<p>The Associated Press interviewed Byron Thomas, an undergraduate at U of South Carolina-Beaufort whom was asked by the university administration to remove the large rebel flag he had hung in his dorm (probably over the window, since campus visitors complained about seeing it).</p>
<p>While I am glad that this young man seems to be thinking for himself rather than taking a default knee jerk opinion, I believe he may not have fully thought through the symbolism of the Confederate flag. Yes, yes, proud white southern friends of mine like to remind me that the Stars and Bars was hijacked and stolen by the Klan and other terrorist hate groups. But that's the point; that flag's contemporary imagery is solidly negative. Young Mr. Thomas has forgotten, that is he didn't read, about how some good citizens who firmly believed in the righteousness of their infernal cause, i.e. Jim Crow, scrapped their traditional state flags and adopted the Stars and Bars post-1954 to show their opposition to integration.</p>
I read that article yesterday. I’m no expert in that flag but maybe his efforts will help reclaim it and take some of the wind out of the white racists who happen to try to be claiming that flag as a symbol as well. Imagine what the klan or aryan racist types would think if they could no longer claim the flag for themselves and the target of their hatred ended up using it for themselves.</p>
<p>If nothing else the student is thinking for himself which is good.</p>
<p>Blacks are returning to the South at an increasing rate. Atlanta was recently called the black NYC. They may be more comfortable with their history than many well-meaning whites. </p>
<p>^ That doesnt seem the same to me, as identifying with the confederate flag. Someone drove past one local HS a few days ago with a HUGE confederate flag ( the “battle flag”) waving, and some on his truck. I just don’t see more than one way to take that. We are in N. Cal.</p>
<p>Also, cities with large black populations, often have a big percentage of black immigrants; not just blacks with an African American history. I know this to be true in Brooklyn, Queens and Atlanta.</p>
<p>If the First Amendment protects the right of someone to burn the flag of the army that won the war, it should protect the right of someone to fly the flag of the army that lost the war.</p>
<p>Ucbalumnus, I think that horse left the barn some time ago. While perhaps they are wrong, I know born and bred and quite conservative white southerners who refer to the Confederate flag as the ‘Stars and Bars.’ Incidentally, a classmate of mine was quite annoyed about what he described as the theft of his ancestor’s flag by the Klan. His great-great grandfather fought for a Tennessee Confederate brigade and bestowed his unit’s flag to his descendants, which they preserved and probably still have.</p>
<p>I wonder how many people would recognize the actual Stars and Bars (the CSA national flag, not the battle flag with the X pattern that was used to make it easier to tell which side was waving the flag in the distance).</p>
<p>I am a white born and bred southerner with roots that go back more than 200 years. My people fought in that war and it was was about preserving slavery… period. That flag is evil. Any variation of that flag is evil. I don’t really care who is flying it. I am going to be horrified and offended. And fuss. I am embarrassed when southerners display inherited flags. I have similar feelings about ancestral portraits in confederate uniforms. I really get it is our history, but it is so very, very ugly. We need to get over glamorizing and romanticizing it.</p>
<p>And we have a huge statue of the nation’s greatest traitor - Robert E. Lee - who took an oath to protect and defend the United States - standing in the nation’s capitol rotunda (where there isn’t a single statue of a Black man, not even the one who designed Washington, DC - Benjamin Banneker.)</p>
<p>This young man is being purposefully myopic, imho. His effort to “restore” the confederate flag , how ever misguided it is, is an offensive joke. I’m guessing that AmericanHistory was not one of his stronger subjects in HS, or it was taught in a very biased manner[ not hard to imagine in parts of the deep south]
This is just as offensive as it would be if someone trying to “restore” the swastika, saying it used to be a harmless symbol in ancient times. So what? It means what it means today because its use as a symbol of Nazism, in recent world history [i.e oppression and discrimination based on racial or ethnic bias]. Same goes for how the Confederate flag was, and continues to used for, even today.</p>
<p>I oppose anyone displaying the swastika. But that symbol does appear in decorative arts that predate Hitler by centuries. The CSA flag or the later Klan flags don’t have any non-offensive symbolism of which I am aware. I am having trouble with a discussion that the Klan “stole” an earlier flag that wasn’t in and of itself evil.</p>
<p>mini - nice post</p>
<p>I am not arguing against the right to display the flag (or the swastika). I am fussing about someone doing so, my right and, I feel, my duty as a southerner. I don’t want anyone to feel comfortable displaying these symbols. I am not going to be nice about it.</p>
<p>To this day, you have people insisting that the secession was about states’ rights. They don’t like it when someone points out which states’ right was by far the most important one in the decision to secede.</p>
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<p>Actually, it was, though pointing the other way from the way the Nazis used it. I remember seeing a Buddha statue in China with convex swastikas on the toenails. And I have seen packaged foods in Chinese grocery stores with swastikas on them to indicate suitability for Buddhist vegetarians. But someone trying to sell to the mainstream US market would be ill-advised to use swastikas in that manner, since most Americans associate it with Nazis and only Nazis.</p>
<p>“I am having trouble with a discussion that the Klan “stole” an earlier flag that wasn’t in and of itself evil.”
And the Nazis “stole” the swastika, which prior to their use, wasn’t evil, and made it a symbol of evil to western civilization .
Same difference.
[I abhor the most recently used symbolic racist meanings attributed to both symbols, fyi.]</p>
<p>I think I didn’t make myself clear.
The original confederate flags are evil.
The klan didn’t appropriate something and make it evil that wasn’t evil already.</p>
![http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Battle_flag_of_the_US_Confederacy.svg]the](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Battle_flag_of_the_US_Confederacy.svg%5Dthe){kind=link}
![http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CSA_FLAG_4.3.1861-21.5.1861.svg]this](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CSA_FLAG_4.3.1861-21.5.1861.svg%5Dthis){kind=link}
