I'm in the final miles of a trip to Texas for the holidays. In a bad chain restaurant just outside of Memphis, I saw a young man wearing a t-shirt with this flag on it:
Under the flag it said:
It's a southern thang. Y'all wouldn't understand.
Well, I'm a southerner. Several of my ancestors fought for the Confederacy. My daddy sang "Dixie" at a Confederate Veterans' Reunion when he was a small child. When I took history in high school, they taught the civil war as "us" and "them" -- and believe me, "them" meant Yankees. I know all about Southern pride and the evils of reconstruction. And from studying the war in more objective fashion in college, I'm fully aware that slavery wasn't the only issue that divided north and south.
But a person waving that flag or wearing it on a t-shirt in the 21st Century is saying just one thing:
I'm sure that young man would have made some argument about southern pride, but that discussion always seems to devolve into nostalgia for a time when "certain people" knew their place. Regardless of the other issues that drove southerners, you cannot divorce the Civil War from slavery. And slavery was a great evil. You cannot separate the Confederate flag from that evil.
The flag belongs in museums, not on people's backs.
But a person waving that flag or wearing it on a t-shirt in the 21st Century is saying just one thing:
"I'm a racist."
I'm sure that young man would have made some argument about southern pride, but that discussion always seems to devolve into nostalgia for a time when "certain people" knew their place. Regardless of the other issues that drove southerners, you cannot divorce the Civil War from slavery. And slavery was a great evil. You cannot separate the Confederate flag from that evil.
The flag belongs in museums, not on people's backs.
1 comment:
My dear you cannot divorce slavery from America period! Slavery is not just a Southern Thang! You need to further this education you say you have.
According to Gordon Bakken: "I have a number of dictionaries for the purpose of researching the evolution of words. Some of their dates of publication are: 1755, 1788,1870,1884,1932,1937,1938,1947, 1967, 1976, etc.
The oldest of my dictionaries to have the word "racist'" (actually "racism") is the 1947 edition."
From that time on the word racist or racism has been applied to everything and by everybody in the world under the sun, agenda driven zillions of times.
So where did that word racist or racism come from? France and Germany about 1895. The agenda for Marxist and Communist was to use race in America to destroy Capitalism in the USA.
Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader - Page 61 by Les ( Back, John Solomos - 2000 - 672 pages
Other perspectives If the meaning of the word race has changed in the way ...not surprising that there is no agreement upon a clear definition of racism. ...
From Wikipedia: "The term racist, when used to describe someone who supports racism, has been a pejorative term since at least the 1940s, and the identification of a group or person as racist is nearly always controversial."
You have fallen into the "Generalizations trap" and is very dangerous as they lead to a group “image” which further perpetuates a racist belief.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism#Definitions_of_racism
http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=3910
While you are about trashing your people, Try to be a good Southern descendant and at least stop adding hate and division to our Southern culture, of which you know so little about. Just google away and pick and choose from the racist, racism smorgasboard.
Leave the man and his shirt alone, mind your own business and let him wear what he pleases - it is an American Right!
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