Before I get into this though, I do ask that you read this post thoroughly and in its entirety. I did a lot of research and put a lot of thought into everything in this post and discuss a lot of viewpoints from different sides and perspectives. So take a deep breath, try not to get all huffy, and do please try to keep an open mind.
I wholeheartedly believe that if you're going to take a strong stance on something then you should have your facts straight and it seems that the people who are being the loudest about it really don't and are only regurgitating a rack of herd mentality shit. You can't combat ignorance with more ignorance because 2 wrongs will never equal one single right.
In case you've been living under a rock for the past couple weeks, let me give you a brief synopsis of what happened because if you don't know then you'll be totally lost...
The Wednesday before last, 6/17/2015, there was a mass shooting at a Bible study prayer meeting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina where 9 people were brutally murdered and one person was wounded. The alleged (I only use that word because this is a publication and he has not been convicted yet... But he has confessed to the murders and is clearly a racist piece of shit) shooter is a 21 year old kid named Dylann Storm Roof.
Let's take a moment to remember these 9 people who were slain. Look at their faces and read their names because with all this flag hoopla I think a lot of people are losing sight of and shifting the focus from what this really should be about...
The victims are:
Pastor and South Carolina State Senator Clementa C. Pinckney, 41
Susie Jackson, 87
Her nephew who tried to protect her Tywanza Sanders, 26
Church Sexton Ethel Lee Lance, 70
Pastor Depayne Middleton-Doctor, 49
Pastor Daniel Simmons, 74
Cynthia Marie Graham Hurd, 54
Pastor Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45
Bible Study Teacher Myra Thompson, 59
I wish to take my own moment to express my deepest sympathies, condolences, and prayers to the family and friends of the people killed in this senseless tragedy. I ask anyone reading this post to do the same. They did not deserve to die like that. NO ONE deserves to die like that.
So Roof came to the prayer meeting and sat down with these nice folks for like an hour and talked to them and got to know them.. and according to some reports even started to like them.. and then he got up at the end and shot them. One of the victims, Tywanza Sanders, tried to talk Roof down and asked why he was attacking churchgoers. Roof responded, "I have to do it. You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go."
He pulled his gun out of his fanny pack.. yeah, a fanny pack.. and proceeded to shoot these innocent people while shouting "Ya'll want something to pray about? I'll give you something to pray about!".. and then he yelled a rack of racial slurs at them as well. He stopped to reload his gun 5 times. Most of the victims were shot at close range which to me says he shot them and then went back over the bodies and shot them again several times.
The only survivors were 2 small children (thank God he didn't kill the kids too) and a couple women, one of whom was Felicia Sanders, daughter of Susie Jackson and mother of Tywanza Sanders, who Roof told he let live so she could go tell people what happened because he was going to kill himself. He put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger but found out that he was out of ammo. So he yelled some more racial slurs and left.
Fortunately there was a surveillance camera that got Roof going into the church along with his car and they blasted that everywhere. Roof was then apprehended in North Carolina thanks to a tip from a lady named Debbie Dills.. a white lady (I mention that because since this whole issue centers around race and racism, it's important to recognize the fact that the overwhelming majority of white Southerners do not condone this guy's actions at all) who saw the images on the news and recognized his car and haircut. She followed him until police caught up. Let's commend this lady for her bravery and help in getting that psycho off the streets so he can be brought to justice for his disgusting, atrocious crimes.
I saw an interview with this lady on the Today Show and she said she's normally not a brave person like that but she followed him to make sure police got him because she couldn't bear the thought of him going and doing that to anyone else. Dills is a Christian and said how awful this is because these innocent people were murdered while they were at church getting closer to God.. She's right. That does add a layer that makes this situation even more appalling than it was just on principle. The victims were unarmed, peaceful people in a house of God loving each other and learning how to be even better people and better Christians and even welcomed in this stranger and included him in their class and then he repaid their acceptance and love with violence.
Roof was a pretty flagrant racist who posted all kinds of hateful bullshit on his website he ran and even had a manifesto. You can tell just by looking at this kid that he was some backwoods hick with some serious deep rooted issues. I mean, the kid had a bowl cut.. Who the fuck still has a bowl cut? I'm pretty sure South Carolina is one of the states that brought back the electric chair due to the shortage of lethal injection drugs and I'm personally hoping they fry his ass.
But while we were all united in our sentiment and caring about the 9 people who were killed, a bunch of instigators had to come and poke the sleepy bear like they always do. They compared Roof's treatment by police to that of the DC Sniper with the whole bulletproof vest Burger King debacle. Then of course it's all this "Black Lives Matter" and dragged out Trayvon and all the recent issues with black men being mistreated and killed by police and the Baltimore Riots.
