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"Four years ago, I became a national news story after I hung a Confederate flag in my dorm room window at the University of South Carolina Beaufort. Controversy wasn’t my intention. For me and many Southerners, the flag celebrates my heritage and regional pride. One of my ancestors, Benjamin Thomas, was a black Confederate cook, and I do not want to turn my back on his service to the South. So I hang the flag in honor of his hard work and dedication to South Carolina during the Civil War.
<snip>
I fought back against the racist interpretation of the flag and I won.
<snip>
I love the Confederate flag, but I love South Carolina and its citizens more. While the flag’s existence on the statehouse grounds never offended me — and it still does not today — I can’t ignore the deep pain that it causes for many people in my state. I can’t ignore that many can’t love South Carolina as I do until the flag is removed." (gaslight: manipulate (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity.)
Well, here is the thing. His relative was a COOK. Blacks were not permitted to fight in the Confederate Army until March 1865. The irony is that a master could force his slave to fight for the Confederacy at gun point.
Hearing what that Black man has to say doesn't change my mind. The Confederate cause itself was explicit in its intentions to continue the institution of slavery. That man's testimony doesn't negate that the Confederacy wanted his enslavement to continue for as long as possible, and that the right to keep slaves was codified in the Articles of Secession.
By the way, I am aware of what gaslighting is. When someone posts snippets of a Black person posing with a Confederate flag, I know it's being done to make me feel stupid for having negative feelings about the Confederate flag.
"The most outspoken political group promoting segregation in the United States was the Dixiecrat political party, who adopted the Confederate flag as their party's symbol in 1948. Before it was adopted by the Dixiecrats, the flag was not used as a political statement. The only times the Confederate flag was flown were at occasional football games (flown by southern universities), or during Civil War reenactments. However, after the Dixiecrats adopted the flag, others also began to use it to resist desegregation and equality and oppose the Civil Rights Movement.
I put a name to the pain ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by green_mariner
Here is the question. Why was the Confederate flag chosen as a symbol of resistance against Civil Rights?
what's your point? how many native Americans wave the American flag and honor our heritage? a tiny minority but it's a heritage for the majority of Americans and the pioneers........should we get rid of the American flag and our heritage because of the feelings of a minority?
all of our founding fathers and our first president owned slaves. Should we get rid of that too to not hurt your feelings?
You know none of this has anything to do with the Founding Fathers. I also know the only reason you brought Native Americans into this is to try and derail the topic. And something else. I'm aware of the displacement of Native Americans in this country. It's something I was taught in school. Here is the difference. The USA flag represents this country. However, the Founding Fathers did not put it in the Constitution to displace Native Americans. The Founding Fathers did not separate from the British Empire for the expressed purpose of displacing and enslaving people. The ideals behind the founding of the USA far more noble than the ideals behind the founding of the Confederacy.
The point is this. Maybe instead of trying to gaslight or claim "Blacks are brainwashed", you might want to ask WHY many Blacks feel how they do about the Confederate flag. Maybe you should consider why the opinion about the Confederate flag varies so vastly between Blacks and Whites.
Several events over the last view years have put the Confederate flag in the national spotlight. It is a controversial symbol and for good reason. I grew up in Georgia and kept hearing the same thing "it represents southern heritage" or "it's about my southern pride". I ask my mother and her response was "I'm southern but it's not my pride". I'll save how I feel about the Confederate flag for later in the thread.
Living in the South, there is one segment of the population that never says that it represents "southern pride" or "southern heritage". That is the Black population. 55 percent of American's Black population lives in the South. Most Blacks regardless of what state they're born in have ancestors from the southern USA (see The Great Migration). By default, the majority of America's Black population are southerners or have southern heritage. However, a majority of Blacks do not claim the Confederate flag as part of their heritage. I can testify to this living in Georgia.
Outside of the "Blacks are brainwashed by the leftists" gaslighting line, I notice very few people can or will answer this question: Why aren't Blacks embracing the Confederate flag as part of their "southern heritage"? This is an important question to ask because. There is a major contrast between how many Whites view the Confederate flag vs how Blacks view the Confederate flag. And there are legitimate reasons for this. However, I'm noticing that said question is not being asked.
