CDZ A Very Interesting Video of the South as 'Other'

[Correll]

I have lived in the South since 1973. You do not see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy. Most of the discussions on slavery, the Confederacy, etc. are done on these message boards.

I believe that you don't or haven't. Others, huge quantities of them, do and they do while just driving around.

• Brandon, FL
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The Virginia Flaggers: Va Flaggers Highway Memorial Battle Flags Update
  • Route 60 around Lexington
    
    
    
• Mississippi state flag
  
  
  
  
• Roanoke, VA
  
  
  
  
• I-95, one of the busiest highways in the whole of the U.S., sightings of Confederate flags
  • Fayetteville, NC -- This flag could be seen while driving on I-95,
    
    
    
    
  • Fredericksburg, VA
    
    
    
    
    
    
  • Stafford, VA
    
    
    
    
  • Prince George County, VA -- Confederate flag erected alongside U.S. 301 is also visible to drivers on I-95 because it flies on an 80 foot flagpole. The flag itself is 20x20 feet.
    
    
    
• Waldron, Ark.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Perhaps you might sometimes allow someone else drive so you can safely avert your eyes away from the road and the traffic on it and see the flora, fauna, and among other things, Confederate flags flying?

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.View attachment 150224

.

It is not the norm...

I hope you're right. I suspect you are right to the extent that fewer than 50%+1 of Southerners display Confederate flag images/objects. That said, my experience doesn't suggest that it's so far afield from "the norm" -- I'd say a large plurality of Southerners display Confederate imagery -- that one won't readily come by individuals and organizations displaying the Confederate flag.

For example, I've yet to take a drive into or in the South and not at least once see a Confederate flag somewhere -- flying at someone's house/yard or on a bumper or other place on a vehicle are the most common places I see them. For me, that's nearly 60 years of driving in and around the south for one-off trips -- business, vacation, or visit family -- to come 2017 still have not have had so much as one trip were I saw not one Confederate flag. Contrast that with D.C., where I live and the Cape Cod area where I have a summer home. I go weeks and months without ever seeing a Confederate flag or even other Confederate-ish imagery.

(And, no, I'm not including souvenir businesses' merchandise on offer. I'm referring to merely going about my business and lo and behold there appears before me a Confederate flag.)

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

Be that as it may, your initial claim was that one does not "[in the South], see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy." However many Confederate flags one observes in the North has nothing to do with that.

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

I don't know what is the norm re: the incidence/probability of observing a Confederate flag in the South. Some of what I know:

• 2015 News story about sales of Confederate flag items:
  • "Somebody in Rhode Island ordered in 50 Confederate (lapel) pins," said Kerry McCoy, owner of Flag and Banner in Little Rock, Arkansas. The order came in on Monday, when Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol.
    
  • Freddie Rich, owner of Rebel Store in North Carolina, said his sales of Confederate items is "unbelievable right now. This is something I never envisioned." Rich said he shipped out 200 Confederate flags in the last 24 hours, compared to his usual sales of a dozen flags a day.
• 2017 News stories about sales of Confederate flags specifically
  • Belinda Kennedy, owner of Alabama Flag and Banner in Huntsville, Ala., said the company, which sells American flags and manufactures Confederate flags, sold around 12,000 [Confederate] flags last year.
    
  • Who's buying the flags? Hard to say, but according to a 2015 map created by Jody Sieradzki of Dadaviz and shared by The Washington Post, people in Virginia, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina and Texas did more Google Shopping searches for Confederate than American flags.
• 2017 Redneck Games
  
  
  
  
  
  

Aside:

At the end of the day, when I see a Confederate flag willfully displayed by someone -- on a pole, on their ass or lapel, etc. -- what I know is that they cannot be doing so out of patriotism for the United States of America because the simple fact is that the Confederate States of America (CSA) was the nation that used that flag/symbol, and the CSA, not the USA, lost the Civil War. The CSA is no more, yet supposedly American citizens with willful pride display the CSA's imagery.

Insofar as displaying "Stars and Bars" cannot be patriotic toward the USA, folks who display it must necessarily be expressing their affinity for something having to do with the CSA and what it stood for. Some will say it today represents "Southern pride."

What the hell is "Southern pride" such that it is not, as slavery/racism are, inextricably linked to CSA/Confederacy

• is distinguished from the pride of people hailing from or living in any other region of the U.S. and that is unique to the South?
• necessitates associating it with the flag of the CSA/Confederacy?

New Englanders are proud to be New Englanders. Ditto folks form other regions of the country. You what flags/symbols they use? I don't really know. I see bumper stickers about crabs and lovers in MD and VA. I see flags depicting patriots in New England.

The South today isn’t what it was in the 1860s -- predominantly poor, rural, isolated. The modern South is the fastest growing region in the US; it is the most populated, nearly doubling the size of the West and Northeast combined with over 117 million residents. The South has a thriving economy, its GDP dwarfing both the Northeast and the West.

There's plenty to be proud of. Why tarnish that pride by conflating it with, or risking that others construe one as doing so, the Confederacy.​

The war is over, Reconciliation was done a LONG time ago, and the Confederate Battle flag was accepted a part of the American Culture for generations, until recent modern lefties decided to be dicks.

Well, more dickish.


Having regional pride in no way precludes having national pride.

 

[Correll]

I have lived in the South since 1973. You do not see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy. Most of the discussions on slavery, the Confederacy, etc. are done on these message boards.

I believe that you don't or haven't. Others, huge quantities of them, do and they do while just driving around.

• Brandon, FL
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The Virginia Flaggers: Va Flaggers Highway Memorial Battle Flags Update
  • Route 60 around Lexington
    
    
    
• Mississippi state flag
  
  
  
  
• Roanoke, VA
  
  
  
  
• I-95, one of the busiest highways in the whole of the U.S., sightings of Confederate flags
  • Fayetteville, NC -- This flag could be seen while driving on I-95,
    
    
    
    
  • Fredericksburg, VA
    
    
    
    
    
    
  • Stafford, VA
    
    
    
    
  • Prince George County, VA -- Confederate flag erected alongside U.S. 301 is also visible to drivers on I-95 because it flies on an 80 foot flagpole. The flag itself is 20x20 feet.
    
    
    
• Waldron, Ark.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Perhaps you might sometimes allow someone else drive so you can safely avert your eyes away from the road and the traffic on it and see the flora, fauna, and among other things, Confederate flags flying?

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.View attachment 150224

.

It is not the norm...

I hope you're right. I suspect you are right to the extent that fewer than 50%+1 of Southerners display Confederate flag images/objects. That said, my experience doesn't suggest that it's so far afield from "the norm" -- I'd say a large plurality of Southerners display Confederate imagery -- that one won't readily come by individuals and organizations displaying the Confederate flag.

For example, I've yet to take a drive into or in the South and not at least once see a Confederate flag somewhere -- flying at someone's house/yard or on a bumper or other place on a vehicle are the most common places I see them. For me, that's nearly 60 years of driving in and around the south for one-off trips -- business, vacation, or visit family -- to come 2017 still have not have had so much as one trip were I saw not one Confederate flag. Contrast that with D.C., where I live and the Cape Cod area where I have a summer home. I go weeks and months without ever seeing a Confederate flag or even other Confederate-ish imagery.

(And, no, I'm not including souvenir businesses' merchandise on offer. I'm referring to merely going about my business and lo and behold there appears before me a Confederate flag.)

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

Be that as it may, your initial claim was that one does not "[in the South], see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy." However many Confederate flags one observes in the North has nothing to do with that.

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

I don't know what is the norm re: the incidence/probability of observing a Confederate flag in the South. Some of what I know:

• 2015 News story about sales of Confederate flag items:
  • "Somebody in Rhode Island ordered in 50 Confederate (lapel) pins," said Kerry McCoy, owner of Flag and Banner in Little Rock, Arkansas. The order came in on Monday, when Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol.
    
  • Freddie Rich, owner of Rebel Store in North Carolina, said his sales of Confederate items is "unbelievable right now. This is something I never envisioned." Rich said he shipped out 200 Confederate flags in the last 24 hours, compared to his usual sales of a dozen flags a day.
• 2017 News stories about sales of Confederate flags specifically
  • Belinda Kennedy, owner of Alabama Flag and Banner in Huntsville, Ala., said the company, which sells American flags and manufactures Confederate flags, sold around 12,000 [Confederate] flags last year.
    
  • Who's buying the flags? Hard to say, but according to a 2015 map created by Jody Sieradzki of Dadaviz and shared by The Washington Post, people in Virginia, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina and Texas did more Google Shopping searches for Confederate than American flags.
• 2017 Redneck Games
  
  
  
  
  
  

Aside:

At the end of the day, when I see a Confederate flag willfully displayed by someone -- on a pole, on their ass or lapel, etc. -- what I know is that they cannot be doing so out of patriotism for the United States of America because the simple fact is that the Confederate States of America (CSA) was the nation that used that flag/symbol, and the CSA, not the USA, lost the Civil War. The CSA is no more, yet supposedly American citizens with willful pride display the CSA's imagery.

Insofar as displaying "Stars and Bars" cannot be patriotic toward the USA, folks who display it must necessarily be expressing their affinity for something having to do with the CSA and what it stood for. Some will say it today represents "Southern pride."

What the hell is "Southern pride" such that it is not, as slavery/racism are, inextricably linked to CSA/Confederacy

• is distinguished from the pride of people hailing from or living in any other region of the U.S. and that is unique to the South?
• necessitates associating it with the flag of the CSA/Confederacy?

New Englanders are proud to be New Englanders. Ditto folks form other regions of the country. You what flags/symbols they use? I don't really know. I see bumper stickers about crabs and lovers in MD and VA. I see flags depicting patriots in New England.

The South today isn’t what it was in the 1860s -- predominantly poor, rural, isolated. The modern South is the fastest growing region in the US; it is the most populated, nearly doubling the size of the West and Northeast combined with over 117 million residents. The South has a thriving economy, its GDP dwarfing both the Northeast and the West.

There's plenty to be proud of. Why tarnish that pride by conflating it with, or risking that others construe one as doing so, the Confederacy.​

I should rephrase my posting, I did not mean you never see Confederate flags flown, it is just not very common, or I dismiss them. It isn't a big deal to me. Of course, there will be more Confederate flags in the South, that is what the Confederacy stood for. Ironically, the KKK is known for this flag, however, they also fly the American Flag, good ole red white and blue.As far as people being proud to be Southern, it is a heritage, not about slavery. People like the charm and Southern hospitality you do not see up North. You see "Black Pride" why? You don't chose your race, why are you proud of something you can't control?

The libs all know that. They just pretend not to, so they have an excuse to be dicks to people they don't like.

 

[Toronado3800]

I have lived in the South since 1973. You do not see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy. Most of the discussions on slavery, the Confederacy, etc. are done on these message boards.

I believe that you don't or haven't. Others, huge quantities of them, do and they do while just driving around.

• Brandon, FL
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The Virginia Flaggers: Va Flaggers Highway Memorial Battle Flags Update
  • Route 60 around Lexington
    
    
    
• Mississippi state flag
  
  
  
  
• Roanoke, VA
  
  
  
  
• I-95, one of the busiest highways in the whole of the U.S., sightings of Confederate flags
  • Fayetteville, NC -- This flag could be seen while driving on I-95,
    
    
    
    
  • Fredericksburg, VA
    
    
    
    
    
    
  • Stafford, VA
    
    
    
    
  • Prince George County, VA -- Confederate flag erected alongside U.S. 301 is also visible to drivers on I-95 because it flies on an 80 foot flagpole. The flag itself is 20x20 feet.
    
    
    
• Waldron, Ark.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Perhaps you might sometimes allow someone else drive so you can safely avert your eyes away from the road and the traffic on it and see the flora, fauna, and among other things, Confederate flags flying?

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.View attachment 150224

.

It is not the norm...

I hope you're right. I suspect you are right to the extent that fewer than 50%+1 of Southerners display Confederate flag images/objects. That said, my experience doesn't suggest that it's so far afield from "the norm" -- I'd say a large plurality of Southerners display Confederate imagery -- that one won't readily come by individuals and organizations displaying the Confederate flag.

For example, I've yet to take a drive into or in the South and not at least once see a Confederate flag somewhere -- flying at someone's house/yard or on a bumper or other place on a vehicle are the most common places I see them. For me, that's nearly 60 years of driving in and around the south for one-off trips -- business, vacation, or visit family -- to come 2017 still have not have had so much as one trip were I saw not one Confederate flag. Contrast that with D.C., where I live and the Cape Cod area where I have a summer home. I go weeks and months without ever seeing a Confederate flag or even other Confederate-ish imagery.

(And, no, I'm not including souvenir businesses' merchandise on offer. I'm referring to merely going about my business and lo and behold there appears before me a Confederate flag.)

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

Be that as it may, your initial claim was that one does not "[in the South], see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy." However many Confederate flags one observes in the North has nothing to do with that.

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

I don't know what is the norm re: the incidence/probability of observing a Confederate flag in the South. Some of what I know:

• 2015 News story about sales of Confederate flag items:
  • "Somebody in Rhode Island ordered in 50 Confederate (lapel) pins," said Kerry McCoy, owner of Flag and Banner in Little Rock, Arkansas. The order came in on Monday, when Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol.
    
  • Freddie Rich, owner of Rebel Store in North Carolina, said his sales of Confederate items is "unbelievable right now. This is something I never envisioned." Rich said he shipped out 200 Confederate flags in the last 24 hours, compared to his usual sales of a dozen flags a day.
• 2017 News stories about sales of Confederate flags specifically
  • Belinda Kennedy, owner of Alabama Flag and Banner in Huntsville, Ala., said the company, which sells American flags and manufactures Confederate flags, sold around 12,000 [Confederate] flags last year.
    
  • Who's buying the flags? Hard to say, but according to a 2015 map created by Jody Sieradzki of Dadaviz and shared by The Washington Post, people in Virginia, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina and Texas did more Google Shopping searches for Confederate than American flags.
• 2017 Redneck Games
  
  
  
  
  
  

Aside:

At the end of the day, when I see a Confederate flag willfully displayed by someone -- on a pole, on their ass or lapel, etc. -- what I know is that they cannot be doing so out of patriotism for the United States of America because the simple fact is that the Confederate States of America (CSA) was the nation that used that flag/symbol, and the CSA, not the USA, lost the Civil War. The CSA is no more, yet supposedly American citizens with willful pride display the CSA's imagery.

Insofar as displaying "Stars and Bars" cannot be patriotic toward the USA, folks who display it must necessarily be expressing their affinity for something having to do with the CSA and what it stood for. Some will say it today represents "Southern pride."

