Is This a Racist Flag?

no its not racist.
Whats all the big fuse about?
its a rebel battle flag.
not a rebel racist flag.
end of story.

it's a racist rebel battle flag.
end of story.

fuse?

Foofie writes:



Says you.

Just because slaveholders kept a portion of their captives alive for economic benefit to themselves does not remove slavery, on the scale it was employed in the USA, as anything but genocide.

Joe(so tell us more about this wonderful heritage stuff?)Nation

By the way, the Nazi concentration camps were mostly slave labor camps that used Jewish, Gypsy, Polish, Russian, Communists, and anti-Nazi Clergy as slave labor. However, the genocide of Jews was the specific effort to EXTERMINATE them as a people from Europe. So, the Naziis had slaves too; however, they specifically only pursued genocide in killing Jews (the advancing Nazi Wermacht, going into Russia, machine gunned Jews over ditches, since there was no way to get them back to the crematoriums in Poland/Germany).
My point is, genocide is not slavery, regardless of the degree of slavery. The ancient Roman Empire had slavery of all conquered people; it was not genocide; nor has anyone accused the Roman Empire of genocide.

I think I'm getting off of the original topic. Any of the Confederate flags were not OBJECTIVELY racist, in my opinion. If one wants to say it is, then I believe it is a SUBJECTIVE opinion, and everyone is entitled to an opinion, as they say.
What I personally find interesting, in context of the thought that Nazi symbols are racist to most Jews, is that Jews would not return to those countries where (racist) anti-Semitism was rampant during WWII (and before). So, since Black Americans did not have the benefit of a United Nations to vote on giving them their own "Israel" after the Civil War (like the European Jews wound up in Israel for the most part), the two cannot be compared fairly. American Blacks have been living in a country that after the Civil War went fairly quickly to the Jim Crow era. That wasn't the objective of Northern abolitionists. My opinion is, American Blacks being in the same country that has a history of slavery and Jim Crow laws, might decide that their quest for eliminating racism is a possible misdirection of their energies (Europe with few Jews still has anti-Semitism - against who, Jewish ghosts?).
Also, Jews still facing a world with anti-Semitism, many do not blame anti-Semitism for anything. To them it is a given. I think that might be the only way to deal with racism - it is a given.
(A small aside: many people know that in NYC, back in the 1940's and 1950's there were many doctors that were Jewish. That was in a time when a Jewish student had to have an A+ average to get into medical school, while something less was acceptable for many a Gentile student. So, in my opinion, combating racism is not by getting people to change their attitudes; its done by working harder.)
Lastly, if one wants to compare Jews being slaves, with Black Americans being slaves, then one can look to ancient Egypt where Black Africans as Pharaohs (the Arabs conquered Egypt much later) had Hebrew slaves (making bricks, not building pyramids). Well, the Hebrews were Black too at that point in history. They also were allowed to maintain their family unity. So, we see that the American Black slavery experience was inhumane on another level of not allowing family unity.
All this history over a flag???

You're peddling bullshit. The death camps also were used to attempt the extermination of "Gypsies," as well as homosexuals and the mentally and physically handicapped. Furthermore, although slavery certainly was the disease of the ancient world, you display a wonderful ignorance of history in claiming that the Romans enslaved "all conquered people"--there is no better way to characterize such a statement than that it is just plain bullshit.

No flag is objectively anything other than a flag. The point, which you seem intent on ignoring, is that all the flags used by the Confederate States were symbols of a racist institution, being a government the sole purpose of which was to preserve the institution of slavery.

What I thought I've read, time and time again, was that the concentration camps "worked people to death." This included Jews, Gypsies and others that found themselves in the camps. Additionally, those that arrived and were not fit to work were gassed and cremated. However, the mentally and physically handicapped had been "euthenized" even before the slave labor camps were installed and the Final Solution mandated (which codified the attempt to exterminate Jews in Europe). Genocide means a systematic attempt to exterminate a people. That was only done to the Jews as part of the Final Solution. There was no Final Solution for anyone else that lost their lives in the Nazi barbarism. Slavery in the U.S. was barbaric, but it was not genocide, since its goal was not to eliminate a people. The word "genocide" has a definition. Anyone can look it up.

I can't argue with anyone saying that the Confederate States were the purveyors of a racist philosopy as the basis of their economic system. I just can't PERSONALLY say that its flag should also be condemned, since the Union won the Civil War, and Reconstruction never stated the Confederate States had legitimacy. So, technically the Confederate flags only represent wishful thinking on the part of "Johnnie Reb." Perhaps, the individual that waves the Confederate flag has issues with the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction? I don't know. But, if anyone wants to get upset over a flag that just gets some people, possibly, to wax nostalgic over "a cause that's gone with the wind" that is their choice.
I can only talk from the perspective of a Northerner; the Southern Confederate States never seceeded, even though they said they did.

okay, foofie, so talk a little about why you think that the use of the Confederate flag in the century AFTER the Civil War as a conscious symbol for "segregation now, segregation forever" was not a racist use of that flag.

I thought we are, technically, two centuries after the Civil War. Regardless, if anyone wants segregation, banning these flags do not change anyone's mind.
My point is if someone thinks that segregation is beneficial, I can't persuade that person that integration is actually beneficial, and segregation is harmful (to white folk also). People oftentimes cling to beliefs far after the belief is proven wrong or incorrect. We humans are funny that way.
So, if the masses are educated that these flags represent a belief that's detrimental to everyone, then the flags might ease their way out of our collective memory.
In the meantime, the flag doesn't bother me. I have no interest in the flag, since as a Northerner I stay above the Mason Dixon Line.