By the way, if the only thing anyone has to offer is "Blacks are brainwashed by the left" or some photo of a token Black person brandishing a Confederate flag, this is not the thread for you. I've seen that tactic so many times it's like a broken record. Gaslighting at its finest.
"The States' Rights Democratic Party (usually called the Dixiecrats) was a short-lived segregationist political party in the United States."
And so now there is confusion ... can not help that in the least. KKK utilized white bed sheets, so now what?
1) The KKK never used bed sheets. They used robes and white pointy hats. Ironic because the KKK hated Catholics.
2) I never asked if the Dixiecrats were a short-lived party. I asked you to think about why the Confederate flag became the symbol of choice for those against civil rights? Why it because the symbol of choice for white supremacists outside of the south? And why it has become a symbol used by some working class/working poor whites who feel at odds with society?
3) And this is something you really need to understand. Why did so many Confederate monuments get erected during the Jim Crow era?
In very small numbers, and technically, Blacks were not allowed to be soldiers in the Confederate forces until 1865. The irony is that some slaves were forced to fight by their masters. Conscription by the master shall we say. Far more troops fought for the Union and for much longer.
But it leaves this for you to think about. A majority of Blacks are southerners. Even with the knowledge of the few Blacks who were Confederate soldiers, most Blacks don't identify with the Confederate flag. You should think about why this is.
"Four years ago, I became a national news story after I hung a Confederate flag in my dorm room window at the University of South Carolina Beaufort. Controversy wasn’t my intention. For me and many Southerners, the flag celebrates my heritage and regional pride. One of my ancestors, Benjamin Thomas, was a black Confederate cook, and I do not want to turn my back on his service to the South. So I hang the flag in honor of his hard work and dedication to South Carolina during the Civil War.
<snip>
I fought back against the racist interpretation of the flag and I won.
<snip>
I love the Confederate flag, but I love South Carolina and its citizens more. While the flag’s existence on the statehouse grounds never offended me — and it still does not today — I can’t ignore the deep pain that it causes for many people in my state. I can’t ignore that many can’t love South Carolina as I do until the flag is removed." (gaslight: manipulate (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by green_mariner
Well, here is the thing. His relative was a COOK. Blacks were not permitted to fight in the Confederate Army until March 1865. The irony is that a master could force his slave to fight for the Confederacy at gun point.
Hearing what that Black man has to say doesn't change my mind. The Confederate cause itself was explicit in its intentions to continue the institution of slavery. That man's testimony doesn't negate that the Confederacy wanted his enslavement to continue for as long as possible, and that the right to keep slaves was codified in the Articles of Secession.
By the way, I am aware of what gaslighting is. When someone posts snippets of a Black person posing with a Confederate flag, I know it's being done to make me feel stupid for having negative feelings about the Confederate flag.
gaslight is a door that swings both ways, you know that right?
Here there is sufficient evidence in the concrete that slavery was not the avowed cause of the conflict. If there was this uncertain notion of the cause of the war among northern sympathizers, how much more befogged must have been the minds of the southern slaves in the hands of men who imagined that they were fighting for the same principles involved in our earlier struggle with Great Britain! To the majority of the Negroes, as to all the South, the invading armies of the Union seemed to be ruthlessly attacking independent States, invading the beloved homeland and trampling upon all that these men held dear.
The loyalty of the slave while the master was away with the fighting forces of the Confederacy has been the making of many orators of an earlier day, echoes of which we often hear in the present. The Negroes were not only loyal in remaining at home and doing their duty but also in offering themselves for actual service in the Confederate army. [The Journal of Negro History Vol. 4, No. 3 (Jul., 1919), pp 239 - 253 (15 pages)]
___________________
There are 253 pages of that Journal, all I give here is a snippet ... I would think that would be enough to cause someone to what to know more ... guess not. (not at gun point)
Quote:
slaves was codified in the Articles of Secession
so as to preserve not only a way of life, but a way of creating revenue that both the white man and the black man had come to utilize ... interesting enough, the history books leave out the snippet of the white woman sent to prison for teaching young black children how to read. History books do not cover the snippets of the Christians that wanted to save the black people's souls so as they would be united in Heaven ... in Heaven ... we are all one. The religion of Politics that is celebrated today ... they leave that out.
