Teen Sues Over Confederate Flag Prom Dress

[Cryozombie]

It is funny how Malcolm X *always* comes up in these discussions. One of the few African-Americans who educated himself, rose out of his environment, confronted white America directly with the same hatred and threats of violence he and his people had faced for *centuries*, and suddenly you can justify any number of terrible racist acts...

Oh I see...

So racism is only ok if its an act of revenge, and then suddenly YOU can justify any number of terrible racist acts. I understand now.

And, BTW, my point was not that racism was justified, but rather that if you are going to censor someone based on a PERCEPTION of racist symbolism, ALL of that PERCIEVED symbolism should be treated equally.

Of course, as long as people feel that its justified for one side to be racist based on historical treatment of a people, as your post suggests, that will never happen.

Hey... whos giving me something seeing as how poorly my family was treated coming over here as poor Irish immigrants and being forced to change our names and hide our heritage in order to survive?

Gimme a break... I mean really.

And, BTW... Malcom X was "One of the few African-Americans who educated himself..." You actualy believe he was one of the "few" african americans who are educated? I see.

 

[rmcrobertson]

Roughly in reverse order:

1. If you'll actually READ Malcolm X's autobiography, you will find that he connected the insight he achieved during his hajj--a religious pilgrimage; one suspects the Right has heard of those?--to a) his rejection of the racialist doctrine he'd been taught, b) his rejection of Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. This was a primary motive for his assassination.

2. The Nazis were around a bit more than ten years. And so was German fascism; three whacks with a copy of, "From Caligari to Hitler."

3. "Cleansing the swastika?" Why? Who's so weak that they need an icon like that anyway? Three whacks with a copy of Hans-Jurgen Syberberg's, "Our Hitler: A Film From Germany," (it's 9 hours long!), which notes that these are the guys, "Who found words like, 'exterminate,' 'blood tribute,' 'take care of,' inferior,' 'final solution,' 'special treatment,' 'scum,' 'root out,', 'inject,' 'slaughter,' 'ruthless,' 'degenerate,' 'shoot down,' 'put against the wall,' 'make short shrift,' 'snuff out,' wipe out,'special force, 'task force,'drastic measures,' 'one head shorter,' 'cleanse,' 'bleeding heart,' 'liquidate,' 'national community,' 'corrupt,' blood banner.'" Scrub THAT off the swastika...me, "I heil pfft/and heil pfft/Right in der Fuhrer's face."

4. "Stainless Banner," my left lower cheek. You want to be proud of a national image? Fine. Try the St. Gaudens memorial in Boston Commons. Contemplate Ernie Pyle, Rodger Young, Rosa Parks.

5. One is dying to hear about the federal laws and unfair advantages that Made Life So Easy for All Them Immigrants. Specifically. With citations, examples, and footnotes. Unlikely--much easier to repeat the old lies; why them Asians! them Hispanics! them Germans, them Italians! them Irish! The Mexicans are Catholic and lazy and dumb and on welfare! it's unfair!! The Asians aren't Christians and they work extra hard and they're smart and they make money! It's unfair!! One would think that people would have caught on by now, at least.

6. Me too am white guy--though one finds terms such as, "white American,' both offensive and divisive, asserting as they do the attempt to preserve one's cultural identity against the idea of being American. Hey, guess what? The perks of this condition are pretty good, and they have been for my whole life. One pretty much has no objection to other folks getting a fair break once in a while. One also wishes that the other "white men," would figure out who their real beef is with...guess what? it's with rich white guys!

7. So is it OK by everybody if we teach kids that the Southern Cause set a crowd of warmongering, feudalist, slave-owning bastards against a crowd of Northern, modernist industrial capitalists--and the glorious Civil War was perfectly understandable from Karl Marx's viewpoint? Sounds good to me.

7. "There is no document of civilizations that is not, at the same time, also a document of barbarism."

 

[rmcrobertson]

P.S. One looked up the, "Stainless banner," people. Many seem to be harmless sales sites for Confederate memorabilia. However, the first three sites listed under the search terms also featured a great deal of genuinely bizarre interpretations of American history....including this little gem, from a Mississippi state senator's 1997 speech demanding the restoration of the Confederate Flag to the capitol:

"Our ancestors in the old South were fundamentally Christians which means they believe that the Bible, Old and New Testament, were the opinions of Almighty God, Who does not change and not the opinions of man. On the other hand, the abolitionists from up North were Humanists. They believed that God changed with the times and that the Bible was merely the opinions of man and not necessarily the opinions of God. I shall read to you a little of what God says in the Bible concerning slavery and thus what our ancestors in the Old South believed.

