This Is What Being American Is All About

[Semper Catholic]

Thread title is spot on, America is all about exploiting and degrading minorities and the lower class and then turning around and pretending like it never happened.

Thanks brad paisley. It's ok there's no way you're racist you have tons of black friends like that one guy from NCIS.

And why do we have to forgive or forget LLs gold chains? Are those illegal or something. Oh just scary to white people got it.

[Lilllabettt]

Thread title is spot on, America is all about exploiting and degrading minorities and the lower class and then turning around and pretending like it never happened.

Guess that low opinion is why you're getting out of the Corps? Or just lost the thirst for war? self-loathing turns off the babes SC.

[Oremoose]

[Socrates]

Thread title is spot on, America is all about exploiting and degrading minorities and the lower class and then turning around and pretending like it never happened.

Thanks brad paisley. It's ok there's no way you're racist you have tons of black friends like that one guy from NCIS.

And why do we have to forgive or forget LLs gold chains? Are those illegal or something. Oh just scary to white people got it.

 

Yeah dude, Amerikkka sux.  We should all move to someplace more enlightened like the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea.

 

 

Don't know why non-white people from all over the world keep fleeing to this racist hell-hole.

[Socrates]

 

#&!$ yeah!

[Seven77]

Socrates, I appreciate your explanation. Thanks!

[Anastasia13]

With regard to the flag, my family had people killed on the basis of race/ethnicity. I am not offended by the Turkish flag. I am offended by willful ignorance, unwillingness to admit that something happened, and a desire to hide truth (and of course approval of what happened). Would it be that different if I was black?

[Anastasia13]

To hell with "diversity education" and political correctness.

 

I think... I love you...

 

Kids learn politics better than they do history these days.

[4588686]

The Confederate flag (as well as monuments to Confederate generals and war heroes) were not generally regarded as deeply offensive symbols of racism until fairly recently.  They became such mostly because people chose to become offended by them, and regard them as symbols of racism or "hate."  Not all black people are offended by the flag.

 

Also, I think people should choose for themselves what symbols of cultural pride to use - rather than "society" (presumably meaning government institutions and schools, mass-media, and other politically-correct opinion makers) telling everybody what symbols are acceptable and not.

To hell with "diversity education" and political correctness.

 

 

You know, Socrates.  You champion a lot of Southern causes.  I'd love to know how connected your family actually is to the south.  Because I'm guessing that your ties are either tenuous or you come from the 'upper crust' of Southern culture.  That's really the only two guesses I have as to how you could be so unaware of the use of Confederate symbols to intimidate.  

 

The Klan has used the Confederate as a symbol of white Southern nationalism for a long, long time.  It's not a recent development.  And it wasn't kept because they wanted to remind people that the causes of the Civil War were complex.  

 

It is still used to intimidate in the South.  This 4th I went to visit my grandparents in Eastern North Carolina, where I am from, and where my family has lived since at least the 18th century.  They don't live in a neighborhood in the traditional sense since it's a very rural part of the state.  The town they live around is theoretically about half black and half white.  If you walk around the white parts of the community there are a lot of confederate flags.  I have never once seen a black person outside of the Piggly Wiggley or other common spaces in the center of town.  That's not true, actually.  I saw a black family from outside the state drive through once.  It's gravel roads so they drove slowly.  I guess they were lost.  The tension was palpable. 

 

Is everybody who wears or promotes Confederate symbols a racist?  Nope.  Although a lot of them are, in my experience, which is pretty extensive.  Is every black person intimidated or offended by the confederate flag?  Nope.  A lot of this is starting to change now that Jim Crow was formally gutted.  

 

This is a pretty good and balanced summary:

http://encyclopediavirginia.org/Confederate_Battle_Flag#start_entry

 

 

Anybody who pretends to be confused over where the associations of the flag with racism could come from, other than PC loving liberals who want to gay marry Muslim terrorists and live in hippie communes, is either lying or staggeringly uninformed.  

Edited July 11, 2013 by Hasan

[4588686]

What about the Flag of the United States? Why does it always get a pass that the Confederate battle flag does not receive? Surely you know enough about history and present day events to know that it could just as easily be associated with far greater crimes and sins against humanity than the South ever committed.

 

Because I fly the US flag doesn't mean I support the Abortion Holocaust, dropping nukes on civilian populations, internment camps, lust, greed, envy, or any number of sins and crimes that have happened under the Flag of the United States. And no I shouldn't have to offer a upfront explanation. For Southerners the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of our heritage, it is not about slavery, it is more about our forefathers who died, not for slavery, but for their brothers in arms and their families. Northerners/Yankees don't see willing to understand or respect that, and that is a shame.

 

 

The American flag can be used as a symbol of intimidation.  It was used as such by my best friend after 9/11.  It just doesn't tend to be used like the confederate flag has been for decades as largely a symbol to intimidate.  

 

There confederate flag needn't always have the association that it does.  And since it's being commercialized it may increasingly become a genuine symbol that harkens more to the positive elements of Southern culture.  More likely it will come to be associated with all this Red Neck crap.  But it is being detoxified.  Slowly.  

