, the argument you seem to be advancing here suggests otherwise.
If the TS were to walk up to me and recite the OP verbally, I’ll tell him “I agree” without bothering to go into propositions. I’ll tell him to stay out of trouble and good luck to his cause. I might even drop a few quarters in the can.
No Confederate flag on anything? I have had so many things with Confederate flags, Nazi flags, Hammer and Sickles, Rising Sun flags, etc. But I also play and played a ton of war games. And I guess that’s another reason I don’t find it taboo. When you see something every day for decades in a proper context it begins to seem normal.
It’s like blue comedy. After a bit those words don’t seem as shocking as they did when used in entertainment or whatever as they do when you are 10.
My belief is that racism is a belief system and you can do good things in the names of racism and bad things that aren’t racist and so forth. I treat them as independent variables based on a strict reading of the definition of racism.
From Merriam-Webster online
So how can flying the flag be intrinsically racist? To me it doesn’t follow. I started thinking about how people love to throw around fallacy this and fallacy that as if this “Great” debate stuff is Euclidean geometry or math and can be formally proved and if it were math and could be formally proved than rational people would obviously agree. And the simple thing is all of us argue from different axioms. And even slightly different sets of accepted axioms can lead to logically different, yet valid conclusions.
The sad thing is, even when the axioms are very close the desire to “win” and to be “right” and to score points with one’s “intellectual” tribe trump the desire to reach a mutual understanding. That to me is a more dangerous character flaw than any flag.
