Charlie,
I guess that's where we differ. I don't see that any good was ever attached
to it. The southern pride you speak of, was the pride of southern landowners
to have the right to own slaves. That's why they seceded from the union.
That's what they were fighting for. What Barbara Kingsolver is saying in
the article is that there were poor white southerners who fought because
they were forced to and that to some of them, the flag symbolizes valor. But
my feeling is that most of them were brainwashed into believing in the
southern cause and that cause was the right to own slaves. There may be
other fine southern traditions, but they're not what the flag was created
for. It was created as a symbol of a new country formed on the basis of
slave ownership.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Charles Crawford
Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2015 1:56 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: A View From the South: Let the Confederate
Flag Go
Hi Carl and Miriam and all,
OK, I will admit it. I like the confederate flag! Why, well it has
a better look to it as far as I am concerned and I was also a fan of Colonel
Molsby on TV back in the 50's. I am saddened to see what has been done to
that flag and all the hate, evil, and downright racism that has been
attached to it. So whatever good was once associated with-it has been
overwhelmed with the horror that has become its legacy. I agree that
putting it in museums and maybe fly it over confederate graveyards is a good
thing to do, but let's now come together in our celebration of freedom and
humanity and say goodbye to a flag that was not just a symbol of slave
ownership, but one that also represented the much broader pride of southern
people for the people they were.
Charlie Crawford.
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: 04 July 2015 16:46
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: A View From the South: Let the Confederate
Flag Go
What is the function of a flag?
In my disinterested opinion, a flag is a symbol of a Belief or a Place. A
flag or banner containing a cross indicates a belief in Jesus Christ. A
flag with 13 alternating red and white stripes, with a blue field filled
with 50 stars, tells me that it represents the United States of America. A
light blue flag with orange and gold zigzag stripes and dueling Humming
Birds, means absolutely nothing to me.
National flags, such as the Stars and Stripes, not only represent a
geographical territory, but to the citizens that flag represents the history
and traditions of that nation.
So what can we say regarding the confederate flag. There is no Confederacy
for it to represent. Does it represent the history and traditions that were
of the short-lived confederacy? If not, then what does it represent. To
say it represents the pride of the South is to suggest that this includes
the Southern Traditions. That tradition of the short-lived confederacy
included slavery. Wouldn't it seem better to design a new flag, proclaiming
the goodness and love of the New South toward all people of all color and
ffaith?
Carl Jarvis
On 7/4/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
If the author of this hadn't been who it is, I would have skipped it(photo:
because so much has been written about the subject.
Miriam
Kingsolver writes: "My little town is proud to have reared citizens
like Carolee, an honour student and star athlete who offers a helping
hand to anyone she meets. She wears her blonde hair in a ponytail and
a delicate tattoo on her wrist. It's the Confederate battle flag."
Kingsolver: 'Around here we see it on license plates and T-shirts. A
ragged one has hung for years on the side of a barn in my neighborhood.'
Stephen Morton/Getty)on her wrist.
A View From the South: Let the Confederate Flag Go By Barbara
Kingsolver, Guardian UK
04 July 15
The Confederate emblem was about pride as well as hatred, but racists
have twisted its meaning
My little town is proud to have reared citizens like Carolee, an
honour student and star athlete who offers a helping hand to anyone
she meets. She wears her blonde hair in a ponytail and a delicate tattoo
Itshonour students.
the Confederate battle flag.
That flag has come crashing into the global conversation after an
avowed white supremacist massacred nine parishioners in an African
Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina. He tore up
hearts and families, left a state without its senator and a nation
bereft. A crime so senseless leaves us grappling for something we can
blame, or fix. Were sickened by Dylann Roofs self-portrait with a
semi-automatic pistol and Confederate flag. In the wider world where
its seldom seen, people must wonder how that emblem waved by a racist
vigilante could ever have held appeal for local historians or thoughtful
No story is ever simple here in the south, least of all the AmericanDixie.
civil war. Its easily reduced to a morality play a conflict between
northerners who wished to abolish slavery (the Union) and southern
whites who refused (the Confederate rebels). In that version, any
invocation of the lost Confederacy looks like nostalgia for slaverys
return.
