That’s a good point. I’m not sure.
Heh… “Elvis is a flag!”
So what? Any discussion of Southern Pride, positive or negative, that leaves out black Southerners is a racially biased discussion.
No Southerner would consider Texas to be part of “The South”. Nor Florida south of Tampa. So not really. The South really doesn’t really claim Arkansas that much either.
Interestingly enough the CSA also claimed (and had control over) “Indian Territory” (modern day Oklahoma) and the southern parts of “Arizona Territory” (current day southern halves of New Mexico and Arizona).
And there is always the thorny question of whether Kentucky, or any part of it, is The South. It was claimed by the CSA, but the CSA never had any control over it.
You’ve got to be totally kidding about Arkansas, and mostly kidding about Texas, at least from this Southerner’s experience (from Louisiana, lived in Arkansas for a few years, and have spent a lot of time visiting Texas with a lot of Texan friends).
Probably everything is a racially biased discussion to you. I’m not “characterizing” the varied residents of Southern states. We’re talking about “Southern pride” and a substitute for the Confederate flag, so it is logical to talk about exactly what is meant be “Southern pride” by the people who actually say it, NOT what it means to be a Southerner or a demographic breakdown by race and ethnicity of the populace.
Sorry, but some Southerners are racists and proud of it. If you have spent any time in the South, you know that this is not a secret or even remotely debatable. That does not discount the existence or opinions of non-white Southerners.
Of course I’m not disagreeing with that.
It doesn’t. Your posts do.
Both Southerners and Texans have been fighting a battle to separate Texas from the rest of the South. And most of the Georgians or other Deep South folks I know don’t really consider Arkansas to be The South. They look askance on Louisiana as it is.
From my perspective, you can replace the word “Southerners” with “people” and be just as accurate. And I’m not convinced that these people are confined to a single geographic region.
Just out of curiosity, how much time have you spent in the South? There are a lot of characterizations and generalizations in this thread that seem … incongruous, let’s say, on a board dedicated to fighting ignorance.
No. The Line turns a corner, and forms Delaware’s western border with Maryland.
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If you want that Flag forever associated with that whackjob in South Carolina , then yeah case the colors. Otherwise fly it or don’t as your want to do. The kind of people that hated the flag, hated it before, and they will hate it after.
Its perfectly fine as a symbol of America, regardless of the region you grew up in.
They did not get it then, and they won’t get it now or in the future.
Declan
Just to be clear, you’re talking about the Confederate battle flag here, right, as a symbol of America? If so, that’s got to be one of the most cynical, borderline nihilistic anti-America statements I’ve ever read.
Depends on how old you are, I can’t see anyone over the age of thirty believing in the mystique of the flag, but I never really seen any difference between some good old boys driving around with the flag in the back of the pick up truck and some proto hipster wearing a che guerva tee shirt. Its a non confomity thing.
Declan
Fair enough. I don’t really see any difference between some good old boys driving around with the flag in the back of the pick up truck and some good old boys wearing Klan hoods. Which is a much better comparison, because at least Che, for all his many many faults, was trying to do good and fight a much eviller government; he was more like the Union of his day.
Yes, there is racism all over, obviously.
I spend approximately two weeks per year in the South.
This, by the way, is pretty awesome. You’re a poster who engages in massive sweeping generalizations about Southerners, and you imply that I’m the one who thinks too many things are racially biased. The irony is scrumptious.
Well, thats an interesting view of Che. The most I will give him, is that he was a man of his times.
Declan
Like everyone else, I would say “the South” probably just doesn’t get to have a flag. That doesn’t mean the South doesn’t get to have a regional identity, the same as the Midwest, the West, New England, the Pacific Northwest, and so forth, but those other regions don’t have flags (or don’t have flags anyone has ever heard of).
If I absolutely had to come up with a new “Southern Flag” that doesn’t support slavery and segregation, apart from making all the same grits and Elvis jokes as the rest of y’all, the best I can come up with is something sort of medieval and kind of eye-watering that would only be recognizable to a complete flag nerd: Take a “four quarter” flag (like the Royal Standard of the United Kingdom). For the first quarter, use the “Union” of the American flag (the blue part with the stars), because Southerners are Americans, after all. For the second quarter, the flag of England (Southerners speak English, and the region started out as a collection of English colonies). For the third quarter, the flag of Ulster, for the Scots-Irish Americans. For the fourth quarter, the Pan-African flag, because Left Hand of Dorkness is right–we shouldn’t define “Southerners” to mean only “white Southerners”.