In the Old Testament, Leviticus, 25; 44-46, God says, "As for your male and female slaves whom you have acquired – you may acquire male and female slaves from the Pagan nations that are around you. Then, too, it is out of the sons of the sojourners who live as aliens among you that you may gain acquisition, and out of their families who are with you, whom they will have begotten in your land; they also may become your possessions. You may even bequeath them to your sons after you, to receive as a possession; you can use them as permanent slaves."

In the New Testament, I Timothy, 6:1-5, God says; "Let all who are under the yoke as slaves regard their own masters as worthy of all honor so that the name of God and our doctrine may not be spoken against. And let thosewho have believers as their masters be not disrespectful to them because they are brethren, but let them serve them all the more because those who partake of the benefits are believers are beloved. Teach and preach these principles".

People who are bitter and hateful about slavery are obviously hatful and bitter against God and His Word, because they reject what God says and embrace what mere humans say about slavery. This humanistic thinking is what the abolitionists embraced while Southerners and most Northerners embrace what God said in the Bible. These humanists' argument is not with me or the South or the United States but rather their argument is with God. They had made themselves out to be greater than God for they add to God's Word when they call something evil that God obviously allows. Is this what the abolitionists did? Teaching the doctrines of man as if they were the doctrines of God. The second lie is; that slaves were mistreated in the Old South. Again, this is not true. Colossians 4;1, Jesus said; "Masters, grant to your servants justice and fairness, knowing that you too have a Master in heaven." To say that slaves were mistreated in the Old South is to say that the most Christian group of people in the entire world, the Bible Belt, mistreated their servants and violated the commandments of Jesus their Lord. Anyone who says this is an accuser of the brethren of Jesus Christ, not a very good position to take. We in the South are offended by such accusations.

Just the opposite is true. In a U.S. Government PWA survey of former slaves, taken years after the war, 70% of former slaves had only good experiences to report about life as a slave and about the Old South. In the Old South there were numerous laws that protected slaves from abuse just like there are laws to protect wives and children from abuse, today. But just because a few men abuse their wives or children does not make marriage or having children a cruel, hateful endeavor. The same is true for slavery. Modern studies of slavery in the Old South proved that in food, shelter, clothing and medical care, Southern slaves were significantly better off than the free white factory workers in the North. The instance of abuse, rape, broken homes and murder are a hundred times greater, today, in the housing projects than they ever were on the slave plantations in the Old South. The truth is, that nowhere on the face of the earth, in all of time, were servants better treated or better loved than those were in the old South by white, black, Hispanic and Indian slave owners..."

Let's review:

The writer specifically ties the Confederacy and its representative symbol, the flag he wishes to restore to the State capitol, to a) the institution of slavery; b) the Will of God. To wit:

"People who are bitter and hateful about slavery are obviously hatful and bitter against God and His Word, because they reject what God says and embrace what mere humans say about slavery. This humanistic thinking is what the abolitionists embraced while Southerners and most Northerners embrace what God said in the Bible. These humanists' argument is not with me or the South or the United States but rather their argument is with God. They had made themselves out to be greater than God for they add to God's Word when they call something evil that God obviously allows."

There isn't enough Oxydol and Zout on the planet for these purposes. Perhaps bleach--it's a whitener.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

1: Malcolms history has been pretty well documented. I believe MLK is a better role model.

2: Yes, the German nazi party was around longer..but wasn't any more effective than the average US 3rd party, until Hitler grew his powerbase, and took over the government.

3: "Who's so weak that they need an icon like that anyway?" Maybe if you would take the time to understand the 3,000+ years of prior meaning, and what it means today in some parts of the world you would realize how uneducated that statement appears.

4: Again, take some time and research the meanings placed behind the various flags of the Confederate States before commenting in such an uneducated manner.

5: You appear to have missed my point.

6: My 'beef' is with those who want it both ways.

7: You continue to miss my points. ReRead my articles, and then look up the reference materials indicated in there. My points were backed with 3rd party intel...not popular disinformation.

7B - ...ok..... ??

 

[Tgace]

We'll as most of the southern soldiers fighting were dirt poor farmers who owned no slaves, I dont think that argument is entirely accurate...my good friend who recently moved to North Carolina tells me that the Civil War isnt called such there..they call it "The War of Northern Aggression". Ive read that Slavery was on the way out during the war anyway, for economic reasons more than moral granted.

