Do you think the Confederate flag is racist?

Question

loveslongnails · Accepted Answer

The flag represents the belief that 11 states wanted the right to maintain slavery in order to keep their economy as it was. Everything that came AFTER that, is rationalization. ALWAYS... Follow the MONEY.

This is specifically in response to MrShaun, but it serves best as my primary response.

"There were a great many people who didn't agree with slavery but was fighting for the right of the state to have a form of power over the federal government."

This old, tired rationalization is nothing but bucket of bullshit. The Constitution clearly lays out that in the 10th amendment: " The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

The South knew that slavery in the form they needed to maintain their plantations was going to be codified as illegal after the next election. In fact, the North was only 2 states short of making it a Constitutional Amendment to ban slavery of all forms, if they wanted to. They weren't there yet, but that's beside the point.

"A great many people not agreeing with slavery" in the South at that time is irrelevant because they didn't rule the economy or the plantations. And if there were THAT many who didn't want it, why did they elect leaders who did? We all know the answer to that.

So let's cut the bullshit. The CW was about the Southern states knowing their fortunes would change IF slavery went away. They weren't about to allow that to happen, so like any good political coalition, you conjure up an enemy to demonize, in this case, " the Northern Aggressors infringing on our Sovereign rights". The same BS playbook gets used over and over again, by the US government, when they want to justify their own invasive actions.

The South seceded to try and protect their economic way of life which was WHOLLY dependent on human slavery. If you read their letters of secession, you'll find some states even stated it was their "God given right" to own slaves. if you read "The Cornerstone Speech", it gets even worse.

The South went so far as to infer that God made this inferior dark-skinned race expressly to do the kind of field work they doing, made them less intelligent, and even made their "scent" offensive. It was the "duty of the white race" to rule over them. It's always more effective if you can claim that God is on your side, isn't it?

All these "states rights" arguments are garbage rationalizations, but it's not surprising they're still being pushed about as if they are valid. If you always FOLLOW the MONEY, you'll get your answers. FOLLOW THE MONEY... the rest is just distraction.

Lliam · Accepted Answer

Not necessarily.
Some racists display it as a symbol of their white supremacist ideology.

But some people display it as a symbol of Southern pride. And Southern pride wasn't all about racism. It was also about independence and state's rights.

The Southern states didn't think they had equal representation in Washington DC.
The north was becoming industrialize while the south depended on an agrarian economy. The North began exploiting and suppressing the Southern economy. That effected all Southerners, not just those who could afford to own slaves.
The North finally banned slavery, not out of compassion for blacks, but as a way to bring Southern states to their knees.

Nothing in the Constitution prevented states from seceding from the union. When the Union was formed and the Constitution ratified, membership had been a voluntary agreement.

The "Confederate" flag became a symbol of the old, simple way of life - farms, cabins, mountains, big rivers, home-made liquor, tobacco, corn, sorghum, sugar cane, thoroughbred horses...
Sadly, beneath those idyllic images was the inhuman institution of slavery.

But before mechanization, large farms/estates relied on manual labor. That had been the case for millennia. Americans didn't invent it.

Even people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson relied upon slave labor.

And, in the North where slavery was abolished, people of means still treated blacks as inferior beings, paid them a pittance, and called them "servants" instead of slaves.

All the while, white people worked as virtual slaves in fields, factories, and mines. They worked under hazardous conditions, were paid starvation wages, and had no benefits.
Forced slavery was replaced by wage slavery.

I'll add that I don't think the confederate flag should be banned because it is part of our history. The people who fought for the Confederacy were patriotic Americans who resisted federal overreach of its constitutional authority by encroaching on state powers and individual rights.

People who keep complaining about slavery should educate themselves. It ended 160 years ago. What caused worse harm was the 100 years of racial segregation that followed. And the Stars and Stripes, not the Confederate flag, flew over segregation policies.

CupcakeTheDestroyer · Accepted Answer

I grew up in a confederate state. I know what that flag means to a lot of people in terms of its history and the loss their families experienced. Hell, my great grandmother, until her dying day, called the Civil War “The Great Betrayal of The North.”
That being said, the flag has undoubtedly and unequivocally become a symbol of racists and racism. Yes, you can make the argument of “Oh, it was the CONFEDERATES that wanted every person to deserve a vote!” And yes, you would be correct, but acting like that wasn’t for the sole purpose of slave-owning farmers to have more power in political voting moments is just manipulating the facts to fit your argument, same as pointing out many confederates were democrats. Yes, they were, and yes that doesn’t fit with our modern interpretation of that class. It doesn’t matter now. What matters now is in countries where free speech is censored, that flag has become synonymous with white supremacy. That flag no longer represents what it once did, it now represents the desires of those who think a different skin color means you’re less than human and they want to enslave those same people again. There is no power worth keeping in that flag, and insisting on it is just the bitter remnants of your ancestors who hate that they lost the war.

