|
Musicmystery -> RE: Civil War (7/8/2015 5:44:35 AM)
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: KenDckey
Well with all of what I consider crap going on in the nation I am really just looking for thoughts.
I have read and heard a lot lately about the subject and the differing opinions are quite intreging to me
Crap? You mean over the Confederate flag?
Since you and your buddy like "interjecting reality," let's have a look:
The first Confederate national flag was widely disliked for a number of reasons (primarily its aesthetic resemblance to the United States flag and its attendant confusion with the U.S. flag on the battlefield), so on 1 May 1863 the Confederate States of America adopted a new national flag known as “the Stainless Banner,” said by its designer to represent the “supremacy of the white man”:
Our idea is simply to combine the present battle-flag with a pure white standard sheet; our Southern Cross, blue on a red field, to take the place on the white flag that is occupied by the blue union in the old United States flag, or the St. George’s cross in the British flag. As a people, we are fighting to maintain the Heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematical of our cause.
[The second Confederate national flag design created its own set of problematic issues, namely that (especially when the flag hung limp in windless conditions) its canton could be obscured, making it appear to be an all-white flag of truce. To ameliorate this problem, a red vertical bar was added to the right-hand side of the white field, and this design (known as “the Blood-Stained Banner”) was adopted as the third Confederate national flag on 4 March 1865]
It is true that for several decades after the Civil War, the Confederate battle flag was not widely perceived as a negative symbol. Its use was largely limited to historical ceremonies associated with veterans’ events and war memorials; the flag did not become the symbol most prominently associated with the Confederacy until several decades after the Civil War ended, and it was not widely perceived as a politically polarizing symbol until it was appropriated by segregationist politicians and groups in the middle of the twentieth century.
However, the fact remains that the Confederate battle flag has long since become the pre-eminent symbol of the Confederacy and what it stood for, and across the span of several decades it has been co-opted by segregationist and white supremacist groups such as the Dixiecrats, the KKK, and the Aryan Nation. Certainly one can be a racist or a white supremacist without associating himself with “Southern Pride” or a Confederate battle flag, but for better or worse, no one group is any more “authorized” to use the Confederate battle flag as their symbol than another: the Confederate government and its military forces ceased to exist 150 years ago and therefore have no say or control over the usage of the Southern Cross.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans may sincerely object to the Confederate battle flag’s use by Neo-Nazis, skinheads, and other extremist groups, and perhaps some of the men who fought and died for the Confederacy would as well if they were alive today. But just as with the swastika, it’s likely to be a very, very long time before that symbol can be reclaimed and regarded in anything approaching a neutral manner, and probably not until the social issues underlying the public perception of that symbol have been more thoroughly canvassed.
Read more at http://m.snopes.com/2015/06/28/confederate-flag-history/#IrxbYRSK033D4MRu.99
THAT'S what all the fuss is about.
So yeah, take the flag down.
|
|
|
|
