> frank scott wrote:
>
>> liberals, and some others, who need oxygen over this "shocker" should
>> understand that many working class folks who sport rebel flags on
>> trucks
>> or t-shirts , do so to indicate that they are, ahem, individuals,
>> free,
>> not to be pushed around, oakland raider fans, etc., and have nothing -
>> absolutely nothing - to do with racism, since the people who sport
>> them
>> aren't as sophisticated as liberals and may not know about symbolism
>> that is, really, pretty outmoded, for most working class whites and
>> many
>> if not most blacks as well...
>
> How do you know this? Have you ever lived in the South?
I do, and have my whole life (if you count growing up in Oklahoma), other than a little bit of political time in the northeast and the upper plains.
What he says is, in my experience, true enough. I believe the majority--at least two-thirds--of those who display the confederate flag do so without racist intent.
It's also true there are a fair number of people who do display the flag with racist intent. I _think_ they're in the minority, but I can't prove it, and in some areas they probably are the majority.
It's an issue to which I don't have a good solution. The revival of the Confederate battle flag, at least here in Georgia, was undoubtedly part of the resistance to the civil rights movement, which makes it a doubly racist symbol. That makes it a symbol which is hard not to oppose--I can't not react emotionally to it. But the hard right has worked it very cleverly so that attacking the symbol amounts to an attack on the people who wear it, the majority of whom are not racists. Attacking it amounts to attacking at a strong point where the result is getting your ass kicked.
I don't see an approach to directly attacking the symbol that isn't a losing approach (with the exception of going up directly against the small but virulent neo-Confederates as they appear). There are more productive uses for the time and energy.
All the best,
John A
see me fulminate at http://www.jzip.org/