I read an interesting book called "Confederates in the Attic" that addresses the issue of the Southerners and the continuation of this Civil War stuff, interesting read.

 

[rmcrobertson]

1. Nice duck-out on the point about Malcolm X rethinking the racism he was raised on by Elijah Muhammad, and seeing through the lies of his society. But then, it'd be hard to find examples of something comparable from the white racists who helped start the Civil War, maintained the institution of slavery as long as they could, invented the Jim Crow laws, maintained the institution of slavery as long as they could, stood in the doors of every school-room and lunch-counter in the South, and are now pushing folks towards a revisionist history almost as repulsive as the revamping of Hitler.

2. The generals and politicans of the South sure as hell weren't dirt farmers, were they? Saintly Robert E. Lee--hardscrabble kinda guy, eh? No wonder they got their asses kicked by a drunken, failed shop-owner and a college teacher of rhetoric and revealed religion and a self-taught country boy lawyer, among others...

3. If we're a-gonna throw around the accusation of ignorance, here's one fer ya: a) the Sanskrit "swastika," went the other way round; b) these arguments about the North and the South are rehashes of claims I heard again and again as a child, and which were brought up by Bruce Catton in the 1950s, and Commager a generation before that. It's a rehash of the same old same old, "Glory of the Confederacy," stuff that had folks in Maryland and Virgina joking, "Save your Dixie cups, the South shall rise again," forty-fifty years ago.

4. Oh. The Stainless Banner sites you meant did not a) hawk flags, b) contain statements/links exactly like the one cited. Which ones were those, again?

5. Oh, one got your point. Here it is: "I am a white American. I believe it is time for everyone to stop feeling sorry for themselves, to stop expecting a handout, and get off their lasy asses and build something out of hard work and sweat. Why can an asian, arab or hispanic family move here and within 10 years have a business that supports them, while others who have been here for generations can not?"

6. Who, precisely, are you talking about? Please provide references which are NOT to Al Sharpton. Or please read Cornel West, "Race Matters." It's been out since, oh, 1997.

7. Your articles are attempts at revisionist history, in my professional opinion. One cannot agree with the theses, the methodology, or the conclusions. And one can no more scrub the swastika clean, or get the blood of generations of black people off the "Stainless Banner," than one can dismiss the Nazi connections of Martin Heidegger and Paul de Man, both direct influences upon the work of Jacques Derrida--whose deconstructions allow one to decipher these conversations. Again, one recommends seeing "Our Hitler," which beautifully discusses the extent to which the Nazis have permanently ruined lovely melody of Joseph Haydn's that they adapted to "Deustchland, Deutschland Uber Alles."

7b. If the Stainless Banner has nothing to do with racism, and slavery was in no way integral to the Confederacy, please explain precisely why, in 1997, a State legislator is giving speeches asserting that the Stainless Banner represents a slavery that was willed by God.

8. One has known that the Civil War was not simply a battle of the saintly North vs. the evil South for approximately...oh, thirty years or so. Among other things, one had the cynicism of the Emancipation Proclamation explained by both Bruce Catton and high school history teachers by oh, 1967.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

1: My understanding of Malcolm X is admitedly, limited. The little I do know, is that much of what he preached has been used by black supremists. If he later changed his message, I'm not aware of it. Again though, you continually omit any other cause for the ACW other than slavery.

2: If you were aware of the records of those who led the Confederate military, you would know that they were some of the highest ranked and experienced of the old Republic army. Lee had been offered command of the Union army by Lincoln himself, and Jackson was held in similar respect. These individuals whose honor you continue to defame were not the evildoers you, and so many others make them out to be. The North won the war on sheer numbers. More men, more resources, more money, and the fact that the great majority of the war was fought in the South, leaving the Norths intact.

3: There are a number of variations on the design of the swastika, some sharp, some soft, some spiral, some reversed. At one time in history it was also used as a Christian symbol.

4: Considering the popularity of the ACW, I don't doubt there are a ton of sites that sell collectibles....in fact, I host at least 2 ACW sites.
Here is some history on the flags of the Confederacy.
http://dixieresearch.com/confederate_flags.htm
and another: http://www.scv674.org/csaflags.htm

5: My point is, why can folks move here and do well, while others who have been here seem to make excuses, and resent those who succeed? It's not just 'black', but it happened every generation when immigrants came here, did well despite getting crap jobs (The Irish in the 1800's comes to mind).

6: Those individuals who want to limit acceptable to their own narrow viewpoint, and censor all others. The school that bans 'gay pride', but allows gay bashing, the community that insists on a Christian manger, but denies a Pagan Yule celebration, etc. Sharpton hasn't been credible IMHO since the incident with Brawley? Bradley? way back when.

