Is the Confederate Flag a symbol of racism?

Posters like you have taken crap for years whilst they down thumbed you for being you...these same senile clowns think they are freedom lovers...no thinking brain in the world would do what they do, it is pure emotion....emotion called hate . They would do well under a Nazi flag but here they are complaining about the Rebel flag...perhaps because it never feels like you have destroyed something if it still has a symbol .

Thompson knew what the flag meant. So did the Confederates. So did Dylann Roof. So when right-wingers defend that flag as "just heritage," it seems reasonable to surmise that they know precisely what that heritage (and that institution) means too.

They know what the "heritage" reflected by the flag means. They don't like being called on it.

It is the flag of the losing side of our civil war. Till now Yankees were tolerant of those in the South that wanted to fly it, who wanted t show pride in the losing effort, but no longer are.

hawkeye10 wrote:

It is the flag of the losing side of our civil war. Till now Yankees were tolerant of those in the South that wanted to fly it, who wanted t show pride in the losing effort, but no longer are.

The flag was never flown to show pride in the losing effort. You couldn't find the flag flying in 1900. It was resurrected to show resistance to efforts to stop Jim Crow.

It was resurrected to show displeasure in the fact that the Washington took great delight in rubbing it in the face of Southerners that they had lost.

This stuff about racism was all tacked on recently, as a justification that would sell for doing what we wanted anyways, telling southerners again to stuff it.

After the surrender in 1865, Confederate flags were folded and put away. They were most likely to be spotted at memorials or cemeteries. Even after the hopeful decade of Reconstruction gave way to the violent repression of Redemption, open displays of the flag remained rare. There was no need for a banner to signal defiance; Jim Crow reigned unchallenged.

The flag slowly crept back into public life over the ensuing decades, saluted at veterans’ reunions, promoted by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, even carried into battle by units from the South. By the mid-twentieth century, the flags were also waved by football fans, and sold to tourists.

But as a political symbol, the flag was revived when northern Democrats began to press for an end to the South’s system of racial oppression. In 1948, the Dixiecrats revolted against President Harry Truman—who had desegregated the armed forces and supported anti-lynching bills. The movement began in Mississippi in February of 1948, with thousands of activists “shouting rebel yells and waving the Confederate flag,” as the Associated Press reported at the time. Some actually removed old, mothballed flags from the trunks where they had until then been gathering dust.

At the Democratic convention that July, nine southern states backed Georgia’s Senator Richard Russell over Truman, parading around the floor behind a waving Confederate flag to the strains of Dixie. The Dixiecrats reconvened in Birmingham, nominating South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond for the presidency. Sales of Confederate flags, long moribund, exploded. Stores could not keep them in stock. The battle flag became the symbol of segregation.

The flag soon spread. It fluttered from the radio antennas of cars and motorcycles, festooned towels and trinkets, and was exhibited on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. Some displayed it as a curiosity, a general symbol of rebellion against authority, or an emblem of regional pride. The United Daughters of the Confederacy were split on how to respond, some pleased to see young people showing interest, others calling the proliferation of flags a “desecration.” Newspapers tried to explain the craze, citing explanations from football fans to historically themed balls.


The black press did not find the phenomena quite so baffling. “In a large measure,” wrote the Chicago Defender in 1951, “the rebel craze is an ugly reaction to the remarkable progress of our group.” That was true in the North, as well as the South.

Over the next two decades, the flag was waved at Klan rallies, at White Citizens’ Council meetings, and by those committing horrifying acts of violence. And despite the growing range of its meanings in pop culture, as a political symbol, it offered little ambiguity.

Georgia inserted the battle flag into its state flag in 1956. Two years later, South Carolina made it a crime to desecrate the Confederate flag. And then, on the centennial of the day South Carolina opened fire on Fort Sumter came in 1961, it hoisted the battle flag above its Capitol.

It was a symbol of heritage—but that heritage was hateful. Two state delegations, in Charleston to mark that 1961 centennial, found themselves barred from the hotel where the ceremony was to take place because they included black members. President Kennedy had to issue an executive order moving the commemoration to the Charleston Navy Base. And when the centennial ended, the flag stayed, proclaiming that South Carolina might have lost the war, but that it was determined not to surrender its opposition to racial equality.

The racism has always been there. That was the purpose. What is new is the refusal to tolerate it without comment.

But the VW is not being trotted out by Nazi sympathizers while oppressing Jews. White racists wrap themselves in the stars and bars when they engage their racist activities.

WHat did Edgar say that enflamed your gizzard there HAwkee? He spoke the goddam truth. Aint no neonazis out there riding around in Beetles. They all drive Ford F250's or Dosge Rms with Stars and Bars in the bed and a "forget Hell" sticker next to their gu racks.

but you were the one who blew up at EDgar by being trivial . Edgar merely responded to another member.
I think you havent come down from last nights partying Either that or youve been hanging around Ionus too much, youre beginning to adopt his "debate skills"