Unfathomable: Church Massacre

[Gumbo4x4]

And don't forget the pickup trucks with the confederate flag painted directly on the back window. Those never go out of style here in Texas. Lol. There will be even more of them now.

Oftentimes, the surest way to get someone to do something is to tell them not to. Allow people to come to their own conclusions about the flag & it will eventually fade into obscurity. Tell folks, "you can't fly that!" and suddenly it becomes "cool". People who couldn't have cared less before suddenly take an interest.

 

[christineann]

Look, I'm obviously anti Southern Cross. I would prefer that it wasn't flown in any state. Heck, the Southern Cross is a part of the actual regular state flag of Mississippi, which is kind of messed up if you ask me. But I also recognize that the murders that happened last week are more than just about a flag. I think it's a bad idea to think that removing a flag from state grounds is going to change anything. Is now the time to talk about it? I don't know. I certainly can understand how people from the South feel like this is an attack on their whole culture. I don't understand why they are so attached to a flag used in a bloody, horrible war. But I understand that an attachment is there.

I don't feel that it is an attack on the South except by those who are ignorant (and I am NOT referring to you in any way) and think that Roof represents the South or how people around here think. Very, very few people around here live in the past or have serious attachment to the flag, but they, like many given media attention today for whatever their agendas, are the most vocal. I believe that our words and actions this past week are more indicative of Southern culture than anything else as it is now. Those who believe otherwise have doing exactly what Roof wanted.

Check out "Southern State of Mind" by Darius Rucker.

 

[JoeA]

A lot of people find the American flag offensive. Will it be next?

I was actually wondering the same thing.

Please explain your logic.

The "Confederate Flag": A flag flown by the army of the Confederacy during a war against the United States of America which it lost. A flag for a confederacy of states that no longer exists. A flag that was never the official flag of the Confederacy, and was not flown on state grounds between the time the war was over and 1962. A flag used without permission by both the KKK and neo Nazis because the Nazi flag is illegal in Europe. That's got to suck, by the way -- having your symbols co-opted by obvious hate groups.

The American Flag: The current flag of an existing country.

There have been several group, one in UC Irvine I believe, that wanted to remove the American flag because it was flown in time of "imperialism and colonialism" and doesn't represent their values. There has been many cases where people wanted to take the flag down for one reason or another.

I woke this morning to the headline: FLAG BAN GAINING GROUND.

Wal-Mart, Google, Amazon...all have stopped selling confederate gear. How are little Billy Joe and Bobby Lee gonna hate now that they can't get their flag?! Man, can't you just feel the racism and hate getting sucked right out of the good ol' U.S. of A!!

 

[luvsJack]

That depends. Does the South identify itself solely with a war it lost 150 years ago when it seceded from the United States?

Of course not, no more than the north does. \

Its not just that we are "attached" to the flag. Its that we get very tired of folks from other areas telling us what we should or should not do.

Right now, there are debates all over the state about changing our flag. We have already gone through all of that. Voted to keep it several years ago.

Before we even get going too much with the flag, they start talking about removing all pictures and such of Nathan Bedford Forrest. Our county is named after the man, are we going to change that?

We can't help but wonder, what's next?

I would rather see the true Confederate flag used in some way than the battle flag on our state flag. But we cannot remove the fact that we are a southern state and we were part of the confederacy.

Its not really about the war or why we fought for us. Its about remembering that we were a strong state and through it all and after Sherman burned and destroyed so much, we pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps and carried on and we have done it again and again.

 

[dinolounger]

That depends. Does the South identify itself solely with a war it lost 150 years ago when it seceded from the United States?

Solely? Obviously not. But having lived in both the South and New England, I can tell you both regions hold deep pride in their historical legacy.

I suspect the longer term residents of Massachusetts would be up in arms if revisionist history types went after the Plymouth Plantation museum, arguing it should be shut down because it "celebrates" colonial imperialism. So I fully understand why many Southerners are resisting attempts to indict and remove all symbols of the antebellum history of their region, because the poorly read people behind that attack don't understand it and imply it was all about slavery.

At a time when slaves were owned by less than 5% of the pre-civil war white Southern population.

What the poorly read also don't know is there were actually blacks who owned slaves.

mericancivilwar.com/authors/black_slaveowners.htm

 

[FlightlessDuck]

the poorly read people behind that attack don't understand it and imply it was all about slavery.

At a time when slaves were owned by less than 5% of the pre-civil war white Southern population.

But they you've also got things like The Cornerstone speech, where Confederate VP Alexander Hamilton Stephens states very clearly that the secession was about slavery. Certainly, Stephens talks about other things, like not favoring one industry over the other, and enforcing a presidential term limit, but slavery is brought up. He even calls it "the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution".

