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Civil War, confederate, confederate flag, confederate flag debate and scandal, confederate flag represents, cultural transformation, dixie, dylann roof, Dylann Storm Roof, Facebook, florida, Georgia, Glenn Beck, heritage not hate, Obama, Peace, racial change in america, racism, south, South Africa, southern american, sweet home alabama, the south, white america
It’s been over a month since the Charleston church massacre and the debate over the Confederate flag continues to scale the virgin peaks of public anger and politico-philosophical absurdity.
“It’s a symbol of White supremacism!” – The Leftists are yelling – incorrectly.
“It’s a symbol of White heritage!” – White people from Oregon, Idaho, Ohio, Wyoming and Michigan are retorting – also incorrectly.
Only a rational (and it would seem, silent) minority correctly identify the confederate flag as being a symbol, not of ‘White America’, but of a limited, poor, neglected, derided (and multiracial) district of America – Dixie, or the ‘South’.
This cultural blanket (although subject to frequent redefinition) is generally said to cover the states of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi (thank you, spell check!), Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, North and South Carolina, Texas, Florida (minus Miami), Kentucky and (occasionally) Missouri. A considerable slice of America, and a very influential force in its history.
Of course, it is no secret that this cultural domain once fought a war to uphold the moral abomination of slavery, and nor is it taboo to acknowledge that the flag under dispute was used as battle regalia in that war. But as times change, so does the meaning of symbols. Over the past 100 years, the Confederate flag has been slowly transformed into a symbol almost devoid of racial connotation. Indeed, before the Charleston massacre so horribly re-politicised it, the Southern Cross was broadly recognised as a symbol of cultural continuity and self-respect, of working class pride in the face of a sneering middle and upper class establishment and media.
That last point needs some detail. How many times have you heard a joke like the following –
Q. “How do you circumcise a Redneck?” A: “Kick his sister in the chin.”
Q: “What’s the last thing you usually hear before a redneck dies?” A: “Hey y’all.. Watch this!”
Q. “How did the redneck die from drinking milk?” A. “The cow fell on him!”
I have heard a hundred similar jokes and I’m an Englishman. One simply cannot avoid them. If you watch the Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park, Friends, the West Wing, Dexter, the Sopranos or any other mainstream US production, you will at some point hear a cruel and bigoted jibe at the ‘South’ and at the disadvantaged folk who reside there.
This bigotry has a long and complicated history. The most disadvantaged sub-region of the South has always been the region of Appalachia – a long broad zone of mountains running up from the Deep South to the southern tip of New York State. For centuries, the denizens of this region were defamed with the most horrible speculation in the developing American press. Indeed, so prevalent was this popular cruelty that it now has the character of a national tradition. The ‘Hillbillies’ (as they have long been known) are said to be habitually incestuous, illiterate, violent, alcoholic and reactionary. Over time the Hillbilly stereotype merged with that of the Redneck, and has since become the singular source of hatred against poor White Americans.
Hatred of poor Whites is the last acceptable prejudice in American life. You can no longer make unkind comments about Blacks, Mexicans and Asians without inviting a storm of condemnation. Poor White have no such protection.
I understand that the Confederate flag has a long and infamous history, chequered with moral whiteness and blackness, heroism and sadism, aspiration and poverty. But it is simple-mined and lazy to imagine only the negative meanings are represented by it today.
D, LDN.
Defend the Modern World 
Brave to comment on this American issue.
But yes, the flag represents a moment that nearly ended the United States. I am hardly a southerner. Oh, from a New England beginning many of my family lines had a stop-off in the south before coming back north to Indiana. Perhaps, the slavery and being members of the Religious Society of Friends doomed it to a short time ‘down south’. Perhaps, being a ancestral first cousin of Levi Coffin (called the president of the Underground Railroad) had a hand also in my forebears not staying in the south. But having ancestors that fought and died for the Union, the CSA battle flag has an association that doesn’t represent pride, but an moment when the USA faced its greatest danger.
I neither like those using it for heritage, and I also don’t like seeing it used for a modern and leftist purpose. If it makes sense, a smart American allows and keeps his true thoughts on the flag largely to his own thoughts. If makes sense, there was more wisdom showed when Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Grant, and Grant showed Lee the represent due a gentleman. My 1x great-father had a brother who was there for the surrender. I also had a 1x great-father that died for the Union.