Well all lives matter and nobody was giving Roof special treatment. He's being prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and it's looking like he may get indicted federally as well because this was a hate crime and that is a federal offense. Nobody had to fight for that to happen. It is just happening because our justice system is actually doing its job and doing right by those victims. People don't like it when you shoot up pastors and old people in a Christian church while they're praying. It's an affront to God and we're a Christian dominant country. That kid will pay for it in this life and when he goes to God on his day of ultimate judgment.
But everybody still wants to focus on minute shit that does not matter. Lee Boyd Malvo didn't get Burger King because he helped terrorize a tri-state area for weeks. He and John Allen Muhammed were lucky they didn't get curb stomped by a rack of angry DMV citizens who thought they were going to get randomly shot every day for weeks. Pretty sure that white guy in Aurora, Colorado who shot up a movie theater full of kids didn't get Burger King either. The Burger King nonsense is just hearsay anyway. But all that stuff is the usual poking that just annoys the sleepy bear because it dies out and everyone moves on. When they started in on the flag though, that's when the bear woke up.
What began this whole flag controversy was that pictures surfaced of Roof posing with the Confederate Rebel Flag. There are also pictures of this kid burning the American flag but nobody is discussing the fact that he was anti-American. They're just focusing on the Rebel Flag part of it and are using it as an excuse to now violate people's right to wave that battle flag. Now it has all kinds of people in an uproar that has gotten well beyond ridiculous.
It started with a call by South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (a white lady) to take the Rebel Flag down that flies over the capital building in Columbia, South Carolina because people think it's offensive and that it doesn't belong there. This came after Senator Pinckney was placed in the state building to lie in repose for public viewing and they put a black curtain over the windows to shield mourners from the sight of the Rebel Flag outside. This sentiment was then shared by others who also think the flag should come down. Well that's fine. It's a state building and I agree that the Confederate Battle Flag does not belong there.
A couple days ago, right before a pro-flag rally was scheduled to take place, an activist against the flag named Brittany Newsome climbed the pole and took the flag down. She had an accomplice, James Tyson, who helped her with her climbing gear. Both of them were arrested and charged with defacing a monument and the flag was put back up pretty much immediately. Now she's being called a hero by all these anti-flag people on Twitter.
People made videos of Newsome and here is one of them...
That particular battle flag is protected by state law and needs a super majority vote by the state Congress in favor before it will come down... Just in case you didn't know that. So unless enough people vote in favor to remove it, the flag stays. There could have been 200 other people in climbing gear behind Newsome ready to shinny up that pole and grab that flag and they all would've met the same fate and gotten themselves some misdemeanor monument defacement charges too.
The way her stunt looks to pro-flag people is a laughable smack down fuck you to the anti-flag cause because no matter what you do that flag stays. Personally I think Newsome's time would've been better served leading a less flashy anti-flag rally against the pro-flag one to get the attention of the politicians in the state building who actually do have the power to bring the flag down.
Honestly though, the only way the people are ripping that flag down and making it stick would probably be if they were to riot in the streets like Baltimore. But look at all the pain and problems that caused the people of Baltimore. Do you really want that? Probably not. Plus the people of Baltimore were rioting over legit issues of police brutality against the African American community of that city. It had nothing to do with trivial flag bullshit and that flag doesn't even fly in that city. It was about fair and equal treatment of people by law enforcement. Nobody is being treated unfairly by anyone in this particular instance. The flag didn't kill anyone. Dylann Storm Roof did.
The Rebel Flag has been identified as a symbol of hatred and racism tantamount to the Nazi swastika... But if you actually do some research then you'll find out that much like the swastika that at its core it's really not. The swastika was and continues to be a Hindu and Buddhist religious symbol.. Both symbols were made into racist symbols by people who twisted and tainted it.
If you don't know then I'll tell you... Let me get all educational on yo ass for a moment and break off some Wikipedia Civil War history for all the huffy folks out there who haven't bothered to crack a book on the subject...
The Confederate Battle Flag or the Rebel Flag or the Dixie Cross or whatever you want to call it was actually originally called the Battle Flag of Northern Virginia. It was designed by William Porcher Miles as a solution to a problem brought up by Confederate Generals after the First Battle of Manassas because it was hard for them to tell the Stars and Bars official Confederate flag from the Union's official Stars and Stripes flag. The Confederacy didn't want to change its official flag so Miles proposed they have 2 flags.. One for peace and one that looked totally different for war.
