Jeff Stahler for July 08, 2015

The Confederate Flag has two meanings. One is light-hearted and no more offensive than the emblems worn on Football and Baseball uniforms. It represents rural living and the ‘good ol’ boy’ life style. It is no more offensive than the Black Pride Flag or even the Gay Pride Flag.*However, when the flag is elevated to a position as a state emblem/symbol or, in a position of importance as it seems to still hold at the Citadel Military School in South Carolina, it takes on a much grimmer meaning. This emblem was restored to the flags of some southern states after 1958 as a way to protest the Civil Rights movement. White men passed a bill to restore a symbol of rebellion and subjugation as a warning to their black populations. *There have been many who say the Civil War was not about Slavery, here is just one of hundreds of quotes proving otherwise – “As a people we are fighting to maintain the Heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematical of our cause.” —William T. Thompson (April 23, 1863), Daily Morning News*The flag we’ve seen on the media isn’t even the original flag of the Confederacy. Those who believe the gov’t is looking for reasons to take away freedoms, like those in Texas who fear the army is about to take over there, need to remember that when Confederate symbols were reintroduced in states that once rose in rebellion, nothing happened. Eisenhower and Kennedy would have not been wrong to mobilize national guard troops or even the military to force states to remove the symbols of rebellion from their flag poles and documents.*States represent ALL Americans of every color, faith, sect, and culture. They have a duty to avoid symbols that marginalize their residents. If I were black, I might not look at the symbol the same way. Especially a black who had a history of slavery in their heritage. I knew old men and women in the 1960s who had grandparents who remembered being ‘freed’.I am glad the flag is coming down from state houses, but unless we are going to order people who fly gay pride flags to stop doing so, we need to have more tolerance for people for whom the flag has nothing to do with racism, and everything to do with ‘keeping it country.’Respectfully,C.

Was anyone in “Dukes of Hazzard” openly racist?

@Respectful Troll

Yours is one of the clearest and most level headed posts I’ve seen on here in a long long while. Nice Job!

Lynyrd Skynyrd will make note of that on their album.

it is a flag of traitors.

The Stars and Bars represented slavery for the period 1860-1865. The Stars and Stripes represented slavery 1776 – 1865.

In fact, the Emancipation Proclamation abolished slavery in the Confederate States while still allowing it in states aligned with the Union. So technically speaking, the United States had slavery longer than the Confederate States.

Ironies.

South Carolina has voted to represent all its citizens. It would be equally bad if a state flew the gay pride flag or the black panther flag. People can still wave the Confederate Flag for southern white heritage or racist hatred.