But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/cornerstone-speech/

PLUS South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas indicated the reason for their secession was because of their desire to keep slavery legal (although at least some of them do, indeed, talk about other issues as well).

South Carolina: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp
Georgia: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_geosec.asp
Mississipi: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp
Texas: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_texsec.asp


6 myths about the Civil War: http://www.livescience.com/13673-civil-war-anniversary-myths.html

 

[Pea-n-Me]

Just to ask - is the fact that many blacks are deeply offended by the "Confederate flag" seen as important at all?

 

[Geoff_M]

Just to ask - is the fact that many blacks are deeply offended by the "Confederate flag" seen as important at all?

I like this sentiment on the issue (bolding mine):

So instead of being lured into the usual cycle of hostility, it is better to ask: how would we deal with this if we were acting, not out of hostility, but out of good will toward our fellow Americans?

The campaign smacks of totalitarian-style overreach, attempting to send inconvenient history down the memory hole.
In this case, we would take into account all those who understandably (and correctly) see the Confederate flag as a giant unwelcome mat, representing the era in which people like them were oppressed and disenfranchised. Then we would limit the flag to those places and occasions in which its meaning really is strictly historical. Jeb Bush, who has the most experience with this issue, having faced a similar decision as governor of Florida, hit the right note when he advocated “moving the flag from the state grounds to a museum where it belonged.” It’s not about trying to expunge this chapter of the South’s history. It’s about making sure it remains history, and that we recognize all of that history, including the unpleasant parts.

The Left will, of course, make its inevitable overreach. They have already moved on from removing the flag to demanding that we strike names associated with the Confederacy from highways and military bases. The seriousness of this can be gauged by the fact that it comes from a DC pundit class who have spent years driving down Jefferson Davis Highway (Virginia’s Rt. 1, which goes straight through Arlington) and Lee Highway (Rt. 29, which runs south from DC’s western suburbs) and have never made a peep about it until five minutes ago.

 

[pat fan]

I like this sentiment on the issue (bolding mine):

Well said!

 

[dinolounger]

But they you've also got things like The Cornerstone speech, where Confederate VP Alexander Hamilton Stephens states very clearly that the secession was about slavery. Certainly, Stephens talks about other things, like not favoring one industry over the other, and enforcing a presidential term limit, but slavery is brought up. He even calls it "the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution".

Good point and well taken. Yes, Stephens actually talked about many other things, including tariffs, process of approving use of public funds and governing structure (cabinet heads can also hold legislative seats). But I digress. He did emphasize the continuance of as slavery as the core (but again not the sole) reason for secession.

That stated, I wasn't previously talking about the key reasons for secession. I was referencing the entire realm of pre-civil war Southern values. The single speech you referenced doesn't encapsulate all of the latter. Particularly when the slavery ownership issue impacted less than 5% of the white population (and less than 3% of the voting population, given women did not have that right back then). If you dig deeper into the antebellum mindset, I feel you'll find the secession hot buttons for the majority of non-slave owning southerners had as much or more than slavery to do with:

• The fact the south still had an agrarian economy while the North became more and more industrialized. That created different values relative to the desired scale and focus of government. Or put more bluntly, the distaste by many of a large, centralized federal bureaucracy is nothing new.

• The fact the concept of breaking off from the U.S. had already almost happened. South Carolina had threatened to secede before in 1832, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, over a tariff that benefited Northern manufacturers but increased the cost of goods in the South. Jackson vowed to send an army to force the state to stay in the Union, and Congress authorized him to raise such an army (all Southern senators walked out in protest before the vote was taken), but a compromise in 1833 prevented the confrontation from occurring.

• A view of having a superior cultural legacy. Many in the prewar South felt the North was primarily populated by descendants of the cold, heartless Puritan Roundheads of Oliver Cromwell. He was the fellow who overthrew and executed the king of England in 1649. Others of the Roundhead class were forced to flee to Holland, where they also caused trouble, before finally settling at Plymouth Rock, Mass.
  
  The Southerners on the other hand (or so their theory went) were the hereditary offspring of Cromwell’s enemies, the “gay cavaliers” of King Charles II and his glorious Restoration, who imbued the South with easygoing, chivalrous and honest ways. Whereas, the "Puritan" people of the North had evolved into (quoting a 19th century Southern article) "gloomy, saturnine, and fanatical people who seemed to repel all the more kindly and generous impulses.” To be fair, this was silly, given many of the original settlers of some Southern states, such as Georgia, had been prison convicts or, in the case of Louisiana, deportees.