There are actually a rack of Confederate flag designs including the official Confederate flag called the "Stars and Bars" which has been used incorrectly to refer to the Rebel Flag.
Here are all the Confederate Flag designs...
No you're not hallucinating.. There are 2 Native American Flags in there because they too fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War and rebelled against the Union over their oppression as a people. Albert Pike conducted treaty terms and later commanded a combined force of Choctaw, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole troops. They got kinda fucked over a little.. But they were still apart of it and are considered Confederate veterans too... Because.. OH SHIT! Not all people who rep Confederate flags are white! Remember that point because we're going to keep coming back to it.
Here is a Press Release from United Native America where they went H.A.M. on some government guy in Oklahoma who dared to tell them their flag was wrong and racist when they wanted to raise it outside of a state building as a symbol of their heritage. They definitely won that fight. Do not fuck with the Cherokee Nation because you will get your ass tamahawked with a quickness.. with words bitches.
You want to tell their descendants they can't fly any or all of those flags, I fucking triple dog dare you. I used to visit Seminole reservations in Florida all the time when I was a kid. Those people wrestle alligators for sport. I would not recommend fucking with them. The Union sanctioned stealing their land and committed mass genocide of their people. Then the US Government stuck them on reservations and they're still there, many of whom are living in extreme poverty. Black people have been getting teddy bear picnics with high tea and crumpets compared to the Native Americans and you know I'm right.
They can do whatever the hell they want to express themselves and their heritage as far as I'm concerned. But if you're against Confederate flags and you want to be like that government dude and go tell them these symbols are hateful and hurtful and need to be removed to appease your own over sensitivity to shit then please go right on ahead. They will rap with you all day on what oppression and discrimination really are and all you'll be able to do is shut your mouth and get schooled cause we all know how much they got fucked and still get fucked.
Anyway the the Battle Flag of Northern Virginia was created through a painstaking design challenge and then presented in Fairfax, Virginia in a ceremony to a few generals including General Robert E. Lee whose unit carried it with pride throughout the war. It restored the morale of the troops and gave them something to be proud of... The Rebel Flag and variations of it were then adopted by other Confederate military units throughout the South so they could easily recognize and differentiate friend from foe.
Here is the marker in Fairfax, VA marking the birth of the flag.. Cause we as Southerners have to commemorate EVERYTHING of any kind of historic significance...
Well all these people's main argument is that the flag was for the people in the war fought to keep slavery. They say "Oh it's all about slavery and that flag is racist and blah blah blah..." I'm not disputing that the Civil War was fought over slavery. I'm just saying it's not the only reason.. like many other people keep saying but nobody wants to listen. For many Southerners it was about states' rights and not being pushed around by a rack of government and business people who were bleeding them dry.
There were also a lot of people who were just plain old non slave owning subsistence farmers and regular old townsfolk like the local blacksmith and shit who were forced to fight in that war simply because their states got dragged into it... Much like General Robert E. Lee... People are coming with guns to your house. What are you going to do? Let them run roughshod all over your land, take your shit, and rape your wife? Probably not.
Here is an extra fun fact for in case that Native American knowledge I dropped on you wasn't enough...
So General Robert E. Lee carried the Rebel Flag first as his standard and he never owned slaves. His wife Mary Custis Lee inherited them along with a few plantations after her father died and Lee was the executor of the will.. Lee was actually against slavery and was quoted in a letter written to his wife in 1856 that he thought slavery was "a moral and political evil". He got into the war because Virginia got dragged into it and he felt he needed to protect and defend his home.
He needed to keep the slaves his father in law owned initially to restore the farms which was a stipulation allowed in the will. Once the farms were straight or within 5 years, which ever cam first, the slaves were to be let go. A lot of slaveowners had the freedom of their slaves upon their death in their wills. Many were viewed like family and what do you need them for when you're dead?
Lee set the slaves on his wife's father's farms free in 1862 long before the war ended. The freed slaves that stayed on were actually allowed to settle at the farm and were educated by Mary and the Lee family because they believed everyone should know how to read so they could read the Bible. Lee was quoted time and again about making sure the people (meaning slaves) were taken care of because he legit cared.
Meanwhile, prominent Union General and former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant actually did own slaves on his farm in Missouri and didn't free them until the law forced him to in 1865... and Missouri was a wishy washy state during the war that only got to keep their slaves because they didn't succeed from the Union.. Cause wait.. The Emancipation Proclamation was actually total bullshit.
