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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsA Little Honesty on the Confederate Flag
http://contraryperspective.com/2015/06/25/a-little-honesty-on-the-confederate-flag/Did you follow that last sentence? If you didnt, pat yourself on the back, because its all BS. The stars and bars may have been a Confederate battle flag 150 years ago, but after the Civil War it morphed into a symbol of White supremacy, becoming a symbol of race hatred and violent resistance to integration during the Civil Rights movement.
A little honesty: The Confederate flag is hardly restricted to the South, and therefore its not primarily about Southern heritage. In rural Central Pennsylvania, where I recently taught for nine years, the Confederate flag was astonishingly common. It was on license plates; it flew every day at a local gas station; I saw neighbors flying it openly on their flag poles. Why, you might ask?
My wife was very good friends with a Black woman in a local town; the (White) neighbor immediately behind her openly flew a Confederate flag from his flag pole. Remember, this was Pennsylvania, Union country, not the heart of the Confederacy. There was no mistaking this mans message his unhappiness that a Black family lived near him, and his decision to make them uncomfortable, to make them squirm, by flying his flag.
uponit7771
(90,378 posts)HassleCat
(6,409 posts)I live in the north part of Washington. If I stand on my roof, I can see Victoria BC across the water. There are several good ole boys around here who make it a point to display the confederate battle flag on their trucks, on their home flag poles, etc. One guy even got an old wooden pallet and painted the flag on it. It looks like crap, of course, something a third grader would make, but I'm sure he's very proud of it. There it sits, propped up among the broken cars and discarded appliances on his lawn, making some kind of statement. Or something. I assume he doesn't like black people, although I'm a little hesitant to stop and ask, if you know what I mean.
Almost forgot, the "stars and bars" design is the first confederate flag. It has three big horizontal bars, with a field of seven to thirteen stars in the upper left corner, one star for each of the confederate states. The flag we see now is called the "stainless banner," although it looks to me like it's made of cloth, not stainless steel.