But history is nuanced. Economics divided an industrialising north
from an agrarian south, where cotton plantations exploited enslaved
labour for their solvency. Most white southerners, of course, didnt
own plantations or other humans. Poor farmers and sharecroppers were
brutally conscripted to fight for the interests of wealthier men. The
region where I live southern Appalachia, was occupied to enforce
compliance.
Bullets, illness and starvation killed hundreds of thousands during
that brief Confederacy, and some six generations later, families still
decorate the graves. Some feel their ancestors are as nobly and
tragically dead as any soldiers under any flag, and would honour them
independently of the worth of the war that consumed them a
distinction weve accepted since the moral quandary of Vietnam. If the
Confederate flag only flew over cemeteries, the discussion would be
over.
But it doesnt. Around here we see it on licence plates and T-shirts.
A ragged one has hung for years on the side of a barn in my
neighbourhood, making me wince daily. My neighbour is a decent person,
so far as Ive seen.
I can only guess he nailed it up in a spirit of defiance, maybe akin
to the way some rappers use the N-word: as a belligerent gesture of
identity politics. Southerners, especially Appalachians, live in a
shadow of condescension. Popular culture wages a steady war on our
dignity, decking us out as ignorant, vaguely incestuous hayseeds.
Reality TV digs deep to find trashy families to reinforce the
stereotype. In a nation with a hair-trigger sensitivity to disparaging
labels, the word hillbilly still flies with impunity.
Attaching banality or meanness to every element of our culture is
unfair, but defining southern pride is an endless navigation. In our
town, high-school football games are community entertainment. Our team
is the Rebels. My daughter played in the marching band known as the
Rebel Regiment.
We decided to embrace the title: rebels, in my opinion, are the pilots
of most human progress. The school cafeteria once bore a mural of
Confederate soldiers and their flag, but it was painted over decades
ago when the schools first African-American principal arrived.
Our Rebels only remaining civil war tie is the schools fight song,
Its a simple song about a southerner far from home who wishes he were(photo:
back on his native soil, south of the Mason-Dixon line. Countless
soldiers surely identified with the sentiment, back in the day, but
Abraham Lincoln also used it at campaign rallies it was never the
official anthem of the Confederacy. Id vote to retire it anyway,
knowing its tainted for those who hear it as such. Alternatives get
proposed, without success, because most people here identify it as the
anthem of a touchdown.
Dylann Roof tore up hearts and families, left a state without its
senator and a nation bereft were sickened by his self-portrait with
a semi-automatic ¬pistol and Confederate flag.
(photo: AP)
Who gets to draw the line between tradition and callous intransigence?
Where
does sensitivity become censorship? Tarring whole communities with the
brush of racism doesnt bring us grace. I could have whisked my
daughter from the home of the Rebels to a private school where she
wouldnt have to play Dixie. But this is our home, and I believe
public schools function best when we all support our kids together. I
think theyre better citizens for having grown up with many kinds of
people, to be judged by the contents of their characters, not their
tattoos.
When I claim my Appalachian identity Im embracing some things that
are often mocked: the poetry of our dipthong-rich language; a
fine-tuned interest in crops, the weather, and everybodys business.
The fact that when I throw a party there will be spontaneous music,
and someone will bring homemade whiskey. The fact that we never say
the words hostess gift but would never show up without one. Loving
your neighbour is a commandment we take seriously.
But I dont have to love his barn art, or the symbolic anti-freedom
fighters frozen beneath a coat of paint in the school cafeteria.
Southern pride doesnt mean loving the lynchings, segregation and
lingering racial inequality that have bled into this place, any more
than wearing cotton implies complicity with that crops awful history.
The modern south, home to our nations most racially diverse cities,
now has organic farms between tobacco fields, and yoga studios beside
churches. My favourite bumper sticker this year says Namaste, yall.