What the hell is "Southern pride" such that it is not, as slavery/racism are, inextricably linked to CSA/Confederacy

• is distinguished from the pride of people hailing from or living in any other region of the U.S. and that is unique to the South?
• necessitates associating it with the flag of the CSA/Confederacy?

New Englanders are proud to be New Englanders. Ditto folks form other regions of the country. You what flags/symbols they use? I don't really know. I see bumper stickers about crabs and lovers in MD and VA. I see flags depicting patriots in New England.

The South today isn’t what it was in the 1860s -- predominantly poor, rural, isolated. The modern South is the fastest growing region in the US; it is the most populated, nearly doubling the size of the West and Northeast combined with over 117 million residents. The South has a thriving economy, its GDP dwarfing both the Northeast and the West.

There's plenty to be proud of. Why tarnish that pride by conflating it with, or risking that others construe one as doing so, the Confederacy.​

I for one would just like to thank the young ladies and you for posting them.

I have dozens of comments I'd love to make about removing their confederate flags.



On a more serious note, I LIKE this re-branded 80's glam rock song even though it makes repeated references to:

"If you trust your rebel heart, ride it into battle
Don't be afraid, take the road less traveled"

It really isn't enough to offend me. Neither does the General Lee.

Really neither do models of German Panther tanks or ME262's. I'll even play the axis in war games.

There is a limit though. Too many huge confederate flags and you get my opinion about the confederacy being racist traitors.

Too much NAZI worship and you get a mouthful.

Too much love of the free market and I invite you back to 2009.

Some revisionist history on a message board and it makes me type.

Put me in the middle of a bunch of hippies and I talk about the addictive nature of pot.

In person I may be able to explain better.

 

[TroglocratsRdumb]

Liberals are against stereotyping and prejudice unless they are the ones doing it.
About 99.99% of Hollywood's portrayals of Southerners are negative.
The World's window to the South comes through Hollywood and Press Left Wingers who loath Southerners and Wasps.

 

[Correll]

I have lived in the South since 1973. You do not see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy. Most of the discussions on slavery, the Confederacy, etc. are done on these message boards.

I believe that you don't or haven't. Others, huge quantities of them, do and they do while just driving around.

• Brandon, FL
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The Virginia Flaggers: Va Flaggers Highway Memorial Battle Flags Update
  • Route 60 around Lexington
    
    
    
• Mississippi state flag
  
  
  
  
• Roanoke, VA
  
  
  
  
• I-95, one of the busiest highways in the whole of the U.S., sightings of Confederate flags
  • Fayetteville, NC -- This flag could be seen while driving on I-95,
    
    
    
    
  • Fredericksburg, VA
    
    
    
    
    
    
  • Stafford, VA
    
    
    
    
  • Prince George County, VA -- Confederate flag erected alongside U.S. 301 is also visible to drivers on I-95 because it flies on an 80 foot flagpole. The flag itself is 20x20 feet.
    
    
    
• Waldron, Ark.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Perhaps you might sometimes allow someone else drive so you can safely avert your eyes away from the road and the traffic on it and see the flora, fauna, and among other things, Confederate flags flying?

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.View attachment 150224

.

It is not the norm...

I hope you're right. I suspect you are right to the extent that fewer than 50%+1 of Southerners display Confederate flag images/objects. That said, my experience doesn't suggest that it's so far afield from "the norm" -- I'd say a large plurality of Southerners display Confederate imagery -- that one won't readily come by individuals and organizations displaying the Confederate flag.

For example, I've yet to take a drive into or in the South and not at least once see a Confederate flag somewhere -- flying at someone's house/yard or on a bumper or other place on a vehicle are the most common places I see them. For me, that's nearly 60 years of driving in and around the south for one-off trips -- business, vacation, or visit family -- to come 2017 still have not have had so much as one trip were I saw not one Confederate flag. Contrast that with D.C., where I live and the Cape Cod area where I have a summer home. I go weeks and months without ever seeing a Confederate flag or even other Confederate-ish imagery.

(And, no, I'm not including souvenir businesses' merchandise on offer. I'm referring to merely going about my business and lo and behold there appears before me a Confederate flag.)

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

Be that as it may, your initial claim was that one does not "[in the South], see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy." However many Confederate flags one observes in the North has nothing to do with that.

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

I don't know what is the norm re: the incidence/probability of observing a Confederate flag in the South. Some of what I know:

• 2015 News story about sales of Confederate flag items:
  • "Somebody in Rhode Island ordered in 50 Confederate (lapel) pins," said Kerry McCoy, owner of Flag and Banner in Little Rock, Arkansas. The order came in on Monday, when Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol.
    
  • Freddie Rich, owner of Rebel Store in North Carolina, said his sales of Confederate items is "unbelievable right now. This is something I never envisioned." Rich said he shipped out 200 Confederate flags in the last 24 hours, compared to his usual sales of a dozen flags a day.
• 2017 News stories about sales of Confederate flags specifically
  • Belinda Kennedy, owner of Alabama Flag and Banner in Huntsville, Ala., said the company, which sells American flags and manufactures Confederate flags, sold around 12,000 [Confederate] flags last year.
    
  • Who's buying the flags? Hard to say, but according to a 2015 map created by Jody Sieradzki of Dadaviz and shared by The Washington Post, people in Virginia, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina and Texas did more Google Shopping searches for Confederate than American flags.
• 2017 Redneck Games
  
  
  
  
  
  

Aside:

At the end of the day, when I see a Confederate flag willfully displayed by someone -- on a pole, on their ass or lapel, etc. -- what I know is that they cannot be doing so out of patriotism for the United States of America because the simple fact is that the Confederate States of America (CSA) was the nation that used that flag/symbol, and the CSA, not the USA, lost the Civil War. The CSA is no more, yet supposedly American citizens with willful pride display the CSA's imagery.

Insofar as displaying "Stars and Bars" cannot be patriotic toward the USA, folks who display it must necessarily be expressing their affinity for something having to do with the CSA and what it stood for. Some will say it today represents "Southern pride."

What the hell is "Southern pride" such that it is not, as slavery/racism are, inextricably linked to CSA/Confederacy

• is distinguished from the pride of people hailing from or living in any other region of the U.S. and that is unique to the South?
• necessitates associating it with the flag of the CSA/Confederacy?

New Englanders are proud to be New Englanders. Ditto folks form other regions of the country. You what flags/symbols they use? I don't really know. I see bumper stickers about crabs and lovers in MD and VA. I see flags depicting patriots in New England.

The South today isn’t what it was in the 1860s -- predominantly poor, rural, isolated. The modern South is the fastest growing region in the US; it is the most populated, nearly doubling the size of the West and Northeast combined with over 117 million residents. The South has a thriving economy, its GDP dwarfing both the Northeast and the West.

There's plenty to be proud of. Why tarnish that pride by conflating it with, or risking that others construe one as doing so, the Confederacy.​

I for one would just like to thank the young ladies and you for posting them.

I have dozens of comments I'd love to make about removing their confederate flags.



On a more serious note, I LIKE this re-branded 80's glam rock song even though it makes repeated references to:

"If you trust your rebel heart, ride it into battle
Don't be afraid, take the road less traveled"

It really isn't enough to offend me. Neither does the General Lee.

Really neither do models of German Panther tanks or ME262's. I'll even play the axis in war games.

There is a limit though. Too many huge confederate flags and you get my opinion about the confederacy being racist traitors.

Too much NAZI worship and you get a mouthful.

Too much love of the free market and I invite you back to 2009.

Some revisionist history on a message board and it makes me type.

Put me in the middle of a bunch of hippies and I talk about the addictive nature of pot.

In person I may be able to explain better.

This is from the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettsyburg, Blue and Gray veteran reunion.

Part of the healing process of the War was to accept the South and it's regional heritage as part of American Heritage.


THe Union veterans who were the ones that paid the price to win the war, accepted that, including the flying of the Confederate Battle Flag by their old foes.



Who today has any moral authority to rescind that act of forgiveness and acceptance?

 

[Toronado3800]

I have lived in the South since 1973. You do not see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy. Most of the discussions on slavery, the Confederacy, etc. are done on these message boards.

I believe that you don't or haven't. Others, huge quantities of them, do and they do while just driving around.

• Brandon, FL
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The Virginia Flaggers: Va Flaggers Highway Memorial Battle Flags Update
  • Route 60 around Lexington
    
    
    
• Mississippi state flag
  
  
  
  
• Roanoke, VA
  
  
  
  
• I-95, one of the busiest highways in the whole of the U.S., sightings of Confederate flags
  • Fayetteville, NC -- This flag could be seen while driving on I-95,
    
    
    
    
  • Fredericksburg, VA
    
    
    
    
    
    
  • Stafford, VA
    
    
    
    
  • Prince George County, VA -- Confederate flag erected alongside U.S. 301 is also visible to drivers on I-95 because it flies on an 80 foot flagpole. The flag itself is 20x20 feet.
    
    
    
• Waldron, Ark.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Perhaps you might sometimes allow someone else drive so you can safely avert your eyes away from the road and the traffic on it and see the flora, fauna, and among other things, Confederate flags flying?

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.View attachment 150224

.

It is not the norm...

I hope you're right. I suspect you are right to the extent that fewer than 50%+1 of Southerners display Confederate flag images/objects. That said, my experience doesn't suggest that it's so far afield from "the norm" -- I'd say a large plurality of Southerners display Confederate imagery -- that one won't readily come by individuals and organizations displaying the Confederate flag.

For example, I've yet to take a drive into or in the South and not at least once see a Confederate flag somewhere -- flying at someone's house/yard or on a bumper or other place on a vehicle are the most common places I see them. For me, that's nearly 60 years of driving in and around the south for one-off trips -- business, vacation, or visit family -- to come 2017 still have not have had so much as one trip were I saw not one Confederate flag. Contrast that with D.C., where I live and the Cape Cod area where I have a summer home. I go weeks and months without ever seeing a Confederate flag or even other Confederate-ish imagery.

(And, no, I'm not including souvenir businesses' merchandise on offer. I'm referring to merely going about my business and lo and behold there appears before me a Confederate flag.)

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

Be that as it may, your initial claim was that one does not "[in the South], see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy." However many Confederate flags one observes in the North has nothing to do with that.

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

I don't know what is the norm re: the incidence/probability of observing a Confederate flag in the South. Some of what I know:

• 2015 News story about sales of Confederate flag items:
  • "Somebody in Rhode Island ordered in 50 Confederate (lapel) pins," said Kerry McCoy, owner of Flag and Banner in Little Rock, Arkansas. The order came in on Monday, when Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol.
    
  • Freddie Rich, owner of Rebel Store in North Carolina, said his sales of Confederate items is "unbelievable right now. This is something I never envisioned." Rich said he shipped out 200 Confederate flags in the last 24 hours, compared to his usual sales of a dozen flags a day.
• 2017 News stories about sales of Confederate flags specifically
  • Belinda Kennedy, owner of Alabama Flag and Banner in Huntsville, Ala., said the company, which sells American flags and manufactures Confederate flags, sold around 12,000 [Confederate] flags last year.
    
  • Who's buying the flags? Hard to say, but according to a 2015 map created by Jody Sieradzki of Dadaviz and shared by The Washington Post, people in Virginia, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina and Texas did more Google Shopping searches for Confederate than American flags.
• 2017 Redneck Games
  
  
  
  
  
  

Aside:

At the end of the day, when I see a Confederate flag willfully displayed by someone -- on a pole, on their ass or lapel, etc. -- what I know is that they cannot be doing so out of patriotism for the United States of America because the simple fact is that the Confederate States of America (CSA) was the nation that used that flag/symbol, and the CSA, not the USA, lost the Civil War. The CSA is no more, yet supposedly American citizens with willful pride display the CSA's imagery.

Insofar as displaying "Stars and Bars" cannot be patriotic toward the USA, folks who display it must necessarily be expressing their affinity for something having to do with the CSA and what it stood for. Some will say it today represents "Southern pride."

What the hell is "Southern pride" such that it is not, as slavery/racism are, inextricably linked to CSA/Confederacy

• is distinguished from the pride of people hailing from or living in any other region of the U.S. and that is unique to the South?
• necessitates associating it with the flag of the CSA/Confederacy?

New Englanders are proud to be New Englanders. Ditto folks form other regions of the country. You what flags/symbols they use? I don't really know. I see bumper stickers about crabs and lovers in MD and VA. I see flags depicting patriots in New England.

The South today isn’t what it was in the 1860s -- predominantly poor, rural, isolated. The modern South is the fastest growing region in the US; it is the most populated, nearly doubling the size of the West and Northeast combined with over 117 million residents. The South has a thriving economy, its GDP dwarfing both the Northeast and the West.

There's plenty to be proud of. Why tarnish that pride by conflating it with, or risking that others construe one as doing so, the Confederacy.​

I for one would just like to thank the young ladies and you for posting them.

I have dozens of comments I'd love to make about removing their confederate flags.



On a more serious note, I LIKE this re-branded 80's glam rock song even though it makes repeated references to:

"If you trust your rebel heart, ride it into battle
Don't be afraid, take the road less traveled"

It really isn't enough to offend me. Neither does the General Lee.

Really neither do models of German Panther tanks or ME262's. I'll even play the axis in war games.

There is a limit though. Too many huge confederate flags and you get my opinion about the confederacy being racist traitors.

Too much NAZI worship and you get a mouthful.

Too much love of the free market and I invite you back to 2009.

Some revisionist history on a message board and it makes me type.

Put me in the middle of a bunch of hippies and I talk about the addictive nature of pot.

In person I may be able to explain better.

This is from the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettsyburg, Blue and Gray veteran reunion.

Part of the healing process of the War was to accept the South and it's regional heritage as part of American Heritage.


THe Union veterans who were the ones that paid the price to win the war, accepted that, including the flying of the Confederate Battle Flag by their old foes.



Who today has any moral authority to rescind that act of forgiveness and acceptance?

Me when it comes to preventing a sacrifice by my children to save decency and equality from being necessary.

 

[Toronado3800]

Liberals are against stereotyping and prejudice unless they are the ones doing it.
About 99.99% of Hollywood's portrayals of Southerners are negative.
The World's window to the South comes through Hollywood and Press Left Wingers who loath Southerners and Wasps.

I disagree.

The Dukes of Hazard
Matlock
Designing Women
Hart of Dixie

Did I hit one from each of the last 4 decades?

If you are a pro-traitor defender you may really be offended by the others enough it bothers you and these slide.

 

[Correll]

I have lived in the South since 1973. You do not see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy. Most of the discussions on slavery, the Confederacy, etc. are done on these message boards.

I believe that you don't or haven't. Others, huge quantities of them, do and they do while just driving around.

