@OCCOM BILL,
OCCOM BILL wrote:
As I suspected, very little ground indeed. If willing blindness and willful ignorance are interchangeable; there is no real beef between us regarding people's motives. Hell, I've know basically decent people who were in fact racist, but wrote it off to simple ignorance, rather than hatred.
As for distinguishing willful racism; take that up with Shorteyes, as I made no such comparison and chose to ignore his phony poutrage (wasn't my turn to feed the troll.)
Now that being said; read the title question again and answer it honestly. It matters little how many people are ignorant of the fact that flag was created in defense of slavery (willfully ignorant, or just plain stupid makes no difference.)
Certainly good men fought on both sides of the ball. Surely you don't think every soldier who fought for Nazi Germany was evil either, do you? But regardless of the who and the why; at the end of the day the confederacy came to be in defense of slavery. That pinnacle issue caused the bloodiest war in this nation's history in defense of one of the most heinous institutions mankind has ever seen.
Where did you come up with this distorted version of what he said? What he did say was that he doesn't believe the children of
illegal immigrants should be granted citizenship.
Yes, to implement this notion would require an amendment to the Constitution, but I'm sure you realize amending the Constitution is perfectly legal and has been done 27 times already.
Apparently I have not made my opinion clear; although Lord knows I've tried.
To answer, once again, the posed question: Is the Confederate Flag a symbol of racism?
It can be.
It can also be a symbol of pride or rebellion without representing racism.
Irrespective of their origins, the symbolism of an object depends upon the intent or view of those who use it.
I'm sure you know that the Swastika predates Nazi Germany by thousands of years and has been used as a symbol by numerous major religions and a wide array of cultures.
For most people in the West today, it is a symbol of Nazi Germany and all that entails. As I’ve commented previously this symbolism remains strongly connected to the figure, but at the fringe there has already developed usage which represents something other than the evils of the Nazis. It's sometimes hard for people of one generation to appreciate how differently those of a newer generation can view the same things. My children weren't alive during the Vietnam War let alone WWII, and I doubt they even know anyone who fought in that war. It won't be long at all before every WWII vet has passed and not that much longer before everyone who was alive during the period will too. I'm sure my grandchildren will learn about Nazi Germany in school and see representations of it in the media, but I doubt that the swastika will engender the same visceral response that it does in people of my generation or of my parents'.
There are quite a few other well known symbols that have adopted new meaning over time.
The Confederate Flag is also a symbol in transition.
If people use it to symbolize regional pride then it is a symbol of regional pride.
If they use it to symbolize racism, then it is a symbol of racism.
The difficulty with using this symbol today, and why I would caution against it, is that there are a whole lot of people who see it, with good reason, as a symbol of racism and assume that anyone using it does too.
It's entirely feasible though that in 50 years, the connection with institutional racism will have passed from popular consideration. It's unlikely that either of us will be here that far in the future, but if you are lucky enough to be, will you still insist that it is a symbol of racism?