We dont want outsiders telling us what we are. So the duty is ours,
and ours alone, to distinguish our past from our future. The
Confederate flag is anathema to that project. Whatever it meant in the
1860s, since then it has been deliberately attached to a racist
agenda, beginning in 1948 when the new, segregationist Dixiecrat party
dug it out of mothballs. (Dixie, alas, was their fight song too.) The
flags presence has grown steadily more menacing. It turned up
wherever white mobs opposed civil rights marchers. It showed up at
Klan rallies. Im sure it still does. Swastika was the ancient
Sanskrit word for good fortune, its symbol representing the movement
of the sun across the sky. But it was appropriated by vile people, and
now virtually everyone sees racial hatred in that one too. Regardless
of intent or origin, a symbol achieves its meaning in the eye of the
beholder.
For some folks who incorporate the battle flag into their wardrobe or
body art, familiarity may have made it seem innocuous. But it isnt. A
flag is a potent symbol, purporting to be the standard of a concordant
nation. By carrying one into hate crimes, racists try to elevate their
evil by suggesting a nation of racists stands behind them.
My southern home is not that nation. This month the Confederate flag
finally came down from several southern state houses, and my
neighbours barn. Our governor banned it from licence plates. The
stock car drivers of Nascar, that bastion of good-ol-boys, expelled it
from the racetracks. Were honouring heritage by tapping our well of
kindness, knowing that for too many people those colours evoke terror
and despair. No more. Now is the moment in history when we send that
flag to the graveyard.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
valid.
Kingsolver: 'Around here we see it on license plates and T-shirts. A
ragged one has hung for years on the side of a barn in my neighborhood.'
Stephen Morton/Getty)honour students.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/03/south-flag-confed
erate-
pride-hatred-racistshttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/
03/sou th-flag-confederate-pride-hatred-racists
A View From the South: Let the Confederate Flag Go By Barbara
Kingsolver, Guardian UK
04 July 15
The Confederate emblem was about pride as well as hatred, but racists
have twisted its meaning y little town is proud to have reared
citizens like Carolee, an honour student and star athlete who offers a
helping hand to anyone she meets. She wears her blonde hair in a
ponytail and a delicate tattoo on her wrist.
Its
the Confederate battle flag.
That flag has come crashing into the global conversation after an
avowed white supremacist massacred nine parishioners in an African
Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina. He tore up
hearts and families, left a state without its senator and a nation
bereft. A crime so senseless leaves us grappling for something we can
blame, or fix. Were sickened by Dylann Roofs self-portrait with a
semi-automatic pistol and Confederate flag. In the wider world where
its seldom seen, people must wonder how that emblem waved by a racist
vigilante could ever have held appeal for local historians or thoughtful
No story is ever simple here in the south, least of all the AmericanDixie.
civil war. Its easily reduced to a morality play a conflict between
northerners who wished to abolish slavery (the Union) and southern
whites who refused (the Confederate rebels). In that version, any
invocation of the lost Confederacy looks like nostalgia for slaverys
return.
But history is nuanced. Economics divided an industrialising north
from an agrarian south, where cotton plantations exploited enslaved
labour for their solvency. Most white southerners, of course, didnt
own plantations or other humans. Poor farmers and sharecroppers were
brutally conscripted to fight for the interests of wealthier men. The
region where I live southern Appalachia, was occupied to enforce
compliance.
Bullets, illness and starvation killed hundreds of thousands during
that brief Confederacy, and some six generations later, families still
decorate the graves. Some feel their ancestors are as nobly and
tragically dead as any soldiers under any flag, and would honour them
independently of the worth of the war that consumed them a
distinction weve accepted since the moral quandary of Vietnam. If the
Confederate flag only flew over cemeteries, the discussion would be
over.
But it doesnt. Around here we see it on licence plates and T-shirts.
A ragged one has hung for years on the side of a barn in my
neighbourhood, making me wince daily. My neighbour is a decent person,
so far as Ive seen.
I can only guess he nailed it up in a spirit of defiance, maybe akin
to the way some rappers use the N-word: as a belligerent gesture of
identity politics. Southerners, especially Appalachians, live in a
shadow of condescension. Popular culture wages a steady war on our
dignity, decking us out as ignorant, vaguely incestuous hayseeds.