Abraham Lincoln used it as a threat to try to keep the Southern states from succeeding because his only goal was to keep the Union together. So in September of 1862 Lincoln sent out a preliminary proclamation saying that all slaves would be freed in any state that didn't end its rebellion against the Union. The Confederate states basically told Lincoln to go fuck himself and continued with their succession. There is a reason it's called the "Rebel Flag". Southerners as a people are generally stubborn and rebellious by nature. Tell us we can't do something and we'll basically tell you to go fuck yourself.. which is also what's happening right now when it comes to this flag today.
Anyway, Lincoln in essence said "Fuck you back" and issued the formal Emancipation Proclamation the following year in 1863 to piss off the South and as an unsuccessful attempt to incite mass slave revolts. Lincoln also thought that the freed slaves would be inspired to run away to the North and fight for the Union and that didn't really work out like he planned either. General Lee, on the other hand, actually advocated to slave holders to free their slaves and allow them to join the Confederate military. He said he could turn anybody with arms and legs into a soldier.. and that did actually happen.. So, again, not all sons and daughters of the Confederate veterans are white.. Keep remembering that because we'll keep coming back to this again and again.
But basically, if the South would have just played ball with the Union then slavery in the Confederate states wouldn't have ended at that point. In fact.. in 1862, President Lincoln wrote a letter to the New York Tribune that included the following passage: "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union."
Sorry to all the black people out there who really thought Abraham Lincoln was the man who wanted freedom for the slaves riding around on unicorns with Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass hopping over rainbows and shit. In reality Abraham Lincoln didn't really give a flying fuck about your ancestors in any real way as far as his the power his political office is concerned. Personally, he was against slavery. But he was also a politician who wanted votes and a whole and peaceful Union. So your ancestors were just pawns in his scheme.
"Oh well it was still fought so WHITE PEOPLE could keep slavery and blah blah blah..." Ok.. Not true either.. It wasn't so the white man could maintain his superiority over the negro people and whatever MC Twisty (Yeah I called you out dick) posted on my FB status cut and pasting Alexander Stephens clandestine bullshit while calling me a racist instead of posting his own legit unique thoughts..
Let's discuss something that most black people who are against the Rebel Flag don't really want to get into.. Not every Southern slave owner was white... And we're not just talking about free blacks who paid to free a couple family members.. though there were some grouped in to the numbers. We're talking about free blacks with huge stereotypical Southern plantations that in some cases were bigger than their white neighbors with a rack of slaves like a fucked up version of Amistad.
There is a very enlightening article I would suggest everyone read written by Robert M. Grooms called Dixie's Censored Subject - Black Slaveowners which provides a fuck ton of statistics on the astounding number of free blacks who owned their own plantations along with a rack of slaves to mind them. These figures are backed up by United States Census records and I found other sources with even more in depth info.
Proportionately... like total population versus actual number of slave owners.. a higher percentage of slave owners were actually black. Let me break it down with some math. In 1860 in the South, there were around 8 Million white people and fewer than 385,000 of those white people owned one or more slaves... So like only 4.8% of white people were slave owners.
But, that same year in 1860, there were around 4 million black people living in the South and around 261,988 were free. Of the free black people, around 30% of them were slave owners. I could not find a total estimate of how many black slave owners there were but let's be conservative in the numbers and put it at around 75,000.
Since we're discussing Charleston, South Carolina let's get into that city's statistics. In 1860 there were 125 free black slave owners just in that one city alone with $1.5 Million in taxable property and $300,000 of that property were slave holdings. Think about what $1 was worth at that time before inflation. That's a lot of money.
They also discuss New Orleans, Louisiana a lot because there were 10,689 free blacks living in that city in 1860 and over 3,000 of them owned slaves. That's 28% of the city's black people.. and a good deal of them dominated the sugar market. Do you think those people wanted to give up their slaves they bought for their cushy sugar plantations because they cared that slavery was evil or wrong? FUCK NO! They were rich and happy and fuck other black people cause that's just too damn bad for them. Don't believe me?
Here is another interesting article to read written by an African American named Henry Louis Gates Jr. from The Root called Did Black People Own Slaves?. It discusses all kinds of facts and statistics of free black slave owners. This is a little snippet from the article...
"Perhaps the most insidious or desperate attempt to defend the right of black people to own slaves was the statement made on the eve of the Civil War by a group of free people of color in New Orleans, offering their services to the Confederacy, in part because they were fearful for their own enslavement: "The free colored population [native] of Louisiana … own slaves, and they are dearly attached to their native land … and they are ready to shed their blood for her defense. They have no sympathy for abolitionism; no love for the North, but they have plenty for Louisiana … They will fight for her in 1861 as they fought [to defend New Orleans from the British] in 1814-1815."