 

[FlightlessDuck]

That stated, I wasn't previously talking about the key reasons for secession. I was referencing the entire realm of pre-civil war Southern values

Ooooooh, duh, I should have read closer. Yes, of course there was more to Southern values than slavery. Sorry.

 

[luvsJack]

Just to ask - is the fact that many blacks are deeply offended by the "Confederate flag" seen as important at all?

Its not that its not important. For this area, at least, the vast majority are NOT deeply offended. There are a vocal few that say they are offended but its by far not the majority.

Personally, I don't care if they change it or not. I do care that it feels as though there is a push to completely remove history of the south from our minds and our lives. There is more than talk of removing a section of our flag going on and that is offensive to many of the people of our state.

 

[dinolounger]

Just to ask - is the fact that many blacks are deeply offended by the "Confederate flag" seen as important at all?

Fine, so we ban the display of a particular flag, because it is important not to deeply offend.

Then, we are told that the Robert E. Lee public park in Baltimore has to be renamed, because it it is important not to deeply offend.

Then, we are told a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest (as if the average reader here even knows who he is) that is currently in the Tennessee Senate chambers has to be removed, because it is important not to deeply offend.

Then, we are told that a memorial to Confederate war dead in Columbus, GA has to be torn down and replaced with a 12-foot statue of Martin Luther King, because it is important not to deeply offend (even though that will deeply, deeply offend the families who have ancestors that memorial celebrated).

Just to ask, a question for you, Pea-N-Me:

Does your definition of "deeply offend" include everything and anything representing or mentioning the Confederacy in any way? Or put more directly, do we ever draw a line?

 

[Luvchefmic]

We start renaming places to wipe out history we are going to have one helluva mess. Can you imagine all the streets, schools, counties, and on and on that are named for past Presidents that either were slave owners sometime in their lives and some that were owners while in office ? I live in a county named for one of them. Interesting info here:

http://hauensteincenter.org/slaveholding/

 

[cabanafrau]

Fine, so we ban the display of a particular flag, because it is important not deeply offend.

Then, we are told that the Robert E. Lee public park in Baltimore has to be renamed, because it it is important not to deeply offend.

Then, we are told a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest (as if the average reader here even knows who he is) that is currently in the Tennessee Senate chambers has to be removed, because it is important not to deeply offend.

Then, we are told that a memorial to Confederate war dead in Columbus, GA has to be torn down and replaced with a 12-foot statue of Martin Luther King, because it is important not to deeply offend (even though that will deeply, deeply offend the families who have ancestors that memorial celebrated).

Just to ask, a question for you, Pee-n-Me:

Does your definition of "deeply offend" include everything and anything representing or mentioning the Confederacy in any way? Or put more directly, do we ever draw a line?

It's hard to tell reading the words on the page, but to me your response sounds in my ears rather aggressive, IMO needlessly so. My take is that you read the other poster's question with an inflection I did not. I think the question simply asked as a point of discussion, if it's causing pain to others, would it be out of line to consider removing it?

You bring up a good and valid perspective that is ripe for discussion, but I think the aggressive style undercuts what you say. IMO the horror that started this whole discussion is proof positive that these issues need to be fully discussed and laid to rest, but that's not possible with shouting or aggression. Maybe if people started talking with one another one on one, as neighbors, heck, as fellow human beings rather than as "the others" with a viewpoint that must be shouted down at all costs, maybe the answers might be more obvious -- and easier to hear.

 

[luvsJack]

It's hard to tell reading the words on the page, but to me your response sounds in my ears rather aggressive, IMO needlessly so. My take is that you read the other poster's question with an inflection I did not. I think the question simply asked as a point of discussion, if it's causing pain to others, would it be out of line to consider removing it?

You bring up a good and valid perspective that is ripe for discussion, but I think the aggressive style undercuts what you say. IMO the horror that started this whole discussion is proof positive that these issues need to be fully discussed and laid to rest, but that's not possible with shouting or aggression. Maybe if people started talking with one another one on one, as neighbors, heck, as fellow human beings rather than as "the others" with a viewpoint that must be shouted down at all costs, maybe the answers might be more obvious -- and easier to hear.

I didn't read aggression. I read exactly what is and what can happen. The bust and portraits of Forrest are already in question. What is next?

The poster makes a good point about are we going to worry about everyone who may be offended by any action? Shouldn't one person's being offended by removing a memorial count as much as the person offended by the memorial?

 

[pat fan]

It's hard to tell reading the words on the page, but to me your response sounds in my ears rather aggressive, IMO needlessly so. My take is that you read the other poster's question with an inflection I did not. I think the question simply asked as a point of discussion, if it's causing pain to others, would it be out of line to consider removing it?

