Is This a Racist Flag?

Right. Tra lee tra la, la de dah on slavery, right?

Joe(Try looking the history of this nation right in the eyes.)Nation

Achilles the Great is correct that the flag in question is a part of American history.

It was the outward symbol of the government which rebelled against the union and fought to preserve the racist institution of slavery.

Neither or maybe both who knows, I know I am tired of hearing about something that happened hundreds of yrs ago. All states had slaves even those in the north! Does that mean our current flag is racist then??

Given that hundreds of thousands of Americans were killed or maimed under the banner of the Union to end slavery, i think it can reasonably be said to have redeemed itself.

It is also horsie poop to claim that all states once had an institution of slavery.

So your saying no northern states had slaves?

http://www.slavenorth.com/index.html

Neither Set nor anybody else said any such thing.

And we probably would have spelled "you're" correctly.

The flag which is the subject of this thread was and is a symbol of the government which rebelled against the United States of America and fought to preserve the racist institution of slavery and which, had it prevailed in it's efforts, would have spread that institution of slavery throughout this nation.

Lincoln said it best in 1858:



The moment the Union was preserved, the moment the flag of slavery was dashed to the ground, we took a giant step towards becoming the nation described by Francis Scott Key so many years before that day:

"the land of the free, the home of the brave."


Joe(and every moment we continue to struggle to raise ourselves up)Nation

well lets see Joe, do you feel this rash of state assemblies are right to pass legislation apologizing for what happened in the past?

Yes, they certainly are right, and about damn time too.

Achilles: Before I answer any of your questions, and I will answer any of them that I find to the point, let us all have your full answer to the question of this thread?

Is this a racist flag?


Yes or no. And why or why not?

Joe(take your time)Nation

Well at risk of getting shot by both sides, I would just say this.

First as a flag, its a good one. Its distinctive, it stands out unlike all the tricolor type stripey flags of various sorts.

As a non American it doesnt quite pull at my emotions as it might do for you guys. So perhaps I could be a bit more objective.

Is it racist? Well a flag is only a bit of cloth so of course its the symbolism behind the flag which is at issue.

I will answer, but first I could ask, was the civil war fought between racists and non racists? I think most people would say there was a great deal more to it than that.

I thought the slave owning plantationists in the south looked upon their slaves as property. A bit like owning horses. Were they racist as we understand the term today? I think not. They were not prejudiced against a man for his skin colour because they didnt recognise a black man as a man. (Perhaps they had to resort to this sort of mental rational to provide justification for how slaves were treated).

But thats not how we think today. Those people who think the flag should not be displayed at all because its offensive (even in appropriate setting, a museum for instance) take it too far.

But those now flying it proudly obviously associate with certain aspects of the symbollism behind the flag...as they see it today...and they are most certainly racists.

so the answer is yes.

No is my answer. Racist no, heritage yes. I take it you didn't use my link to show the north had slaves as well? If you have, then what about our current flag? Racist?

I don't think it would be fair to lump every Southern soldier into the racist category. But it most certainly was fought on behalf of racists against non-racists, yes.

Oh please. That is practically the definition of racism. We're not talking about cavemen here. The distinguished southern gentlemen obviously would have known about the centuries long Reconquista against the Moors. Dehumanizing enemies is pretty standard procedure; but you can't really believe they aren't human, deep down, unless you are indeed a racist. Your partial defense is absurd.

Also, to my knowledge; no one objects to the flag hanging appropriately in museums. That's where things like that, Swastikas, etc. belong.

Our current flag wasn't created in defense of heinous racism. What heritage do you think you are referencing? Please answer Joe's question thoroughly instead of vomiting up this nonsense.

First of all, to dispense with the nonsense--i did not deny that there were "northern" states in which slaves were held. After all, the constitution did authorize slavery, and make particular provisions with regard to "the peculiar institution." But by and large, slavery was confined to the South. Delaware was a slave state, almost from the beginning, and it was, of course, right next door to Maryland, also a slave state. So people who come up with feeble excuses to apologize for the racism of the era. Delaware may be said to be a Northern state, but basically, it was a slave state too far north to safely secede from the Union. There were a handful of slaves in New Jersey, as well. None of that should be surprising. New York and New Jersey were, before James, Duke of York seized New Amsterdam in the Third Anglo-Dutch war, Dutch colonies. What we call Delaware was originally a Swedish colony, but the Dutch took it over before they lost their own colonies to the English. The Dutch were very heavily involved in the slave trade, and to this day, Dutch writers produce some of the most detailed accounts of the slave trade, because they have so many documentary resources on the subject in Holland. The first slaves brought to the English colonies of the North American mainland were brought to Jamestown in 1609 by a Dutch captain who was blown off course in a storm in the middle passage, and who was desperate to unload his human cargo. As it was, he only managed to sell a few, and had trouble giving the rest away. It was not until a huge monoculture--tobacco--developed in the southern colonies that slavery became profitable. It was only profitable so long as there was lots of relatively cheap land available, because a huge slave force could clear the land, and plant tobacco. But a monoculture tends to exhaust the soil, and without new land to clear and plant, slavery became increasingly unprofitable. In South Carolina, they planted indigo and rice, both of which are relatively benign cash crops in terms of what they do to the soil, so slavery long remained profitable there. The rice grown there was sold to the sugar islands of the West Indies--to feed the slaves there.