7: Robert, you are accusing me? of revisionist history? Please.
I cited documented sources, such as the words of Lincoln himself....not some made for TV special. The "Stainless Banner" was in effect less than 2 years. 1863-1865. Hardly enough time for "Generations". More "Black Blood" was spilled over the US flag before, during and after the ACW. Remember, the North won....since you insist it was all about race, it's nice that in your world, that ended it all, and blacks in the North were welcomed and wanted. The sad reality is that after the 'ReUnionifcation', more limits were placed on racial integration than prior.

7B - The "Stainless Banner", as well as the "Stars and Bars" and the "Bonnie Blue Flag" were national flags of a legal nation, that nation being the Confederate States of America. As to why a Senator would say things...well, I don't know. I was not there, and am not privy to his thoughts. But, his words must be true, for we do know that no one elected to that high office could possibly ever be mistaken, or misunderstood, right? Please explain to me if Christianity isn't racist, why thousands upon thousands of KuKluxKlan members use both it's symbols and scripture as proof of their cause? If the US Flag isn't a hate symbol, why these groups are just as likely to salute it and wave it, as any Confederate symbology?

8: Yet you continue to ignore those facts which dispute your own narrow, and limited view.

 

[MA-Caver]

Malcolm X source
(May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965)
Named Malcolm Little by his parents, Malcolm X was born on May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. Malcolm’s father, Earl Little was an outspoken supporter of the Black Nationalist, Marcus Garvey. As a result, he received numerous death threats and was forced to move his family several times. While the family was in Lansing, Michigan their home was burned down. Two years later Malcolm’s father died after he was run over by a streetcar. It was rumored that he was murdered by a white supremacist group. Malcolm’s mother had an emotional breakdown, and was unable to care for Malcolm and his siblings. The children were split up and sent to foster homes.
By the time that Malcolm was a teenager, he had dropped out of high school. At first he worked odd jobs in Boston, Massachusetts, but he soon moved to Harlem, New York where he became involved in criminal activity.
Malcolm moved back to Boston, where he was later convicted of burglary in 1946.
While Malcolm was in prison, he converted to the Muslim religious sect, the Nation of Islam. When he was released in 1952, he changed his last name to X because he considered the name “Little” to have been a slave name. The Nation of Islam’s leader, Elijah Muhammad, made Malcolm a minister and sent him around the country on speaking engagements. Malcolm spoke about black pride and separatism, and rejected the civil rights movement call for integration and equality.
Malcolm was a charismatic speaker, and soon was able to use newspaper columns, television, and radio to spread the Nation of Islam’s message. Membership to the Nation of Islam increased dramatically as a result of Malcolm's speeches. However, while many blacks were embracing his message, civil rights leaders rejected him. Malcolm also became a concern of the government. The Federal Bureau of Investigation began surveillance of him, and infiltrated the Nation of Islam.
While Malcolm had garnered increasing attention, his relationship with Elijah Muhammad became strained in 1963. Malcolm learned that contrary to Muhammad’s teaching of celibacy until marriage, Muhammad was having sexual relations with six women. Malcolm felt that Muhammad was committing fraud and refused to keep it a secret.
When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, Malcolm publicly described it as “the chickens coming home to roost.” Because of this comment Muhammad silenced him for ninety days. In March of 1964, Malcolm left the Nation of Islam and founded the Muslim Mosque, Inc. In April of 1964, he took a pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It was there that his view of separatism changed. He discovered that white and black Muslims could coexist together.
When he returned to the United States, he still advocated Black Nationalism, but he also accepted a more orthodox Islam view of the "true brotherhood" of man and believed that there was a potential for cross-racial alliance.
However, upon his return he discovered that the Nation of Islam wanted to assassinate him. On February 14, 1965 his home was firebombed, but no one was hurt. A few days later on February 21, 1965, while Malcolm was on stage at the Manhattan Audubon Ballroom, three gunmen shot him to death. The gunmen were arrested and convicted. It was later discovered that they were members of the Nation of Islam. Malcolm was buried on February 27, 1965 in Hartsdale, New York.
Since his death his popularity has continued, and is partly due to the publication of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Spike Lee’s 1992 movie, “Malcolm X.”

Seems to me from this (brief) biography he was a man who at first hated whites and then realized later from other countries that blacks and whites and any other race can co-exist together. Unfortunately he was killed before he could spread his (changed) message.