• Brandon, FL
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The Virginia Flaggers: Va Flaggers Highway Memorial Battle Flags Update
  • Route 60 around Lexington
    
    
    
• Mississippi state flag
  
  
  
  
• Roanoke, VA
  
  
  
  
• I-95, one of the busiest highways in the whole of the U.S., sightings of Confederate flags
  • Fayetteville, NC -- This flag could be seen while driving on I-95,
    
    
    
    
  • Fredericksburg, VA
    
    
    
    
    
    
  • Stafford, VA
    
    
    
    
  • Prince George County, VA -- Confederate flag erected alongside U.S. 301 is also visible to drivers on I-95 because it flies on an 80 foot flagpole. The flag itself is 20x20 feet.
    
    
    
• Waldron, Ark.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Perhaps you might sometimes allow someone else drive so you can safely avert your eyes away from the road and the traffic on it and see the flora, fauna, and among other things, Confederate flags flying?

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.View attachment 150224

.

It is not the norm...

I hope you're right. I suspect you are right to the extent that fewer than 50%+1 of Southerners display Confederate flag images/objects. That said, my experience doesn't suggest that it's so far afield from "the norm" -- I'd say a large plurality of Southerners display Confederate imagery -- that one won't readily come by individuals and organizations displaying the Confederate flag.

For example, I've yet to take a drive into or in the South and not at least once see a Confederate flag somewhere -- flying at someone's house/yard or on a bumper or other place on a vehicle are the most common places I see them. For me, that's nearly 60 years of driving in and around the south for one-off trips -- business, vacation, or visit family -- to come 2017 still have not have had so much as one trip were I saw not one Confederate flag. Contrast that with D.C., where I live and the Cape Cod area where I have a summer home. I go weeks and months without ever seeing a Confederate flag or even other Confederate-ish imagery.

(And, no, I'm not including souvenir businesses' merchandise on offer. I'm referring to merely going about my business and lo and behold there appears before me a Confederate flag.)

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

Be that as it may, your initial claim was that one does not "[in the South], see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy." However many Confederate flags one observes in the North has nothing to do with that.

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

I don't know what is the norm re: the incidence/probability of observing a Confederate flag in the South. Some of what I know:

• 2015 News story about sales of Confederate flag items:
  • "Somebody in Rhode Island ordered in 50 Confederate (lapel) pins," said Kerry McCoy, owner of Flag and Banner in Little Rock, Arkansas. The order came in on Monday, when Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol.
    
  • Freddie Rich, owner of Rebel Store in North Carolina, said his sales of Confederate items is "unbelievable right now. This is something I never envisioned." Rich said he shipped out 200 Confederate flags in the last 24 hours, compared to his usual sales of a dozen flags a day.
• 2017 News stories about sales of Confederate flags specifically
  • Belinda Kennedy, owner of Alabama Flag and Banner in Huntsville, Ala., said the company, which sells American flags and manufactures Confederate flags, sold around 12,000 [Confederate] flags last year.
    
  • Who's buying the flags? Hard to say, but according to a 2015 map created by Jody Sieradzki of Dadaviz and shared by The Washington Post, people in Virginia, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina and Texas did more Google Shopping searches for Confederate than American flags.
• 2017 Redneck Games
  
  
  
  
  
  

Aside:

At the end of the day, when I see a Confederate flag willfully displayed by someone -- on a pole, on their ass or lapel, etc. -- what I know is that they cannot be doing so out of patriotism for the United States of America because the simple fact is that the Confederate States of America (CSA) was the nation that used that flag/symbol, and the CSA, not the USA, lost the Civil War. The CSA is no more, yet supposedly American citizens with willful pride display the CSA's imagery.

Insofar as displaying "Stars and Bars" cannot be patriotic toward the USA, folks who display it must necessarily be expressing their affinity for something having to do with the CSA and what it stood for. Some will say it today represents "Southern pride."

What the hell is "Southern pride" such that it is not, as slavery/racism are, inextricably linked to CSA/Confederacy

• is distinguished from the pride of people hailing from or living in any other region of the U.S. and that is unique to the South?
• necessitates associating it with the flag of the CSA/Confederacy?

New Englanders are proud to be New Englanders. Ditto folks form other regions of the country. You what flags/symbols they use? I don't really know. I see bumper stickers about crabs and lovers in MD and VA. I see flags depicting patriots in New England.

The South today isn’t what it was in the 1860s -- predominantly poor, rural, isolated. The modern South is the fastest growing region in the US; it is the most populated, nearly doubling the size of the West and Northeast combined with over 117 million residents. The South has a thriving economy, its GDP dwarfing both the Northeast and the West.

There's plenty to be proud of. Why tarnish that pride by conflating it with, or risking that others construe one as doing so, the Confederacy.​

I for one would just like to thank the young ladies and you for posting them.

I have dozens of comments I'd love to make about removing their confederate flags.



On a more serious note, I LIKE this re-branded 80's glam rock song even though it makes repeated references to:

"If you trust your rebel heart, ride it into battle
Don't be afraid, take the road less traveled"

It really isn't enough to offend me. Neither does the General Lee.

Really neither do models of German Panther tanks or ME262's. I'll even play the axis in war games.

There is a limit though. Too many huge confederate flags and you get my opinion about the confederacy being racist traitors.

Too much NAZI worship and you get a mouthful.

Too much love of the free market and I invite you back to 2009.

Some revisionist history on a message board and it makes me type.

Put me in the middle of a bunch of hippies and I talk about the addictive nature of pot.

In person I may be able to explain better.

This is from the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettsyburg, Blue and Gray veteran reunion.

Part of the healing process of the War was to accept the South and it's regional heritage as part of American Heritage.


THe Union veterans who were the ones that paid the price to win the war, accepted that, including the flying of the Confederate Battle Flag by their old foes.



Who today has any moral authority to rescind that act of forgiveness and acceptance?

Me when it comes to preventing a sacrifice by my children to save decency and equality from being necessary.

There is nothing about the flying of the Confederate Flag that would require any sacrifice by your children.


Thus your claim to moral authority greater than that of those that fought to defeat the Confederacy is completely weak.




(Indeed, that act of trying to deny a large segment of the population their right to celebrate their heritage in more likely to lead to trouble.)

 

[usmbguest5318]

I have lived in the South since 1973. You do not see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy. Most of the discussions on slavery, the Confederacy, etc. are done on these message boards.

I believe that you don't or haven't. Others, huge quantities of them, do and they do while just driving around.

• Brandon, FL
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The Virginia Flaggers: Va Flaggers Highway Memorial Battle Flags Update
  • Route 60 around Lexington
    
    
    
• Mississippi state flag
  
  
  
  
• Roanoke, VA
  
  
  
  
• I-95, one of the busiest highways in the whole of the U.S., sightings of Confederate flags
  • Fayetteville, NC -- This flag could be seen while driving on I-95,
    
    
    
    
  • Fredericksburg, VA
    
    
    
    
    
    
  • Stafford, VA
    
    
    
    
  • Prince George County, VA -- Confederate flag erected alongside U.S. 301 is also visible to drivers on I-95 because it flies on an 80 foot flagpole. The flag itself is 20x20 feet.
    
    
    
• Waldron, Ark.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Perhaps you might sometimes allow someone else drive so you can safely avert your eyes away from the road and the traffic on it and see the flora, fauna, and among other things, Confederate flags flying?

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.View attachment 150224

.

It is not the norm...

I hope you're right. I suspect you are right to the extent that fewer than 50%+1 of Southerners display Confederate flag images/objects. That said, my experience doesn't suggest that it's so far afield from "the norm" -- I'd say a large plurality of Southerners display Confederate imagery -- that one won't readily come by individuals and organizations displaying the Confederate flag.

For example, I've yet to take a drive into or in the South and not at least once see a Confederate flag somewhere -- flying at someone's house/yard or on a bumper or other place on a vehicle are the most common places I see them. For me, that's nearly 60 years of driving in and around the south for one-off trips -- business, vacation, or visit family -- to come 2017 still have not have had so much as one trip were I saw not one Confederate flag. Contrast that with D.C., where I live and the Cape Cod area where I have a summer home. I go weeks and months without ever seeing a Confederate flag or even other Confederate-ish imagery.

(And, no, I'm not including souvenir businesses' merchandise on offer. I'm referring to merely going about my business and lo and behold there appears before me a Confederate flag.)

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

Be that as it may, your initial claim was that one does not "[in the South], see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy." However many Confederate flags one observes in the North has nothing to do with that.

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

I don't know what is the norm re: the incidence/probability of observing a Confederate flag in the South. Some of what I know:

• 2015 News story about sales of Confederate flag items:
  • "Somebody in Rhode Island ordered in 50 Confederate (lapel) pins," said Kerry McCoy, owner of Flag and Banner in Little Rock, Arkansas. The order came in on Monday, when Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol.
    
  • Freddie Rich, owner of Rebel Store in North Carolina, said his sales of Confederate items is "unbelievable right now. This is something I never envisioned." Rich said he shipped out 200 Confederate flags in the last 24 hours, compared to his usual sales of a dozen flags a day.
• 2017 News stories about sales of Confederate flags specifically
  • Belinda Kennedy, owner of Alabama Flag and Banner in Huntsville, Ala., said the company, which sells American flags and manufactures Confederate flags, sold around 12,000 [Confederate] flags last year.
    
  • Who's buying the flags? Hard to say, but according to a 2015 map created by Jody Sieradzki of Dadaviz and shared by The Washington Post, people in Virginia, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina and Texas did more Google Shopping searches for Confederate than American flags.
• 2017 Redneck Games
  
  
  
  
  
  

Aside:

At the end of the day, when I see a Confederate flag willfully displayed by someone -- on a pole, on their ass or lapel, etc. -- what I know is that they cannot be doing so out of patriotism for the United States of America because the simple fact is that the Confederate States of America (CSA) was the nation that used that flag/symbol, and the CSA, not the USA, lost the Civil War. The CSA is no more, yet supposedly American citizens with willful pride display the CSA's imagery.

Insofar as displaying "Stars and Bars" cannot be patriotic toward the USA, folks who display it must necessarily be expressing their affinity for something having to do with the CSA and what it stood for. Some will say it today represents "Southern pride."

What the hell is "Southern pride" such that it is not, as slavery/racism are, inextricably linked to CSA/Confederacy

• is distinguished from the pride of people hailing from or living in any other region of the U.S. and that is unique to the South?
• necessitates associating it with the flag of the CSA/Confederacy?

New Englanders are proud to be New Englanders. Ditto folks form other regions of the country. You what flags/symbols they use? I don't really know. I see bumper stickers about crabs and lovers in MD and VA. I see flags depicting patriots in New England.

The South today isn’t what it was in the 1860s -- predominantly poor, rural, isolated. The modern South is the fastest growing region in the US; it is the most populated, nearly doubling the size of the West and Northeast combined with over 117 million residents. The South has a thriving economy, its GDP dwarfing both the Northeast and the West.

There's plenty to be proud of. Why tarnish that pride by conflating it with, or risking that others construe one as doing so, the Confederacy.​

I should rephrase my posting, I did not mean you never see Confederate flags flown, it is just not very common, or I dismiss them. It isn't a big deal to me. Of course, there will be more Confederate flags in the South, that is what the Confederacy stood for. Ironically, the KKK is known for this flag, however, they also fly the American Flag, good ole red white and blue.As far as people being proud to be Southern, it is a heritage, not about slavery. People like the charm and Southern hospitality you do not see up North. You see "Black Pride" why? You don't chose your race, why are you proud of something you can't control?

I should rephrase my posting, I did not mean you never see Confederate flags flown, it is just not very common, or I dismiss them.

Okay. I understand what you are saying, and I appreciate your clarifying your comments.

As goes commonality, well, I suspect that's somewhat relative. "Every time I go driving in the South" strikes me as common. You live there, however, so perhaps you don't see one everyday. Perhaps too, as you noted, Confederate flag images are so common that you "don't see them" in much the same way I "don't see," diplomatic licence plates -- they're both abundant and yet most cars don't have them, and they don't "reach out and touch" or otherwise mean something to me, so I usually pay them no mind. It's also that way in D.C. with statues and historic buildings/sites.

Funny observation:

D.C. even has a pair of what I call "penis statues." I don't know much about them, but if you're walking on Mass. Ave, you'll see them. Driving, however, one probably won't notice them. I suspect that's similar to what you have in mind when say you disregard Confederate flags.

​

As far as people being proud to be Southern, it is a heritage, not about slavery. People like the charm and Southern hospitality you do not see up North.

Okay. By all means, Southern hospitality is a thing to be proud of, particularly if one routinely exhibits it. Replace the Confederate flag with one that evokes that theme. There are surely myriad ways to do that without also explicitly recalling the Confederacy.

You see "Black Pride" why?

The answer to that is much the same as why one sees "pride" expressions/affirmations made by any group that has had to overcome systematized oppression. Black pride, gay pride, Jewish pride, and women's pride are borne of a desire for obtaining greater communion -- "we shall overcome" -- with those who oppress us mindset. One sees a similar thing among other "outcast" members of a society.

When minorities express "pride", it's (usually) a cultural kind of pride, not racial. "Black" pride has to do with Black culture and history, Mexican pride has to do with Mexican culture and history, Asian pride has to do with Asian culture and history. White people's culture in the U.S. isn't considered "white culture" because it's considered "American culture" (or British or Australian culture) and American history, and it is because white people are the majority. American culture and history is for the most part American White culture and history. The culture of the majority isn't really considered a culture distinct from the culture of the region.

For instance, one doesn't in India find people "on about" Indian pride. Everything in the culture there is Indian.

Southerners may attempt to claim that is what they too are expressing, but it's sophistic to express it with imagery and axioms that recall the Confederacy -- "The South will rise again" -- for the fact is that the South and its people, particularly those who fought in the Civil War had nothing to overcome. They were welcomed with open arms back into the United States and, AFAIK, not one of them, not even Jefferson Davis or the top Confederate generals were so much as tried for treason. Accordingly, the only thing that might "rise again" about the South is the odiousness of the Confederacy. Southern hospitality, for example, never fell. The U.S. has never not been a majority white-populated, "owned and operated" nation.

Everything about U.S. history and culture -- no matter the region from which one hails or finds oneself -- is already white.

• White folks at war; non-whites involved chose between one "white guys' side" or the other "white guys' side."
  • Revolutionary War
  • Civil War
  • WWI
  • WWII
• First man on the Moon --> White dude
• American economic history --> One white guy's company after the next
• The Gilded Age --> Story of a bunch of really industrious white guys
• History of U.S. Presidents and Generals --> The story of white guys
• Old Hollywood and entertainment culture --> Stories about white folks told by white folks
• Every U.S. history textbook --> With only a few exceptions, it's about what white folks have done in North America from the 1400s to the present.