Slavery was actually becoming unprofitable before the American Revolution. Washington himself acknowledged that, and was much troubled by just how inefficient and unprofitable slavery was. He decided to get out of tobacco, both because it was destroying the soil, and because the London factors shamelessly cheated their clients in the American colonies, keeping them constantly in debt by cheating them no the price of tobacco and scandalously overcharging them for the cheap and shoddy goods they shipped back. So Washington gave up tobacco as a cash crop, and switched to wheat, millet, hemp for rope and grazing livestock--all intended for the "home," colonial markets. He was worried about what to do with all the slaves. His wife brought about 300 slaves to Mount Vernon, which were not hers to sell, because she held them in trust for her children. So Washington was in a quandry--if he freed the slaves, they would be helpless in a hostile world (Virginia passed an ordinance against teaching slaves to read and write when it became known that Washington contemplated doing just that), and he didn't own half of them, the 300 Martha brought with her when they married. If he freed them upon Martha's death, that gave them a motive to hurry her along to her heavenly reward. So he set up a plan to pension off the slaves who would not work for shares (many of his slaves he employed in his new, non-tobacco farming operations, if they were willing to work, on the basis of shares, much like feudal serfs). His estate paid pension until 1832, more than 30 years after his death.

At the constitutional convention, it was John Rutledge and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, both of South Carolina, who threatened to leave the convention, and their state to leave the Union, if slavery were not protected. This is unsurprising as South Carolina still relied upon rice and indigo, rather than tobacco, for cash crops. In fact, Pinckney's family had promoted indigo as a cash crop in South Carolina.

Slavery might still have been economically doomed, but for three things. The first was the cotton monoculture, but that would not really have made much difference, because cotton also exhausts the soil, and it was far too labor intensive to be more than marginally profitable. But in 1793, Eli Whitney perfected his cotton gin to separate the seeds from the fiber, and that not only made cotton wildly profitable (both England and France were already heavily invested in the textile industry, but American cotton was far cheaper than bringing it from East Africa or India), but breathed new life into the institution of slavery. The third thing was the end of the Creek War (1813) and the War of 1812. This opened up Alabama and Mississippi to settelement, and made it reasonable to now settle Louisiana and Arkansas, with the English gone and no longer stirring up the Indians against the Americans. Just as had been the case with tobacco in the late 17th century, speculators could buy land very cheaply, or claim it for next to nothing--a filing fee--and bring in slaves to clear it and plant cotton. The worst abuses of the slave era were committed in that region while "King Cotton" reigned in the South.

So yes, slavery was written into the fabric of the early republic. But you seem to think that all "Northerners" should have risen in a body, the day after the Constitution was sent out for ratification, and denounced slavery. They didn't, for a variety of reasons. The principle reason was that the Union needed all the 13 states, and most people understood that they could not have Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia in the Union without slavery. Another reason, which no one should hide, is that many Northerners were racist, and the thought of slavery did not bother them. Another reason was that many Northerners had profited from and would continue to profit from the monocultures of the South, and the concomitant slavery. And, ironically, many of the grandfathers and even fathers of the biggest abolitionist firebrands had made themselves very wealth off the slave trade, until it was abolished in 1808 (a provision of the Constitution, which was made law in 1807, effective January 1, 1808).

But as early as 1775, the Society of Friends (the "Quakers") began a movement to abolish slavery. Even earlier than that, Samuel Sewell had publish "The Selling of Joseph," an anti-slavery tract in Boston in 1700. By the 1830s, the movement was powerful in the North, and so alarmed the South that those states began expelling known abolitionists, and firing teachers who were known or just thought to be Northern abolitionists. Preachers who were thought to be abolitionist were usually run out of their parishes.