It is similar to the English Civil War. For myself, I know I am a cousin of the King as I am likely a cousin of that Oliver Cromwell. We need enough, and try to be broadminded knowing that all this is a part of our common history.
The mark needed is being a gentleman, and especially in public. Frankly, we here in the States could seriously use more facing that issue addressed here. I am quite glad that the Union was saved – even if that meant a war. However, I don’t need to shame the south. The leftists are using the flag as a weapon. It shows the danger of becoming what one is against. Worst – it makes one worst because the position is claiming the moral high ground. They are not showing it here, and making the problem worst. So yes – these behaviors are a attack just as bad as attacking any other group.
Brave to comment. 🙂
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Wow. You have a remarkable lineage. I’m envious.
I have to do a lot of research before I comment on US issues. I’m sure there are innumerable things that I don’t know or have misunderstood. I do believe I’m right in saying that the majority of people who wave this flag are not ‘racist’, as claimed by MSNBC.
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Oh, just a regular guy here, but yes – I am rather blessed with notable kin here and overseas. It does allow a different view on history.
The thing that I like about this blog is that it represents clear thought, and even reason. Sadly, this modern age we live in has little. And this found across the field of political thought.
The flag; a hard one. This Northern man finds it unpleasant. It ought to have put away, and surely never been flow on government property. Nevertheless, we are all better being mindful of history. This includes even that flag. And yes, some like to paint broadly the CSA battle flag. I hear this is also happening, with some, over your stand alone English flag… Extreme and wrong. But these are the times we live in. By and large, I do think you see this issue well. And yes – while some are racist, but not everyone is with it. People have a right to be proud of their heritage. However, you know very well that we live in a increasingly collectivist world.
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Government property is a difficult question. I think that should be solved by majority consent one way or the other. It shouldn’t be a decision forced by mob pressure. In general, I think Southerners have the right to fly the flag and not be thought racist. It’s a symbol of a lot of different things, and not only bad things.
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Northerners shouldn’t have a say over the customs of the South and vice verse, in my view. That is, unless they violate constitutional norms.
This is part of what I like about America, the cultural diversity from State to State. That must be preserved.
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I can largely agree. One thing I would say is that the American structure assumes a federation that begins at the local level, and rises to the national level. In part, our theory assumes each person has rights due by nature, and the rest is build on as much local as possible. One of the issues never quite explained as the interaction of state rights and the federal level. That part of the 10th Amendment… This has created much trouble over here. Yet – what government doesn’t come without problems?
Cultural diversity is indeed something to be preserved. It is the issue of the flag on government property that I raise an eye over, but none over the private individual. (If you looked – you would some cousins of mine that were quite the supporters of the CSA; especially in South Carolina.)
The last thing I would say on the issue – we Americans killed more between ourselves in our Civil War than the nation has lost in all others wars. The principle was and is established with the Civil War – you enter into the country with no rights to leave it. Perhaps some disagree still. However, before that war Americans spoke ‘the United States are”, and after ‘the United States is”.
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The civil war was a terrible and disruptive event. I would never support the flag if I believed it represented a new attempt as secession. You’re right to be wary about the government endorsement of this symbol. I only really meant the private or commercial display of the symbol.
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Understood. We share much in common, but still some differences do exist. I believe this is somewhat a similar case as I believe there is a statue to Oliver Cromwell outside your Parliament building in London.
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The “Dixie” or Old South being conjured up by all this flag hysteria never existed. It’s the new meme du jour for those who need a symbol to rally around and legitimize the trumped up racism inherent in their claims and animosity towards anything white and Southern. If anything, the South was a much more multi racial and broadly diverse part of the US, predating the much vaunted and virtuous “New England”, but then hindsight is always perfect 20/20 vision. Yes, it was a stratified and class driven society based on agriculture that was known to create millionaires with one successful harvest. How could this successful feudal system be stopped or even modified? They were making money hand over fist and the “peculiar institution” of slavery was essential, even in it’s abhorrence. The fact that most white people in the South were too poor to own slaves and lived difficult lives of hard scrabble subsistence farming is always ignored. They were essentially shut out of the political process and often lived no better than black slaves. Those good upstanding puritans in New England never stopped pushing for their manifest idea of creating a new world order in the South in their own stunted and zealous image. The axiom “do as I say, not as I do” applies aptly to those rabid “reformers” who wanted nothing short of extinguishing the South and culturally cleansing it to bring on redemption from it’s evils. All whites were guilty of enslaving, raping and generally killing anything that wasn’t white and had to be punished for their sins. While New England was ostensibly founded on the idea of religious freedom (only Rhode Island fulfilled that promise), the South was, from the very start, a commercial venture funded and backed by European money (mostly from London and Scotland) and modeled on England’s other colonies such as the Irish Plantation. The South had no interest in being another New England and by it’s very nature, had more in common with the slave, plantation societies of the Caribbean and Latin America. (slavery was common in the North as well but not so much in an agricultural sense. The New England faction in the triangular slave trade between Africa, the Caribbean and the US made a very tidy profit from its importing of human cargo).
