- Joined
- Mar 27, 2014
- Messages
- 63,665
- Reaction score
- 33,726
- Location
- Tennessee
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Undisclosed
And the Iron Cross was used by the Nazis, and the Japan's "Rising Sun" flag (which is actually pretty damn similar to the 'Confederate flag' in terms of cultural significance) was used as the battle flag of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy during WW2.
Just because bad people may have adopted a symbol at a certain point, doesn't mean that they taint it forever. Symbols are ultimately completely arbitrary. They mean whatever a given people say they mean.
This looks pointless, but I'll play anyway. The Iron Cross had a long and distinguished history prior to and post the Nazi era. It wasn't ever identified AS a uniquely "Nazi" symbol.
Japan adopted their flag in 1870, so it's also not identified with Pearl Harbor except that it was the Japanese who attacked us. And to my knowledge Hawaii doesn't fly the Japanese flag over any memorial to dead Japanese, killed at Pearl Harbor.
But these examples are red herrings so you can avoid the history of the Rebel flag. Your state's elected leaders and mine flew it as a signal of defiance against civil rights for blacks, in my lifetime. Sorry, but when it went up in 1961 it didn't mean "Love of the South."
In this case, the vast majority of Southerners say that, for them, the flag stands simply for Southern culture as a whole, and as a form of memorial for their ancestors who fought and died during the Civil War. There's really no reason not to believe them.
I believe them, but what you mean is "the vast majority of WHITE Southerners..." Before the current crisis, about 60% of blacks did not share those feelings, and it was them and their ancestors who were oppressed by the STATE through Jim Crow laws those same legislators marched under THAT flag to maintain.
Like I said, I get the divide, but what's frustrating is the seeming unwillingness to actually acknowledge how your state's leaders used THAT particular flag.
It's only really non-Southerners, and African Americans looking for an excuse to be offended, who see it otherwise. Frankly, that's just because they're either reading too much into it, or have a negative view of Southern culture to begin with, and are actively trying to impose their own preconceptions upon the flag, while completely ignoring the ways in which the flag's cultural significance has evolved over the course of recent decades.
That's unfair. I'm a southerner, life long, 51 years and I can't wait to bury that relic of history. I think it gives this entire region a bad name. When I see someone with that flag, I don't know how to tell if they're a proud racist or just love the South. Neither does the rest of the world. The killer didn't pick that flag at random. The meaning he ascribed to it is the exact same meaning ascribed to it by state leaders, elected leaders, governors, legislators, all across the South. Frankly to assume blacks are "looking for an excuse" to be offended by that flag is just a dedicated refusal to see why they might not need to look very hard - all they have to do is look at recent history and how that banner was used.