William Lloyd Garrison was the moving force behind the establishment of the abolition movement in the United States. That was in the 1830s, and many members of Protestant denominations who were moved by the wave of evangelicalism in the England and the United States at the time became abolitionists, even to the extent that some churches were fragmented by the controversy, most notably with the foundation of the Free Methodists, who were opposed to slavery. Most states north of Delaware and Maryland had abolished slavery within their own borders by 1804--New Jersey being the only notable exception. The Missouri Compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act deepened suspicions and animosity between the slave States and abolitionists, and many people in the North considered the Mexican War to be nothing more than a land-grab by the slave states.

If you understand how the Constitution worked with its original institution of slavery, then you'll understand how the Three-Fifths Compromise gave the slave states political power out of proportion to their populations. (Representation in the Senate was, of course, equal; in the House of Representatives, the number of members in slaves states was determined by adding to the population of adult, white male voters a figure equally 60%--three fifths--of adult, male slaves; therefore, slave states in the South effectively sent Representatives to the Congress who represented far fewer voters than did the Representatives of "free states"--that was yet another reason for Northerners, even if they were racist, to resent the spread of slave states.) Even some prominent Northern politicians, such as Stephen Douglas, supported the slave states in Congress; this was usually, as in the case of Douglas, who actually wrote and promoted the Kansas-Nebraska Act, an attempt to preserve the Democratic Party, which suffered from "multiple personality disorder," and had long juggled politically to keep its northern and southern branches in harmony.

Because of the political "necessities" which lead the Democrats and Whigs into a "strange bedfellows" alliance with their southern members, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed. This allowed southern law officers (Sheriff and those whom they deputized) to seize runaway slaves in the North without due process of law. The southern Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Roger B. Taney (a vehement advocate of slavery) wrote the majority opinion in Dred Scott versus Sandford in 1856, which sent Scott back to slavery in Virginia. This further heightened the resentments and the strife. Even before the Dred Scott case, Northerners had rebelled against the Fugitive Slave Act, and many Northerners who had never been abolitionists joined the Quakers in non-violent opposition, which made the underground railway even more effective in getting runaway slaves out of the South and into Canada. It even lead to riots in which southern law officers were hindered, and even attacked, as they attempted to seize black men and women. As many abolitionists pointed out, the Act meant that even free black men and women were no longer safe.

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I didn't say to you that there was no slavery in the North, i just pointed out that it is not true that there was ever an institution of slavery in all the states. The Missouri Compromise in 1820 set the pattern of one free state being admitted to the Union whenever a slave state were admitted. When Alabama was admitted to the Union in 1819, it meant that there were 11 slave states, and 11 free states. The Missouri Compromise held that no slave states could be admitted to the union north of 36 degrees, 30 minutes north, which was the southern border of Missouri, except for Missouri. At the same time, the compromise was effected by admitting Maine as a free state. Therefore, beginning with Maine in 1820, each time states were admitted to the Union, there would always be at least one free state, which never had an institution of slavery.

Therefore, i said that it is not true that all states had an institution of slavery--Maine, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Oregon were all admitted to the Union without ever having had an institution of slavery.

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So you can bleat about "heritage" to your heart's content. The heritage of the "southern cross" flag is that it represents an institution, the Confederate States of America, which was created to preserve and protect the institution of slavery, a racist institution. No amount of apologetics for that flag and what it represents will ever change that.

I've already pointed out that the lives which Northerners gave up on the battlefield more than exonerates the flag of the United States for whatever institutional racism it once harbored. You seem to forget that the first principle consequence of the Civil War, politically speaking, was the ratification of the XIIIth Amendment, which abolished involuntary servitude--it abolished slavery.

What setanta said, except I haven't the education to put it the way he does.

Not racist at all. The flag means nothing to me.

That is a pretty risky venture on your part, given that the institution of slavery was promoted in the North American colonies by the English.



Or perhaps rather than being objective, you might just be missing the significance of this issue.



Anyone who claimed that there was more to it than slavery would be missing a great deal, indeed. Absent the issue of slavery, there would never have been a war. After John Quincy Adams was defeated by Andrew Jackson in the 1828 election, he attempted to found a political party to oppose the Democrats, which he wanted to call the National Republicans--it was a dismal failure. By 1820, there was no other party in the United States other than the Democratic-Republican Party founded by Thomas Jefferson. In fact, in 1824, every candidate for President was a Democratic-Republican, including John Quincy Adams, who got fewer votes than Jackson, but won the election when it was thrown into the House of Representatives (Jackson got the most votes, but no one got a majority, so it was sent to the House based on the constitutional provision). That is why Jackson took the disaffected members of the Democratic-Republican Party and created the first modern political party, the Democratic Party, by organizing from the ground up, precinct by precinct, county by county, and state by state. When Adams was defeated in 1828, he wanted to organize a party which would represent the interests of those who had once been Federalists, and those in the Democratic-Republicans who did not want to join Jackson's Democrats. But as i said, he failed.