These guys were, to put it bluntly, opportunists par excellence: As Noah Andre Trudeau and James G. Hollandsworth Jr. explain, once the war broke out, some of these same black men formed 14 companies of a militia composed of 440 men and were organized by the governor in May 1861 into "the Native Guards, Louisiana," swearing to fight to defend the Confederacy. Although given no combat role, the Guards -- reaching a peak of 1,000 volunteers -- became the first Civil War unit to appoint black officers.
So the slave owners that wanted to succeed based solely on keeping the institution of slavery were not just white. The black plantation owners who were making a fuck ton of money off the backs of their own people are just as complicit as their white counterparts. Plus if you do your research on slave owner statistics, only the wealthiest 1% which includes both white and black slave owners had those stereotypical exaggerated plantations with hundreds of slaves.
Do you really think over one million men really went to war just over what 4,600 people had a super vested interest in? Well, of course because that still happens today to some respect.. But let me give you an example.. So you know how Donald Trump pissed off Mexico over immigration? Let's pretend Bill Gates, Oprah, and Warren Buffett all agree with him and don't like Mexico either.. and then they get into it and Mexico declares war and decides to invade the US so then the entire state of Texas is forced to fight Mexico because they ain't going to Oprah's house first.. They're coming to yours to run roughshod all over and steal and rape your wife. You think Texas will let that happen? No. Does that make Texas racist against Mexicans just because they fight to defend their homes? No.
Anyway, the Civil War ended and guess what? The South lost.. pretty badly.. just in case you didn't know. We do. We got that. We have accepted it... well, most of us have accepted it.. and by most I mean there are still some super old, kinda ignorant, funny people out there who hang on to the hope that one day the South will rise again and we'll finally beat them damn Yankees! Those people who still hang on to that though are not advocating a return of slavery. We all agree that slavery is bad and it's good that it ended.. What they're advocating for is a return of Southern pride that was lost the day the South surrendered.
Look at it this way.. You know how sometimes you see people driving around with old bumper stickers for candidates that lost elections? When you see them you kinda smirk and think to yourself "Man, you should take that off your car cause they didn't win in case you didn't get the memo." Many Southerners of my generation kinda viewed the Rebel Flag like those stickers. It's been a running joke for quite some time and it's our God given right as Southerners to laugh about the people who think somehow them damn Yankees will get their due.
Many Southerners though who still to continued to fly their Confederate flags claimed their veteran's status as well.. Not all of whom, as we've established were white. In an 1890 US Census there were 3,273 black men claiming to be Confederate veterans along with 542 widows of Confederate veterans. Imagine just how many descendants of those 3,815 people there are in the Southern United States today alone. Want to tell them they can't remember their dead great great great grandfathers just because you're offended?
Another interesting article you should read by Jim W. Dean from Veterans Today is called Confederate Soldiers Are American Veterans By Act of Congress. This article discusses how after the Spanish American War in 1898 the Confederate veterans at the proposal of President McKinley were made American Veterans by several acts of Congress with all the same rights and honors as any veteran of this country. The dead soldiers were even reburied in federal military cemeteries including Arlington National Cemetery and given proper headstones and honors and whatnot. Why?
Well, remember my example of the whole Donald Trump war with Mexico? Yeah that shit actually happened for real a couple times.. not over immigration but over differences with Spain and us fighting for Cuban independence. So this Confederate veterans' honors thing was a gesture made by the federal government to ease the lingering tension between the North and the South because the Southerners fought their asses off for this country. Many of those people were children of Confederate soldiers whose fathers had been thrown in mass graves and shit. So that Rebel Flag you hate became a symbol of their dead loved ones recognized as appropriate by the United States federal government.
It has continued as a military and commemorative symbol since that time. There was a resurgence of its use during World War II by soldiers drafted from the Southern states. They used it as a way to identify other soldiers from home so they could feel more at ease during the war. Since it is a war battle flag, these soldiers also carried it as their standard under Rebel companies and hung it up as a big fuck you to the Nazis when they claimed victory... So the flag you hate was also used as a counter against the swastika.. Didn't know that did you?
Of course, the commanding officer made the guys take it down because he said there were other people involved in the victory who weren't from the South. But still. At least that explains why many of our Southern grandfathers who are WW2 veterans had an attachment to that flag... Not because they're racist.. But as a military symbol. Wanna tell your 90 year old grandpa his war flag is bad? Go right ahead. Hope he tans your hide and bitch slaps your ass for being a disrespectful ingrate.
