This.
@CaliCash
See the stats from @ucbalumnus Post #27:
Your negative sentiment about the CSA flag is not as near-universal as the negative sentiment about the Nazi flag.
One outlier I ran into: we had an au pair girl from Brazil. I remember bringing her to watch a D-Day parade and was stunned to learn that she knew nothing about WW2-- it’s just not taught in the curriculum in her country. Lol, she had never even heard the Gregory Peck movie, “The Boys from Brazil”.
According to her, there was a real difference. The southern states seceded to protect their “right” to own slaves. They didn’t go to war, they formed their own country. The federal government didn’t go to war to end slavery. It went to war to assert control over rebellious states. Slavery was a a secondary cause for going to war. If it hadn’t been, the Emancipation Proclamation would have been issued earlier than the 3rd year of the war and it would have freed all the slaves, not just those in the states still in open rebellion.
I don’t know why people persist in a flying Confederate flags. It’s not a state flag; it’s actually the flag of a foreign country. As a teen, I had a real sense that the war isn’t over in the south. Many still openly resented the north, and northerners, then (more than 100 years after the war’s end) and the northerners I know who moved south in the last decade tell me that divide still exists. It’s a shame. I hope they can learn better.
I wonder if it is mutual though. I see so many bigoted comments on message boards (including this one) about Southerners, too.
^^ I don’t understand why so many people don’t get why many people in the south bear so much resentment toward the north. There is a fair amount of evidence that, had Lincoln not been killed, he would have worked very hard to bring the south back into the union. Absent his exceptional wisdom, the federal government proceeded to instead spend decades punishing the south and making sure that they were kept down and humiliated as much as possible for daring to try secession. Reconstruction did as much (if not more) damage than the war itself and many of the comments on this board reflect the continuing attitude of northerners toward the south.
Contrary to the prejudice of many on CC, southerners aren’t stupid. They know very well how superior most northerners (and westerners and mid-westerners) feel toward them and they also know that there is no basis for that superiority complex. Believe me, they really aren’t bothered when they manage to offend people like that.
Well, given the debate over the federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, the ‘states right’ idea becomes problematic. When some states tried to nullify the law, the South argued that the federal government had the jurisdiction here.
One thing I have noticed is that there are a lot of assumptions about the mindset of the two girls in the photo. It is easy to jump to that conclusion. But isn’t an equally likely scenario (since this was a school field trip) that they had a tour guide ask for a couple volunteers to stand on the rock and wave the flag - followed by the discussion of “imagine yourself on this battlefield, and this flag is one of your means of communication - no radio, phones, etc.” In this context, the use of the flag becomes purely historical.
As to the prior comments about the swastika - I recently traveled to Japan and the symbol is prevalent on temples. It really made me unsettled to see it. I asked some of my hosts about it, and they did not connect it with WWII Germany, but in the process of asking about it I also found out my hosts were very uncomfortable talking about WWII. Culture and symbols are amazing for how we react to them.
My gut reaction is to agree with this–but I still have to ask, who gets to make the determination of what a symbol means? How long does it mean that? Can it mean different things in different contexts?
@GMTplus7 In the words of Roger Goodell, “ignorance is not an excuse.” Just because they know it is as bad doesn’t mean that it isn’t as bad.
Why must everyone accept your definition of the flag?
“I still have to ask, who gets to make the determination of what a symbol means?”
I can’t answer that in theory, but the specific symbols we’re talking about aren’t close calls IMHO. A word is a symbol. You can insist all you want that you didn’t mean offense when you said f_____ n_______, but we know what those symbols mean.
WW2 in Asia had very minimal contact with Nazis. In most countries in Asia, Imperial Japan was by far the biggest Axis villain of WW2. Meanwhile, swastikas (pointing the other way) were commonly used in Buddhism, so the symbol is not as strongly associated with Nazis there as it is in Europe and the US.
Of course, someone selling vegetarian food in Asia would be well advised not to use swastikas on the packaging to indicate such, particularly if such food is to be exported to Europe or the US.
Jesus Christ!
The swastika symbol in Buddhism existed long time ago.
It’s totally different in color and shape. It’s not is as the same as the Nazi black swastika.
https://www.■■■■■■■■■■/photos/49337086@N07/4525274963
http://www.japanese-buddhism.com/swastika.html
http://www.chinabuddhismencyclopedia.com/en/index.php/Swastika
History tells us the winners generally get to decide.
About ten years ago I bought a t-shirt at a National Park bookstore with the “Don’t Tread On Me” flag on it. If I wore that shirt today, it would suggest something different about me than if I had worn it when I first bought it. I’m not sure what those kids meant by holding up those Confederate flags. I think what they actually meant matters. Maybe it doesn’t matter for the swastika–but I recently bought some old Rudyard Kipling books that have a swastika motif on the title page–a symbol he liked and used, but stopped using after the emergence of the Nazis. If somebody sees me reading it, would they be justified in thinking that I am a Nazi sympathizer? Should I destroy the books?
I am pretty attached to the Chicago flag. But I’m also pretty sure that if a nationwide group of racial terrorists used the Chicago flag in conjunction with its lynch mobs for a few decades, I’d quit flying it. Especially if Chicago had a bunch of other flags from the same era.
Languages only work if speakers pay attention to what listeners will hear. When Chevrolet tried to sell the Nova in Mexico, they were only thinking about what the name meant to them. But “No va” means “doesn’t go” in Spanish. So they didn’t sell any cars. As far as I’m concerned, battle flag fans – at best – keep trying to sell the Nova in Mexico. At worst, they mean exactly what their listeners hear.
No, it’s not equally likely.
@CaliCash wrote
Holy mackerel. If we’re using Roger Goodell (apologist for domestic abuse and deflate-gate cheating) as the authority on moral judgement, we’re all doomed.
@DecideSomeHow
I’ve also seen the swastika motif in Japan at temples. WW2 in Asia is associated w very different symbology, as compared to the West. Just goes to show that context matters.
Nobody “must” accept anybody’s definition of anything. But it behooves all of us to be aware of how our various ways of communicating are interpreted. As Hanna said, if you use an offensive term and then insist that it actually means Happy Rainbow Bunnies when you say it, nobody’s actually going to cut you any slack. You’re assumed to know that people will interpret your words in the way that is commonly understood.
You’re perfectly free to fly the Confederate flag and insist that it doesn’t communicate what most people think it does. Have fun with that. You’re going to get the reaction you’re going to get, and all the ranting and yelling in the world about how it doesn’t mean XYZ, it means ABC instead, aren’t going to change how people react to you. There are people in the world who spend a lot of energy trying to make words and messages mean something other than what the majority of people think they mean. They’re typically called “cranks.”