You must not own any rap or hip-hop. Or played sports.
Well-known differences? Hell, I teach the Civil War every year and I always have to review the flags, especially the white ones. I think you may be giving other posters, certainly me, too much credit here.
No, it was not; it was founded on protecting ALL of the RIGHTS granted to its constituent states by the U.S. Constitution, as evidenced by it adopting the U.S. Constitution as its instrument of government. The CSA adopted NOTHING that had not been their absolute Constitutional rights as Americans (except for that unfortunate event at Ft. Sumter. Whoopsie.)
No, they absolutely WERE NOT US CITIZENS, as the Constitution very clearly defined and the SCOTUS so eloquently ruled. They were chattel property under American law, as they continued to be under Confederate law.
It was already a guaranteed constitutional right. They just weren’t called slaves.
This bullshit attempt at an argument has been so thoroughly debunked by facts that it is surprising anyone bothers to repeat it. Any denial that the CSA was founded explicitly to protect slavery is just silly.
The preservation of slavery is found in every single major speech by the advocates of secession and appears in most of the states’ declarations of independence.
And since there was no legislation proposed to remove those rights from any state, your claim fails on an utter absence of evidence. When New England members met to discuss separation during the War of 1812, Southern states declared that secession was not to be allowed for any reason. Less than 40 years later, they acted on their own desires for separation in response to a non-existent threat.
I’m just curious, are there any people of color who use the rebel flag as a symbol of their southern pride?
Somehow, I doubt it, but it’s been 45 years since I left Florida.
While I agree with the OP’s conclusion, there is one small flaw in his argument, a relevant point of difference between the Klansman’s hood and the Confederate Battle Flag. The proximate reason for the existence of the flag (like for any flag) was to identify a group of people (albeit, in this case, a reprehensible group of people). The proximate reason for the hood is to conceal one’s identity while one is doing things one wants hidden.
And Southerners do have a lot to be proud of, but the Confederate flag is not a symbol of the South in general. If you want a real symbol of the South, try a bowl of grits. The Confederate flag is a symbol of one specific aspect of the South, treason for purpose of perpetuating slavery, which nobody should be proud of.
A principle which they even still clung to after their own secession: The CSA itself did not recognize any right to secession.
No, the USA had slavery because it believed in it and liked it, which is why it was legal in a ALL STATES on July 4, 1776.
No, it’s because Americans like to pretend slavery was a Southern thing and not an American thing. It was an American thing.
No we didn’t. Slavery was legal in all states “from the beginning.” We knew exactly how we felt. It wasn’t a struggle, for whites anyway.
And if you can’t understand why the USA is just as guilty, nothing I say will help.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=black+people+confederate+flag
Just off the top of my head Kanye West. It’s his flag now. And growing up in the South I’ve seen it on shirts blacks have worn. There are some black rednecks.
Since there were states prohibiting slavery, that’s not much of an argument. For example, the 1802 Ohio state constitution stated that:
But no alteration of this constitution shall ever take place, so as to introduce slavery or involuntary servitude into this State.
[…]
There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in this State[…]
…which wouldn’t have happened if the US Constitution guaranteed the right. No, the guarantee of slavery was a creation of the CSA.
See, that is part of the problem.
Some folks use the Confederate Flag pretty much because it IS the default flag for “the South”.
Can you (the all you you) think of some OTHER flag to represent the good parts of the South?
If there was a Grit flag that went viral then the problem would be solved.
Ah, sorry about that. I didn’t think there was much to debate here wrt a klansmans hood being an obvious symbol of racism and not cultural heritage. I think there is a wee bit more room concerning the Confederate battle flag, but even there I agree that it’s a symbol of some pretty evil shit, perhaps not (quite) on par with the Nazi flag but not exactly apple pie and baseball either. I used to think basically different strokes and such, but honestly I don’t see why the battle flag of a group of states that tried to leave the union through force of arms with one of the primary reasons for doing so being the continued enslavement of black people as well as that whole entrenched aristocracy should be tolerated simply for supposed cultural reasons.
Again, sorry about the flip answer but I guess there ARE folks willing to debate this…I assumed initially it would simply be a thread of ‘me too!’ and ‘what s/he said!’ type responses to your OP.
Let’s make some distinctions here: There’s “the South” (1607- ), “the North” (1620- ), “America” (1607- ), “the United States of America” (1776- ), and “the Confederate States of America” (1861-1865). It’s absolutely not questionable that both the South and the North–and also “the West”–and America as a whole has a history that’s deeply and painfully tainted with racism, including slavery and later Jim Crow, exploitation and oppression of Chinese out in California, and–very fundamentally, for the entire country of “America” as a whole–the massive expropriation of land from the Indians, accomplished with at-times genocidal violence. And since the U.S.A. did not magically end all these injustices after the Revolution–far from it!–this painful history doesn’t just belong to “America” (the ethnocultural entity that arose as a collection of English or British colonies), it also taints the history of “the United States of America”, the country founded in the Revolution that continues to this day.
The history of the South stretches for over 400 years, and it sure as hell includes a lot of racism, including outright slavery. But of course the history of the North–nearly as long as that of the South–also includes a lot of slavery, and other forms of racism. Anyone who says “Oh, slavery? Well, that’s just a Southern thing and I’m from New York, so that has nothing to do with me” is at best very, very ignorant of history.