Well then in 1948, Strom Thurman and the Dixiecrats and the fucking Ku Klux Klan and people who didn't want integration came along and fucked shit up for every Southerner who owned that flag to remember their dead relatives for like 90 years and all the military who carried it through WW2 and those racists made it dirty. Suddenly all Southerners with that flag who had it for their own honest reasons were lumped into together with a rack of racist pieces of shit and those people weren't happy about it at all.
The Dixiecrats touted states' rights as their main deal.. But really they were protesting integration and Civil Rights and rebelling against the federal government so they hung that flag all over as a symbol of their rebellion. Then the KKK got on the bandwagon (probably because some of the Dixiecrats were also members of the KKK too) and started waving that flag everywhere as a hate group.
Well of course many of the KKK members and the other white supremacy groups that sprouted up over the years still do wave that flag because they consider themselves rebels and whatever.. and they spout that Alexander Stephens' clandestine bullshit Cornerstone speech MC Twisty threw in my face and they preach their sermons of hatred... not just against black people but against Jews, Arabs, Latinos, Asians, and pretty much everyone else who isn't them.
The reality of the situation is though that you can take away their swastikas and their Rebel Flags and their lighters to burn their crosses with (which personally I see as an affront to Jesus perpetrated by hypocrits who thump a Bible but clearly have never read it because I don't see how burning the main symbol of Christianity shows Jesus any love)... Anyway, you can take that all away and they will still be exactly who they are with or without it.. Racist pieces of shit brimming with hatred and ignorance. They will still say all the same things and commit the same hate crimes. So what did you really accomplish?
As a parallel to that though, during the Civil Rights movement there were also Civil Rights groups in the South who adopted the Rebel Flag.. Didn't know that huh? There is another article written by Jesse Walker on 6/24/2015 called When Anti-Racists Adopted the Confederate Battle Flag which talks about the peace group called the Southern Student Organizing Committee in 1964 that used the Rebel Flag as their symbol. This emblem was designed by a black man named Claude Weaver and it was adopted as a symbol of rebellion against those in the South who were pro-segregation.
But they had to do redesigned variations of it though because both the other Civil Rights groups and the KKK and other white supremacy groups didn't understand. I think that's cool because it kinda threw a wrench in everything. They were rebelling against the Southern status quo views of segregation at the time. They were also trying to explain that that flag wasn't about racism. It was just about heritage.
A militant Civil Rights group called the Patriots that was apart of the Rainbow Coalition along with the Black Panthers also adopted the Rebel Flag as their symbol to represent the poor South's rebellion against the owning class. My favorite quote in that whole article is from a member of the Patriots about their message. "From historical experience, we know that the people make the meaning of a flag. This time we mean to see that the spirit of rebellion finds and smashes the real enemy rather than our brothers and sisters in oppression."
So in case you forgot where we started before the history lesson then let me bring it back.. Within just the past week though people have gone apeshit über fascisti on everything to do with Southern cultural symbols. First, it started with the call by the South Carolina Governor to take the Rebel Flag down that flies over the state capital building in Charleston... who I'm sorry to say but seems to me like a lady filled with something many Southern white people refer to as "white guilt." If you look at Gov. Haley she kinda has that shit written all over her.
For every black person who pulls the slavery card out, there are some white people out there, usually women, who fall right into it and feel some kind of trite remorse for whatever their ancestors and white people as a race did to the black folks like 150 years ago.. which actually as we established, this particular lady's ancestors may not have even been guilty of. I know my family on my dad's side owned some slaves back then. I don't feel guilty about it because I had nothing to do with it. I wasn't even alive. Their slave ownership isn't on me to make amends for to anyone... especially because those family members and the slaves they owned are all long dead now. I reaped zero benefit from whatever money they made and that farm isn't even in our family anymore.
But if you're some cotton or sugar heiress then yeah you should probably feel some guilt cause you know how that fortune got built. Even then though it's not like the people alive today had anything to do with enslaving anyone either. People just need to move on. Instead they feel the need to stand up for the poor, disenfranchised black people like they're weak, feeble children who can't defend themselves.. which we know isn't true. It's a covert form of racism that I think is much more insulting. A similar lady brimming with white guilt outed Paula Deen and we all know how that shook out. Black people love Paula Deen. Can't bring her down.
But that state capital flag wasn't anywhere near the end of it. Last Wednesday, 6/24/2015, all the major retailers including Amazon, Ebay, Target, Walmart, Sears.. the list goes on.. have pulled all Rebel Flags and related merchandise and will no longer sell them. Google has even removed the Shopping search results so you can't find one to buy unless you use the Web search feature and weed through.