Black folks, by comparison, have to talk about "black pride" so that the accomplishments and contributions of black Americans is made known and given recognition. How many people, for instance can name 20 black authors, inventors, or scientists/doctors? Same for women.

• How many people have any idea that Hedy Lamar is the reason they have GPS in their phones and cars?
• A black woman invented the laser used to cure cataracs and that are used in eye surgery.
• The gas masks that saved millions in WWI was invented by a black dude.
• A black man invented the pacemaker.
• The first American woman to become a self-made millionaire was a black woman from the "Jim Crow" South. (She died in 1912.)

So, what black pride is about it calling attention to men and women who, rightly, should be every bit as much of an inspiration to every American as are Neil Armstrong, George Patton, Henry Ford, and all the white Americans whose names we all recognize.

For additional discussion of the psychological and socio-anthropological reasons why minority and other oppressed groups overtly express and vocalize "pride," and form groups purposed on doing so, here are a few places to start:

• 5 Ways White Supremacists Use Victimhood to Their Advantage
  
• Wannabes, Goths, and Christians: The Boundaries of Sex, Style, and Status
  
• Why Pride? An Explanation For Straight People | HuffPost
  
• The Self Concept
• Identity Politics
• Belonging
• Group interaction as the crucible of social identity formation: A glimpse at the foundations of social identities for collective action
  
• Taking a Closer Look at Group Identity The Link between Theory and Measurement of Group Consciousness and Linked Fate
  
• Competition of a Different Flavor How a Strategic Group Identity Shapes Competition and Cooperation

 

[MizMolly]

I have lived in the South since 1973. You do not see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy. Most of the discussions on slavery, the Confederacy, etc. are done on these message boards.

I believe that you don't or haven't. Others, huge quantities of them, do and they do while just driving around.

• Brandon, FL
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The Virginia Flaggers: Va Flaggers Highway Memorial Battle Flags Update
  • Route 60 around Lexington
    
    
    
• Mississippi state flag
  
  
  
  
• Roanoke, VA
  
  
  
  
• I-95, one of the busiest highways in the whole of the U.S., sightings of Confederate flags
  • Fayetteville, NC -- This flag could be seen while driving on I-95,
    
    
    
    
  • Fredericksburg, VA
    
    
    
    
    
    
  • Stafford, VA
    
    
    
    
  • Prince George County, VA -- Confederate flag erected alongside U.S. 301 is also visible to drivers on I-95 because it flies on an 80 foot flagpole. The flag itself is 20x20 feet.
    
    
    
• Waldron, Ark.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Perhaps you might sometimes allow someone else drive so you can safely avert your eyes away from the road and the traffic on it and see the flora, fauna, and among other things, Confederate flags flying?

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.View attachment 150224

.

It is not the norm...

I hope you're right. I suspect you are right to the extent that fewer than 50%+1 of Southerners display Confederate flag images/objects. That said, my experience doesn't suggest that it's so far afield from "the norm" -- I'd say a large plurality of Southerners display Confederate imagery -- that one won't readily come by individuals and organizations displaying the Confederate flag.

For example, I've yet to take a drive into or in the South and not at least once see a Confederate flag somewhere -- flying at someone's house/yard or on a bumper or other place on a vehicle are the most common places I see them. For me, that's nearly 60 years of driving in and around the south for one-off trips -- business, vacation, or visit family -- to come 2017 still have not have had so much as one trip were I saw not one Confederate flag. Contrast that with D.C., where I live and the Cape Cod area where I have a summer home. I go weeks and months without ever seeing a Confederate flag or even other Confederate-ish imagery.

(And, no, I'm not including souvenir businesses' merchandise on offer. I'm referring to merely going about my business and lo and behold there appears before me a Confederate flag.)

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

Be that as it may, your initial claim was that one does not "[in the South], see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy." However many Confederate flags one observes in the North has nothing to do with that.

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

I don't know what is the norm re: the incidence/probability of observing a Confederate flag in the South. Some of what I know:

• 2015 News story about sales of Confederate flag items:
  • "Somebody in Rhode Island ordered in 50 Confederate (lapel) pins," said Kerry McCoy, owner of Flag and Banner in Little Rock, Arkansas. The order came in on Monday, when Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol.
    
  • Freddie Rich, owner of Rebel Store in North Carolina, said his sales of Confederate items is "unbelievable right now. This is something I never envisioned." Rich said he shipped out 200 Confederate flags in the last 24 hours, compared to his usual sales of a dozen flags a day.
• 2017 News stories about sales of Confederate flags specifically
  • Belinda Kennedy, owner of Alabama Flag and Banner in Huntsville, Ala., said the company, which sells American flags and manufactures Confederate flags, sold around 12,000 [Confederate] flags last year.
    
  • Who's buying the flags? Hard to say, but according to a 2015 map created by Jody Sieradzki of Dadaviz and shared by The Washington Post, people in Virginia, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina and Texas did more Google Shopping searches for Confederate than American flags.
• 2017 Redneck Games
  
  
  
  
  
  

Aside:

At the end of the day, when I see a Confederate flag willfully displayed by someone -- on a pole, on their ass or lapel, etc. -- what I know is that they cannot be doing so out of patriotism for the United States of America because the simple fact is that the Confederate States of America (CSA) was the nation that used that flag/symbol, and the CSA, not the USA, lost the Civil War. The CSA is no more, yet supposedly American citizens with willful pride display the CSA's imagery.

Insofar as displaying "Stars and Bars" cannot be patriotic toward the USA, folks who display it must necessarily be expressing their affinity for something having to do with the CSA and what it stood for. Some will say it today represents "Southern pride."

What the hell is "Southern pride" such that it is not, as slavery/racism are, inextricably linked to CSA/Confederacy

• is distinguished from the pride of people hailing from or living in any other region of the U.S. and that is unique to the South?
• necessitates associating it with the flag of the CSA/Confederacy?

New Englanders are proud to be New Englanders. Ditto folks form other regions of the country. You what flags/symbols they use? I don't really know. I see bumper stickers about crabs and lovers in MD and VA. I see flags depicting patriots in New England.

The South today isn’t what it was in the 1860s -- predominantly poor, rural, isolated. The modern South is the fastest growing region in the US; it is the most populated, nearly doubling the size of the West and Northeast combined with over 117 million residents. The South has a thriving economy, its GDP dwarfing both the Northeast and the West.

There's plenty to be proud of. Why tarnish that pride by conflating it with, or risking that others construe one as doing so, the Confederacy.​

I should rephrase my posting, I did not mean you never see Confederate flags flown, it is just not very common, or I dismiss them. It isn't a big deal to me. Of course, there will be more Confederate flags in the South, that is what the Confederacy stood for. Ironically, the KKK is known for this flag, however, they also fly the American Flag, good ole red white and blue.As far as people being proud to be Southern, it is a heritage, not about slavery. People like the charm and Southern hospitality you do not see up North. You see "Black Pride" why? You don't chose your race, why are you proud of something you can't control?

I should rephrase my posting, I did not mean you never see Confederate flags flown, it is just not very common, or I dismiss them.

Okay. I understand what you are saying, and I appreciate your clarifying your comments.

As goes commonality, well, I suspect that's somewhat relative. "Every time I go driving in the South" strikes me as common. You live there, however, so perhaps you don't see one everyday. Perhaps too, as you noted, Confederate flag images are so common that you "don't see them" in much the same way I "don't see," diplomatic licence plates -- they're both abundant and yet most cars don't have them, and they don't "reach out and touch" or otherwise mean something to me, so I usually pay them no mind. It's also that way in D.C. with statues and historic buildings/sites.

Funny observation:

D.C. even has a pair of what I call "penis statues." I don't know much about them, but if you're walking on Mass. Ave, you'll see them. Driving, however, one probably won't notice them. I suspect that's similar to what you have in mind when say you disregard Confederate flags.

​

As far as people being proud to be Southern, it is a heritage, not about slavery. People like the charm and Southern hospitality you do not see up North.

Okay. By all means, Southern hospitality is a thing to be proud of, particularly if one routinely exhibits it. Replace the Confederate flag with one that evokes that theme. There are surely myriad ways to do that without also explicitly recalling the Confederacy.

You see "Black Pride" why?

The answer to that is much the same as why one sees "pride" expressions/affirmations made by any group that has had to overcome systematized oppression. Black pride, gay pride, Jewish pride, and women's pride are borne of a desire for obtaining greater communion -- "we shall overcome" -- with those who oppress us mindset. One sees a similar thing among other "outcast" members of a society.

When minorities express "pride", it's (usually) a cultural kind of pride, not racial. "Black" pride has to do with Black culture and history, Mexican pride has to do with Mexican culture and history, Asian pride has to do with Asian culture and history. White people's culture in the U.S. isn't considered "white culture" because it's considered "American culture" (or British or Australian culture) and American history, and it is because white people are the majority. American culture and history is for the most part American White culture and history. The culture of the majority isn't really considered a culture distinct from the culture of the region.

For instance, one doesn't in India find people "on about" Indian pride. Everything in the culture there is Indian.

Southerners may attempt to claim that is what they too are expressing, but it's sophistic to express it with imagery and axioms that recall the Confederacy -- "The South will rise again" -- for the fact is that the South and its people, particularly those who fought in the Civil War had nothing to overcome. They were welcomed with open arms back into the United States and, AFAIK, not one of them, not even Jefferson Davis or the top Confederate generals were so much as tried for treason. Accordingly, the only thing that might "rise again" about the South is the odiousness of the Confederacy. Southern hospitality, for example, never fell. The U.S. has never not been a majority white-populated, "owned and operated" nation.

Everything about U.S. history and culture -- no matter the region from which one hails or finds oneself -- is already white.

• White folks at war; non-whites involved chose between one "white guys' side" or the other "white guys' side."
  • Revolutionary War
  • Civil War
  • WWI
  • WWII
• First man on the Moon --> White dude
• American economic history --> One white guy's company after the next
• The Gilded Age --> Story of a bunch of really industrious white guys
• History of U.S. Presidents and Generals --> The story of white guys
• Old Hollywood and entertainment culture --> Stories about white folks told by white folks
• Every U.S. history textbook --> With only a few exceptions, it's about what white folks have done in North America from the 1400s to the present.

Black folks, by comparison, have to talk about "black pride" so that the accomplishments and contributions of black Americans is made known and given recognition. How many people, for instance can name 20 black authors, inventors, or scientists/doctors? Same for women.

• How many people have any idea that Hedy Lamar is the reason they have GPS in their phones and cars?
• A black woman invented the laser used to cure cataracs and that are used in eye surgery.
• The gas masks that saved millions in WWI was invented by a black dude.
• A black man invented the pacemaker.
• The first American woman to become a self-made millionaire was a black woman from the "Jim Crow" South. (She died in 1912.)

So, what black pride is about it calling attention to men and women who, rightly, should be every bit as much of an inspiration to every American as are Neil Armstrong, George Patton, Henry Ford, and all the white Americans whose names we all recognize.

For additional discussion of the psychological and socio-anthropological reasons why minority and other oppressed groups overtly express and vocalize "pride," and form groups purposed on doing so, here are a few places to start:

• 5 Ways White Supremacists Use Victimhood to Their Advantage
  
• Wannabes, Goths, and Christians: The Boundaries of Sex, Style, and Status
  
• Why Pride? An Explanation For Straight People | HuffPost
  
• The Self Concept
• Identity Politics
• Belonging
• Group interaction as the crucible of social identity formation: A glimpse at the foundations of social identities for collective action
  
• Taking a Closer Look at Group Identity The Link between Theory and Measurement of Group Consciousness and Linked Fate
  
• Competition of a Different Flavor How a Strategic Group Identity Shapes Competition and Cooperation

I guess I just don't get why people have to be recognized so much. When I think of inventions, I don't care what race they are, I either like or dislike the invention, period. When we studied history in school, yes, they may have been white people in the books, but I learned what they did and who they were, not because they were white, their race never was a factor in my mind.

 

[usmbguest5318]

I have lived in the South since 1973. You do not see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy. Most of the discussions on slavery, the Confederacy, etc. are done on these message boards.

I believe that you don't or haven't. Others, huge quantities of them, do and they do while just driving around.

• Brandon, FL
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The Virginia Flaggers: Va Flaggers Highway Memorial Battle Flags Update
  • Route 60 around Lexington
    
    
    
• Mississippi state flag
  
  
  
  
• Roanoke, VA
  
  
  
  
• I-95, one of the busiest highways in the whole of the U.S., sightings of Confederate flags
  • Fayetteville, NC -- This flag could be seen while driving on I-95,
    
    
    
    
  • Fredericksburg, VA
    
    
    
    
    
    
  • Stafford, VA
    
    
    
    
  • Prince George County, VA -- Confederate flag erected alongside U.S. 301 is also visible to drivers on I-95 because it flies on an 80 foot flagpole. The flag itself is 20x20 feet.
    
    
    
• Waldron, Ark.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Perhaps you might sometimes allow someone else drive so you can safely avert your eyes away from the road and the traffic on it and see the flora, fauna, and among other things, Confederate flags flying?

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.View attachment 150224

.

It is not the norm...

I hope you're right. I suspect you are right to the extent that fewer than 50%+1 of Southerners display Confederate flag images/objects. That said, my experience doesn't suggest that it's so far afield from "the norm" -- I'd say a large plurality of Southerners display Confederate imagery -- that one won't readily come by individuals and organizations displaying the Confederate flag.

For example, I've yet to take a drive into or in the South and not at least once see a Confederate flag somewhere -- flying at someone's house/yard or on a bumper or other place on a vehicle are the most common places I see them. For me, that's nearly 60 years of driving in and around the south for one-off trips -- business, vacation, or visit family -- to come 2017 still have not have had so much as one trip were I saw not one Confederate flag. Contrast that with D.C., where I live and the Cape Cod area where I have a summer home. I go weeks and months without ever seeing a Confederate flag or even other Confederate-ish imagery.

(And, no, I'm not including souvenir businesses' merchandise on offer. I'm referring to merely going about my business and lo and behold there appears before me a Confederate flag.)

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

Be that as it may, your initial claim was that one does not "[in the South], see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy." However many Confederate flags one observes in the North has nothing to do with that.

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

I don't know what is the norm re: the incidence/probability of observing a Confederate flag in the South. Some of what I know:

• 2015 News story about sales of Confederate flag items:
  • "Somebody in Rhode Island ordered in 50 Confederate (lapel) pins," said Kerry McCoy, owner of Flag and Banner in Little Rock, Arkansas. The order came in on Monday, when Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol.
    