TECHNICALLY, your history is lousy. We are somewhat less than a century and a half past the Civil War. The use of the flag by state governments for segregationist purposes is well within the memory of living people, myself included, since it lasted well into the 1960s, and with somewhat more covert sentiment for at least a decade or two after that. Segregation was the law in southern states into the mid 1960s. But as you may have realized, equal rights are guaranteed in the Constitution, and you're talking here about unconstituional acts wrapped up in that flag.

I can't discuss this topic anymore, since my opinion is nothing I care to debate. And, whether or not the flag symbolizes this or that, I thought it is not illegal to exhibit it.
So, if the flag offends those that suffered under its symbolism, I had nothing to do with that. Personally, it is not my responsibility to be concerned about other groups' historical grievances. My concerns are mundane. I'm not a joiner!!!!

so why did you join the topic in the first place?

I joined this topic to make my point, not debate. I'm not trying to proselytize my point of view. Now that I've given my point of view I'm exiting stage left.
To synopsize my point of view, to the original question, the Confederate flag is not racist. Flags can have no inherent racist philosophies. They represent political entities or organizations.
There are some people of color (hopefully very few) that even believe all Caucasians are racist. Perhaps unknowingly, but racist all the same. The whole question of what, or who, is racist is a very, very subjective topic. That's why it devolves into a debate, I believe. Hasta luego.

Don't let that door hit ya.

Heh, heh, snood.

Hey.

That was kind of strange, wasn't it?

And I still (yes. because I am an ignorant dud) need someone to describe in full the wonderful heritage celebrated and symbolized by the Stars and Bars. What feelings does waving it bring out in it's wavers??

Joe(I myself am on waivers)Nation

That's correct.

For those who still insist that the Confederate flag is racist, let me ask this: what single message does the US flag convey?

What utter crap. As if the swaztika was benign, and anyone marching under it wouldn't be associated with a particular message. You can't pass off this bullshyt, that the confederate flag is only a symbol of oppression and racism in the eye of its beholders., It's been used as a symbol over the last 100 years almost exclusively by racist organizations and racists.

The simple message which the United States flag conveys (or intends to convey) is that there is a union of states which was founded on the principle (alleged to be self-evident) that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The Constitution of the United States originally provided for the institution of slavery, and made provisions to protect that institution. However, those provisions were voided by the XIIIth Amendment. One might argue that prior to 1867, the United States flag was also a symbol of racism, but that is no longer true.

In reference to the flag(s) of the Confederate States of America, the preamble to the Constitution of the Confederate States of America is sufficiently similar to that of the United States Constitution not to require its rehearsal here. Furthermore, that constitution embodies nearly every provision of the United States Constitution, and even incorporates the provisions of the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution.

However, Article IV, Section II, the first paragraph of the Constitution of the Confederate States of America reads:

The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.

That constitution recognized a right of property in human beings, which was never subsequently eliminated by amendment. That is a signal difference in the meaning of these two symbols.

The text of the Constitution of the Confederate States of America can be found at the University of Oklahoma.

Joe Nation says "I am an ignorant dud". I must take issue, Joe. You may be an ignorant dude, tho I would disagree with that characterisation too. But you are definitely not a dud.

joe from Chicago apparently trying to refute the fact that flags can sym
bolize something, asks what message the American flag conveys. A lot, joe, a lot.George Washington was among the first to state that the flag was symbolic. The Congress even published a book on the symbolism of the flag. As the US flag, so the Confederate flag, Joe, they mean something.

From Wikipedia: "The United States flag is among the nation's widely recognized and used symbols. Within the U.S. it is frequently displayed, not only on public buildings, but on private residences, as well as iconically in forms such as decals for car windows, and clothing ornaments such as badges and lapel pins. Throughout the world it is used in public discourse to refer to the U.S., both as a nation state, government, and set of policies, but also as an ideology and set of ideals.

Many understand the flag to represent the freedoms and rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights and perhaps most of all to be a symbol of individual and personal liberty as set forth in the Declaration of Independence. Through the Pledge of Allegiance and other political uses the flag has also come to be associated with U.S. nationalism, patriotism, and even militarism. The flag is a complex and contentious symbol, around which emotions run high.

In terms of the symbolism of the design itself, a book about the flag published by the Congress in 1977 states: "The star is a symbol of the heavens and the divine goal to which man has aspired from time immemorial; the stripe is symbolic of the rays of light emanating from the sun."[3] George Washington is credited for saying: "We take the stars from Heaven, the red from our mother country, separating it by white stripes, thus showing that we have separated from her, and the white stripes shall go down to posterity representing Liberty."[4]

Many people also take the red and white to stand for the blood of those who gave their lives for freedom, and the presumed purity of the freedom ideal, respectively.[citation needed]"

Remember the Vietnam War, when supporters put flag decals on their car, wrapping themselves in its mantle to support that unpopular and ultimately futile war. Remember John Prine?

"Your flag decal won't get you into heaven anymore.
It's already overcrowded from your dirty little war.
And Jesus don't like killin'
No matter what the reason for.
Your flag decal won't get you into heaven anymore."

It's not just a piece of cloth, otherwise some people wouldn't be trying to pass laws that you can't sew a flag to the butt of your blue jeans, to make it a crime to sit on the flag.