What the Confederate flag means to me

I'm a little late to the game, but I thought I would weigh in.

You know what the confederate flag means to me? Nothing. Seriously. I don't care what it stood for 150 years ago or what it stands for now. The bottom line is that everyone looks at a piece of fabric and derives some emotional result.

Its a flag. Just like the American flag. It is a piece of fabric. You know when you go to a party and several people bring a dip? They sometimes make little labels for their dip. This one is onion. This one is spinach. This one is buffalo chicken and bacon dip. This one is vegan gluten free hummus dip. They are pieces of paper that identify what is in the bowl. Flags are the same thing. They say, "hey, a Croatian lives here," or "yo, jerk, this is berkeleyn Jersey."

Some guests will look at the array of "flags" and say, "I'm going for that awesome buffalo dip because who eats that tree-hugger granola hummus crap?" Others will choose the vegan hummus and wonder, "If only those meat eaters knew what that toxic stuff does to them." Then they return to the party and carry on normal, friendly conversation. They have fun and respect each other - completely oblivious to the fact that they can be friends without judging the person's choices.

Its fabric. Its a symbol. It means different things to different people. Did some people fly that flag as white supremacy? Yup. Does it mean that to everyone? Nope. Just because it means something to you does not equal banning it from the planet. It does not equal cancelling a television show that had nothing to do with racism simply because from 1979-1985 there was a show that had it on a car's roof.

I'm so tired of everyone in this country fighting for their own individual rights and whining about everything else while claiming that their rights are being violated by not squashing the rights of everyone else.

Live your berkeleying life and let others live theirs. Period.

In reply to curtis73:

I'm still amused Walmart made an ISIS flag cake......lol

I am not surprised that someone in Walmart didn't know what the Isis flag looked like. I'm more tired of the manufactured outrage where people on both sides go and look for ignorant people and get them to do or say something dumb so that they can point and yell at how they are being wronged unfairly. I wouldn't expect a black person to make a Confederate flag cake, an evangelical Christian to make a gay wedding cake, an atheist to wish me a Merry Christmas or any of the other things that seem to anger everyone while we ignore the things that are really destroying our country.

It means the Confederacy lost the Battle at Fort Fisher! (says the transplanted Yankee to Cape Fear).

I was born in Tenn, but have spent my last 40 yrs here in SC. As a child I viewed the Civil War as an issue of states rights, ignoring that slavery was one of the primary rights that was a concern. As I've gotten older I'm conflicted about it, I absolutely hate the association with slavery, but it is there. I also am aware of the fact that states do have rights on issues that shouldn't be regulated by the Federal Government. As stated earlier, the reason the flag stayed on the State Capital building was in defiance of integration. Historically, the flag was removed from the capital dome as a compromise between those who wanted it removed completely and those that wanted it to stay. The key part of the compromise was to be able to display it at the memorial on the state house grounds. That's now being changed. Any time you try to force change, it's going to be met with opposition, especially here in the South. Initially I supported taking it down and moving it to the memorial. Much of the sentiment to keep the flag comes from the perception that it is being "forced" upon the state by outside forces. It represents what was at one time a sovereign nation so it definitely shouldn't be on top of the state house. Personally I feel like it should be allowed to stay at the memorial, it's a memorial to the soldiers not the war. I've found Clemson vs South Carolina in football to be more divisive than the flag, at least to those of us in Upstate SC.

In reply to peabody:

Pretty much my opinion. Just shows that you can't reason with some people. They just want more more more.

trucke wrote:

Are they helping a poor black Chrysler? Or do they have it in chains!!?

http://www.knoxmercury.com/2015/07/01/was-the-south-ever-confederate-anyway/ said: There’s something the opposite poles in the flag debate have in common. When they talk about the South, exalting and glorifying the South or ridiculing and berating the South, they’re talking about “the South” as if it's only white people. The South is everybody who lives here. And considering its African-American population, it may be a more cosmopolitan region than any other. African-American culture has pervaded and energized and inspired the South, its music, its cuisine, its literature, more thoroughly than that of any other region on the continent. Blacks may be the largest part of what makes the South the South, and different from all other places. Any symbol that does not acknowledge that fact can’t say much about the South that’s true.

The arguments "It was about State's Rights" and "It was about slavery" are both untrue.

To the South, I would say, "Be honest. It was about the State's rights to own slaves".

To the North, I would say, "If you actually gave a damn about slavery, why didn't the Emancipation Proclamation free any Northern slaves?". Even Mary Todd Lincoln's family owned slaves (which A. Lincoln did not try to free).

Both are lying.

It was about money. Economic viability. And power.

Still is.

The North was becoming an industrialized society, and automation and manufacturing made slave labor less necessary for profitability. It was easy for them to argue against the economic viability of the South, which was agriculturally based, and dependent on cheap labor.

I never saw as much real racism as when I lived in the North. At least the South has some level of integration. People wrestle daily with their own discomfort and shortcomings on the issue because it's in their face.

The mindset when I lived in the North was that it was a Southern problem. Northerners live so separately that they have convinced themselves they don't have a problem. They do.

The flag argument is a red herring from the real problem. It's a way for people to jump on the bandwagon for their own political gain and say, "Look! We care about you!". Hogwash.

I know a LOT of rednecks. I've never met anyone who flew the Confederate flag because they wanted to own slaves. I do, however, know a lot of people who fly it as a way of expressing their rebellious and resentful attitude. And I have met many people who resent laws, processes, and institutions which favor minorities and which they perceive as taking opportunities from them. Many express this resentment in bigoted verbiage.

But the flag doesn't create hate.

Well the flag came down today at 10:00. I'm sure all will be right with the world now.

In reply to spitfirebill:

So now that racism was defeated, what will the new word for it be?

White privilege

In reply to spitfirebill: They have a show for that now:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jul/9/mtvs-white-people-documentary-asks-whites-to-addre/

Didn't click your link Wally. I already saw references to it on the TV. Where did Alec Baldwin go to when GW Bush got elected? I may want to check it out.

He went to a young yoga instructor. Probably not a bad idea.

oh lets just berkeleying ban everything already.

http://patch.com/virginia/kingstowne/petition-started-change-name-robert-e-lee-high-school

In reply to failboat:

I'll bet all those people are too stupid to know anything about his service to this country prior to the civil war......

yamaha wrote: In reply to failboat: I'll bet all those people are too stupid to know anything about his service to this country prior to the civil war......

Or his actions after the war.

This man's property (actually his wife's) was stolen and used for what some Yankee sumbitch thought was the ultimate insult, as a Yankee cemetery.