Reality TV digs deep to find trashy families to reinforce the
stereotype. In a nation with a hair-trigger sensitivity to disparaging
labels, the word hillbilly still flies with impunity.
Attaching banality or meanness to every element of our culture is
unfair, but defining southern pride is an endless navigation. In our
town, high-school football games are community entertainment. Our team
is the Rebels. My daughter played in the marching band known as the
Rebel Regiment.
We decided to embrace the title: rebels, in my opinion, are the pilots
of most human progress. The school cafeteria once bore a mural of
Confederate soldiers and their flag, but it was painted over decades
ago when the schools first African-American principal arrived.
Our Rebels only remaining civil war tie is the schools fight song,
Its a simple song about a southerner far from home who wishes he were
back on his native soil, south of the Mason-Dixon line. Countless
soldiers surely identified with the sentiment, back in the day, but
Abraham Lincoln also used it at campaign rallies it was never the
official anthem of the Confederacy. Id vote to retire it anyway,
knowing its tainted for those who hear it as such. Alternatives get
proposed, without success, because most people here identify it as the
anthem of a touchdown.
Dylann Roof tore up hearts and families, left a state without its
senator and a nation bereft were sickened by his self-portrait with
a semi-automatic pistol and Confederate flag.
(photo: AP)
Who gets to draw the line between tradition and callous intransigence?
Where
does sensitivity become censorship? Tarring whole communities with the
brush of racism doesnt bring us grace. I could have whisked my
daughter from the home of the Rebels to a private school where she
wouldnt have to play Dixie. But this is our home, and I believe
public schools function best when we all support our kids together. I
think theyre better citizens for having grown up with many kinds of
people, to be judged by the contents of their characters, not their
tattoos.
When I claim my Appalachian identity Im embracing some things that
are often mocked: the poetry of our dipthong-rich language; a
fine-tuned interest in crops, the weather, and everybodys business.
The fact that when I throw a party there will be spontaneous music,
and someone will bring homemade whiskey. The fact that we never say
the words hostess gift but would never show up without one. Loving
your neighbour is a commandment we take seriously.
But I dont have to love his barn art, or the symbolic anti-freedom
fighters frozen beneath a coat of paint in the school cafeteria.
Southern pride doesnt mean loving the lynchings, segregation and
lingering racial inequality that have bled into this place, any more
than wearing cotton implies complicity with that crops awful history.
The modern south, home to our nations most racially diverse cities,
now has organic farms between tobacco fields, and yoga studios beside
churches. My favourite bumper sticker this year says Namaste, yall.
We dont want outsiders telling us what we are. So the duty is ours,
and ours alone, to distinguish our past from our future. The
Confederate flag is anathema to that project. Whatever it meant in the
1860s, since then it has been deliberately attached to a racist
agenda, beginning in 1948 when the new, segregationist Dixiecrat party
dug it out of mothballs. (Dixie, alas, was their fight song too.) The
flags presence has grown steadily more menacing. It turned up
wherever white mobs opposed civil rights marchers. It showed up at
Klan rallies. Im sure it still does. Swastika was the ancient
Sanskrit word for good fortune, its symbol representing the movement
of the sun across the sky. But it was appropriated by vile people, and
now virtually everyone sees racial hatred in that one too. Regardless
of intent or origin, a symbol achieves its meaning in the eye of the
beholder.
For some folks who incorporate the battle flag into their wardrobe or
body art, familiarity may have made it seem innocuous. But it isnt. A
flag is a potent symbol, purporting to be the standard of a concordant
nation. By carrying one into hate crimes, racists try to elevate their
evil by suggesting a nation of racists stands behind them.
My southern home is not that nation. This month the Confederate flag
finally came down from several southern state houses, and my
neighbours barn. Our governor banned it from licence plates. The
stock car drivers of Nascar, that bastion of good-ol-boys, expelled it
from the racetracks. Were honouring heritage by tapping our well of
kindness, knowing that for too many people those colours evoke terror
and despair. No more. Now is the moment in history when we send that
flag to the graveyard.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