But–the flags we’re talking about aren’t symbols of “the South”, they are the flags of the Confederate States of America, a relatively brief but terribly significant period in the lengthy history of the South and of America when the major portion of the Southern states chose to secede and wage a huge and bloody war in order to try to form a new nation dedicated to the proposition that all white men are created equal and that all black men should properly be slaves. The United States of America–warts and all–is damned well a better country than the Confederate States of America was or would have been (and of course the Confederacy never got a chance to become either a better or–somehow–worse country than it was in 1861-1865). When I talk about a country founded on slavery and for the perpetuation of slavery, I’m not talking about “the South”, I’m talking about the Confederate States of America.
And as long as too many Southerners insist that the symbols of that one horrible period are emblematic of the whole of Southern identity and history, from Jamestown until right now, they must bear a substantial amount of the blame if people wind up saying “Southerners? Oh, you mean those pro-slavery racist people?”
Well, there isn’t any such flag, of course. That’s not too surprising–“the Midwest” doesn’t have a flag, neither does “the West”, or “the Northeast”. I guess “New England” could use this one, though I don’t know how recognizable it would be even in New England.
Hell, most states–which are formally defined entities–don’t have very strong symbols of identity. Sure, South Carolina has a very nice and distinctive flag; along with Alaska and Arizona or New Mexico and a few others. California has its “Bear Flag Republic” flag. (And Texas, of course, although it’s pretty obviously based on the U.S. flag.) But most U.S. state flags are what the vexillological community refers to as “a logo on a bedsheet”–unless you’re close enough to read where it says “Seal of the State of _____” on the flag, you’re likely out of luck trying to quickly and easily distinguish which is which. (A lot of them do helpfully put the name of the state in large letters on the flag to aid with this–which is a sure sign of a pretty uninspired flag design.)
George Washington was born into a world where slavery was legal. He led a successful Revolution, was active in the adoption of the Constitution and was our first President. He changed that world & he changed himself.
Alas, Washington only freed his slaves in his will–death came suddenly but he was able to remember to burn the earlier version in his last agonizing day of life. Among the Southern slaveholders who followed him into office, none freed their slaves. (Well, TJ freed a few favorites; he failed to pursue his children who fled & they could easily pass.)
Washington also intended that his freed slaves become Virginians; it’s thought the actions of the many African-Americans serving under him in the War influenced his thinking. In Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, he points out how their racial inferiority means that ex slaves must be deported. As much as he kept saying he hated slavery, his alternative was just too hard & too expensive. (Imported wine & books cost money; architecture is not a poor man’s hobby.)
Most of the Southern Founders at least claimed to oppose slavery, even if they did damn little. By the middle of the next century, Southerners in power saw it as a positive good. So they tried to break the country & failed.
So, what do I think of the Klan hood & the Battle Flag? The same thign I’ve though most of my life. Even Clarence Thomas agrees with me in the Battle Flag. Alas, the Klan isnot a purely Southern institution.
(Where do you teach history?)
Native New Englander here. Never seen it. If someone asked me what it was, I’d guess it had something to do with Lebanon. (Not Lebanon, CT, NH or ME 
)
Apology appreciated; next time, perhaps you can wait to see if your assumption is correct before making the first response to the OP be the way it was here.
I see a T-shirt in my future!
The Confederate flag is not equivalent to a Klan hood in terms of promoting an agenda of vicious racism.
However, it’s bad enough. The flag should not be publicly displayed, especially on government property or state license plates.
Cheers to the GOP candidates who’ve come out against display of the Confederate flag, as opposed to slugs like Ted Cruz and his “state’s rights” message.
Barbecue, baby…with sides of cornbread and collard greens.
It should however be illegal to display a flag showing “sweet tea” (urk).
Just to be clear, are you saying a state should not be allowed to display the flag, or that in your opinion, they shouldn’t?
ETA: I responded to you before you added that last sentence, and I have no idea what is meant by “sweet tea” in that context.
Okay, I think I begin to grasp your position. You’re ignoring every anti-slavery argument made in the early days, every hint that slavery was maintained (with indifference by some and anguish by others) as a compromise to keep the Southern states from withdrawing and making the Union stillborn, and every breath expelled and drop of ink used by white abolitionists railing against the evils of that compromise and demanding that the injustice of the maintaining of slavery in a country whose foundational principles were equality and justice and liberty be corrected. Instead you pretend that white Americans, as a people, just love them some slavery, and therefore it’s an irredeemably damning fact that the United States didn’t abolish slavery before it had even managed to become a country. (Hint: July 4, 1776 is not a magical date on which American identity was forged forever; there was still an actual revolution to fight, and the Constitution was written more than a decade later, with a hell of a lot of debate on what should go into it and what should go out.) Furthermore, you think that that failure to preemptively abolish slavery nationwide means that the USA is exactly as bad as the Confederate States, which withdrew from the Union for the explicit purpose of protecting slavery from the abolitionists (who, I guess, must not have been white in your world, because, as established, white Americans always loved slavery) and who spelled it out in their own Constitution that no law could be passed in the good ol’ CS of A that denied or impaired the right to keep black people as property. You’re free to believe, of course, that any country that ever had slaves at all is exactly the moral equivalent of a country that was founded specifically to preserve slavery and would not have come into existence in the first place if they hadn’t believed slavery to be in danger. Suffice it to say, I’m not inclined to agree with that.