Screenwriter · Accepted Answer

The  flag  isn't racist, but it  represents  the racist ideas of secession of the Southern states over slavery and the states' rights to determine that they keep slavery. This removal of those states from the United States was to keep their "peculiar institution" which relegated black people to property, poverty, physical abuse, and enriched those who kept slaves.  It kept human beings in bondage for life to be used, and it proposed that black Africans and their offspring were not fullly human.  Some people want to say that this Tennessee battle flag isn't about that. But it represents a way of life and the subjugation of human beings to "less than." It was a flag flown by Confederate troops who fought to keep their way of life as it was and to keep black people as chattel. That is the problem with this symbol. Flying it associates the flyer with these tenets.

Anonymous · Answer

The whole goal of The Confederacy was to preserve states’ rights to slavery.

President Abraham Lincoln went as far as to offer The South slavery wouldn’t be outlawed, if they simply rejoined The Union to keep The United States intact however The South refused so, President Lincoln made it about the abolishment of slavery.

After slavery was abolished, The South implemented things to keep people of color of descendants of slave underneath The South’s White Supremacist Rule.
Jim Crow Laws, Sharecropping, Grandfather Clause, Lynchings, Biased Trials, and KKK Intimidation Tactics which left members of the clan who did violence get off due to police, law enforcement, and courts having members influencing accountability.

I don’t even think The Confederacy is even something to be proud of, didn’t it last for only 4 years? And all it shows for it is a history of corruption, racism, suppression of human rights, criminality, vandalism, also Anti Civil Rights. Now it is a stain on our American history since African Americans aren’t slaves, can vote, and are prominent members in our society to climb the ladder to Presidential Power also Vice Presidential Power.
Times have changed, sadly progressive isn’t fully made since there’s still systemic measures in place to keep certain people down and others up.
There are even people trying to paint the dark vile history into something to be proud of, to erase the memory and impact to prevent progress from happening further.

The Flag itself isn’t racist, it is the people who fomented the racism and practiced the hate, and there are people who use the flag as a symbol of hate founded in racism against those with a darker skin tone.

MrShaun · Answer

It is not. The Confederacy itself, fought for the right to still own slaves. Slave ownership was at the heart of the war, but it was a much bigger ideology than just that.

Since the inception of our nation, there was a great deal of arguing over the power of the state versus the power of the federal government. Remember, we had just fought to free ourselves from a king that felt he had absolute control over the colonies. Many of the states felt that there should be a way for a state to veto a law they didn't agree with. Thomas Jefferson was an enormous proponent of the states having the power to veto federal legislation. Unfortunately, when the Constitution was ratified, he was in France.

So at the time of ratification, there were still a great deal of people who felt this kind of federal authority was unjust. This came to a head when the federal government began the process reducing the power of "slave states" and not allowing further expansion of slave states to the west. There were a great many people who didn't agree with slavery but was fighting for the right of the state to have a form of power over the federal government.

Have you ever heard the saying, "The South Shall Rise Again?" That's exactly what it's referring to.

Telekinetic-Potato · Answer

I say let people fly it, judge the character of the person as you get to know them.

So far as I can tell, it's not about what they were fighting for, it's about the actions of their ancestors in the battlefield.

There's something that doesn't sit right with me about the thought of taking away the ability of the families of the losing side of a civil war to have some level of pride in the acts of their ancestors.

I get it, slavery was bad. But let's try to be respectful of the fact that someone's great, great grandfather or whatever maybe lead a group of people to safety or did something that inspires someone today to exhibit good qualities.

Just because someone was on the confederate side doesn't mean they were just completely evil to the bone.

emeraldsaphire · Answer

It has an interesting history to it. The Flag started as confederate battle flag. Then in the 1890s it became a symbol of southern pride. Sadly in the 1960s it became used by a lot of racists to support Jim crow laws and segregation. Today it seems mostly to be flown by racists. So I don't think it's inherently racist, but I wouldn't fly it because of the association. Also I'm from one the most northern states lol

jazzy34 · Answer

Absolutely. "Heritage, not hate", my ass. If you know ANYTHING about Civil War history, you'd know that, one of the reasons for the war is that southerners wanted to KEEP their slaves. As a friendly reminder, slaves were not viewed as human beings, but as property. So yes, the Confederate flag is symbolic of the south's racist history.

