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