South Carolina considering removing Confederate flag

[ManaMan]

I guess it takes a white-supremacist terrorist attack to soil the "stars and bars" for these southern conservatives but hey, better late than never?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/ ... UY20150623

[Shrinweck]

Mississippi is also due to look at having the ACTUAL Confederate flag removed from their actual state flag. Here's hoping that goes well, too.

[ManaMan]

Anything happening in Georgia? It looks like the state flag only recently (2001) had the confederate flag removed from it. I'd imagine that Atlanta proper isn't as much into the confederate "heritage" B.S., it's a pretty modern place. I know that even in Missouri & Southern Illinois where I used to live you'd see quite a few confederate flags on trucks. I've even seen a few up here in Wisconsin(!) where I now reside.

[Replay]

Pleasantly surprised to see support here for ending the hate.

I think it's a complex issue, however. I despise the fucking thing and everything it stands for, but I worry about the precedent being set for the government to decide what is and is not protected free speech - though I'm happy to see its removal being discussed on a voluntary basis. (And don't get me wrong, I cannot stand the Confederate flag, and will and have freely exercised my own right to free speech at length to tell people who fly it exactly what I think about it and people who fly it.)

To me, the best outcome would be getting the symbol shamed and taken down everywhere without setting a precedent that it be taken down by legal force.

If it ends up being legally mandated that it be taken down, you end up with a situation where it will be illegal to display the Confederate flag, and yet still legal to pass out flyers with Nazi symbology in America (this has actually happened - if anyone wonders why neo-Nazi groups are so prevalent to this day, due to the First Amendment you cannot actually imprison someone passing out the stuff unless it also contains exhortations to commit violence or break the law). That would cause certain sectors of the South to radicalize even beyond where they are now.

I personally think the right way to approach this is that everyone who opposes it registers vocal support for taking it down voluntarily and shaming the Hell out of people who continue to ignore the legacy of slavery it stood for, and boycotting companies that continue to make Confederate flag-themed products if necessary.

I also think it's more important to attack the hate behind it than I think it is to go after the symbol itself - not saying taking down against the Confederate flag isn't worthwhile, but is taking it down going to actually stop people like this? This is the worst example of some letters sent recently to the Huffington Post and some of their black columnists. Attacking some of the generational ignorance and poverty that produces people like this is important too. If someone had taken this person in hand as a child before he grew up to be an impoverished, racist Southern-conservative asshole, and taught him that black lives matter, Julia Craven wouldn't have had to get this letter.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/2 ... 40334.html

[ManaMan]

I think it's a complex issue, however. I despise the fucking thing and everything it stands for, but I worry about the precedent being set for the government to decide what is and is not protected free speech - though I'm happy to see its removal being discussed on a voluntary basis. (And don't get me wrong, I cannot stand the Confederate flag, and will and have freely exercised my own right to free speech at length to tell people who fly it exactly what I think about it and people who fly it.)

I don't think that taking away government endorsement of something is the same as squashing free speech. We're not talking about making it illegal to fly the flag but removing state-sponsored memorials that fly the flag, removing it from state flags, removing it from state issued license plates, etc.

[Replay]

True, a valid point. It's all in how the response is drafted.

[Shrinweck]

Anything happening in Georgia? It looks like the state flag only recently (2001) had the confederate flag removed from it. I'd imagine that Atlanta proper isn't as much into the confederate "heritage" B.S., it's a pretty modern place. I know that even in Missouri & Southern Illinois where I used to live you'd see quite a few confederate flags on trucks. I've even seen a few up here in Wisconsin(!) where I now reside.

The Sons of the Confederacy got a license plate with the flag on it, but I never see them in the city and don't venture outside of the city border/its suburbs/immediately neighboring cities very often by car these days (last time was like 4-5 years ago). There's only one actual "Son of the Confederacy" in Georgia these days and a direct quote from him is "Is that something special?" which is to say, he doesn't give a flying fuck.

It's unfortunate that a lot of people boil down the Civil War to Abolitionists versus Slave-holders, since it just wasn't the case, but the Confederate symbols have been co-opted by white supremacists since then and flying the flag above government installations is distasteful at the best of times, but basically after an attack like this it's like spitting into someone's face.

Amazon and Walmart getting rid of memorabilia with the Confederate flag on it is also a step in the right direction.

[Replay]

The Civil War itself was incredibly complex and the North indeed had a whole lot of labor rights abuses going on, just as the South did, and overreach of Federal behavior - which need to be talked about to heal the rift between the South and the rest of the nation.

I do feel that discussion should not change the fact that the Confederate flag itself stood part and parcel with the right to keep African-Americans as property. That's kinda why the KKK set loves it, and has co-opted it.

[Replay]

After a LOT of talks with Southerners on the issue I really feel the issue is this:

The Confederate flag does stand for two things in practicality.

One is a Southern identity that Southerners feel deep pain over losing.

The other is a terrible Confederate set of law that absolutely stood for slaveholding and racism.

To me it seems an identity issue. There is a LOT of hurt in the South - poverty is the worst in America there, and I feel for the poor - and the identity crisis caused by the loss of the Civil War really feels to me like a rift that has never healed. I would love to see someone design a new Southern flag minus the infamous saltire (x-cross) that is so heavily identified with Confederate ideology...

[Replay]

Called it: Amazon has banned Confederate memorabilia but Nazi memorabilia is still available for purchase on the site.

Wonder how long it'll be before Bezos backpedals on THAT one. I wonder exactly how much of it he's sold over the years, maybe without even knowing it. Shame on him.

[Replay]

More of the kind of reactionary stupidity I was worried about - Apple is apparently banning just about every Civil War-related title on the Apple Store for "displaying the Confederate flag".

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/06/25/app ... rate-flag/

I wonder if this is just corporate fear...or if people really can't tell the difference between displaying a symbol in a historical context and FLYING IT OVER THE FUCKING CAPITOL BUILDING. The second thought really scares me. You can't just pretend it never existed. How is that supposed to teach anyone about the horrors of slavery?

Megacorps are like a damned beast without a brain sometimes. It and all it represents are part of America's overall historical tapestry. As a part of the tapestry it is frequently part of a red, white, blue, and black scene of horror to scar the mind...but you could say the same thing about most of our American symbology in the long run, and those who forget or redact history in its entirety are absolutely doomed to repeat it.

[Replay]

It's not even, like, little fringe apps. It's shit like Ultimate General: Gettysburg and Civil War: 1862 and 1863.

These are AAA wargame titles that have undoubtedly had teams of corporate heads scrubbing them ALREADY for anything too controversial.

Get the popcorn.

If I were these studios, and I were looking at Apple sitting on a multi-hundred-billion-dollar war chest that just kicked me out of its restaurant and refused to serve me lunch, with the First Amendment sitting right next to me and common sense on my side, I'd lawyer up faster than a USA network weekend TV marathon.

[ManaMan]

[Julius Seeker]

That was nice. There's a huge amount of truth to it. The tragedy of these deaths has had a massive impact, it's bringing about social change for the better of American society.

[ManaMan]

South Carolina Republican State Rep Jenny Horne (descendent of Confederate president Jefferson Davis) gives a fiery speech to push for removing the flag before the vote. Looks like she helped. Both the SC House and Senate have now voted to remove it and Gov. Nikki Haley says she'll sign the bill.