[CatherineM]

It's easy to ruin a symbol, the swastika is a good example. My family landed in Virginia 400 years ago, so my Southern roots are pretty deep, my present location not withstanding. My Great-grandfather served in the Confederate army, then later in the Union. That was common in border states like Kentucky or Missouri. Had I inherited a stars and bars from him, I would definitely have kept it. I wouldn't fly it on my flag pole though.

Just remember that two of the guys on Mount Rushmore owned slaves, and no one is asking for them to be removed. I'm still peeved that the baseball team I grew up watching in OKC had to be renamed the red hawks because the 89'ers was later deemed to be offensive.

[4588686]

Had I inherited a stars and bars from him, I would definitely have kept it. I wouldn't fly it on my flag pole though.

 

 

So would I.  

 

My school has a statue.  He's called Silent Sam.  And he is a monument to the UNC students who fought for the confederacy.

 

I wouldn't support removing him.  He's part of our history.  But I'm not going to pretend to be totally perplexed as to why a black student would find him offensive and if I flew a confederate flag on my lawn I wouldn't pretend that people who assumed I was a racist were making an unreasonable assumption.  

[Socrates]

You know, Socrates.  You champion a lot of Southern causes.  I'd love to know how connected your family actually is to the south.  Because I'm guessing that your ties are either tenuous or you come from the 'upper crust' of Southern culture.  That's really the only two guesses I have as to how you could be so unaware of the use of Confederate symbols to intimidate.  

 

The Klan has used the Confederate as a symbol of white Southern nationalism for a long, long time.  It's not a recent development.  And it wasn't kept because they wanted to remind people that the causes of the Civil War were complex.  

 

It is still used to intimidate in the South.  This 4th I went to visit my grandparents in Eastern North Carolina, where I am from, and where my family has lived since at least the 18th century.  They don't live in a neighborhood in the traditional sense since it's a very rural part of the state.  The town they live around is theoretically about half black and half white.  If you walk around the white parts of the community there are a lot of confederate flags.  I have never once seen a black person outside of the Piggly Wiggley or other common spaces in the center of town.  That's not true, actually.  I saw a black family from outside the state drive through once.  It's gravel roads so they drove slowly.  I guess they were lost.  The tension was palpable. 

 

Is everybody who wears or promotes Confederate symbols a racist?  Nope.  Although a lot of them are, in my experience, which is pretty extensive.  Is every black person intimidated or offended by the confederate flag?  Nope.  A lot of this is starting to change now that Jim Crow was formally gutted.  

 

This is a pretty good and balanced summary:

http://encyclopediavirginia.org/Confederate_Battle_Flag#start_entry

 

 

Anybody who pretends to be confused over where the associations of the flag with racism could come from, other than PC loving liberals who want to gay marry Muslim terrorists and live in hippie communes, is either lying or staggeringly uninformed.  

 

For the record, I'm of mixed heritage.  My dad is not a native Southerner (he's a Los Angeles native), but my mom was born and raised in Arkansas, and her family's been there a long time.  And no, her family was not upper crust, but quite poor - I've actually got genuine Ozark hillbilly farmer relatives (laugh all you like), though most of that generation recently passed away.  My mom was the first in her family to attend and graduate college.  I have ancestors who fought on both sides of the war.

 

My wife's a native Texan and her parents are respectively originally from Texas and southwestern Virginia.

 

But it's cute how you presume so much about my family.

 

I was born in the north, but lived most my life in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley.  Lots of locals like to fly the battle flag there, but it's usually used as more a symbol of Southern Pride (or just being a redneck), than racial hate, and there's a lot of pride in the region's Confederate past and heroes.  I've even seen a liberal Virginian fly the flag.

 

Like the bumper sticker says, "Heritage, not Hate."

 

I've occasionally seen the flag used in a blatantly racist context, but that's not its most common use (and I regard such croutons as a disgrace to the flag rather than honoring it).

 

I myself and others have worn clothing with the flag and Confederate memorabilia in racially-mixed settings without any incidents, and a young buddy of mine got suspended from a college for flying the flag in his dorm room, and his black friends from the South defended him, saying its about where they're from, not racism.

 

My simple point was that the Confederate flag doesn't necessarily stand for racism - and stands for a lot more, and it isn't the equivalent of the Nazi swastika..

 

I can't speak about every place in the South, but while there's undoubtably still some racism (in and outside the South), I don't think overall the modern South's the hellish hotbed of racial hatred liberals make it out to be, and I get tired of Southern whites being constantly demonized as a group.

 

I'm also sick of all the constant political race-baiting and racial hypersensitivity, trying to make everything about race and racism (witness all the nonsensical garbage over the Zimmerman trial).

Edited July 11, 2013 by Socrates

[CatherineM]

I just remembered that my grandparents had a lawn jockey on their front lawn. Their lawn used to win all sorts of gardening or best lawn awards. Most people here are probably too young to even know what a lawn jockey is.

I left Oklahoma for good in 1994. Back then the NE part of town was stilled called "colored town." I wonder if they still do that.

[Tab'le De'Bah-Rye]

Pride is the biggest fault of Australia also. Loose that pride and than you can walk hand in hand with the outcast,broken,poor etc. Pride is bad right?