But a new political party was formed in 1833--the Whigs. It was founded by Henry Clay of Kentucky. It was a reasonably successful party, and managed to elect three Presidents. (John Tyler was also a Whig and President, but he succeeded to the office upon the death of William Henry Harrison, a founding member of the Whigs, and the first Whig elected President.) The Whigs formed to oppose Jackson and the Democrats--many prominent Americans disliked Jackson, whom they referred to as a "King," and they favored the powers of Congress over the power of the President. They had other policy agendas, too, but it would be foolish not to recognize that they were formed to oppose Jackson and the Democrats.

The American Party, usually referred to as the Know Nothings (they were extremely secretive, and members who were questioned about the party had been taught to reply: "I know nothing."), were formed much later, in the 1840s. They were a nativist, urban party, who were alarmed by immigration (there has always been a strong anti-immigrant thread in American politics), and especially the arrival of Irish Catholics, whom they saw as a threat to America's "Protestant culture," and whom they believed were controlled by the Pope in Rome. Although they were anti-slavery, and supported municipal reform (which they never managed to carry out), principally, they were opposed to the Irish and Catholicism. Thomas Nast, who is famous (undeservedly) in American history as a crusading reformer, was as close to a prominent supporter as they ever had. As you can see from the image below . . .



. . . he was virulently anti-Catholic. That cartoon was inspired by a movement among the Know Nothings to set up a system of state orphanages in New York. At the time, there were no state orphanages, and about the only orphanages in New York were those run by the Catholic Church. Note that the "crocodiles" in the cartoon are Catholic bishops whose miters are the snapping jaws threatening the brave, orphaned Protestant children on shore. He was most famous for his attacks on Tammany Hall, as a corrupt political organization with its claws embedded in New York City. Almost all municipal governments in the United States in the 1840s and -50s were corrupt--but Tammany Hall was Democratic, and largely Irish and Catholic.

The Know Nothings, however, were never successful as a national party.

But after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, Northerners became alarmed that they weren't represented by a party which opposed the impositions of the slave states with their inordinate political power (see my previous post with reference to the Three-Fifths Compromise). People who weren't interested in Adams' National Republicans, and who saw it as a haven for the financial powers who were once members of the Federalists now hurried to organize. The Republican Party was founded in 1854 from among northern Whigs and Democrats and "free soilers" (those opposed to the admission of slave states to the Union) and abolitionists. Southern politicians immediately branded them as abolitionist--and although they attempted to deny it (ironically, only the Know Nothings publicly advocated abolition), their first candidate for President was John C. Frémont, a well-known abolitionist. (In 1861, Lincoln gave Frémont a commission and put him in charge of Missouri; Frémont promptly issued a proclamation freeing all the slaves in Missouri--Lincoln just as promptly removed him from his post, and put Henry Halleck in his place. Frémont went on to demonstrate conclusively that he was not competent for high military command when he failed to bag "Stonewall" Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley in 1862.)

Frémont lost the 1856 election, but the Republicans were firmly established, and even though defeated for the office of President, they took over a lot of local government in the North, and sent a lot of men to the Congress. In 1858, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas (the Democratic "fair-haired boy" who had consistently compromised with slave state politicians and who wrote and managed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, odious to abolitionists and free soilers) campaigned for the Senate in Illinois. Senators were not elected in those days, but were appointed by the state legislatures, so Lincoln and Douglas were campaigning for candidate for the legislature, which took them both all over the state. In a series of now famous debates, Lincoln forced Douglas into a corner. If he repudiated slavery, he would alienate the southern wing of the Democratic Party. If he did not, he would offend many Illinois voters. Douglas managed to waffle, successfully as it turned out, because his party won, and he was appointed Senator--it was a close thing, though, with the Democrats getting slightly less than half the votes, and slightly more than half the seats. But it was always a dangerous thing to debate Lincoln, who was arguably one of the most capable politicians in our history. Douglas said that he believed that the United States was a republic founded for the white man, and that states had a right to exclude "inferior races." Lincoln replied in his usual cutting style, with reference to the equality of black men:

I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal [meaning a black man] in many respects-certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.

Douglas was no piker, though, and he gave as good as he got, sneering effectively at Lincoln when Lincoln said that he was not an abolitionist.