  • Freddie Rich, owner of Rebel Store in North Carolina, said his sales of Confederate items is "unbelievable right now. This is something I never envisioned." Rich said he shipped out 200 Confederate flags in the last 24 hours, compared to his usual sales of a dozen flags a day.
• 2017 News stories about sales of Confederate flags specifically
  • Belinda Kennedy, owner of Alabama Flag and Banner in Huntsville, Ala., said the company, which sells American flags and manufactures Confederate flags, sold around 12,000 [Confederate] flags last year.
    
  • Who's buying the flags? Hard to say, but according to a 2015 map created by Jody Sieradzki of Dadaviz and shared by The Washington Post, people in Virginia, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina and Texas did more Google Shopping searches for Confederate than American flags.
• 2017 Redneck Games
  
  
  
  
  
  

Aside:

At the end of the day, when I see a Confederate flag willfully displayed by someone -- on a pole, on their ass or lapel, etc. -- what I know is that they cannot be doing so out of patriotism for the United States of America because the simple fact is that the Confederate States of America (CSA) was the nation that used that flag/symbol, and the CSA, not the USA, lost the Civil War. The CSA is no more, yet supposedly American citizens with willful pride display the CSA's imagery.

Insofar as displaying "Stars and Bars" cannot be patriotic toward the USA, folks who display it must necessarily be expressing their affinity for something having to do with the CSA and what it stood for. Some will say it today represents "Southern pride."

What the hell is "Southern pride" such that it is not, as slavery/racism are, inextricably linked to CSA/Confederacy

• is distinguished from the pride of people hailing from or living in any other region of the U.S. and that is unique to the South?
• necessitates associating it with the flag of the CSA/Confederacy?

New Englanders are proud to be New Englanders. Ditto folks form other regions of the country. You what flags/symbols they use? I don't really know. I see bumper stickers about crabs and lovers in MD and VA. I see flags depicting patriots in New England.

The South today isn’t what it was in the 1860s -- predominantly poor, rural, isolated. The modern South is the fastest growing region in the US; it is the most populated, nearly doubling the size of the West and Northeast combined with over 117 million residents. The South has a thriving economy, its GDP dwarfing both the Northeast and the West.

There's plenty to be proud of. Why tarnish that pride by conflating it with, or risking that others construe one as doing so, the Confederacy.​

I for one would just like to thank the young ladies and you for posting them.

I have dozens of comments I'd love to make about removing their confederate flags.



On a more serious note, I LIKE this re-branded 80's glam rock song even though it makes repeated references to:

"If you trust your rebel heart, ride it into battle
Don't be afraid, take the road less traveled"

It really isn't enough to offend me. Neither does the General Lee.

Really neither do models of German Panther tanks or ME262's. I'll even play the axis in war games.

There is a limit though. Too many huge confederate flags and you get my opinion about the confederacy being racist traitors.

Too much NAZI worship and you get a mouthful.

Too much love of the free market and I invite you back to 2009.

Some revisionist history on a message board and it makes me type.

Put me in the middle of a bunch of hippies and I talk about the addictive nature of pot.

In person I may be able to explain better.

No question about it. The pervasiveness of Confederate imagery makes a huge difference in distinguishing between incidental representations of it and manifestations and expressions of hateful ideas and themes.

Fictitious depictions and "real world" ones also are, at least by me, viewed differently. Everything about he Dukes of Hazard is clearly a comedic caricature presented purely and solely to garner laughs. I think blacks and whites can all laugh at and empathize with many of the situations presented in that show.

Now, like it or not, the Confederacy and what it stood for is part of America and our history. It should be remembered so that we don't repeat/perpetuate the same mistakes that the Confederacy and its attitudes caused. It is also among the most shameful parts of it; thus it does not deserve to be celebrated.

I don't and won't put my "dirty laundry" on a pedestal. It got dirty, I know how it did and I don't aim to repeat the actions that made it so. I don't see any reason why the nation should or would do any differently. We can "own our sh*t" without lauding it.

 

[Correll]

I have lived in the South since 1973. You do not see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy. Most of the discussions on slavery, the Confederacy, etc. are done on these message boards.

I believe that you don't or haven't. Others, huge quantities of them, do and they do while just driving around.

• Brandon, FL
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The Virginia Flaggers: Va Flaggers Highway Memorial Battle Flags Update
  • Route 60 around Lexington
    
    
    
• Mississippi state flag
  
  
  
  
• Roanoke, VA
  
  
  
  
• I-95, one of the busiest highways in the whole of the U.S., sightings of Confederate flags
  • Fayetteville, NC -- This flag could be seen while driving on I-95,
    
    
    
    
  • Fredericksburg, VA
    
    
    
    
    
    
  • Stafford, VA
    
    
    
    
  • Prince George County, VA -- Confederate flag erected alongside U.S. 301 is also visible to drivers on I-95 because it flies on an 80 foot flagpole. The flag itself is 20x20 feet.
    
    
    
• Waldron, Ark.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Perhaps you might sometimes allow someone else drive so you can safely avert your eyes away from the road and the traffic on it and see the flora, fauna, and among other things, Confederate flags flying?

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.View attachment 150224

.

It is not the norm...

I hope you're right. I suspect you are right to the extent that fewer than 50%+1 of Southerners display Confederate flag images/objects. That said, my experience doesn't suggest that it's so far afield from "the norm" -- I'd say a large plurality of Southerners display Confederate imagery -- that one won't readily come by individuals and organizations displaying the Confederate flag.

For example, I've yet to take a drive into or in the South and not at least once see a Confederate flag somewhere -- flying at someone's house/yard or on a bumper or other place on a vehicle are the most common places I see them. For me, that's nearly 60 years of driving in and around the south for one-off trips -- business, vacation, or visit family -- to come 2017 still have not have had so much as one trip were I saw not one Confederate flag. Contrast that with D.C., where I live and the Cape Cod area where I have a summer home. I go weeks and months without ever seeing a Confederate flag or even other Confederate-ish imagery.

(And, no, I'm not including souvenir businesses' merchandise on offer. I'm referring to merely going about my business and lo and behold there appears before me a Confederate flag.)

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

Be that as it may, your initial claim was that one does not "[in the South], see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy." However many Confederate flags one observes in the North has nothing to do with that.

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

I don't know what is the norm re: the incidence/probability of observing a Confederate flag in the South. Some of what I know:

• 2015 News story about sales of Confederate flag items:
  • "Somebody in Rhode Island ordered in 50 Confederate (lapel) pins," said Kerry McCoy, owner of Flag and Banner in Little Rock, Arkansas. The order came in on Monday, when Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol.
    
  • Freddie Rich, owner of Rebel Store in North Carolina, said his sales of Confederate items is "unbelievable right now. This is something I never envisioned." Rich said he shipped out 200 Confederate flags in the last 24 hours, compared to his usual sales of a dozen flags a day.
• 2017 News stories about sales of Confederate flags specifically
  • Belinda Kennedy, owner of Alabama Flag and Banner in Huntsville, Ala., said the company, which sells American flags and manufactures Confederate flags, sold around 12,000 [Confederate] flags last year.
    
  • Who's buying the flags? Hard to say, but according to a 2015 map created by Jody Sieradzki of Dadaviz and shared by The Washington Post, people in Virginia, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina and Texas did more Google Shopping searches for Confederate than American flags.
• 2017 Redneck Games
  
  
  
  
  
  

Aside:

At the end of the day, when I see a Confederate flag willfully displayed by someone -- on a pole, on their ass or lapel, etc. -- what I know is that they cannot be doing so out of patriotism for the United States of America because the simple fact is that the Confederate States of America (CSA) was the nation that used that flag/symbol, and the CSA, not the USA, lost the Civil War. The CSA is no more, yet supposedly American citizens with willful pride display the CSA's imagery.

Insofar as displaying "Stars and Bars" cannot be patriotic toward the USA, folks who display it must necessarily be expressing their affinity for something having to do with the CSA and what it stood for. Some will say it today represents "Southern pride."

What the hell is "Southern pride" such that it is not, as slavery/racism are, inextricably linked to CSA/Confederacy

• is distinguished from the pride of people hailing from or living in any other region of the U.S. and that is unique to the South?
• necessitates associating it with the flag of the CSA/Confederacy?

New Englanders are proud to be New Englanders. Ditto folks form other regions of the country. You what flags/symbols they use? I don't really know. I see bumper stickers about crabs and lovers in MD and VA. I see flags depicting patriots in New England.

The South today isn’t what it was in the 1860s -- predominantly poor, rural, isolated. The modern South is the fastest growing region in the US; it is the most populated, nearly doubling the size of the West and Northeast combined with over 117 million residents. The South has a thriving economy, its GDP dwarfing both the Northeast and the West.

There's plenty to be proud of. Why tarnish that pride by conflating it with, or risking that others construe one as doing so, the Confederacy.​

I for one would just like to thank the young ladies and you for posting them.

I have dozens of comments I'd love to make about removing their confederate flags.



On a more serious note, I LIKE this re-branded 80's glam rock song even though it makes repeated references to:

"If you trust your rebel heart, ride it into battle
Don't be afraid, take the road less traveled"

It really isn't enough to offend me. Neither does the General Lee.

Really neither do models of German Panther tanks or ME262's. I'll even play the axis in war games.

There is a limit though. Too many huge confederate flags and you get my opinion about the confederacy being racist traitors.

Too much NAZI worship and you get a mouthful.

Too much love of the free market and I invite you back to 2009.

Some revisionist history on a message board and it makes me type.

Put me in the middle of a bunch of hippies and I talk about the addictive nature of pot.

In person I may be able to explain better.

No question about it. The pervasiveness of Confederate imagery makes a huge difference in distinguishing between incidental representations of it and manifestations and expressions of hateful ideas and themes.

Fictitious depictions and "real world" ones also are, at least by me, viewed differently. Everything about he Dukes of Hazard is clearly a comedic caricature presented purely and solely to garner laughs. I think blacks and whites can all laugh at and empathize with many of the situations presented in that show.

Now, like it or not, the Confederacy and what it stood for is part of America and our history. It should be remembered so that we don't repeat/perpetuate the same mistakes that the Confederacy and its attitudes caused. It is also among the most shameful parts of it; thus it does not deserve to be celebrated.

I don't and won't put my "dirty laundry" on a pedestal. It got dirty, I know how it did and I don't aim to repeat the actions that made it so. I don't see any reason why the nation should or would do any differently. We can "own our sh*t" without lauding it.

For over 5 generations, the South has been a loyal part of America while still having and celebrating it's regional heritage.


There is no danger of what the Flag ORIGINALLY stood for, over 150 years ago, being repeated.


THe new danger is coming not FROM the South, but AT the South, from those who want to deprive Southern whites of their right to have and celebrate their regional culture.

 

[JimBowie1958]

There's plenty to be proud of. Why tarnish that pride by conflating it with, or risking that others construe one as doing so, the Confederacy.​

The south is the only part of the USA that has been successfully invaded, occupied for decades and the economic progress stymied during that occupation.

The south watched the rest of the nation become quite advanced running up to WW2, while many of its inhabitants still had dirt floors and lived in poverty unimaginable today for Americans.

This shared experience (minus Texas which never had occupying troops of any significance) has brought the Southern states together and rather than be ashamed, the people of the South have taken pride in their impressive military record and other acts during that war much as during the American Revolution US troops took the British pejorative 'Yankee' and turned it into a prideful name.

 

[usmbguest5318]

I have lived in the South since 1973. You do not see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy. Most of the discussions on slavery, the Confederacy, etc. are done on these message boards.

I believe that you don't or haven't. Others, huge quantities of them, do and they do while just driving around.

• Brandon, FL
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The Virginia Flaggers: Va Flaggers Highway Memorial Battle Flags Update
  • Route 60 around Lexington
    
    
    
• Mississippi state flag
  
  
  
  
• Roanoke, VA
  
  
  
  
• I-95, one of the busiest highways in the whole of the U.S., sightings of Confederate flags
  • Fayetteville, NC -- This flag could be seen while driving on I-95,
    
    
    
    
  • Fredericksburg, VA
    
    
    
    
    
    
  • Stafford, VA
    
    
    
    
  • Prince George County, VA -- Confederate flag erected alongside U.S. 301 is also visible to drivers on I-95 because it flies on an 80 foot flagpole. The flag itself is 20x20 feet.
    
    
    
• Waldron, Ark.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Perhaps you might sometimes allow someone else drive so you can safely avert your eyes away from the road and the traffic on it and see the flora, fauna, and among other things, Confederate flags flying?

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.View attachment 150224

.

It is not the norm...

I hope you're right. I suspect you are right to the extent that fewer than 50%+1 of Southerners display Confederate flag images/objects. That said, my experience doesn't suggest that it's so far afield from "the norm" -- I'd say a large plurality of Southerners display Confederate imagery -- that one won't readily come by individuals and organizations displaying the Confederate flag.

For example, I've yet to take a drive into or in the South and not at least once see a Confederate flag somewhere -- flying at someone's house/yard or on a bumper or other place on a vehicle are the most common places I see them. For me, that's nearly 60 years of driving in and around the south for one-off trips -- business, vacation, or visit family -- to come 2017 still have not have had so much as one trip were I saw not one Confederate flag. Contrast that with D.C., where I live and the Cape Cod area where I have a summer home. I go weeks and months without ever seeing a Confederate flag or even other Confederate-ish imagery.

(And, no, I'm not including souvenir businesses' merchandise on offer. I'm referring to merely going about my business and lo and behold there appears before me a Confederate flag.)

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

Be that as it may, your initial claim was that one does not "[in the South], see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy." However many Confederate flags one observes in the North has nothing to do with that.

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

I don't know what is the norm re: the incidence/probability of observing a Confederate flag in the South. Some of what I know:

• 2015 News story about sales of Confederate flag items:
  • "Somebody in Rhode Island ordered in 50 Confederate (lapel) pins," said Kerry McCoy, owner of Flag and Banner in Little Rock, Arkansas. The order came in on Monday, when Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol.
    
  • Freddie Rich, owner of Rebel Store in North Carolina, said his sales of Confederate items is "unbelievable right now. This is something I never envisioned." Rich said he shipped out 200 Confederate flags in the last 24 hours, compared to his usual sales of a dozen flags a day.
• 2017 News stories about sales of Confederate flags specifically
  • Belinda Kennedy, owner of Alabama Flag and Banner in Huntsville, Ala., said the company, which sells American flags and manufactures Confederate flags, sold around 12,000 [Confederate] flags last year.
    