8: Yet you continue to ignore those facts which dispute your own narrow, and limited view.

Bob, respectfully refrain from this type of statement(s) as they can be construde as a personal attack. :asian:

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Thank you for the Bio...definately educational.

As to Robert, I'll try to be more tolerant of his unique way of debating in the future.
:asian:

 

[Cryozombie]

Good information on Malcom X, and failry accurate from what I know about him.

Unfortunate that most of the people I know of (we will exclude their race) who seem to want to follow the "teachings" of Mr. X, want to follow his violent and racist ones.

Is this a mistaken notion? maybe...

maybe about as mistaken as the notion that the confederate flag = racism.

But hey... like I said... equal treatment for symbols PERCEIVED as racist folks...

You know... as a biker and a boater, I see a lot of people who fly pirate flags... I think that symbolizes theft and rape...

Lets rally against it!

 

[PeachMonkey]

So racism is only ok if its an act of revenge, and then suddenly YOU can justify any number of terrible racist acts. I understand now.

Racism is never okay, but thanks for putting words into my mouth.

Of course, as long as people feel that its justified for one side to be racist based on historical treatment of a people, as your post suggests, that will never happen.

My quote actually suggests that Malcolm X's reaction was *understandable*, not justified. Perhaps if you understood history, you'd recall that during that time, people were turning dogs and firehoses on his people, firebombing their churches, lynchings were still common -- this does not justify racism, but it makes it understandable, yes? The fact that even with these pressures, he eventually rose above that hatred is all the more laudable.

And, BTW... Malcom X was "One of the few African-Americans who educated himself..." You actualy believe he was one of the "few" african americans who are educated? I see.

Wow, you must either have been seriously offended, or simply looking for an argument, to read that into my statement. It is clear, however, that Malcolm X went out of his way in prison to reach a level of education that was unusual for a convicted African-American dropout felon of his era, and then rose to a level of political prominence extremely unusual for an African-American of his time (hence his mention in this conversation). For you to dispute this would be simply silly.

If you're suggesting that I implied anything further about the educational level of African-Americans, I recommend that you grow up.

 

[PeachMonkey]

We'll as most of the southern soldiers fighting were dirt poor farmers who owned no slaves, I dont think that argument is entirely accurate

It's absolutely true that most Southern soldiers were poor dirt farmers, just as most Northern soldiers were poor farmers and workers as well.

...my good friend who recently moved to North Carolina tells me that the Civil War isnt called such there..they call it "The War of Northern Aggression".

Yep, because it's a more pleasant way to spin it. But primarily because they felt they had an honest right to secede from the Union, and that there was no aspect of "Civil War"... that the CSA had formed a distinct nation, that was aggressively invaded and conquered by the USA. All negative aspects of the war aside, it's difficult to argue that states have no right to secede.

Ive read that Slavery was on the way out during the war anyway, for economic reasons more than moral granted.

The South was in no position to convert rapidly away from slavery; the capital investments alone would have been astronomical.

 

[PeachMonkey]

1If he later changed his message, I'm not aware of it. Again though, you continually omit any other cause for the ACW other than slavery.

I think you've already seen more info on this, but Malcolm X did change his message later, and was assassinated (most likely by the Nation of Islam) for having done so. And to be fair, Robert's focus on causes for the ACW are on slavery, but he has conceded repeatedly (with a focus on the Marxist class conflict) that neither the North or South were clean, white, pure "good guys" in origins of the conflict.

The North won the war on sheer numbers. More men, more resources, more money, and the fact that the great majority of the war was fought in the South, leaving the Norths intact.

Given Robert's history reading Catton and others, I'm sure he's familiar with the record of the Southern generals.

Keep in mind, Bob, that those sheer numbers wielded by the North were insufficient to defeat the Army of Northern Virginia until Grant took over. Keep in mind as well that Grant continually outmaneuvered and defeated opponent after opponent in the western theater until taking command of the Army of the Potomac.

Grant then recognized that Lee would never allow his Army, which was at that stage badly outnumbered and suffering miserably from blockade, to be outmaneuvered in the field, so Grant deliberately chose to use the North's advantage in numbers (which had never been properly leveraged before) and engaged in a strategy of attrition by which he forced the South to surrender. Fighting the battle you can win, rather than the one your opponent can win, has been called good generalship since the days of Sun Tzu at the very least. To not credit Grant for this is to deny *Grant* the honor he deserves. It also denies a very American tradition of warfighting that extends into the Second World War (where people also like to talk about how the great German generals would never had lost except for the Allied advantages in materiel...)

