Rebel flag, racist or not?

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Sorry, i don't get it.

I think he means your image is broken. It's broken for me.

works for me. Must be something wrong with your browsers?

Nope. I just have the security features set high.

As if to prove my point, here is a screen dump

It's true that hate groups use it to promote their agendas,they also use lots of Celtic symbols especially the Celtic cross.So if I got a Celtic cross tattoo to celebrate my Scots-Irish heritage I would appear racist to some people.There's also a double standard,I saw a lady with a shirt on that said "I'm black and I'm proud" but if I wear a shirt that says" I'm white and I'm proud" I would look like a racist ass.Maybe one day we can all get along.Sigh.

Theres a big difference there, because the confederate flag was never flown with any historical pretext before the CSA, which was a pro slavery, pro white supremacy, state.

The swastika and celtic cross are different because of their ancient lineage.

Even if not everyone who flies the Confederate flag today has racist intent, it still carries a considerable history of racism and division along with it - intended or not.
As for the claim that slavery was not the stated reason for pursuing the war - it is true, that was the case in the North, but the Confederacy clearly stated slavery was their primary motivation.
As for the claim that the war had been caused by reasons other than slavery - whether it was economic or regional division, or a matter of states rights vs. Federal control, the fact of the matter is, the root of every one of those points was slavery.
And while it was true that not every southerner was a slave owner, it was equally untrue that only the big plantation owners owned slaves. Plenty of less affluent southern families owned one or a few slaves. And while there had been plenty of southern soldiers who owned no slaves who fought for the Confederacy, many others - realizing this was a war that could only benefit the plantation owners - had joined the Union army. Or like the gallant Newton Knight, who had gathered a small. ragtag army of escaped slaves and Confederate deserters around himself, to carry on non-stop guerrilla warfare against the Confederacy.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I would probably think that there was a group of gay Nazis.

The thing is, those flags are associated solely with one thing. The rebel flag isn't, and most people down here will tell you that. It's just the fact that people who don't live down here choose to only see one side of it and then turn around and insist that is the one thing it does mean. It means so many more things. If it were a symbol of white supremacy, why are there so many black people that I see wearing Dixie Outfitters shirts that have it on the logo and the pictures, and why have I seen black guys wearing ball caps with it on there, and why have I seen some black guys driving trucks with a rebel flag tag or one on the back window?

True, not all black people down here agree that it's not a racist symbol but about half seem to, and almost all white people down here say it's not. I think thats because down here we are taught about it and what it meant and about the Civil War and the Confederacy, where people up North aren't, or if they are they aren't taught all that much and what they are taught is just as biased against us as ours is biased toward us.

To most of us, it's simply a symbol of the South. Not slavery. Not Jim Crow. Not George Wallace. Not the Klan. Yes, some people associate it with that, especially Northerners and people who want to see racism in everything, but to most people who like the flag, it has nothing to do with any of those things. It's about Southern heritage, which has nothing to do with anybody's race at all. It's a shame that some groups who are hateful have chosen that as their emblem, but we can't stop them. We can only say that isn't what it means to most normal, regular, noncrazy people. (Noncrazy refers to people who aren't racist, I consider racists to be crazy)

Turkeys voting for Christmas?

The same with national flags who get "hijacked" by neo-Nazis and other ethnic nationalist types. If you demonise people's flags and sense of identity, it will be associated with nutcases. Best thing to do is to take it back from them and detoxify it.

It seems we can't do that with the rebel flag because as soon as someone tries to explain that it isn't about racism, we are told that we are wrong and oh yes it is. It's the de facto flag of the Deep South, don't you think we know what our flag actually means, rather than what people just associate it with?

It's impossible to detoxify it when people insist that you are wrong and that is is about racism. In fact, I have had people tell me in the past that I am racist because I 1) like the flag and 2) state that it isn't racist.

It's crazy. No matter what Southerners say about the rebel flag, people from the rest of the country will insist that we are wrong.

Yeah.... And I've seen quite a few Jewish people wearing t-shirts and sporting tattoos with Nazi symbols!




You lost. Get over it.

Last edited by AspieRogue on 21 Sep 2012, 8:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

If you have a lot of black friends, it might be worthwhile getting them to talk to the constantly-offended and point out their own relationship to the flag.

Speaking of racist flags and symbols, what about THIS ONE here:









{For those who don't know, this is the old South African flag(used by the apartheid regime) which was flown from 1948 to 1994}

Racist? I vote yes.

I think the flag is racist now but was not in the generation after the war.

The Rebel flag has racist connotations because it has current racist connections.