it's as simple as that .. i thought the topic had been roasted, but since you brought it up again, you have to understand that even though i appreciate the fact that you personally have evolved from the racist position many of your fellow southerners obdurately hang on to i agree with all the reasoned content in all the posts you have been given ..
I’ve lived in the South my whole life, Texas to be exact. To say the South is like an entirely different country in some aspects is exactly right. As a progressive living in this state, sometimes I really don’t feel like I’m on the same planet, let alone in the same country as many of the conservatives I encounter .. http://www.forwardprogressives.com/racism-ignorance-hypocrisy-confrontation-open-carry-activist/ . The ignorance I’ve come across living here is often so absurd that I almost feel as if these people are willfully and pridefully ignorant. Especially in today’s world. With Google at most of our fingertips and an endless supply of information at our disposal, how can so many people be so incredibly stupid?
Which brings me to my point; my message to those who seem to proudly boast that the Confederate flag is a symbol of “Southern pride” and “Southern heritage.” I really feel the need to address those people directly.
I’ve met many of you. The “proud Southerner” who sees the Confederate flag as a symbol of your roots .. http://www.forwardprogressives.com/pathetic-mississippi-tea-party-candidate-defends-sons-confederate-veterans-says-theyre-not-racist/ , your “heritage” as many of you call it. You live in a state of denial that’s almost unparalleled. Do you know why you’ve been allowed to live in denial for so long? Do you know why, in many areas of the South, the Confederate flag is still seen as a symbol of “pride”? Because it took nearly a century after the Confederacy lost the Civil War before African-Americans in many of those states were finally given equal rights. Even long after the Confederacy was defeated and disgraced, many still held on to the racism that fueled it.
It was just over 50 years ago that we still had segregation, bans on interracial marriage and even water fountains from which African-Americans weren’t allowed to drink. That’s why that flag remained a symbol of “pride” – because it was still tied to the generations of your “heritage” linked to slavery, oppression and pure hate.
There wasn’t any need to be ashamed of this flag by which every American should rightfully be embarrassed. Your “heritage” wasn’t ashamed of the racism, intolerance and hate it perpetuated for a century. If anything, your “heritage” embraced it.
She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery–the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits–a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.
That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding States.
Yes, that’s part of the Texas Ordinance of Secession from 1861 declaring that African-Americans were essentially property owned by the superior white race. But please, by all means, tell me again how the Confederacy was about “states’ rights” and not slavery or racism.
Oh, but it’s your heritage, right? If the Confederate flag is a symbol of your “heritage” then you should be downright ashamed of that heritage.
But that’s the sad part – millions in the South aren’t. You embrace that hate and ignorance, and you lie to yourself about what that vile flag means by telling yourself it was just about an opposition to an overreaching federal government.
That’s bullshit, and I think deep down you know. Of course, cognitive dissonance is difficult to overcome. Those of you who don’t believe the Confederate flag represents racism have clearly created some delusional reality where you’ve ignored the racism, bigotry, intolerance and hate that’s followed your “heritage” and was represented by that flag by telling yourselves that it’s a “symbol of Southern pride.”
I’m a Southerner and that flag damn sure doesn’t represent me or my heritage .. http://www.forwardprogressives.com/redstateliberal/ . The only flag I honor is the only flag an American should honor, and that’s the flag of the United States of America. You know, the one the Confederacy declared war against in an effort to continue to own other human beings as property.
Here’s a rule: You can’t claim to be a proud, patriotic American while you honor the flag of the largest treasonous uprising against this country in our history.
hookrider, The View From/Ledyard; The Flag Shows Up In American Indian Art
.. re Native American attitudes toward the Stars and Stripes .. this one is interesting ..
By TINA KELLEY Published: November 28, 1999
AFTER the American Indian sun dance ceremony was prohibited by the federal government in the 1880's, some bands of Lakota Indians would gather in large groups during the summer to sing, celebrate and dance around a pole much like the one they had used in their traditional ritual of Thanksgiving. On top of it, they flew the American flag, which also decorated the clothing of warriors and children. It was, at least from the outside, a Fourth of July celebration, and the military was less likely to break up what appeared to be a patriotic fete.
Over the years, Indian artists have used the flag as a bounty, a protective talisman, a profitable, decorative motif, or a mark of honor for warriors. Now, one of the more unusual windows on the nation's past can be seen at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center in Ledyard, near the Foxwoods Resort Casino, which is hosting ''The Flag in American Indian Art.''
The exhibition, which runs through Jan. 2, includes moccasins, leggings, a headdress for a horse, baskets, a holster, a pillow sham and a ''possible bag,'' a bag for every possible thing, used by a nomadic Sioux band from the Dakotas or Minnesota. The beadwork shines in cases in the dimly lit gallery.
Early in the battles between Indians and the United State Army, the flag was considered a trophy, which would be worn as a garment or decorated with beads.
''Indian warriors understood it was a power symbol, and if they could attain or capture the flag, therefore they could have access to that power,'' said Sherry Brydon, curator of Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw collection of Indian art at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., where the exhibit originated.
But the flag was more than a symbol of an oppressive government.
''In the 1880's this shifted, and the flag became a symbol of protection, in that if you were a group of native people and had the U.S. Army around you as a constant threat, you would fly the flag and it could potentially protect you. But that didn't always stop them from attacking native people,'' Ms. Brydon said.
By 1890, the time of the massacre of the Miniconjous Lakota at Wounded Knee by the 7th Cavalry, the stars and stripes had already been widely incorporated in Native American art, particularly among the plains tribes. After the last bullets were fired at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwestern South Dakota, a young girl named Lost Bird was found, half frozen but still alive, wearing a bonnet decorated with an American flag sewn out of tiny beads.
In the early decades of the new century, native craftspeople, especially those confined to reservations, created beadwork for sale to the tourists exploring the west. The flag was popular around the country, and objects decorated with it sold well. In later years, as a large number of Indians fought in the world wars, Vietnam and Desert Storm, the flag was used on clothing to distinguish the wearer as a veteran or a relative of one.
''Through the flag, the individual warrior is honored, recognized and memorialized; it symbolizes the prowess of the individual warrior, not patriotism,'' Howard Bad Hand, a member of the Lakota tribe, wrote in the exhibit's catalog.
John Holder, a member of the Pequot tribe who won a Purple Heart in Vietnam, was very impressed by the show and its positive depiction of the flag.
''The artwork was incredible. I don't know what to make of the fact that they were using the American flag,'' he said. ''I guess they felt enough allegiance to the flag to reproduce it in their artwork.''
JoAllyn Archambault, director of the American Indian program at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian, said modern understanding of the motifs in the exhibit is based on educated guesses.
''When people were incorporating this symbol into this art nobody was asking the question, 'Why are you doing this?' '' she said.
The flag appears in many variations in the exhibit, which includes flags with no white stripes, one with four stars, one with a white grid on blue for a field of stars, and one with the pole extending from the upper right corner.
Often the stars have four points, instead of five, which was easier to execute and more in keeping with the Indian motifs, which honored the four directions.
''When it's a flag, which everybody recognizes, all of the sudden it can get people with no background in Native American art or history to think about symbolism,'' said Stephen Cook, assistant curator of the exhibit.
''This is a very powerful statement, in that sense.''
Photos: At left, students from the Linden Street School in Plainville look at an exhibit in the ''The Flag in American Indian Art'' at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center near the Foxwoods Resort Casino. Above, a horse mask, and right, a pouch made from hide, glass and metal beads. The show runs through Jan. 2. (Photographs by George Ruhe for The New York Times)
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