My point is, why can folks move here and do well, while others who have been here seem to make excuses, and resent those who succeed? It's not just 'black', but it happened every generation when immigrants came here, did well despite getting crap jobs (The Irish in the 1800's comes to mind).

I recommend the book "Race Matters" for some insight into this. Even if you don't agree with it, it's an important read.

To be fair, I also don't think Robert has ever disputed that:

-- The North is a horribly racist place as well
-- Lots of horrible things happened to the South during and after the war
-- Lots of people base their racist beliefs in Christianity

Sharpton hasn't been credible IMHO since the incident with Brawley? Bradley? way back when.

The Tawana Brawley thing was a farce, but you should pay attention to Al Sharpton of late. He's one of the few people associated with the Democratic Party of late who will actually speak the truth about the state of affairs in America today... I actually think you'd like him.

 

[Tgace]

Personally, I have no real "side" on this issue. However, i did dig up this interesting bit on the "Southern" viewpoint.

http://www.etymonline.com/cw/apologia.htm

The material here presented is meant to illuminate certain aspects of American history from the Civil War era, but it is also meant to establish arguments and to answer other arguments, either among professional historians or average Americans.

Some of the chapters will give due appreciation of the military effort put forth by the South -- both in comparison to the North and in its own right -- establish the legitimacy of the South's bid for independence, and encourage respect for the will to fight shown by the people of the Southern states. Others will re-emphasize that racism and slavery were, and remain, national experiences. Still others will give economics and politics their proper roles as causes of the American Civil War.

I am born and raised in the North; I have no moonlight-and-magnolias sentimental attachment to the ante-bellum South. I live in an urban neighborhood, and I teach my child to judge the people around him by their deeds and character, not their pigment. I have no moral argument to make in favor of American slavery, though, unlike some, I won't condemn every slaveowner in history as a monster.

These sort of disclaimers must be made. Anyone, even the most respected historian, who defends or even speaks objectively about the Old South or the Confederacy is liable to be shouted down. The great historian Avery O. Craven, son of Quaker parents who left the South because of their opposition to slavery, faced an avalanche of "Confederate sympathizer" charges after he published "The Coming of the Civil War" in 1942. In defending his book, Craven wrote:

"My book is not greatly concerned with the causes of the war or with war guilt. It is an attempt to show how the democratic process broke down under an unusual strain .... I did not set out to defend slavery. I do not attempt to do so; I do not even believe that it can be defended. I simply attempted to explain a section's institution in terms of its own day and to present both its advantages and disadvantages as a labor system."
More than 40 years later, Gary W. Gallagher had to make extensive denials before writing his 1997 assessment of the South's war effort in "The Confederate War":
"Any historian who argues that the Confederate people demonstrated robust devotion to their slave-based republic, possessed feelings of national community, and sacrificed more than any other segment of white society in United States history runs the risk of being labeled a neo-Confederate. As a native of Los Angeles who grew up on a farm in southern Colorado, I can claim complete freedom from any pro-Confederate special pleading during my formative years. Moreover, not a single ancestor fought in the war, a fact I lamented as a boy reading books by Bruce Catton and Douglas Southall Freeman and wanting desperately to have some direct connection to the events that fascinated me. In reaching my conclusions, I have gone where the sources led me. My assertions and speculations certainly are open to challenge, but they emerged from an effort to understand the Confederate experience through the actions and words of the people who lived it."
Eugene Genovese is another who has observed that, in today's academic climate, "to speak positively of any part of this southern tradition is to invite charges of being a racist and an apologist for slavery and segregation." When Bernard Bailyn wrote the word "fanaticism" to refer to abolitionist beliefs, he was attacked for using "the vocabulary of proslavery apologists."[1]
One stands up for the South with a resignation to being splattered by rotten vegetables. So why bother?

Because many otherwise thoughtful and open-minded Americans only see the South, past and present, as a failed society, poisoned by slavery and racism, peopled by evil masters and wretched rednecks -- Simon Legrees and "Deliverance" extras. Any love or respect for anything Southern, to these people, is just a transparent mask for racism. This is palpably false. And it is destructive. First, because objective historical inquiry is an essential aspect of a free, thinking people. To ask, "was slavery profitable?" is not to say, "slavery was justified," even if the answer you come up with is, "yes, it was." Moral abhorrence does not preclude honest study. The historian's job is not to tell you the way things ought to have been, but the way they were.

