The Confederate Flag

[cmad1977]

A side note: My 10 year old son has expressed a feeling of shame at being a Southerner because the South had slaves and fought a war to keep them. I wonder if any of you can understand how I could feel both glad and sad about this?

Bullgrit

Completely. I'm plenty ashamed of our attempts at genocide re: native population. I can also understand your proud/sad feelings. Emotions are complex, we can be proud/ashamed or happy/sad.

 

[cmad1977]

But we like traitors.
[video=youtube;r-OujQhrjkg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-OujQhrjkg[/video]

No!! Unification for evar!!

 

[Neonchameleon]

You should want to bring those hold-out Southerners to the right side of the issue by appealing to their innate good morals; you should not be trying to defeat and humiliate them because others with poor morals have taken up the same side. (Remember, average Southerners don’t want the damn racists among us or using our symbols, either.)

Between the white robe with a hood, the firey cross, and the Confederate Flag, there's only one symbol designed by racists in the service of racism. That was the Confederate Flag.

If you don't want the damn racists among you using your symbols stop using theirs. The Confederate Flag is and has always been one of theirs. And that is why there's such an objection to it. And anyone who cared about the damn racists among you would be leading the push to stop using their flag.

A side note: My 10 year old son has expressed a feeling of shame at being a Southerner because the South had slaves and fought a war to keep them. I wonder if any of you can understand how I could feel both glad and sad about this?

Here you have my sympathies.

 

[Janx]

Then, bro, I got a REAL problem!

The eloquence of your statement convinced me. you can call yourself a southerner. Or denizen of the southern regions. whatever.

And you don't have to feel all mopey about yourself.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

No more mopey?

 

[Bullgrit]

When I was a teenager, (circa 1985), I visited some "sort-of" family up in Maryland. My cousin (a boy about my age), showed me a cap his father had bought him during some trip through the South. It was a black ball cap with a Confederate flag on the front. He asked me to confirm that it was a common apparel in the South. I told him that I had seen the hat in some stores, (sporting goods, small marts, etc.), but only once or twice actually on a person's head. He was proud of that hat, that he had a "real piece of the South."

Also, I saw and heard more blatant racism (not just directed at blacks) in that week up in Maryland than I regularly saw and heard in a week back home in North Carolina. Really, it made me uncomfortable. Actually, I heard more open, general vulgarity that week than I usually experienced in my normal life. It was like a Tarantino movie.

Bullgrit

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Not surprising.

IME, there is little difference in the amount of racism between North & South. The difference lies mainly in the openness, institutionalization, and celebration of it.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Not surprising.

IME, there is little difference in the amount of racism between North & South. The difference lies mainly in the openness, institutionalization, and celebration of it.

I believe the joke goes that Southern racists don't mind black people as long as they don't get uppity. Northern racists don't mind them getting uppity as long as they don't do it round here. Sundown Towns (which fit the textbook definition of ethnic cleansing) were certainly a thing much more common in the North.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Oh, yeah. As I recall, California had more than any other state. California is also where the concept of eugenics as implemented by the Nazis was created. The biggest number of Asians were interred were on the west coast. Oregon was founded to be a white utopia. Montana has a huge number of white supremacists. In the Dakotas, some act as if we're still fighting Native Americans- blacks are OK, but don't dare be red.

So, no- no state has clean hands in American race relations.

 

[Bullgrit]

IME, there is little difference in the amount of racism between North & South. The difference lies mainly in the openness, institutionalization, and celebration of it.

I read somewhere, (many years ago), that actually (at the time of the article/study, somewhere in the late 80s, early 90s), the North and Mid-West and West (especially the west, like California) were more generally racist (white/black) than the South (of the time). The reason was that there were far more blacks in the South, so the general population (again, of the time) had grown accustomed to a more racially mixed general society. In the other areas of the country, blacks were still relatively rare in the general population and so stood out more as "other" from the general (mostly white) society.

That article's point stuck with me since then because I have heard and read and experienced many anecdotes that agree with that idea. For instance, in my own life, I was surrounded by plenty of black people in my schools and my jobs, (though I do note not so much in my neighborhoods).

Heck, I was in college before it really clicked in my realization that the term "minority" included/meant "black". I thought it mean native American or Hispanic. In fact, when I came to understand that, I went back to my old high school year book and actually counted the ratio of white to black in my graduating class, I saw that it was greater than 3:1. I felt like such an idiot for never having realized that before. I'm not saying I was color/race blind, just that there was enough racial diversity in my world that blacks were not some rare "other" people that I had little experience with in my life.

Bullgrit