Well guess what? These revisionist idiots are back. As a person of a longstanding Southern background, (and multi racial I might add, as many southerners were of the time, even unknowingly) This whole new and simple minded black and white narrative just doesn’t stand up. The demagogues are having a field day belittling all us dumb and racist Southerners who should be paying reparations to the poor downtrodden negro. It works like a charm for the class war obsessed Left and makes for a very convenient scapegoat. Let’s make the Stars and Bars illegal! “It’s like the Nazi swastika!” they shriek. Well fiddle dee dee and shet my mouth!
The United States is still a young republic drawn from many sources, some being very conflicted to the very idea of such a thing. It makes many people uncomfortable that during the early days of the colonies, there was a profound shortage of suitable white females, so men being men, found their comfort with the other parts of the population. Of course Andrew Jackson changed all that just prior to the Civil War and a strict racial code became law, as dictated by America’s uneasiness with racial mixing. Each state had its own say in how to enact the law, and that is where the divide between North and South escalated. In the “acquired through purchase” territory of Louisiana where my forefathers were from, racial divisions only became strict after the Americans came in. In fact, Louisiana had a sizable population of “gens de couleur” who more or less freely interacted in commercial enterprise with whites and, gasp, some even owned slaves and plantations. And SOME even lived with whites as man and wife! This was by no means common but it riled the Americans to no end. The French and Spanish “Code Noir” was overturned and replaced by the rigid American idea that one drop of non-white blood excluded you from the white race and its privilege. The irony is not lost in that there were so many “passe blanc” that blended in that it would probably make the majority of whites in Louisiana people of color.
To conclude my take on this foolishness over a flag and symbol, it would appear to be yet another tool to drive the perfect wedge between the mythological “Old South” of klansmen and mammies and “ol’ massa” (represented by all Southern whites), and the rest of the nation. Sad that it’s come to this whereby dogma trumps history and those pushing this will brook no dissent. If a lie is repeated and repeated enough times it becomes the truth, no?
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Wonderfully articulated and genuinely fascinating. I agree with every word. I think it’s a point worth repeating that the North owned slaves for a long while themselves. If one read only the official narrative, one would think the South was a high-walled quarantine of evil unreplicated anywhere else. That is the impression I was given in school – (In UK history lessons, you learn about slavery, Henry VIII, Churchill and the Holocaust, barely anything else) – and I believed it for a great many years afterward.
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Very true! There are forces at work within the US to do just that. The history of slavery within the US (from colonial to 1865) was far more complex than the present crowd would know or what to know. This is a movement thinking the flag can be used for something quite different. Frankly, all lives matter.
And quite so on matters of ‘race’. But not with these forces using the flag. That’s a group that hates the truth of slavery. It was never so simple, and never so easy to put into a plain one size fits all.
I know my family tree very well for this side of that ocean. From being a heritage that in branch was the largest slave owners in Rhode Island, the tree stayed white. However, the present push shows the extremes. It was enough to remove from govenment grounds. They want total removal of even Stone Mountain. Much too much for very little – other than shaming white culture and white people.
I will look into that about Andrew Jackson. I didn’t know that one. But not a surprise, and makes sense it would have been someone like him. It was the tensions that built in the 1840’s and 1850’s that pushed the nation to finally war.
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“All lives matter” – Very true. That should be the slogan waved by people protesting police oppression.
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I know it’s Wikipedia, but much of it is accurate as far a the legal precedents it set.
“President Andrew Jackson was able to gain Congressional passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which authorized the government to extinguish Native American title to lands in the Southeast.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears
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Wikipedia is good practice for critical judgement. There can indeed good material there. Really, behind nearly all issues, the question is – who has something and who knows it. The native Americans of the south were in the way, and – gold had been discovered in native lands.
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