My second objection to unthinking South-bashing is more personal and patriotic. I have seen too many people shift the blame for America's modern race mess, and its violent past, onto that one-third of the nation that lies below the Mason-Dixon Line. This psychological shell game absolves the whole by cheating a part. Behind this scapegoating, perhaps, is frustration at a race problem that won't go away. We've given up on dialogue and understanding, and now we just hope to placate the demon with sacrifices. I have had conversations with sane, intelligent, liberal-hearted men who, without a trace of irony, have said that Jefferson and Madison should have been slaughtered by their slaves, and that this would have been fitting and proper and the best possible course of American history.

Scapegoating the South trains the mind to think the race problem is one that happens somewhere else, in someone else's town. Particularly, it encourages those of us outside the South to overlook our own communities. It ignores the oft-told truth -- told by Frederick Douglass and Alexis de Tocqueville and Martin Luther King Jr. -- that racism in the Northern cities has always been far more virulent than that in the Southern countryside.

Trash-talking the South also incidentally sanctifies a New England-based political and moral culture that is the root of much that is wrong in modern America. The North was a great deal more than just abolitionists and Freedom Riders, just as the South was more than the slave auction block and the lynch mob. Manichaean history does no justice to America's complexity.



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"When misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood."
-Lionel Trilling
Dealing with American history on this level requires patience and the ability to get past attitudes unwilling to go further than, "They had slaves, slaves were wrong, the South deserves everything it got." The American Civil War was "about" slavery like the Boston Tea Party was "about" tea. Slavery became the symbol and character of all sectional differences. It was the emotional gasoline on the sectional fires. Its moral and social implications colored every issue in terms of right and rights. William Seward, the Republican leader whose party made so much of this, recognized the fact: "Every question, political, civil, or ecclesiastical, however foreign to the subject of slavery, brings up slavery as an incident, and the incident supplants the principal question."

Those who make the mistake of treating modern American racism as some perverse peculiarity of Southern white culture often make the same mistake about slavery. Slavery originally existed in all the colonies (as well as European, Middle Eastern, and African nations). In the United States, it took root in one region and not the other; an accident of climate and geographical economics having nothing to do with inherent moral qualities. Slavery was profitable, and its profits enriched all sections of late 18th and early 19th century America. The South was stripped and plundered and impoverished after 1865, but Northern communities and institutions still enjoy the legacy of their wealth.

But if the Civil War wasn't about slavery, what was it about? My favorite (historical) Latin professor, Basil L. Gildersleeve, put forth the proposition that the Civil War was fought over a question of grammar -- whether "the United States" is a singular or plural noun.[2] The American union was like a marriage, and the South wanted a divorce. She got herself together and left the jealous spouse who abused her and took her money. But she was dragged back. I have found nothing in the writings of Southerners to match what I read this week in a file of unpublished letters of Thaddeus Stevens. The words are echoed in plenty of published correspondence, of course. On Sept. 5, 1862, Stevens hoped the leadership in Washington had "a sufficient grasp of mind, and sufficient moral courage, to treat this as a radical revolution, and remodel our institutions .... It would involve the desolation of the South as well as emancipation; and a repeopling of half the Continent. This ought to be done but it startles most men."

The CSA was a bid to form an independent nation out of a region that had a common enemy and some collective regional identity. But the CSA comprised many sub-cultures (a few of them didn't want to be there), and it had a leadership that sometimes confused self-interest with public policy. It had its fair share of charlatans and profiteers and criminal opportunists. It had some brilliant generals and a great many men in uniform who would be the pride of any army in human history. It was committed to 18th century republican values that were incompatible with fighting a modern war, and it had internal social conflicts that the war aggravated.

In nearly all of this it was entirely like the American Revolutionaries. The colonists in 1776: one-third for independence, one-third against, one-third uncommitted. That must be the standard for legitimacy, or else our United States lacks it. The CSA fought a much larger enemy than George III, mostly on its own soil, without a Dutch loan or a French fleet to aid it, and the majority, in spite of internal divisions, put up a herculean effort, won spectacular victories, made shift with what little it had, and held out till the place was literally gutted and blood-drained by its foe.

The four-year history of the CSA is not necessarily the place to seek an example of the values Southerners sought to uphold. Any nation fighting for survival from the cradle, invaded and blockaded all its life, doesn't get a chance to express the finer points of democracy and civil culture. If all we knew of Americans was how they actually behaved from 1776 to 1783, we wouldn't think much of our sense of "democracy" or commitment to "personal freedom."