Alia_Czechgirl · Answer

Absolutely not. The war between the North and the South was not primarily about slavery either. By the way, the last two states that abolished slavery were both from the North - Kentucky and Delaware.
After them, Mississippi followed, but it was an administrative oversight in 2013
But the Southern flag is a proud reminder of US history and a big mistake and crime of current leftists that they are trying to rewrite an inconvenient and unpopular history by force

RavVid · Answer

Don't see why per se though I guess it represented the pro slave side.

Other than that it is an attractive cool flag.

I think your confederates pinched it from our revolting gold miners cause Eureka stockade was seven years earlier. The Eureka flag has a blue background instead of red and an upright cross instead of a St Andrews cross but both convey a rebellious nature.

I kinda like the later

OneViewpoint · Answer

The flag is just a rag, a piece of cloth with symbols and colors. What the Confederate flag represents is the pinnacle of racism, the enslavement of Black people by White people because of their skin color.

RandomGirl42 · Answer

No.

permanentem · Answer

It's the flag of the Democrats. While Democrats are extremely racist, the flag is an inanimate object. It doesn't even know what your race is. It has not feeling one way or another.

BonzoInBitburg · Answer

For thousands of years the swastika was a symbol of prosperity. Just like the swastika, the Confederate flag has been hijacked and turned into a symbol of racism.

BobbieBoy666 · Answer

It's only a flag to me. That means nothing.

AviatorTom · Answer

No I don't think any flag is racist. Some people may associate it with racist people, but time, the Confederate flag is just a flag of a bunch of states who rebelled, for a variety of reasons.

strateguy632 · Answer

That is too indirect. It is really just history. I doubt the people who fly it intend to rebel now.

abc3643 · Answer

The flag is a symbol of racism. In and of itself. It is not racist because it is not alive and doesn't have feelings or thoughts.

Agape93 · Answer

No. It's fabric with dye on it. What meaning you get is what you ascribe to it

lightbulb27 · Answer

don't know, but I really think it's an unattractive flag.

Surely · Answer

It is part of history. Some, think that is racist. Others do not.  No difference than flying a foreign country’s flag and objecting to an American flag!

Sal_Monella · Answer

The Battle Jack of the Army of Northern Virginia is not racist. It was a battle Jack just like we had. It did not stand for anything except for their states.

Pterodon · Answer

The flag itself no but I do think it shouldn’t be allowed to be displayed. It’s the flag of a regime that was defeated in war. You don’t see Nazi Swastikas flying in Germany ever

jshm2 · Answer

Losers are always racists. No one but loser hillbillies are Confederates to this day.

Bricealan · Answer

Oh sure. Everything is racist. Didn't you know that?

Twalli · Answer

The flag is a piece of fabric. The way it was used after the Civil War was with the slogan "Segregation now, segregation forver" made it be used for racism.

Xoirwinkan · Answer

I'm not American but I think it isn't racist, especially when nowadays it seems people from the South fly it out of love for their Southern heritage and not what it stood for in the 1800's.

FunkyMonkee · Answer

No, did it ever say racist things to you or burn crosses on peoples' lawns?

worldscolide · Answer

The flag it's self, no, the morons that fly it, yes.

genericname85 · Answer

no it's not. things can't be racist. people who condone black slavery are racist.

Alex-Snow · Answer

There is no place for it in the USA anymore.

msc545 · Answer

Yes, of course, the Confederacy was racist, just like the Nazis were racist, and the Nazi flag is racist. You can't separate these things.

Anonymous · Answer

flags are inanimate objects. they can't be racist

TonyMetal___86 · Answer

I saw it a lot ut don't know for what it stands for 🤷🏻‍♂️

Bklynbadboy12 · Answer

I dont think the flag is racist but what it represents is

Anonymous · Answer

It depends on why certain people are flying the flag.

Alexandrubaschet08 · Answer

Who know history "YES".

douride2 · Answer

How can a flag be racist?

Massageman · Answer

Like most flags, I think it's fabric.

KostasKouvalis · Answer

Maybe a little, but so what?

purplepoppy · Answer

It's a red flag.

Hispanic-Cool-Guy · Answer

It represents mostly racists punks.

beefcakebradybatson · Answer

H**L to the YES !!!

Sabretooth · Answer

well, what did they fight for?

Sophia1998 · Answer

It’s is and it’s treason.

qwerty2469 · Answer

Yes. Amd it's correct. Become racist or die!!

strawberryapple · Answer

Absolutely not.

Mike_Hum · Answer

Nope.

Snowman84 · Answer

Yes it is.

Paige2006 · Answer

No I don 't!!

888theGreat · Answer

No , historic

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