So What's The Deal With The Confederate Flag Anyway?

It would seem to me that, after reading this thread with high regard, that the folk who launch into "racists!!!" tantrums over the flag clearly don't really understand what the flag represented in the first place so I agree with your post in a sense that, just 'cause someone is reppin' that flag doesn't make them a racist.

It's like the swastika in Europe really, especially Deutschland. Now anyway you look at it, everyone gone be like OMG NAZI FLAG RACISTS! But I like to look into the context of the flag. Now the swastika is well known now to have come from eastern and Indian cultures. This wasn't a mistake by Hitler really I don't think, considering the SS used another highly popular Norse symbol in the Sowilo, it stands out to me that the idea of the swastika was for a cultural purpose too, a long time ago representation of the sun. The sun cross. Now the "same" swastika in other cultures is often depicted in reverse. So why the change? Well the swastika coming back into modern times had been chopped and it was no longer a "sun" cross for the design had the four wings of the sun chopped and then it was reversed and commonly referred as spokes on a wheel. The wheel motioned forward once it was reversed from the older versions. This wheel could have been perceived very differently but you often hear about moving forward, wheels in motion or alike. Now the battle flag had this wheel in motion, but many other swastikas used in nazi Germany weren't depicted in motion, they were standing still pointing north to south. Many of these ones adorned the buildings and flag poles. Now Hitler never made it into power by saying he wanted to eradicate all the Jews from the planet. Like as if anyone would have voted him in. There's so much underlying causes and ideals in National Socialism and they're often overlooked like the aspect that the civil war as we are taught was because the south wanted slaves.

Himmler was a master of immigrating foreign fighters to fight in his army. Check the record books, it wasn't just Germans fighting the war, but Muslim recruits and those who were against the oppressing Red Army were openly taken into the German forces as volunteers flying under the swastika. That makes the race debate pretty interesting right there for what the German army was doing was going completely against what the scholars would have you believe in the first place. So what did the swastika mean to the Muslims fighting for it? Or for the folk that joined the boys in Grey once they swept through town? I don't think they fought for "racism" at all and perhaps, that spoked swastika moving forward was an encouraging symbol that represented change and motion to a world and economy that drastically needed change?

 

British? The people who brought slavery to the US during colonial times? This may be the craziest Civil War post I've read so far.

The one commonly used today is the Confederate Navy version. Army version was square.

Bet you can't find a black family that owns one, in your town or anywhere else in America.

1864? Desperation moves, made by a dying movement.

I don't know any such truth.

Ever heard of a black person?

Na na na na
Na na na na
Hey hey
Goodbye
:seeya:

OMG, you have no idea what you're talking about.

 

I think all this applies to this thread:
http://www.hipforums.com/forum/topic/468216-mass-shooting-in-charleston/page-3#entry7761325

Also, the flags are shown in post #46:
http://www.hipforums.com/forum/topic/449062-us-civil-war/page-2

 

my black friend Damien owns one . probably the craziest black person Ive ever known. dreadlocks, leather jacket, megadeath blasting from his Iroc Z camaro. plays guitar, auto mechanic, probably just a few years younger than I. Its not flying outside, its hanging on the wall inside his house. It covers up the holes in the plaster.

 

That's different. If somebody gave me some kind of a Malcom X "black power" thing from the sixties, and I had a basement party room, I'd probably hang it up on the wall, just for laughs.

Outdoors, a Confederate flag on a pole is like a banner that says, "fuck all niggers in the ass". The owner is never going to have any black friends.

 

We've already established though, that racism isn't on the agenda for many who rep the flag and that their perception is different. How can they be wrong just because someone else has another idea? That's just two individual perceptions so I back up my statement that you can't just label everyone a racist because YOU have your own opinion of said flag.

 

Oh, so your one of "them"....

 

Without racism, the flag would never have existed in the first place.

If people are in denial of that, they are not seeing clearly. Or maybe they actually are racist.

 

Aptly put, and it’s no coincidence that since the demand to lower the flag was issued, there have been several suspicious fires at predominantly black churches throughout the south.

The KKK, Aryan Nation, or the Skinheads, have been very busy.


Hotwater

 

Speculation We don't know that at all.

 

Speculation - maybe.

I can't see why anyone would want to fly it though if they weren't in some way enamoured of the cause of the old South, which was racist.
Unless they are simply ignorant of history.

