Mass Shooting In Charleston

I agree with most of what you wrote, but I'm perplexed at the references you and others keep making to widespread slavery in the North during the war. Nobody cites any references for this. That's because it isn't true. Black slavery was never common in the North at any time, and use of slave labor in nineteenth century manufacturing was never a success story, so wealthy Northern industrialists had no interest in it. Without the financial interest of that group, Northern politicians had no reason not to side the growing abolitionist movement. By 1860, Northern slavery was close to extinct and headed that way rapidly, without pressure from the federal level. The states were taking care of it on their own.

Western states also had no interest. With a ranch economy as their cornerstone, they thought it best to leave the increasingly unpopular institution alone, foreseeing trouble down the road.

General J. Lawrence Chamberlain wrote in his memoirs that in all his years in Maine, before joining the US Army, he had never before seen a black man, slave or free. He had been a college professor before the war.

 

Except that after the civil war the north did their best to attract as many former slaves as possible to work in factories. Once there they became victims of the "company store" system and were slaves once again. So too were the other workers regardless of color. A lot of reprehensible shit went down back then, so the assertion that we'll return to chattel slavery is ludicrous when wage slavery is so much better for the wealthy owners. Minimum wage is a perfect example of this because the "slaver" gets cheap labor but doesn't have to feed or care for the slaves and the slaves can be any race or color or ethnicity or gender.

There used to be a saying that the southern "lords of the lash" only existed to supply the norther "lords of the looms" with cotton.

I still fail to see how any of this is relevant to some nut case murdering people in a church. And I fail to see how symbols like a flag or the bones of Confederates can actually be "blamed" for the actions of this guy. If I was to surrender to that sort of thinking I'd be scared shitless of what a movie like Mad Max or Blade Runner might make my brother do next since he loves them both so much. Will he one day snap and shoot up a convenience store? I doubt it. Because he's not insane. That phenomenon in this family is mine alone and I have no interest in murder

But blaming his actions on a flag has actually allowed a lot of people to feel very self-righteous as they trample and burn it to get their frustrations out. Unfortunately it has given a green light to random attacks on people for simply being white. THAT is racism.

 

This is all confused, and contradicts what you said earlier. Company store systems were dominant in coal mining, victimizing mostly European immigrants. To this day, black coal miners are rare. Factories just wanted skilled workers. Race did not matter to them. Almost no black workers were available to apply for those jobs before 1864. The wages offered seemed quite generous, for that time period. Most people preferred factories to farm work.

The worst textile mills (for workers) were in the UK, where a high percentage of the cotton went before the war.

And I guess you will always fail to see it, no matter how it is explained to you, because you'd rather not.

Let me try one more time, in the simplest possible terms. This guy assassinated a state legislator, and other black legislators and black staff members who work in the capitol building every day didn't think they should still be required to walk past that nasty fucking flag every day, paid for with their tax dollars, and watch the KKK hold victory celebrations around it. And the majority of voters and taxpayers in a state that you don't live in agreed with them.

Settled issue. Stop whining about it. Nobody is going to take away any flag that you own.

 

You are getting needlessly upset and personal with this. Stick to the matter at hand. One example I would point out were the riots in 1864 New York. White men attacked black people because they didn't like the newly freed slaves taking jobs. And again, I'm from California where that flag means nothing and has never held any meaning for me.

I think you are making a lot of assumptions about me because I don't buy every line of yours to the hilt. That's the purpose of debate and discussion isn't? Not all this personal shit.

One point where you and I do agree is that a state senator was assassinated. Could it be that this whole thing was a smokescreen to hide that fact? What if he was the target all along? Wouldn't a huge flap about an old flag that was hijacked by the KKK years ago be the PERFECT cover? Look how nobody is investigating Pinkney's assassination any further. The case is locked up solid because the narrative that white supremacists, who have zero support from the white population at large, are trying to kill all the black people and take over the nation (fat chance of that).

I do hope you're not making all of these odd assumptions about me simply because of my color. They have a word for that you know.

Personally, I think the flag issue should be dropped. This would give the losers the idea that they had "won" and they'd start hanging their flags all over the place. Then we'd all know whom to avoid.

 

I'm just sick and tired of people from a variety of places acting all butt-hurt over the way SC handled their problem. It appears that nearly everybody down there has moved on.

The national reaction is a different story. Too much. So far, most of it is nothing but talk.

I'm just not convinced you've done enough reading about the CW period to seriously debate this period in history.

To avoid post-war revisionism and political spin control, you have to focus on things that were written and said prior to 1861.

Of course he was! The killer has admitted that he researched this particular church online. That's why he drove all the way to Charleston. His house is near Columbia, on the far side of town from the coast. He could have found a lot of random black people much closer to home.

The killer is in custody, and I don't believe he's smart enough to have been working with somebody more important. He just got his mostly empty head too deep into racist propaganda.