And since it is impossible to rewind the tape of history and see how it would have played out under a different script, I can't say "the South would have been X, Y, Z today if it had been allowed to separate in peace." That being said, I'd assert there was a tremendous level of self-sacrifice evident in the civilian sector of the South during the war. Southerners endured more and sacrificed more during those years than any large population of Americans has, before or since.

And, even amid the hell of losing a destructive war on home soil, the Southern government remained more true to its own constitution on matters like habeas corpus and freedom of the press than the Northern administration did. In the South I see nothing like the war-profiteer fortunes piled up in the North, or the vast government bounty system that bribed men into the army.

 

[MA-Caver]

Interesting piece of work that.
If I may inject a bit of personal (theological) view to it all. The United States was conceived and drawn by men guided by a power greater than themselves. It's been oft said that the documents which created this country (The Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, etc.) are inspired documents.
For the southern states to succeed from their northern counterparts would've been contrary to the plan/will of God as drawn out in those aforementioned documents. It is clear (to me) that He intended this nation to be ONE nation under God... indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Thanks to men like Abraham Lincoln and others the liberty came with the emancipation of the slaves, making it illegal all across the country. It took time but it held and still holds.
Justice for all. This took time and is still taking time but it's growing pains are past with the success of the Civil Rights Movement. There is still resistance to it but it's on an individual level not collective.
Our great nation is 229 years old. Relatively still young. But we've definitely come a long way with a long way to go. For us to be ONE nation we must (as a whole) become one mind in realizing God's plan for this nation, with individuality being on the individual basis, i.e. Freedom of Speech, Religion and so forth.
But one mind that this is a "free country." That this is a place where a person can realize their dreams and have dreams to realize without the fear of oppression and supression.
Our past is our past, shameful in some places but glorious in many others. By letting go of (but not forgetting) the past we can cling better to the future. The past is there for us to learn from. To learn from the mistakes and the successes. United we are stronger. Our strength can and should be used to help others achieve the freedoms that we often times take for granted.
Remembering the past is necessary, glorifying it is not.

(These opinions are of course my own. ) :asian:

 

[Flatlander]

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[Satt]

I still think it's hot, and I would have taken her to my prom. artyon:

 

[Cryozombie]

Racism is never okay, but thanks for putting words into my mouth.



My quote actually suggests that Malcolm X's reaction was *understandable*, not justified. Perhaps if you understood history, you'd recall that during that time, people were turning dogs and firehoses on his people, firebombing their churches, lynchings were still common -- this does not justify racism, but it makes it understandable, yes? The fact that even with these pressures, he eventually rose above that hatred is all the more laudable.



Wow, you must either have been seriously offended, or simply looking for an argument, to read that into my statement. It is clear, however, that Malcolm X went out of his way in prison to reach a level of education that was unusual for a convicted African-American dropout felon of his era, and then rose to a level of political prominence extremely unusual for an African-American of his time (hence his mention in this conversation). For you to dispute this would be simply silly.

If you're suggesting that I implied anything further about the educational level of African-Americans, I recommend that you grow up.

THANK YOU FOR PLAYING.

You see how EASY it is to take somthing TOTALY out of context based on erronius preconcieved notions?

 

[PeachMonkey]

THANK YOU FOR PLAYING.

You see how EASY it is to take somthing TOTALY out of context based on erronius preconcieved notions?

Particularly once it's online

 

[loki09789]

Teen Sues Over Confederate Flag Prom Dress

Author: AP Source: CNN

Title: TEEN SUES OVER CONFEDERATE FLAG PROM DRESS

A teenager is suing her school district for barring her from the prom last spring because she was wearing a dress styled as a large Confederate battle flag.

The lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court claims the Greenup County district and administrators violated Jacqueline Duty's First Amendment right to free speech and her right to celebrate her heritage at predominantly white Russell High School's prom May 1. She also is suing for defamation, false imprisonment and assault.

"Her only dance for her senior prom was on the sidewalk to a song playing on the radio," said her lawyer, Earl-Ray Neal.

Duty, 19, is seeking actual and punitive damages in excess of $50,000.
Options: [Read Full Story]
Original Thread: Wrens Nest

Was she appropriately covered for a Formal School function?

Her taste in fashion may be questionable but not worth this much hype. How many trucks,cars, tshirts,hats, binders/notebooks in her school are covered with the Confederate flag on a daily basis and students are not being punished? As an authority, if you let something slide on a daily basis and then suddenly want to make a stand....you are going to look stupid - even if it is a point worth making.

I would be more concerned with the 'questionable' fashion of the attendees that decided that dressing like a Pop Star/porn star or wearing skater shorts to a formal function is appropriate than this dress.