Yeah, what if instead of a Confederate flag, he’d had an ice cream cone? Think about your hatred now, Mr. and Mrs. ice cream loving America.
ETA to paraphrase Baby Jane Hudson: “but he was, Blanche. He was wearing a Confedetate flag!”
Yep
Because, unless you and those who are pointing your collective fingers at the down-and-out, uneducated Southerners who equate the confederate flag with Yankee defiance instead of anti-black sentiment are yourselves down-and-out, uneducated Northerners who can be excused for not being able to tell the difference…then, yes, they are free to stereotype Northerners. But, I suspect that you are not down-and-out nor uneducated, so you should know better.
And, It’s disingenuous for you to subtlety try to shift the focus of my meaning by saying, “they should be left alone to display a symbol celebrating the worst kind of racism.” I’m saying they should be excused for their ignorance, but how about educating them to understand the true meaning of the confederate flag, so that maybe they won’t display it in the future?
So you’re saying they don’t know the Confederate flag comes form the civil war???
No, not at all. In fact many lower educated southerners are hyper-aware of the Civil War. But, they equate the Civil War with Union soldiers, not slavery. They don’t dig beyond the surface layer of hatred.
They hate northerners (the Union) because they conquered their ancestors in a very bloody war. It’s quite understandable for conquered people to feel resentment toward their conquerors, no matter what the underlying politics are with regard to the conquest. Granted a lot of them are carrying the grudge a bit too long…but, that’s the way they roll.
They also have some hatred toward northerners because a lot of northerners move south and make fun of their southern ways. I never encountered any hatred because I treated southerners with respect when I first moved here. Treat them with respect and they will treat you with respect, no matter what color you are. Is that so much different from anywhere else?
So we’re giving a pass for being ignorant and uneducated? Because the kid that shot that church group dead, dropped out in 9th grade.
Anyone think he’ll be getting a pass for being ignorant and uneducated?
No, he will not be given a pass for being ignorant and uneducated, he will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, because he is a murderer, and the hate-crime aspect of the crime will most likely, and should, result in an even more severe sentence. So, given a pass because he’s ignorant, uneducated white trash? No, I don’t think so. Not unless he has a damned good defense attorney.
So who’s torching all the black churches since the shooting, and why? People who hate Northerners because they defeated the South in the Civil War?
I’m going to take a stab in the dark and say racists are committing that crime. What’s your guess?
Southern racists.
Google Frank Rizzo. YouTube him. Wikipedia him. Northern racists are just as despicable as Southern racists…and Western…and Eastern…and intercontinental. How about stop pointing fingers at others and work on your own part of the world?
Come back when we start flying Frank Rizzo flags.
Google Brooks Orpik. He’s an American born hockey player. Therefore America and Canada produce equal numbers of equivalently talented hockey players.
Pretty sure Frank Rizzo isn’t a suspect in any recent church burnings. Having died in 1991, he’s got a solid alibi.
Can everyone please stop talking about flags? I only mentioned them as a casual reference in the OP but the fixation on them leads me to believe that even the members of the SDMB have the attention span of a brain damaged house cat. They are just dyed pieces of cloth that comes and go just like bell bottoms but they aren’t fundamentally important. No one in this thread has advocated flying a Confederate Flag on state grounds yet most people insist on debating it like it is a contentious issue. No one advocated it so take your comments about that to your own personal message board where you can give your comments and then respond to yourself in an infinite loop.
If I was more conspiracy theory minded, I could almost believe that a special interest group orchestrated this whole public opinion mess from the outside. We had a tragic mass murder and everyone directly affected stood tall and spoke eloquently about it directly afterwards even while they were in mourning. They should be quietly applauded for it but instead we get get hostility towards a whole region of the U.S.
Media: “We have another tragic shooting. You know that the focus is going to be on new gun control laws just like it was after the Connecticut child massacres.”
Lobbyist: “No, it isn’t going to work that way. We have a very different plan. You know how everyone likes to paint the South as a backwards, racist place. We are going to use that to our advantage. There is a Confederate flag that they have on a memorial near the capitol in South Carolina. We will just shift all the attention to it and cause a mass diversion.”
Media: “That is too stupid for words. That doesn’t have anything to do with the current issues. Nobody will fall for that.”
Lobbyist: “You underestimate the stupidity of the American public. We can turn them against themselves based on trivial issues and they will fall for it every single time.”
Cut to the current day.
People are talking about confederate flags because the widespread public support for them in the South is good evidence for widespread racism, a fact which is relevant to the entirety of your OP.
You may not buy that argument about the meaning of the widespread public support for flying confederate flags. And there has been much debate about whether that inference of intent is a good one or not. But pretending that the flag issue is some kind of non-sequitur is bizarre.
Yeah! Stop talking about the Confederate flag and rebut my argument that there is no evidence that the South is uniquely racist!
And if you don’t understand the connection between this shooting and the confederate flag, you are a bigger fucking moron that you seem.
Remember, petulant defensiveness = bad. Honest recognition of the problems = good.
Insisting something is a problem when it’s not = moronic.
Just because it’s not a problem for you doesn’t mean it’s not a problem.
The only form that shitting on the South has taken is trying to get them to remove the Confederate flag. It’s literally THE THING you are talking about. It’s the only difference between how the South was treated before and how they are being treated now.
Granted, Arkansas is the Upper South, but other Arkansans have been shat on. Yet I’ve not been at all. Why? Because I don’t support that fucking flag. I even think it’s aesthetically pleasing (and lament that Arkansas’s flag will have to change), but I don’t fucking support it.
Stop trying to act like the flag isn’t important when it’s the topic of the thread. And if you’re upset about it being in the public consciousness, blame South Carolina for not only making it illegal to take down, even for a few days, but still not having gotten their act together and done it.
You want the South to stop being treated like it has a racist problem? Take down those fucking flags.
We’ve already done that. And they just keep ignoring it. You pretend like the average Southerner doesn’t know that black people consider the flag to be racist. If that were the case, then they wouldn’t all be shouting “it’s not racist, it’s Southern Pride!”
I have a lot of friends that are all explaining how the flag is racist on Facebook. The responses are all people telling them they are wrong, including one person telling my friends to leave the area and another saying she moved here to get away from the Mexicans.
And it’s not because Northerners are telling them, because we’re not Northerners. Sure, some people say Arkansas isn’t the “real South,” but we did go with the Confederacy, and our flag is actually based on the Confederate flag.
The problem is, these people JUST DON’T CARE. And, as I articulated in the other thread on this topic, knowing that black people find it racist but not caring about their opinion IS FUCKING RACISM.
Edit: Yes, SC has finally taken the flag down–less than 24 hours ago. Still their fault the flag became part of this.