  • Who's buying the flags? Hard to say, but according to a 2015 map created by Jody Sieradzki of Dadaviz and shared by The Washington Post, people in Virginia, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina and Texas did more Google Shopping searches for Confederate than American flags.
• 2017 Redneck Games
  
  
  
  
  
  

Aside:

At the end of the day, when I see a Confederate flag willfully displayed by someone -- on a pole, on their ass or lapel, etc. -- what I know is that they cannot be doing so out of patriotism for the United States of America because the simple fact is that the Confederate States of America (CSA) was the nation that used that flag/symbol, and the CSA, not the USA, lost the Civil War. The CSA is no more, yet supposedly American citizens with willful pride display the CSA's imagery.

Insofar as displaying "Stars and Bars" cannot be patriotic toward the USA, folks who display it must necessarily be expressing their affinity for something having to do with the CSA and what it stood for. Some will say it today represents "Southern pride."

What the hell is "Southern pride" such that it is not, as slavery/racism are, inextricably linked to CSA/Confederacy

• is distinguished from the pride of people hailing from or living in any other region of the U.S. and that is unique to the South?
• necessitates associating it with the flag of the CSA/Confederacy?

New Englanders are proud to be New Englanders. Ditto folks form other regions of the country. You what flags/symbols they use? I don't really know. I see bumper stickers about crabs and lovers in MD and VA. I see flags depicting patriots in New England.

The South today isn’t what it was in the 1860s -- predominantly poor, rural, isolated. The modern South is the fastest growing region in the US; it is the most populated, nearly doubling the size of the West and Northeast combined with over 117 million residents. The South has a thriving economy, its GDP dwarfing both the Northeast and the West.

There's plenty to be proud of. Why tarnish that pride by conflating it with, or risking that others construe one as doing so, the Confederacy.​

I should rephrase my posting, I did not mean you never see Confederate flags flown, it is just not very common, or I dismiss them. It isn't a big deal to me. Of course, there will be more Confederate flags in the South, that is what the Confederacy stood for. Ironically, the KKK is known for this flag, however, they also fly the American Flag, good ole red white and blue.As far as people being proud to be Southern, it is a heritage, not about slavery. People like the charm and Southern hospitality you do not see up North. You see "Black Pride" why? You don't chose your race, why are you proud of something you can't control?

I should rephrase my posting, I did not mean you never see Confederate flags flown, it is just not very common, or I dismiss them.

Okay. I understand what you are saying, and I appreciate your clarifying your comments.

As goes commonality, well, I suspect that's somewhat relative. "Every time I go driving in the South" strikes me as common. You live there, however, so perhaps you don't see one everyday. Perhaps too, as you noted, Confederate flag images are so common that you "don't see them" in much the same way I "don't see," diplomatic licence plates -- they're both abundant and yet most cars don't have them, and they don't "reach out and touch" or otherwise mean something to me, so I usually pay them no mind. It's also that way in D.C. with statues and historic buildings/sites.

Funny observation:

D.C. even has a pair of what I call "penis statues." I don't know much about them, but if you're walking on Mass. Ave, you'll see them. Driving, however, one probably won't notice them. I suspect that's similar to what you have in mind when say you disregard Confederate flags.

​

As far as people being proud to be Southern, it is a heritage, not about slavery. People like the charm and Southern hospitality you do not see up North.

Okay. By all means, Southern hospitality is a thing to be proud of, particularly if one routinely exhibits it. Replace the Confederate flag with one that evokes that theme. There are surely myriad ways to do that without also explicitly recalling the Confederacy.

You see "Black Pride" why?

The answer to that is much the same as why one sees "pride" expressions/affirmations made by any group that has had to overcome systematized oppression. Black pride, gay pride, Jewish pride, and women's pride are borne of a desire for obtaining greater communion -- "we shall overcome" -- with those who oppress us mindset. One sees a similar thing among other "outcast" members of a society.

When minorities express "pride", it's (usually) a cultural kind of pride, not racial. "Black" pride has to do with Black culture and history, Mexican pride has to do with Mexican culture and history, Asian pride has to do with Asian culture and history. White people's culture in the U.S. isn't considered "white culture" because it's considered "American culture" (or British or Australian culture) and American history, and it is because white people are the majority. American culture and history is for the most part American White culture and history. The culture of the majority isn't really considered a culture distinct from the culture of the region.

For instance, one doesn't in India find people "on about" Indian pride. Everything in the culture there is Indian.

Southerners may attempt to claim that is what they too are expressing, but it's sophistic to express it with imagery and axioms that recall the Confederacy -- "The South will rise again" -- for the fact is that the South and its people, particularly those who fought in the Civil War had nothing to overcome. They were welcomed with open arms back into the United States and, AFAIK, not one of them, not even Jefferson Davis or the top Confederate generals were so much as tried for treason. Accordingly, the only thing that might "rise again" about the South is the odiousness of the Confederacy. Southern hospitality, for example, never fell. The U.S. has never not been a majority white-populated, "owned and operated" nation.

Everything about U.S. history and culture -- no matter the region from which one hails or finds oneself -- is already white.

• White folks at war; non-whites involved chose between one "white guys' side" or the other "white guys' side."
  • Revolutionary War
  • Civil War
  • WWI
  • WWII
• First man on the Moon --> White dude
• American economic history --> One white guy's company after the next
• The Gilded Age --> Story of a bunch of really industrious white guys
• History of U.S. Presidents and Generals --> The story of white guys
• Old Hollywood and entertainment culture --> Stories about white folks told by white folks
• Every U.S. history textbook --> With only a few exceptions, it's about what white folks have done in North America from the 1400s to the present.

Black folks, by comparison, have to talk about "black pride" so that the accomplishments and contributions of black Americans is made known and given recognition. How many people, for instance can name 20 black authors, inventors, or scientists/doctors? Same for women.

• How many people have any idea that Hedy Lamar is the reason they have GPS in their phones and cars?
• A black woman invented the laser used to cure cataracs and that are used in eye surgery.
• The gas masks that saved millions in WWI was invented by a black dude.
• A black man invented the pacemaker.
• The first American woman to become a self-made millionaire was a black woman from the "Jim Crow" South. (She died in 1912.)

So, what black pride is about it calling attention to men and women who, rightly, should be every bit as much of an inspiration to every American as are Neil Armstrong, George Patton, Henry Ford, and all the white Americans whose names we all recognize.

For additional discussion of the psychological and socio-anthropological reasons why minority and other oppressed groups overtly express and vocalize "pride," and form groups purposed on doing so, here are a few places to start:

• 5 Ways White Supremacists Use Victimhood to Their Advantage
  
• Wannabes, Goths, and Christians: The Boundaries of Sex, Style, and Status
  
• Why Pride? An Explanation For Straight People | HuffPost
  
• The Self Concept
• Identity Politics
• Belonging
• Group interaction as the crucible of social identity formation: A glimpse at the foundations of social identities for collective action
  
• Taking a Closer Look at Group Identity The Link between Theory and Measurement of Group Consciousness and Linked Fate
  
• Competition of a Different Flavor How a Strategic Group Identity Shapes Competition and Cooperation

I guess I just don't get why people have to be recognized so much. When I think of inventions, I don't care what race they are, I either like or dislike the invention, period. When we studied history in school, yes, they may have been white people in the books, but I learned what they did and who they were, not because they were white, their race never was a factor in my mind.

I don't want to dismiss your remarks, but I also know that properly responding to them (at least based on what I know) is well beyond the scope of what I'm willing to undertake here. The best I can do is suggest you consider your remarks just above in the contextual themes found in the following documents:

• Talking Productively About Race in the Colorblind Era
  
• "I Did Not Get That Job Because of a Black Man...": The Story Lines and Testimonies of ColorBlind Racism
  
• The Colorblind Ideal in a Race-Conscious Reality: The Case for a New Legal Ideal for Race Relations

I guess I just don't get why people have to be recognized so much.

• Recognition -- This is an excellent document for obtaining a good layman's understanding.
• What Drives Our Need For Approval?
  
• The Psychology of Change: Self-Affirmation and Social Psychological Intervention
  
• Self-Affirmation Theory
• Non-financial recognition -- This is recognition theory applied to work environments, but the principles are about the same for most people in a general societal setting.

I think everyone needs affirmation. What varies among individuals is from whom they seek or will accept it.

 

[MizMolly]

I have lived in the South since 1973. You do not see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy. Most of the discussions on slavery, the Confederacy, etc. are done on these message boards.

I believe that you don't or haven't. Others, huge quantities of them, do and they do while just driving around.

• Brandon, FL
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The Virginia Flaggers: Va Flaggers Highway Memorial Battle Flags Update
  • Route 60 around Lexington
    
    
    
• Mississippi state flag
  
  
  
  
• Roanoke, VA
  
  
  
  
• I-95, one of the busiest highways in the whole of the U.S., sightings of Confederate flags
  • Fayetteville, NC -- This flag could be seen while driving on I-95,
    
    
    
    
  • Fredericksburg, VA
    
    
    
    
    
    
  • Stafford, VA
    
    
    
    
  • Prince George County, VA -- Confederate flag erected alongside U.S. 301 is also visible to drivers on I-95 because it flies on an 80 foot flagpole. The flag itself is 20x20 feet.
    
    
    
• Waldron, Ark.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Perhaps you might sometimes allow someone else drive so you can safely avert your eyes away from the road and the traffic on it and see the flora, fauna, and among other things, Confederate flags flying?

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.View attachment 150224

.

It is not the norm...

I hope you're right. I suspect you are right to the extent that fewer than 50%+1 of Southerners display Confederate flag images/objects. That said, my experience doesn't suggest that it's so far afield from "the norm" -- I'd say a large plurality of Southerners display Confederate imagery -- that one won't readily come by individuals and organizations displaying the Confederate flag.

For example, I've yet to take a drive into or in the South and not at least once see a Confederate flag somewhere -- flying at someone's house/yard or on a bumper or other place on a vehicle are the most common places I see them. For me, that's nearly 60 years of driving in and around the south for one-off trips -- business, vacation, or visit family -- to come 2017 still have not have had so much as one trip were I saw not one Confederate flag. Contrast that with D.C., where I live and the Cape Cod area where I have a summer home. I go weeks and months without ever seeing a Confederate flag or even other Confederate-ish imagery.

(And, no, I'm not including souvenir businesses' merchandise on offer. I'm referring to merely going about my business and lo and behold there appears before me a Confederate flag.)

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

Be that as it may, your initial claim was that one does not "[in the South], see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy." However many Confederate flags one observes in the North has nothing to do with that.

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

I don't know what is the norm re: the incidence/probability of observing a Confederate flag in the South. Some of what I know:

• 2015 News story about sales of Confederate flag items:
  • "Somebody in Rhode Island ordered in 50 Confederate (lapel) pins," said Kerry McCoy, owner of Flag and Banner in Little Rock, Arkansas. The order came in on Monday, when Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol.
    
  • Freddie Rich, owner of Rebel Store in North Carolina, said his sales of Confederate items is "unbelievable right now. This is something I never envisioned." Rich said he shipped out 200 Confederate flags in the last 24 hours, compared to his usual sales of a dozen flags a day.
• 2017 News stories about sales of Confederate flags specifically
  • Belinda Kennedy, owner of Alabama Flag and Banner in Huntsville, Ala., said the company, which sells American flags and manufactures Confederate flags, sold around 12,000 [Confederate] flags last year.
    
  • Who's buying the flags? Hard to say, but according to a 2015 map created by Jody Sieradzki of Dadaviz and shared by The Washington Post, people in Virginia, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina and Texas did more Google Shopping searches for Confederate than American flags.
• 2017 Redneck Games
  
  
  
  
  
  

Aside:

At the end of the day, when I see a Confederate flag willfully displayed by someone -- on a pole, on their ass or lapel, etc. -- what I know is that they cannot be doing so out of patriotism for the United States of America because the simple fact is that the Confederate States of America (CSA) was the nation that used that flag/symbol, and the CSA, not the USA, lost the Civil War. The CSA is no more, yet supposedly American citizens with willful pride display the CSA's imagery.

Insofar as displaying "Stars and Bars" cannot be patriotic toward the USA, folks who display it must necessarily be expressing their affinity for something having to do with the CSA and what it stood for. Some will say it today represents "Southern pride."

What the hell is "Southern pride" such that it is not, as slavery/racism are, inextricably linked to CSA/Confederacy

• is distinguished from the pride of people hailing from or living in any other region of the U.S. and that is unique to the South?
• necessitates associating it with the flag of the CSA/Confederacy?

New Englanders are proud to be New Englanders. Ditto folks form other regions of the country. You what flags/symbols they use? I don't really know. I see bumper stickers about crabs and lovers in MD and VA. I see flags depicting patriots in New England.

The South today isn’t what it was in the 1860s -- predominantly poor, rural, isolated. The modern South is the fastest growing region in the US; it is the most populated, nearly doubling the size of the West and Northeast combined with over 117 million residents. The South has a thriving economy, its GDP dwarfing both the Northeast and the West.

There's plenty to be proud of. Why tarnish that pride by conflating it with, or risking that others construe one as doing so, the Confederacy.​

I should rephrase my posting, I did not mean you never see Confederate flags flown, it is just not very common, or I dismiss them. It isn't a big deal to me. Of course, there will be more Confederate flags in the South, that is what the Confederacy stood for. Ironically, the KKK is known for this flag, however, they also fly the American Flag, good ole red white and blue.As far as people being proud to be Southern, it is a heritage, not about slavery. People like the charm and Southern hospitality you do not see up North. You see "Black Pride" why? You don't chose your race, why are you proud of something you can't control?

I should rephrase my posting, I did not mean you never see Confederate flags flown, it is just not very common, or I dismiss them.

Okay. I understand what you are saying, and I appreciate your clarifying your comments.

As goes commonality, well, I suspect that's somewhat relative. "Every time I go driving in the South" strikes me as common. You live there, however, so perhaps you don't see one everyday. Perhaps too, as you noted, Confederate flag images are so common that you "don't see them" in much the same way I "don't see," diplomatic licence plates -- they're both abundant and yet most cars don't have them, and they don't "reach out and touch" or otherwise mean something to me, so I usually pay them no mind. It's also that way in D.C. with statues and historic buildings/sites.

Funny observation:

D.C. even has a pair of what I call "penis statues." I don't know much about them, but if you're walking on Mass. Ave, you'll see them. Driving, however, one probably won't notice them. I suspect that's similar to what you have in mind when say you disregard Confederate flags.

​

As far as people being proud to be Southern, it is a heritage, not about slavery. People like the charm and Southern hospitality you do not see up North.

Okay. By all means, Southern hospitality is a thing to be proud of, particularly if one routinely exhibits it. Replace the Confederate flag with one that evokes that theme. There are surely myriad ways to do that without also explicitly recalling the Confederacy.

You see "Black Pride" why?