The same day, on the order of Alabama Governor Robert Bentley, the Confederate Battle Flag that stands at the foot of the Confederate memorial was removed. It's a memorial to the Civil War and the flag was there because it's part of history. People need to stop warring on history and historical stuff.
Now we've reached a supreme point of psycho behavior because Apple pulled all the Civil War game apps off the Apple Store so you can no longer buy them. Then Warner and major retailers have pulled all the Dukes of Hazzard merchandise that has the Rebel Flag on it including the iconic car General Lee.. It's an old Dodge Charger that has a Rebel Flag painted on the roof. Next thing you know they'll start saying Daisy Dukes are offensive and promote racism.
Oh wait, it gets even better. The New York Times and some douchey film critic are now calling for a ban on Gone with the Wind... The classic Oscar winning 1939 film starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh based on a Pulitzer Prize winning novel. The film is already now being shunned by art institutions. And for what? Because it depicts the fucking Civil War and slavery and has a Rebel Flag flying in parts of it.. What the fuck is that shit? And what the fuck is next? Where does it end?
Today we're even on removing the historic statues from everywhere that have stood for over a century just because people are offended by them. They're statues. They don't move. They are just chillin there being statues like they have been for awhile. Leave them alone.
The war fucking happened. It's a fact of life. You can't rewrite it or change it. Right or wrong that flag is actually a symbol of Southern heritage and our culture and what we as a region contributed to this nation's history. Is our heritage a perfect lily white awesome thing collectively? No. It's got some violence and some oppression and some other fucked up shit in there.. But then again, so does the American flag and our American heritage. It seems none of the people who are against it have bothered to even wrap their brains around why this flag is important to Southern people... Not white Southern people.. Southern people as a collective whole.
Another article I suggest people read is an article on Veterans Today by Jim W. Dean called People of Color – Under Confederate Battle Flag Colors. Most people don't seem to be aware that Confederate veterans were made legit veterans by an act of the United States Congress. This includes the many black Confederate veterans who fought in the Civil War. They along with their descendants get the same honors and inclusion as their white peers. Many Southern black people who fly the Rebel Flag are doing it in proud honor of their own ancestors.
So are they racist against other black people even though they are also black and their ancestors were black? Well apparently so.. They get called "Uncle Tom" by members of their own community. To me it seems like people are just hating on others because they didn't have the same experience. Just because you're not included in something doesn't make it wrong. For all they know they've been against this flag and all it represents for so long that they never bothered to trace their own lineage to find out if their ancestors were apart of the war effort too.
I also don't think people took into account, including the major retailers, that a significant portion of their Confederate Battle Flag sales were actually purchases made by people who do Civil War reenactments on the weekends as a hobby. It's a major past time in this country especially for those who live near the battlefields. Those people don't buy that flag to fly as any kind of racist symbol. To them it is purely historic. So now those people have to go give their business to these little stores.. some of which no doubt do support and sell it as a symbol of racism and support white supremacy groups.. just so they can continue to have their historical hobby. "Oh well they shouldn't do that either then.." Well fuck you. What choice have you left them?
I also don't think the people against the flag are taking into account that the loudest people in favor of the Rebel Flag advocating for its continued use are not the KKK and white supremacists. Those people hide behind bedsheets and bullshit. They are not writing widely read articles for reputable publications discussing why they're in favor of it.
The people you're fighting against on this are people who descendants of Confederate veterans, historians who just care about preserving history as it is in an honest way, people who have Civil War reenactments that are also into history, Southerners who regard it as part of our culture and heritage and consider it a mark of our rebellious Southern pride, and people who believe that this war on that flag is nothing but blatant censorship and a violation of free speech and just another step onto a slippery slope of infringement upon our Constitional rights.
For me personally, the only good association I ever had with the Rebel Flag was that it was a mark of home. I know if I drive a little South or West of Fairfax and I start seeing those flags here and there that I'm in the legit South and can actually get some decent sweet tea.. not sweetened tea cause yuck.. But good ol' sugary sweet tea. I've been making that joke repeatedly and most people don't really understand its significance.. If you're a Southerner who moved out of the deep South then you feel me.
I grew up in Florida which some people do not think is the Dirty South but you can guess again.. It's about as far south and dirty as you can get and it was one of the original founding states of the Confederacy. Anyway, I grew up in the deep South and there were Rebel Flags around as a part of life. For me, since I moved to the DMV the Rebel Flag is just a mark of where I can get my tea and some decent food that tastes like the best part of my childhood and is part of some of the only nice memories I have of my childhood.