Did you know the population of the south did you know there were more black people living here, than white? Do you know how that effected the power struggle in politics where as the north wished to cash in on the southern revenue and law making capabilities ... ?
Abraham Lincoln wanted to send the black population away ...
We live together, work together and pray together, it was no different 158 years ago. We know one another not by the color of our skin, but by the fruits of our labor. Through Christ we are united, through politics we are damned.
In very small numbers, and technically, Blacks were not allowed to be soldiers in the Confederate forces until 1865. The irony is that some slaves were forced to fight by their masters. Conscription by the master shall we say. Far more troops fought for the Union and for much longer.
But it leaves this for you to think about. A majority of Blacks are southerners. Even with the knowledge of the few Blacks who were Confederate soldiers, most Blacks don't identify with the Confederate flag. You should think about why this is.
You're not going to find this in the history books:
"Union soldiers robbed, raped and murdered Free Black and slave Southerners they had come to "emancipate." Union "recruiters" hunted, kidnapped and tortured Black Southerners to compel them to serve in the Union Army. At the Battle of the Crater white Union soldiers bayoneted retreating Black Union soldiers and the 54th Massachusetts was intentionally fired upon by Union Maine troops while assaulting Battery Wagner. The Federal Official Records and memoirs of the USCT document all of these war crimes."
you'll find it in ... "The Federal Official Records and memoirs of the USCT document" ... also, not mentioned as it is a, as "legend has it" during the war people in the south hid the black people in their basements and root cellars as it was dangerous for the Union soldiers to find them, not because they wanted to recruit them, but because they wanted to kill them.
A person has to seek this information out, because ... no one wants it known, because it goes against the official narrative, the one meant to keep us divided. A united people are much more difficult to govern ...
"Genealogists for our Finding Your Roots PBS series told me that I had descended from three sets of fourth great-grandparents who had been freed well before the Civil War. (Unless, like comedian Wanda Sykes, you descend from a mulatto child born to a white mother, all of your African-American ancestors were once slaves; the only question is when they became free, which for 90 percent of us was either during the Civil War or with the ratification of the 13th Amendment following the war.) Two sets of my own ancestors (the Cliffords and the Redmans) were free people by the time of the American Revolution, and the other set, the Bruces, were freed in the will of their master in 1823.
As if this weren’t surprising enough, it was another fact that drove me to re-read Ira Berlin’s book about freed slaves. All of these people, and their descendants, continued to live in slave-holding Virginia, even during the Civil War. (Their part of Virginia would join the Union as the state of West Virginia in the middle of the war, but they had no way of knowing this when they decided to remain there, rather than flee.) Why didn’t my great-great-great-great-grandparents run away to safety in the North, rather than remain in the Potomac Valley region of slave-holding western Virginia, about 30 miles, as a matter of fact, from where I was born? Free Negroes headed north just as soon as they could, right? Didn’t my ancestors’ decision to stay put in the Confederacy run counter to what we all understood about the history of slavery?"
what's your point? how many native Americans wave the American flag and honor our heritage? a tiny minority but it's a heritage for the majority of Americans and the pioneers........should we get rid of the American flag and our heritage because of the feelings of a minority?
all of our founding fathers and our first president owned slaves. Should we get rid of that too to not hurt your feelings?
ALL of our founding fathers did NOT own slaves.. some did, some did NOT! Some were staunch abolitionist from the outset but forming a new country was simply a higher priority for them.
ALL of our founding fathers did NOT own slaves.. some did, some did NOT! Some were staunch abolitionist from the outset but forming a new country was simply a higher priority for them.
really? if they were "staunch" abolitionists from the outset why didn't they put it in the constitution? or mention it in any documents?......try again.
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