They are flying those flags more than ever, and I do know who to avoid. At least, I know where they live and what they drive.

They better not make any wrong turns and drive through a black neighborhood, or they'll be lucky to get out with nothing worse than a broken windshield.

 

What you're saying here is only confirming the perspective of racists. That a "black" neighborhood is dangerous. I remember how the Tenderloin district was labeled this way and it was assumed to be a black issue. The truth was that it was a largely Hispanic and white problems as they were doing the most robberies and dealing the most dope. Granted, it was the 70s so the area was still largely white. Still, the overall assumption was that all that crime was surely the mark of blacks.

I live in Atlanta now and people all over the country ask me about it. They love to harp on how it's a black lawless city when the crime here pales in comparison to places like Memphis, Baltimore or Gary. Sure, Atlanta has had black leadership for like 3 decades, but the city is not a crumbling ghetto or 'hood. People are shocked to hear that the south has all the new car plants, some of the new aviation plants, nuclear power AND indoor plumbing.

Of course when you get out of the city it changes a little, but not as much as is assumed by the example of northern "white flight". I think a lot of people get their latest information about the south from old movies. Some are surprised that we actually get along pretty well in these parts.

I also admit that I care little about the civil war in the 21st century, but don't assume I have read nothing about it. What I have read has been conflicting, so I will not gravitate to anything that claims to be absolute truth in a book. Some of the best insights I read were letters from that time. On both sides the guys in the trenches and their families at home tried to reconcile the rhetoric and propaganda with the reality they actually saw.

I dislike the idea that people today are expected to pay for the misdeeds of other people 150 years ago. But that's exactly what is happening. I wonder if I can get a fat check from the Moors for enslaving Sicily for so long? And since Rome is still around, why can't the Tunisians sue for the destruction of Carthage? All this digging in the past for payback heals nothing. It's like picking at a scab.

 

We're talking about displaying racist symbols. You can safely show a Confederate flag in a dangerous white trash neighborhood. They may steal the flag, but they won't hurt you.

Hey, let's ask the UK for some cash, since they brought slavery here in the first place!

 

Now there's a great point. Slavery was brought here by the British and the Dutch. When the actual US was incorporated and had driven out the British (the Dutch were tossed out of leadership of any sort many years before) slavery was dividing factors for the Americans to deal with. When I hear people complain about how the US kept slaves for over 400 years I try to point out that is not the truth. As a nation slavery was ended in 77 years, faster than any other nation. If not for the War of 1812, the Mormon Wars and the various conflicts with the Native nations, slavery might have ended much sooner. Most Americans didn't want it.

But the new nation couldn't afford to unplug it all at once for fear of collapsing a fragile economy and laying the country open to further invasion by the British. It seems to me that it was the Americans who drove the ending of slavery in this entire hemisphere. Including the slavery being practiced by the indigenous people/nations. The US has been moving forward since we finally shed British rule. I little over a century after ending the civil war, Americans walked on the moon. Even with all of the problems the nation managed to make amazing progress.

This is why I am distressed at all the backsliding we are doing now. It's as if the information age has stagnated us after the space age seemed to promise so much. We're smarter, but also at each other's throats for shit done largely by people who have been dead for a very long time. This is why I have so little sympathy for people who assume that my color makes me a natural born racist. If they really knew me, that idea would be preposterous.

 

Just when you thought all this was settled and over with, more than 24,000 signatures have been placed on a petition to remove the African American monument from the SC capitol grounds, as payback for removing the Confederate flag. :wall:

The news story includes a beautiful pic of the monument: http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1256507

 

These are the same asswipes who wonder why there is no "white history" month. They just do not get the point that flying the stars & bars today is a resurrection of white supremacy that flag represented in history and is in no way the same as a diorama or statue representing a moment of history.

BTW, who around the world were they referring to. It ain't nobody's business around the world who were not a part of the history of that backwater state of S. Carolina. And I am glad they said it upset the white ppl in S. Carolina to alleviate some of my embarrassment of being a white person but not of that Old South mentality.

 

Maybe they (or a part of them) get the point well enough, but simply happen to (unfortunately impolitely) disagree.

 

There was a monument in Boston that was dishonored by the confederate flag

Boston- An unknown vandal attached a Confederate battle flag to a memorial honoring an all-black regiment that fought for the Union during the Civil War.

The flag was discovered and removed from the Robert Gould Shaw and Massachusetts 54th Regiment Memorial by a private citizen on Sunday night, The Lowell woman threw the flag in the trash.

Shaw led the regiment that formed shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation allowed for volunteer units of African-American soldiers, The 54th Regiment was the subject of the acclaimed historical drama film "Glory," released in 1989 with Matthew Broderick as Shaw and Denzel Washington.


Hotwater

 

God this shit just gets me fuming...Yeah "we've made so much progress over the last few decades" Progress my ass