Randy's Rants - Confederate Flags

RIP DOWN THAT FLAG

This Confederate flag issue keeps standing between Americans. I don't fly this flag myself. I'm sensitive to its symbol to black Americans. I support its removal from any government property or its use as a symbol by any team of a public institution.

I admit the Civil War was fought over slavery. Slavery was wrong. The first amendment gives racists the right to display racist symbols. I think Mohammad cartoons are offensive, but that's the price of free speech.

I don't believe for one minute that the offended would be satisfied if all Confederate flags were destroyed. Next, all Confederate monuments must be torn down. Obliterating all Confederate history and banning all pictures of R. E. Lee will not satisfy people who blame Caucasians for their condition TODAY. White people are still the enemy of many blacks.

Recognizing all the efforts our country has made to help blacks assimilate does not meet the needs of many blacks or politicians today. Without victim hood, a person must take responsibility for his own condition. Victim status is the only hope for so many people today. Politicians pander to victims. Constantly being reassured by politicians that they are victims, blacks can ignore their self destructive behavior.

Take the Confederate flag down. Go on. This will not stop one violent inner city black from killing another black. It will not resurrect the black family. It will not discourage drug crime or black gangs. It won't change the fear that whites have of blacks. It will not change the attitude blacks have toward police. It will not satisfy the offended.

This flag is a side show, a distraction that will make some people feel good while our country spins further into racial strife, encouraged by those who truly desire to see mobs of rioting blacks in every city and policemen unable to intervene. That's the opinion of an old white man.

 

Proud of the glory, stare down the shame.
Duality of the southern thing

 

I never bought the idea that it was just about some concept of Southern pride and nothing about racism. 1/3rd of the South in 1860 and a significant portion of the South today is black. Why isn't the Confederate flag flown in Southern black communities, homes, etc.? Is there anything that makes them less Southern? I don't think so. In fact, black and white Southerners have actually created a quite a bit of shared Southern culture together in music, food and a host of other areas than creating some unifying concept of Southernhood between the two groups is very possible. Getting rid of something that has long symbolized the effort to divide the two groups is a good step in the right direction.

 

Earlier in life I was like most southern males when the Confederate flag was denounced, usually by a northerner. But I have come to the realization of what it means to those of slave decent. Not unlike how the Nazi flag is viewed by those of Jewish faith. It should not be flown on state owned property.

 

The truth of the matter is the flag was not flown over any state capital during the confederacy. The flag was flown by the KKK and later the dixiecrats as a reaction against force school integration. That's history. The idea that it was flown in the 20th for "Southern pride" is an apologist invention of the last 30 years. The flag of "Southern pride" would look like this:



Well, that is if you are treasonous. Otherwise it would look like this:

 

There are some blacks that fly the confederate flag, just not a huge number

 

Excellent post, RB.

That I was born and raised in The South is a matter of distinct, deep and personal pride for me. I understand that many view this as odd, curious, simple-minded and quizzical. And I'm ok with that, as it causes me neither hindrance nor harm.

I love it's people, though terribly ignorant and misguided as they are sometimes prone to be.

I love it's ways, though sometimes too dogmatically clinging to an ideal that never was, or worse, should have been.

I love it's history, though indelibly stained with the most terrible forms of savagery and treasonous rebellion.

I would not live elsewhere, were you take make me King of the World (but I would commute).

I am raising my children to know, understand and appreciate the same, and hope to instill the same sense of pride in them.

I believe that The South, in the Civil War, raised an entirely valid series of questions as it relates to states rights, and which did - and do - demand an answer. But I also know that these questions were only posed in the protection of slavery, at first, and later, in its defense. And that The South then demanded to receive their answer, not through the ballot box or otherwise within the confines of a democratic system which they had each sworn to uphold and abide by, but upon the battlefield and in open rebellion. And they got their answer, in full measure, and must now accept the somewhat time-faded but ever-persistent shame of that decision and the devastation of defeat, which those wholly unjust and tragically misguided actions caused - begged, even - to occur.

All of that being said, the continued display and flying of the Confederate flag represents little more than the last, and hopefully, dying vestiges of the same and equally crippling near-sighted, ignorant and narrow-mindedness which gave it first rise, and caused its fall.

Like RB, I oppose it's continued flying and celebration, thinking that it only continues to add to our already hard-won and well-earned defeat. It is no worthy symbol of the Southern people, but only causes them further and needless shame. As such, we should demand not only it's removal, but it's refutation, even above the loudest shouts and vehement protests of, truly, the most ignorant amongst us.

The South, both black and white, have suffered enough, and deserve better.

 

i do agree on federal owned land it should not be flown

 

:hi:

 

Many of these flags went up in the 60's to show opposition to desegregation. Where was the Southern pride prior to that?!?

 

After Reconstruction and the whole Southern Mystique movement culminating with Gone With the Wind.

Wouldn't have the notion of the Glorious Cause without the movement.

 

IP's logic, several months ago, in saying that the portraits of Lee and Jackson should be removed from the halls of West Point, as they were leaders of an armed rebellion against the very government which founded, maintains and requires an unyielding allegiance of its members to the same, was an entirely valid and correct one.

I know that Lee and Jackson were both great generals, as well as largely good and decent men, and I resisted his argument. But the fact is that the decision to rebel was not only corporately made by states, but individually by men, and voluntarily. This must also include Lee and Jackson, despite any other fact beyond that, and which is of comparitively secondary and entirely trivial importance.

Obviously, I am no less prone to clinging to the same type of ignorance as I accuse others as suffering from, but my hypocrisy does know some bounds, however belated and overdue.

I concede the point.

 

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/cornerstone-speech/ :

- Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens

That is what the flag represents. That was 19th Century ignorance. This is the 21st Century, time to move forward.

 

Zero doubt the war was about Slavery and it's expansion west. We have a solid 50 years of the powder keg in congress.

 

Should a government entity be flying it? No, and take it down.

Is taking it down going to do anything to change hearts/minds of those who remain set in a mindset, regardless of race? No.

 

It would at least be a step in the right direction for people saying "this mentality is an institutional problem".

I personally don't prescribe to that mindset but it's just ample amounts of easy and powerful ammunition to those wishing to beat those drums.

 

I don't think it has any place on gubment property for sure. IMO prudence says there's no place for it anywhere.

Also, no offense intended but take a look at the vast majority of folks displaying it, and well...

 

I don't disagree. I just feel like too many people think this would be a cure all victory.

 

There is also this.

I've always been curious to meet the people who own that little piece of land at about the 300MM on I-40.

 

The largest concentration of privately flown confederate flags I have ever seen has been in Northeast, Ohio.

It's unreal.