The answer to that is much the same as why one sees "pride" expressions/affirmations made by any group that has had to overcome systematized oppression. Black pride, gay pride, Jewish pride, and women's pride are borne of a desire for obtaining greater communion -- "we shall overcome" -- with those who oppress us mindset. One sees a similar thing among other "outcast" members of a society.

When minorities express "pride", it's (usually) a cultural kind of pride, not racial. "Black" pride has to do with Black culture and history, Mexican pride has to do with Mexican culture and history, Asian pride has to do with Asian culture and history. White people's culture in the U.S. isn't considered "white culture" because it's considered "American culture" (or British or Australian culture) and American history, and it is because white people are the majority. American culture and history is for the most part American White culture and history. The culture of the majority isn't really considered a culture distinct from the culture of the region.

For instance, one doesn't in India find people "on about" Indian pride. Everything in the culture there is Indian.

Southerners may attempt to claim that is what they too are expressing, but it's sophistic to express it with imagery and axioms that recall the Confederacy -- "The South will rise again" -- for the fact is that the South and its people, particularly those who fought in the Civil War had nothing to overcome. They were welcomed with open arms back into the United States and, AFAIK, not one of them, not even Jefferson Davis or the top Confederate generals were so much as tried for treason. Accordingly, the only thing that might "rise again" about the South is the odiousness of the Confederacy. Southern hospitality, for example, never fell. The U.S. has never not been a majority white-populated, "owned and operated" nation.

Everything about U.S. history and culture -- no matter the region from which one hails or finds oneself -- is already white.

• White folks at war; non-whites involved chose between one "white guys' side" or the other "white guys' side."
  • Revolutionary War
  • Civil War
  • WWI
  • WWII
• First man on the Moon --> White dude
• American economic history --> One white guy's company after the next
• The Gilded Age --> Story of a bunch of really industrious white guys
• History of U.S. Presidents and Generals --> The story of white guys
• Old Hollywood and entertainment culture --> Stories about white folks told by white folks
• Every U.S. history textbook --> With only a few exceptions, it's about what white folks have done in North America from the 1400s to the present.

Black folks, by comparison, have to talk about "black pride" so that the accomplishments and contributions of black Americans is made known and given recognition. How many people, for instance can name 20 black authors, inventors, or scientists/doctors? Same for women.

• How many people have any idea that Hedy Lamar is the reason they have GPS in their phones and cars?
• A black woman invented the laser used to cure cataracs and that are used in eye surgery.
• The gas masks that saved millions in WWI was invented by a black dude.
• A black man invented the pacemaker.
• The first American woman to become a self-made millionaire was a black woman from the "Jim Crow" South. (She died in 1912.)

So, what black pride is about it calling attention to men and women who, rightly, should be every bit as much of an inspiration to every American as are Neil Armstrong, George Patton, Henry Ford, and all the white Americans whose names we all recognize.

For additional discussion of the psychological and socio-anthropological reasons why minority and other oppressed groups overtly express and vocalize "pride," and form groups purposed on doing so, here are a few places to start:

• 5 Ways White Supremacists Use Victimhood to Their Advantage
  
• Wannabes, Goths, and Christians: The Boundaries of Sex, Style, and Status
  
• Why Pride? An Explanation For Straight People | HuffPost
  
• The Self Concept
• Identity Politics
• Belonging
• Group interaction as the crucible of social identity formation: A glimpse at the foundations of social identities for collective action
  
• Taking a Closer Look at Group Identity The Link between Theory and Measurement of Group Consciousness and Linked Fate
  
• Competition of a Different Flavor How a Strategic Group Identity Shapes Competition and Cooperation

I guess I just don't get why people have to be recognized so much. When I think of inventions, I don't care what race they are, I either like or dislike the invention, period. When we studied history in school, yes, they may have been white people in the books, but I learned what they did and who they were, not because they were white, their race never was a factor in my mind.

I don't want to dismiss your remarks, but I also know that properly responding to them (at least based on what I know) is well beyond the scope of what I'm willing to undertake here. The best I can do is suggest you consider your remarks just above in the contextual themes found in the following documents:

• Talking Productively About Race in the Colorblind Era
  
• "I Did Not Get That Job Because of a Black Man...": The Story Lines and Testimonies of ColorBlind Racism
  
• The Colorblind Ideal in a Race-Conscious Reality: The Case for a New Legal Ideal for Race Relations

I guess I just don't get why people have to be recognized so much.

• Recognition -- This is an excellent document for obtaining a good layman's understanding.
• What Drives Our Need For Approval?
  
• The Psychology of Change: Self-Affirmation and Social Psychological Intervention
  
• Self-Affirmation Theory
• Non-financial recognition -- This is recognition theory applied to work environments, but the principles are about the same for most people in a general societal setting.

I think everyone needs affirmation. What varies among individuals is from whom they seek or will accept it.

I would think people would feel better about being recognized for their achievements rather than what they did because of their race. If someone does something great, good for them, they should be proud of it, but not because they are a white, black, etc. person.

 

[usmbguest5318]

I believe that you don't or haven't. Others, huge quantities of them, do and they do while just driving around.

• Brandon, FL
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The Virginia Flaggers: Va Flaggers Highway Memorial Battle Flags Update
  • Route 60 around Lexington
    
    
    
• Mississippi state flag
  
  
  
  
• Roanoke, VA
  
  
  
  
• I-95, one of the busiest highways in the whole of the U.S., sightings of Confederate flags
  • Fayetteville, NC -- This flag could be seen while driving on I-95,
    
    
    
    
  • Fredericksburg, VA
    
    
    
    
    
    
  • Stafford, VA
    
    
    
    
  • Prince George County, VA -- Confederate flag erected alongside U.S. 301 is also visible to drivers on I-95 because it flies on an 80 foot flagpole. The flag itself is 20x20 feet.
    
    
    
• Waldron, Ark.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Perhaps you might sometimes allow someone else drive so you can safely avert your eyes away from the road and the traffic on it and see the flora, fauna, and among other things, Confederate flags flying?

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.View attachment 150224

.

It is not the norm...

I hope you're right. I suspect you are right to the extent that fewer than 50%+1 of Southerners display Confederate flag images/objects. That said, my experience doesn't suggest that it's so far afield from "the norm" -- I'd say a large plurality of Southerners display Confederate imagery -- that one won't readily come by individuals and organizations displaying the Confederate flag.

For example, I've yet to take a drive into or in the South and not at least once see a Confederate flag somewhere -- flying at someone's house/yard or on a bumper or other place on a vehicle are the most common places I see them. For me, that's nearly 60 years of driving in and around the south for one-off trips -- business, vacation, or visit family -- to come 2017 still have not have had so much as one trip were I saw not one Confederate flag. Contrast that with D.C., where I live and the Cape Cod area where I have a summer home. I go weeks and months without ever seeing a Confederate flag or even other Confederate-ish imagery.

(And, no, I'm not including souvenir businesses' merchandise on offer. I'm referring to merely going about my business and lo and behold there appears before me a Confederate flag.)

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

Be that as it may, your initial claim was that one does not "[in the South], see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy." However many Confederate flags one observes in the North has nothing to do with that.

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

I don't know what is the norm re: the incidence/probability of observing a Confederate flag in the South. Some of what I know:

• 2015 News story about sales of Confederate flag items:
  • "Somebody in Rhode Island ordered in 50 Confederate (lapel) pins," said Kerry McCoy, owner of Flag and Banner in Little Rock, Arkansas. The order came in on Monday, when Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol.
    
  • Freddie Rich, owner of Rebel Store in North Carolina, said his sales of Confederate items is "unbelievable right now. This is something I never envisioned." Rich said he shipped out 200 Confederate flags in the last 24 hours, compared to his usual sales of a dozen flags a day.
• 2017 News stories about sales of Confederate flags specifically
  • Belinda Kennedy, owner of Alabama Flag and Banner in Huntsville, Ala., said the company, which sells American flags and manufactures Confederate flags, sold around 12,000 [Confederate] flags last year.
    
  • Who's buying the flags? Hard to say, but according to a 2015 map created by Jody Sieradzki of Dadaviz and shared by The Washington Post, people in Virginia, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina and Texas did more Google Shopping searches for Confederate than American flags.
• 2017 Redneck Games
  
  
  
  
  
  

Aside:

At the end of the day, when I see a Confederate flag willfully displayed by someone -- on a pole, on their ass or lapel, etc. -- what I know is that they cannot be doing so out of patriotism for the United States of America because the simple fact is that the Confederate States of America (CSA) was the nation that used that flag/symbol, and the CSA, not the USA, lost the Civil War. The CSA is no more, yet supposedly American citizens with willful pride display the CSA's imagery.

Insofar as displaying "Stars and Bars" cannot be patriotic toward the USA, folks who display it must necessarily be expressing their affinity for something having to do with the CSA and what it stood for. Some will say it today represents "Southern pride."

What the hell is "Southern pride" such that it is not, as slavery/racism are, inextricably linked to CSA/Confederacy

• is distinguished from the pride of people hailing from or living in any other region of the U.S. and that is unique to the South?
• necessitates associating it with the flag of the CSA/Confederacy?

New Englanders are proud to be New Englanders. Ditto folks form other regions of the country. You what flags/symbols they use? I don't really know. I see bumper stickers about crabs and lovers in MD and VA. I see flags depicting patriots in New England.

The South today isn’t what it was in the 1860s -- predominantly poor, rural, isolated. The modern South is the fastest growing region in the US; it is the most populated, nearly doubling the size of the West and Northeast combined with over 117 million residents. The South has a thriving economy, its GDP dwarfing both the Northeast and the West.

There's plenty to be proud of. Why tarnish that pride by conflating it with, or risking that others construe one as doing so, the Confederacy.​

I should rephrase my posting, I did not mean you never see Confederate flags flown, it is just not very common, or I dismiss them. It isn't a big deal to me. Of course, there will be more Confederate flags in the South, that is what the Confederacy stood for. Ironically, the KKK is known for this flag, however, they also fly the American Flag, good ole red white and blue.As far as people being proud to be Southern, it is a heritage, not about slavery. People like the charm and Southern hospitality you do not see up North. You see "Black Pride" why? You don't chose your race, why are you proud of something you can't control?

I should rephrase my posting, I did not mean you never see Confederate flags flown, it is just not very common, or I dismiss them.

Okay. I understand what you are saying, and I appreciate your clarifying your comments.

As goes commonality, well, I suspect that's somewhat relative. "Every time I go driving in the South" strikes me as common. You live there, however, so perhaps you don't see one everyday. Perhaps too, as you noted, Confederate flag images are so common that you "don't see them" in much the same way I "don't see," diplomatic licence plates -- they're both abundant and yet most cars don't have them, and they don't "reach out and touch" or otherwise mean something to me, so I usually pay them no mind. It's also that way in D.C. with statues and historic buildings/sites.

Funny observation:

D.C. even has a pair of what I call "penis statues." I don't know much about them, but if you're walking on Mass. Ave, you'll see them. Driving, however, one probably won't notice them. I suspect that's similar to what you have in mind when say you disregard Confederate flags.

​

As far as people being proud to be Southern, it is a heritage, not about slavery. People like the charm and Southern hospitality you do not see up North.

Okay. By all means, Southern hospitality is a thing to be proud of, particularly if one routinely exhibits it. Replace the Confederate flag with one that evokes that theme. There are surely myriad ways to do that without also explicitly recalling the Confederacy.

You see "Black Pride" why?

The answer to that is much the same as why one sees "pride" expressions/affirmations made by any group that has had to overcome systematized oppression. Black pride, gay pride, Jewish pride, and women's pride are borne of a desire for obtaining greater communion -- "we shall overcome" -- with those who oppress us mindset. One sees a similar thing among other "outcast" members of a society.

When minorities express "pride", it's (usually) a cultural kind of pride, not racial. "Black" pride has to do with Black culture and history, Mexican pride has to do with Mexican culture and history, Asian pride has to do with Asian culture and history. White people's culture in the U.S. isn't considered "white culture" because it's considered "American culture" (or British or Australian culture) and American history, and it is because white people are the majority. American culture and history is for the most part American White culture and history. The culture of the majority isn't really considered a culture distinct from the culture of the region.

For instance, one doesn't in India find people "on about" Indian pride. Everything in the culture there is Indian.

Southerners may attempt to claim that is what they too are expressing, but it's sophistic to express it with imagery and axioms that recall the Confederacy -- "The South will rise again" -- for the fact is that the South and its people, particularly those who fought in the Civil War had nothing to overcome. They were welcomed with open arms back into the United States and, AFAIK, not one of them, not even Jefferson Davis or the top Confederate generals were so much as tried for treason. Accordingly, the only thing that might "rise again" about the South is the odiousness of the Confederacy. Southern hospitality, for example, never fell. The U.S. has never not been a majority white-populated, "owned and operated" nation.

Everything about U.S. history and culture -- no matter the region from which one hails or finds oneself -- is already white.

• White folks at war; non-whites involved chose between one "white guys' side" or the other "white guys' side."
  • Revolutionary War
  • Civil War
  • WWI
  • WWII
• First man on the Moon --> White dude
• American economic history --> One white guy's company after the next
• The Gilded Age --> Story of a bunch of really industrious white guys
• History of U.S. Presidents and Generals --> The story of white guys
• Old Hollywood and entertainment culture --> Stories about white folks told by white folks
• Every U.S. history textbook --> With only a few exceptions, it's about what white folks have done in North America from the 1400s to the present.

Black folks, by comparison, have to talk about "black pride" so that the accomplishments and contributions of black Americans is made known and given recognition. How many people, for instance can name 20 black authors, inventors, or scientists/doctors? Same for women.

• How many people have any idea that Hedy Lamar is the reason they have GPS in their phones and cars?
• A black woman invented the laser used to cure cataracs and that are used in eye surgery.
• The gas masks that saved millions in WWI was invented by a black dude.
• A black man invented the pacemaker.
• The first American woman to become a self-made millionaire was a black woman from the "Jim Crow" South. (She died in 1912.)

So, what black pride is about it calling attention to men and women who, rightly, should be every bit as much of an inspiration to every American as are Neil Armstrong, George Patton, Henry Ford, and all the white Americans whose names we all recognize.

For additional discussion of the psychological and socio-anthropological reasons why minority and other oppressed groups overtly express and vocalize "pride," and form groups purposed on doing so, here are a few places to start:

• 5 Ways White Supremacists Use Victimhood to Their Advantage
  
• Wannabes, Goths, and Christians: The Boundaries of Sex, Style, and Status
  
• Why Pride? An Explanation For Straight People | HuffPost
  
• The Self Concept
• Identity Politics
• Belonging
• Group interaction as the crucible of social identity formation: A glimpse at the foundations of social identities for collective action
  
• Taking a Closer Look at Group Identity The Link between Theory and Measurement of Group Consciousness and Linked Fate
  
• Competition of a Different Flavor How a Strategic Group Identity Shapes Competition and Cooperation

I guess I just don't get why people have to be recognized so much. When I think of inventions, I don't care what race they are, I either like or dislike the invention, period. When we studied history in school, yes, they may have been white people in the books, but I learned what they did and who they were, not because they were white, their race never was a factor in my mind.