 

The old south was racist, the flag is a confederate battle flag so anyone who waves it has got to be racist. I am not saying there is no logic in there but it is a generalisation anyway. That we can't see why anyone else would want to fly it for another reason than for a primarily racist one doesn't mean it is so.

edit: it mainly makes sure we don't understand always why others do or show certain things and in our urge to understand it we generalize and oversimplify things We all do this to some extent. Sure the majority of people with such a flag might indeed have racist tendencies. Why not just leave it at that. I agree in the end that people who really insist the flag has solely a racist purpose and focus on it in this time because of certain recent events are letting themselves be distracted from the real issue. There is a lot of racism in the US, and pissing on and stereotyping the confederate flag and EVERYONE who has one doesn't change shit.

 

OK - they might want to fly it because they think it's pretty.

Others are proud of their southern heritage, but that leads back in a kind of circle to racism IMO.

The point is that without racism the flag wouldn't exist, and it's a reminder to both black and white of the times when America was openly a racist country. So if you display it for some other motive, you are still potentially going to cause offence.

 

We don't know what would exist without racism. It's like saying the world would be a much better place if there never was religion.

Yes, pride on southern heritage leads back to racism because of associations. But just because it was an intricate part of the south doesn't mean the people who are still proud on the old south and the efforts of trying to get their own conferderate states are primarily so because they are racists. As you say yourself it is IYO. Others might have more and wider range of associations when they think of southern heritage?

 

I think that treating all races as one race is just as racist as segregating all races.

 

Unfortunately, it's up to seven, as of last night. Another AME church in eastern SC.

I do know. It's a complex historical period, but it can be understood.

Actually, some seek to honor their Confederate military ancestors. Unfortunately, it's hard to do that without appearing to honor the cause they were fighting for. I definitely have respect for some of the CSA army leaders, but I'm not going to put one of those flags out where a black person can see it. Why? Because I'm not an insensitive ass. Everybody knows what the flag means to black people.

Is it legitimate to separate your opinion of an army from what it's fighting for? Well, Lincoln appeared to do so. He knew the Northern side was fighting for what was truly right, but he made it clear that at some times, he thought the US Army sucked. He couldn't find a general that functioned on Lee's level until Grant rose to the top.

 

Obviously we can't change the past. Racism was/is a reality and slavery was one result. The southern states didn't start slavery, they inherited it, along with racism from their European ancestors.

People from the south certainly are entitled to their heritage, but I just wish they would choose a different symbol than a flag that only came to exist because of a brutal war fought in the end over the issue of the right of one human being to own and exploit another.

 

The least controversial symbols seem to be statues of generic soldiers, nameless young men who lost their lives before they really started, when they were too young to understand how the world really works. They were just doing what they thought was expected of them at the time. Many Southern towns of all sizes have war memorial monuments that feature such statues.

Unfortunately, many black leaders now object to these also.

One reason that the Southern army was so good was the rural culture. So many young men had significant skills and experience with hunting and horseback riding before the war started. That's why Jeb Stuart's cavalry is still considered to be one of the best in world history. They did some extremely impressive things.

Too bad we didn't have a better assignment for them. I'm sure Lincoln would have paid everything he owned to trade armies. The matchup I'd like to see is Lee versus Napoleon.

Even today, a lot of what Robert E. Lee said and wrote is good advice on how to live your life and be a good person.

 

I have ancestors who fought under the Confederate Battle Flag.

A 3rd Great Grandfather, a farm laborer, was captured at the Battle Of Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia, only four miles from his home and family. He was taken to the prisoner of war camp, Camp Douglas in Chicago, Illinois. After several months there he died from diarrhea. He is buried and named on the Confederate War Mound Monument in Oakwoods Cemetery in Chicago.

I understand what the flag meant to those people, in that time.

That time has passed.

What people use the Confederate Battle Flag for today, outside of that history, is asinine in my opinion.

 

asmo, I appreciate that you always try to maintain a fair position, but I'm afraid in this case stereotypes exist for a reason. My family is 100% southern on both sides going back pre revolutionary war. I had ancestors that fought in the confederate war l, I probably had slave owning ancestors. But no one in my family has ever flown the Confederate flag because we have class. Flying the confederate flag may not make you a racist but it does make you an insensitive classless redneck with no regards to people who find southern heritage a bitter pill to swallow.