You bring up a good and valid perspective that is ripe for discussion, but I think the aggressive style undercuts what you say. IMO the horror that started this whole discussion is proof positive that these issues need to be fully discussed and laid to rest, but that's not possible with shouting or aggression. Maybe if people started talking with one another one on one, as neighbors, heck, as fellow human beings rather than as "the others" with a viewpoint that must be shouted down at all costs, maybe the answers might be more obvious -- and easier to hear.

I agree with you, but he has a very valid point, which could have been stated softer, given where this discussion all started. It's kind of like if you give a mouse a muffin. Take down the flag and what's next? The flag in and of itself may really need to come down, and as others have stated, it's really not a big deal but they WAY they are doing it is making it feel that way to some. It's a slippery slope though to start banning, removing things because it may "offend" certain people.

 

[cabanafrau]

I didn't read aggression. I read exactly what is and what can happen. The bust and portraits of Forrest are already in question. What is next?

The poster makes a good point about are we going to worry about everyone who may be offended by any action? Shouldn't one person's being offended by removing a memorial count as much as the person offended by the memorial?

I said the points were valid for discussion. I took no position on the topic itself, merely expressed my thoughts about how they were expressed. Much like the Middle East, you don't have to look hard to find evidence of pain on both sides of the conflict of the American Civil War. Thousands died and were wounded. Families and lives were torn apart. There was a surrender and the conflict ended more than a century ago. Maybe it's time to focus on the needs and the pain of people alive today and not spit on the memory of those who resolved to remain a united country in the face of many obstacles, a resolve to proceed as a nation of free thinkers in an imperfect system that nonetheless offered the best opportunities to all. Maybe the best honor we can erect to those who suffered and sacrificed is a nation united in peace and freedom.

 

[luvsJack]

I said the points were valid for discussion. I took no position on the topic itself, merely expressed my thoughts about how they were expressed. Much like the Middle East, you don't have to look hard to find evidence of pain on both sides of the conflict of the American Civil War. Thousands died and were wounded. Families and lives were torn apart. There was a surrender and the conflict ended more than a century ago. Maybe it's time to focus on the needs and the pain of people alive today and not spit on the memory of those who resolved to remain a united country in the face of many obstacles, a resolve to proceed as a nation of free thinkers in an imperfect system that nonetheless offered the best opportunities to all. Maybe the best honor we can erect to those who suffered and sacrificed is a nation united in peace and freedom.

Those who resolved to remain a united country? who? And who is spitting on their memory?

 

[Wendy31]

I think people who don't have southern roots don't understand.

Believe or not, as children, my sister & I were not taught "hate." I didn't hear the "n" word growing up, & I was taught that every person is equal. Not every southerner is a racist, & I'm offended that so many believe the South is a just hotbed of illiterate redneck racists. Actually, I know some people from north of the Mason-Dixon Line that are far more racist than anyone from the south is assumed to be.

I don't like the words "Southern Pride" in relation to the Confederate Flag. I prefer "Southern Heritage," & I'm proud of my southern heritage. I love the South & wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

The Confederate Flag is part of our heritage & history - some of it good & some of it bad. You can't erase history, but you can learn from history.

Taking down a flag is not going to end racism. Racism is a heart issue & not a flag issue.

Bad things have been done under the flag of the United States of America. Bad things have been done under the banner of the cross. But, still, that flag & that cross are part of my heritage & history - in the same way that the Confederate Flag is.

I have ancestors (who did not have slaves) who fought for the south in the Civil War for a cause in which they believed & which had nothing to do w/ slavery. I'm proud of that. Both my mother's & my father's families came from small farms in northern Alabama & Georgia - they worked in the fields & picked cotton. DH's family came from the poor coal mining districts in Tennessee.

And, as a white southern woman, I share my southern heritage & history w/ my black southern sisters & brothers. And I'm proud of that as well.
I think when we constantly label the Confederate Flag as a "racist" symbol, we actually do a disservice to the black southern community. Part of southern history includes slavery. (Actually, part of American - not just southern - history includes slavery.) We can't erase that. We can't go back & change that.

But that's not the only thing that ever happened in the south. Yes, that may be a big part, but it's not the only part. African Americans in several different ways have contributed so much to the southern heritage. I think only talking about the slavery actually serves to suppress the African American community. No, let's not forget what happened, but let's also remember & celebrate their contributions to our rich heritage & how they helped shape & define the south.

Frederick Douglass, cigar box guitars, Rosa Parks, the blues, George Washington Carver, soul food, Jackie Robinson, Fort Mose... these people & these things & more are part of our Southern Heritage.

When I see the flag, I don't see racism. I see our shared heritage.