I don't want to dismiss your remarks, but I also know that properly responding to them (at least based on what I know) is well beyond the scope of what I'm willing to undertake here. The best I can do is suggest you consider your remarks just above in the contextual themes found in the following documents:

• Talking Productively About Race in the Colorblind Era
  
• "I Did Not Get That Job Because of a Black Man...": The Story Lines and Testimonies of ColorBlind Racism
  
• The Colorblind Ideal in a Race-Conscious Reality: The Case for a New Legal Ideal for Race Relations

I guess I just don't get why people have to be recognized so much.

• Recognition -- This is an excellent document for obtaining a good layman's understanding.
• What Drives Our Need For Approval?
  
• The Psychology of Change: Self-Affirmation and Social Psychological Intervention
  
• Self-Affirmation Theory
• Non-financial recognition -- This is recognition theory applied to work environments, but the principles are about the same for most people in a general societal setting.

I think everyone needs affirmation. What varies among individuals is from whom they seek or will accept it.

I would think people would feel better about being recognized for their achievements rather than what they did because of their race. If someone does something great, good for them, they should be proud of it, but not because they are a white, black, etc. person.

Well, now I understand your earlier comment.

 

[Toronado3800]

I believe that you don't or haven't. Others, huge quantities of them, do and they do while just driving around.

• Brandon, FL
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The Virginia Flaggers: Va Flaggers Highway Memorial Battle Flags Update
  • Route 60 around Lexington
    
    
    
• Mississippi state flag
  
  
  
  
• Roanoke, VA
  
  
  
  
• I-95, one of the busiest highways in the whole of the U.S., sightings of Confederate flags
  • Fayetteville, NC -- This flag could be seen while driving on I-95,
    
    
    
    
  • Fredericksburg, VA
    
    
    
    
    
    
  • Stafford, VA
    
    
    
    
  • Prince George County, VA -- Confederate flag erected alongside U.S. 301 is also visible to drivers on I-95 because it flies on an 80 foot flagpole. The flag itself is 20x20 feet.
    
    
    
• Waldron, Ark.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Perhaps you might sometimes allow someone else drive so you can safely avert your eyes away from the road and the traffic on it and see the flora, fauna, and among other things, Confederate flags flying?

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.View attachment 150224

.

It is not the norm...

I hope you're right. I suspect you are right to the extent that fewer than 50%+1 of Southerners display Confederate flag images/objects. That said, my experience doesn't suggest that it's so far afield from "the norm" -- I'd say a large plurality of Southerners display Confederate imagery -- that one won't readily come by individuals and organizations displaying the Confederate flag.

For example, I've yet to take a drive into or in the South and not at least once see a Confederate flag somewhere -- flying at someone's house/yard or on a bumper or other place on a vehicle are the most common places I see them. For me, that's nearly 60 years of driving in and around the south for one-off trips -- business, vacation, or visit family -- to come 2017 still have not have had so much as one trip were I saw not one Confederate flag. Contrast that with D.C., where I live and the Cape Cod area where I have a summer home. I go weeks and months without ever seeing a Confederate flag or even other Confederate-ish imagery.

(And, no, I'm not including souvenir businesses' merchandise on offer. I'm referring to merely going about my business and lo and behold there appears before me a Confederate flag.)

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

Be that as it may, your initial claim was that one does not "[in the South], see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy." However many Confederate flags one observes in the North has nothing to do with that.

It is not the norm, you can find Confederate flag in the North too Pleasantville, Iowa.

I don't know what is the norm re: the incidence/probability of observing a Confederate flag in the South. Some of what I know:

• 2015 News story about sales of Confederate flag items:
  • "Somebody in Rhode Island ordered in 50 Confederate (lapel) pins," said Kerry McCoy, owner of Flag and Banner in Little Rock, Arkansas. The order came in on Monday, when Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol.
    
  • Freddie Rich, owner of Rebel Store in North Carolina, said his sales of Confederate items is "unbelievable right now. This is something I never envisioned." Rich said he shipped out 200 Confederate flags in the last 24 hours, compared to his usual sales of a dozen flags a day.
• 2017 News stories about sales of Confederate flags specifically
  • Belinda Kennedy, owner of Alabama Flag and Banner in Huntsville, Ala., said the company, which sells American flags and manufactures Confederate flags, sold around 12,000 [Confederate] flags last year.
    
  • Who's buying the flags? Hard to say, but according to a 2015 map created by Jody Sieradzki of Dadaviz and shared by The Washington Post, people in Virginia, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina and Texas did more Google Shopping searches for Confederate than American flags.
• 2017 Redneck Games
  
  
  
  
  
  

Aside:

At the end of the day, when I see a Confederate flag willfully displayed by someone -- on a pole, on their ass or lapel, etc. -- what I know is that they cannot be doing so out of patriotism for the United States of America because the simple fact is that the Confederate States of America (CSA) was the nation that used that flag/symbol, and the CSA, not the USA, lost the Civil War. The CSA is no more, yet supposedly American citizens with willful pride display the CSA's imagery.

Insofar as displaying "Stars and Bars" cannot be patriotic toward the USA, folks who display it must necessarily be expressing their affinity for something having to do with the CSA and what it stood for. Some will say it today represents "Southern pride."

What the hell is "Southern pride" such that it is not, as slavery/racism are, inextricably linked to CSA/Confederacy

• is distinguished from the pride of people hailing from or living in any other region of the U.S. and that is unique to the South?
• necessitates associating it with the flag of the CSA/Confederacy?

New Englanders are proud to be New Englanders. Ditto folks form other regions of the country. You what flags/symbols they use? I don't really know. I see bumper stickers about crabs and lovers in MD and VA. I see flags depicting patriots in New England.

The South today isn’t what it was in the 1860s -- predominantly poor, rural, isolated. The modern South is the fastest growing region in the US; it is the most populated, nearly doubling the size of the West and Northeast combined with over 117 million residents. The South has a thriving economy, its GDP dwarfing both the Northeast and the West.

There's plenty to be proud of. Why tarnish that pride by conflating it with, or risking that others construe one as doing so, the Confederacy.​

I for one would just like to thank the young ladies and you for posting them.

I have dozens of comments I'd love to make about removing their confederate flags.



On a more serious note, I LIKE this re-branded 80's glam rock song even though it makes repeated references to:

"If you trust your rebel heart, ride it into battle
Don't be afraid, take the road less traveled"

It really isn't enough to offend me. Neither does the General Lee.

Really neither do models of German Panther tanks or ME262's. I'll even play the axis in war games.

There is a limit though. Too many huge confederate flags and you get my opinion about the confederacy being racist traitors.

Too much NAZI worship and you get a mouthful.

Too much love of the free market and I invite you back to 2009.

Some revisionist history on a message board and it makes me type.

Put me in the middle of a bunch of hippies and I talk about the addictive nature of pot.

In person I may be able to explain better.

This is from the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettsyburg, Blue and Gray veteran reunion.

Part of the healing process of the War was to accept the South and it's regional heritage as part of American Heritage.


THe Union veterans who were the ones that paid the price to win the war, accepted that, including the flying of the Confederate Battle Flag by their old foes.



Who today has any moral authority to rescind that act of forgiveness and acceptance?

Me when it comes to preventing a sacrifice by my children to save decency and equality from being necessary.

There is nothing about the flying of the Confederate Flag that would require any sacrifice by your children.


Thus your claim to moral authority greater than that of those that fought to defeat the Confederacy is completely weak.




(Indeed, that act of trying to deny a large segment of the population their right to celebrate their heritage in more likely to lead to trouble.)

Perhaps I will come get you to talk down the "the south will rise again" fellows and this ridiculous talk from the fringe about the nation Texas should be again and all that.

People tell me their true feelings socially and WHILE WORKING all the time. Consider my glass 3/4 empty when it comes to faith in humanity and race relations.

 

[Correll]

I hope you're right. I suspect you are right to the extent that fewer than 50%+1 of Southerners display Confederate flag images/objects. That said, my experience doesn't suggest that it's so far afield from "the norm" -- I'd say a large plurality of Southerners display Confederate imagery -- that one won't readily come by individuals and organizations displaying the Confederate flag.

For example, I've yet to take a drive into or in the South and not at least once see a Confederate flag somewhere -- flying at someone's house/yard or on a bumper or other place on a vehicle are the most common places I see them. For me, that's nearly 60 years of driving in and around the south for one-off trips -- business, vacation, or visit family -- to come 2017 still have not have had so much as one trip were I saw not one Confederate flag. Contrast that with D.C., where I live and the Cape Cod area where I have a summer home. I go weeks and months without ever seeing a Confederate flag or even other Confederate-ish imagery.

(And, no, I'm not including souvenir businesses' merchandise on offer. I'm referring to merely going about my business and lo and behold there appears before me a Confederate flag.)

Be that as it may, your initial claim was that one does not "[in the South], see Confederate flags waving nor any obsession with the Confederacy." However many Confederate flags one observes in the North has nothing to do with that.

I don't know what is the norm re: the incidence/probability of observing a Confederate flag in the South. Some of what I know:

• 2015 News story about sales of Confederate flag items:
  • "Somebody in Rhode Island ordered in 50 Confederate (lapel) pins," said Kerry McCoy, owner of Flag and Banner in Little Rock, Arkansas. The order came in on Monday, when Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol.
    
  • Freddie Rich, owner of Rebel Store in North Carolina, said his sales of Confederate items is "unbelievable right now. This is something I never envisioned." Rich said he shipped out 200 Confederate flags in the last 24 hours, compared to his usual sales of a dozen flags a day.
• 2017 News stories about sales of Confederate flags specifically
  • Belinda Kennedy, owner of Alabama Flag and Banner in Huntsville, Ala., said the company, which sells American flags and manufactures Confederate flags, sold around 12,000 [Confederate] flags last year.
    
  • Who's buying the flags? Hard to say, but according to a 2015 map created by Jody Sieradzki of Dadaviz and shared by The Washington Post, people in Virginia, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina and Texas did more Google Shopping searches for Confederate than American flags.
• 2017 Redneck Games
  
  
  
  
  
  

Aside:

At the end of the day, when I see a Confederate flag willfully displayed by someone -- on a pole, on their ass or lapel, etc. -- what I know is that they cannot be doing so out of patriotism for the United States of America because the simple fact is that the Confederate States of America (CSA) was the nation that used that flag/symbol, and the CSA, not the USA, lost the Civil War. The CSA is no more, yet supposedly American citizens with willful pride display the CSA's imagery.

Insofar as displaying "Stars and Bars" cannot be patriotic toward the USA, folks who display it must necessarily be expressing their affinity for something having to do with the CSA and what it stood for. Some will say it today represents "Southern pride."

What the hell is "Southern pride" such that it is not, as slavery/racism are, inextricably linked to CSA/Confederacy

• is distinguished from the pride of people hailing from or living in any other region of the U.S. and that is unique to the South?
• necessitates associating it with the flag of the CSA/Confederacy?

New Englanders are proud to be New Englanders. Ditto folks form other regions of the country. You what flags/symbols they use? I don't really know. I see bumper stickers about crabs and lovers in MD and VA. I see flags depicting patriots in New England.

The South today isn’t what it was in the 1860s -- predominantly poor, rural, isolated. The modern South is the fastest growing region in the US; it is the most populated, nearly doubling the size of the West and Northeast combined with over 117 million residents. The South has a thriving economy, its GDP dwarfing both the Northeast and the West.

There's plenty to be proud of. Why tarnish that pride by conflating it with, or risking that others construe one as doing so, the Confederacy.​

I for one would just like to thank the young ladies and you for posting them.

I have dozens of comments I'd love to make about removing their confederate flags.



On a more serious note, I LIKE this re-branded 80's glam rock song even though it makes repeated references to:

"If you trust your rebel heart, ride it into battle
Don't be afraid, take the road less traveled"

It really isn't enough to offend me. Neither does the General Lee.

Really neither do models of German Panther tanks or ME262's. I'll even play the axis in war games.

There is a limit though. Too many huge confederate flags and you get my opinion about the confederacy being racist traitors.

Too much NAZI worship and you get a mouthful.

Too much love of the free market and I invite you back to 2009.

Some revisionist history on a message board and it makes me type.

Put me in the middle of a bunch of hippies and I talk about the addictive nature of pot.

In person I may be able to explain better.

This is from the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettsyburg, Blue and Gray veteran reunion.

Part of the healing process of the War was to accept the South and it's regional heritage as part of American Heritage.


THe Union veterans who were the ones that paid the price to win the war, accepted that, including the flying of the Confederate Battle Flag by their old foes.



Who today has any moral authority to rescind that act of forgiveness and acceptance?

Me when it comes to preventing a sacrifice by my children to save decency and equality from being necessary.

There is nothing about the flying of the Confederate Flag that would require any sacrifice by your children.


Thus your claim to moral authority greater than that of those that fought to defeat the Confederacy is completely weak.




(Indeed, that act of trying to deny a large segment of the population their right to celebrate their heritage in more likely to lead to trouble.)

Perhaps I will come get you to talk down the "the south will rise again" fellows and this ridiculous talk from the fringe about the nation Texas should be again and all that.

People tell me their true feelings socially and WHILE WORKING all the time. Consider my glass 3/4 empty when it comes to faith in humanity and race relations.

Glad to.

 

[JimBowie1958]

D.C. even has a pair of what I call "penis statues." I don't know much about them, but if you're walking on Mass. Ave, you'll see them. Driving, however, one probably won't notice them. I suspect that's similar to what you have in mind when say you disregard Confederate flags.

Always thought that those were tributes to John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

They are not?

"I Did Not Get That Job Because of a Black Man...": The Story Lines and Testimonies of ColorBlind Racism

"Colorblind Racism"?

Are you insane?

roflmao

 

[usmbguest5318]

D.C. even has a pair of what I call "penis statues." I don't know much about them, but if you're walking on Mass. Ave, you'll see them. Driving, however, one probably won't notice them. I suspect that's similar to what you have in mind when say you disregard Confederate flags.

Always thought that those were tributes to John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

They are not?

"I Did Not Get That Job Because of a Black Man...": The Story Lines and Testimonies of ColorBlind Racism

"Colorblind Racism"?

Are you insane?

roflmao

Always thought that those were tributes to John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

They are not?

ROTFL