It's also a mark for me to remember my Southern manners instilled in me cause I damn sure know that every person I talk to, especially any who are older than me no matter what color their skin is, are going to expect me to mind them. For all you Yankees and whatever who don't know, this is why you stand out like sore thumbs when ya'll come down here.. Cause you bring your Northern rudeness with you and don't address people properly.
Mr. Jones from the down the street may be black as night and poor as dirt but NOBODY calls him boy or talks down to him or even forgets their respect because he's decades their better. You call him "Sir" when you speak to him and be polite because his age has earned him that.. The same way every other person older than you has regardless of whether they are white, brown, black, yellow, or fucking purple.
And I do personally know what that flag means to some of the people who have one that I've encountered in my life and I hate to say that more of them than I care to admit have been apart of that racist shit. But a lot of them are old and set in their ways.. and they're still my elders. So I learned from my half-Lebanese mom to mind my manners and respect them regardless with my "Yes Sir" and "Yes Ma'am". That's not to say that as a willful child who knew their words were wrong I didn't still occasionally have some respectful discussions where I voiced my opinion to change theirs.
Anyway, I was never anti-flag for that pure reason of locating my precious sweet tea. But I wasn't really a big fan of the Rebel Flag either because I thought it was just a racist symbol too.. One that I like many younger Southerners were content to let just phase out on its own over time. But now after having done my own research my mind has totally changed and I am all up in the Pro-Rebel Flag Resurgence. I want to go out and sport a Rebel Flag belt buckle with my Daisy Dukes and paint a Rebel Flag on the roof of my Corolla and get a matching Rebel Flag license plate before Virginia recalls them and then refuse to let them take it back. and get some Rebel Flag hats and shirts and socks and maybe some Rebel Flag flower pots to sit next to my massive Rebel Flags I'll fly off my apartment balcony.. And then I'll have an even bigger flag inside and I'll hang it next to a massive American flag right above my gun. Why? Because this America and I have that right.
People will see it and think things about me and assume I'm some racist piece of shit.. Hell, MC Twisty already thinks I am and he knows everything and is Captain of what everyone should do and thinks whatever he thinks regardless of what I say.. Just like so many other close minded people who only see that flag the one way they see it and refuse to listen to anyone else who might not have the same views as them because their experiences with that flag have been different.. Their attachment and its meaning are different.
Southern pride is not a bad or shameful thing. I like my accent and my food and my tea and where I come from and I don't think I should have to apologize for that to anyone. I didn't get to pick where I was born but that doesn't mean I would change it either. I revel in the beauty of Southern gentility and chivalry. I like our slow, polite every day life where we take the time to appreciate each other. I know when I go down to where those flags are more prominent that I'm nicer to people and enjoy them more. I don't want that messed with or changed and I don't want the mark that signals that removed.
Get over it. Move on. If you blame a flag for your life and your pain then clearly you need to reevaluate things for yourself. It's a cop out. I, like many people, have come from nothing and worked hard for everything I have. I blame no symbols for where I started and I see no reason why I should let something so trivial keep me down. Nobody hands you anything in this life and the world does not owe you a living.
I also don't dwell on little things that offend me because it's pointless. People have rights to be offensive and say and do and wave things I don't like or agree with and I just keep it moving. Maybe if you do the same you'll find you'll get further along in your own life and we'll get further along as a society.
I'll leave you with this. Several Southern hip hop artists have waved the Rebel Flag as a symbol of their own Southern pride.. Including my personal fave Lil Jon.
Kanye West wears his little jacket with the Rebel Flag on his arm all over the place. We all know that Kanye is very afrocentric and even discusses slavery in his songs. Well damn.. Look at that dichotomy.. A black person who advocates for equality and has deep feelings about slavery and rocks the Rebel Flag as a fashion statement much like rednecks in the deep South. It even made its way into his merchandise. In a 2013 interview Kanye West said, “You know, the Confederate flag represented slavery in a way – that's my abstract take on what I know about it. So I made the song 'New Slaves.' So I took the Confederate flag and made it my flag. It's my flag. Now what are you going to do?"
He's a Rebel and no doubt that symbol resonates with him on that level for sure. Regardless Kanye is doing alright. That flag does not get him down or oppress him. It doesn't have that power over him. Maybe everyone else should take a cue from Mr. West and we'll all be better for it. Quit being so damn overly sensitive. This is Murica.. We eat pussies for breakfast and then go invade random countries just cause they need some democracy imposed on them for lunch. So chill the fuck out. Let it go and let history stand as is. If nothing else, let all that bad shit you put on it be a reminder of what you don't want repeated and let us keep our good things we hold dear about it. Sounds like a win-win to me. Just sayin.