Although Douglas won the battle, he had lost the war in 1858. In the 1860 election, the Democrats split fatally. John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky ran for President as a "Dixiecrat" (a southern Democrat), and although he polled half a million votes less than Douglas, he got more electoral votes because he got solid support in the South. The combined Democratic vote given to Douglas and Breckenridge would have buried Lincoln in a landslide, but the Party was split because Southerners did not trust Douglas, and Northerners did not trust Breckenridge. Lincoln won the election because he had solid Republican support in northern states, while Douglas only got Missouri's electoral votes, and three electors from New Jersey, which split its electoral votes.

Lincoln was elected on November 3, 1860. South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860, as a direct result of the election of Lincoln, based on the conviction that Lincoln was an abolitionist who would work to free the slaves. In April, 1861, having seized the customs house in Charleston, having expelled or arrested all Federal officers in the state who had not already left, the began shelling Fort Sumter in the harbor at Charleston.

Anyone who thinks that slavery was not just a cause of the war, but the sole cause, is either ill-informed, or indulging an apologist fantasy.



The Southerners (and many Northerners) were very certainly prejudiced against black men for the color of their skin. A very decided racist propaganda was circulated from the 17th century onward about black men and women. Note that Stephen Douglas, a Northerner, promoted the claim that black men and women were an "inferior" race. But the prejudice ran deeply enough that even Protestant clergy preached in favor of it based on the bible. In the opinion of biblical scholars, Ham, the son of Noah, went into Africa after the flood, and the people of Africa were considered to be descended from them (he was also considered to be the father of many of the people of the middle east, and modern racists deny that the Jews are white people on that basis). The passage which they used was from Genesis, Chapter 9, verses 20-25: (in the King James Version)

And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:

And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.

And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.

And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness.

And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.

And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.

Upon that dubious basis, and claiming that Africans were descended from Ham, Protestant clergy declared that the bible had ordained that Africans were to be the "servant[s] of servants" and that black men were made by God to be slaves.

No rest for the wicked--although Pope Gregory XVI condemned slavery in his 1839 bull, In Supremo Apostolatus, the Catholic Church in America at that time was politically and spiritually centered in Maryland, a slave state--if Catholic priests did not openly support slavery, they certainly did not speak against it. When Irish and Polish Catholics began arriving in America in great numbers, they resented the black man, because they saw him as competition for the menial labor which as all that was then available to them. Southern slave holders were canny, too, they supported Catholic emancipation in Ireland, and supported the cause of Irish independence--after all, the Irish were white, even if disgustingly Catholic. Many Irish fought for the south in the Civil War, and one, Patrick Cleburne, who reached the rank of Major General in the Confederate Service, advocated the freeing of blacks to serve the Confederacy--and ruined his career.

he other two ritualist churches, the Episcopalians and the Lutherans, also tolerated, or even supported the institution of slavery in the South. Like the Catholics, they waffled by holding the the only valid distinction between people was that they were either unrepentant sinners, or redeemed sinners, and that God loved a repentant slave as much as he loved a repentant slave master. In fact, Leonidas Polk, the Episcopal Bishop of Louisiana, rose to the rank of Lieutenant General in the Confederate service, and fought under this disputed banner from the very beginning of the war until he was killed in Georgia in 1864. He wasn't much of a general--like most Southern generals, his notion of military skill was wait on the defensive until the enemy appeared, and then to attack savagely, regardless of the odds. Nevertheless, he was popular with his troops, because they thought he was a good preacher as well respecting the rank. Whenever possible, he had his breakfast served to him, or dined at a table with linen, silver and crystal, served by the more than one dozen slaves who attended him on all his campaigns. The boys in the Army of the Tennessee appreciated a good show and a pugnacious fighter.

Nobody gets a pass on this issue.



While it is certainly appropriate to display the flag in a museum, the entire issue is summed up by the fact that the symbol is ubiquitous, and even if some innocently display this flag, you are completely correct in noting that it is still used as a racist symbol.

Yes, of course it is
Like the Chinese letter which later became the symbol of Nazi Germany, the Confederate Battle Flag is a symbol of racism because racist people chose to use it to represent them. In the 20's and 30's, racist leaders in the South (some of them my forefathers), decided to make their beliefs known to all by using the flag. Did it ruin the historical significance of the flag for millions of other Southerners and their offspring? Yes it did. If you don't like that this symbol is now considered clearly racist, blame those who decided to use it that way, not those who see it and have no trouble interpreting its meaning. You can say "History, not Racism", but the reality is "history and racism".

Too true, engineer.

And all the pathetic attempts to make the battle flag a sweeter symbol of just mean as a snake Southern good ol boyism fail to sway me.

Speaking of pathetic. The Dukes of Hazzard was offered as what? as exemplars of what ? Southern Heritage? Southern Culture?

Joe(It sure was a breakout show for a lot of black actors)Nation