I’ve seen this twice today … once in my inbox in an email from Ellen, and once on Twitter. It is moving and it is every bit as true today as it was when Mr. Douglass delivered the speech in Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852.
Tag Archives: confederate flag
Inhumanity
I know the majority of people in this … or any nation … are decent human beings who care about the planet, wildlife, and their fellow humans. At least … I hope that’s still the case. But those ‘bad apples’ sure do stink and they seem to be everywhere you look! The latest example that slapped me across the face this morning was this one …
This woman was part of a counter-protest during a Black Lives Matter event in Branson, Missouri, on Sunday. Okay, the confederate flag is offensive enough, but we’re used to the fools waving those things around. And the maga hat … it doesn’t even offend anymore … it is a joke. It was what she screeched at the Black Lives Matter protestors that caused my jaw to drop …
“I will teach my grandkids to hate you all!”
Then she got to her feet with her Confederate flag and screamed, “suck on this.” What sort of human being does this? What is our society turning into? I think some people in this nation have taken their 1st Amendment ‘rights’ just a bit too far! Frankly, if I had been there, I likely would have lit fire to her damn rebel flag. Rebellion is one thing … hate is quite another.
So, this woman will teach her grandchildren to hate black people. Just when we think we’re making progress, that perhaps we can finally begin to end racism in this country, we have people teaching the youngest among us to hate … to hate only because of the colour of another’s skin. How, then, can we ever end racism? It is being passed down from one generation to the next by narrow-minded, arrogant, ignorant people.
On Sunday, days after NASCAR announced the banning of the confederate flag at their events, a noose was found in Bubba Wallace’s garage stall at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama. Wallace is the only full-time black NASCAR driver and a supporter of Black Lives Matter. A noose. The symbol of lynchings. Why? Because his skin is black, because some of those southern ‘good ol’ boys’ are angry at the banning of their symbol of slavery, the confederate flag.
I sit here looking out my window, watching the neighbor’s two dogs playing in the yard. One is chestnut brown, the other dappled grey, and yet … they are equal. They have fun together, they live together, share the same food dishes, and snif each other’s butts with never a care for the colour of their fur. Not long ago, I saw a story of a dog who raised a kitten … not only was their fur a different colour, but they were of two different species … yet it did not matter to them. Humans believe that they are the highest of all species, that their opposable thumbs and larger brains make them somehow superior. I don’t think so.
Babies are not born hating. Go visit a playground … notice that all the children play together … black, brown, white … it doesn’t matter to them. But as they grow into adults, they are either taught that all people are equal and should be judged only on behaviour, not skin colour, not gender, not who their ancestors were, or else they are taught to hate. They are taught to hate those perceived as “other”, just as that grandmother in Branson is teaching her grandchildren. And 20 years from now, one of her grandchildren may become that cop who shoots and kills an unarmed black man … just because he can.
Where does it end, folks? In the 1960s, I thought it was ending. It wasn’t, it only became unpopular to express bigoted viewpoints, so people kept their opinions largely to themselves, else aired them only among those who they knew shared their views. And in the past few weeks, since the brutal murder of George Floyd, with Civil War monuments coming down, protests gaining momentum, and calls for major changes in law enforcement, I once again thought that perhaps we were making some progress. And perhaps some of us are, but as long as there are people who value their icons of slavery, who believe that people of colour are somehow inferior, we’re not going to end racism. I think, well … the older generation will die out and the young people today are smarter, more compassionate. But … not if they’re taught to hate.
Our friend Keith wrote a post a week or so ago titled, “Bad Apples Will Spoil the Bunch”. How many ‘bad apples’ like the grandmother in Branson, like the person who put the noose in Bubba Wallace’s garage stall, are there among us? How many more will they infect with their hideous disease? Racism is a disease far more lethal than the coronavirus, for it is passed down from one generation to the next, and there will never be a vaccine.
A New Batch Of Snarky Snippets … Grrrrr
There are a number of relatively minor things that have cropped up in the last couple of days with seemingly the sole purpose of stirring my ire. So … you know what that means … it must be time for some snarky snippets, yes?
Let’s start with Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and some speculate next vice-presidential running mate for Trump in 2020. As governor, I had a great deal of respect for Ms. Haley. As ambassador, I had less, for she fell in line with Trump’s ideology, if he can be said to actually have one. She became one of his sycophants, and I lost much of my respect for her.
So, why is she raising my hackles today? Well … last Friday she was being interviewed in a podcast on conservative Glenn Beck’s radio program. One segment of the podcast was about Dylan Roof who, in June 2015, opened fire in an African-American church, killing nine people. Roof was an avowed white supremacist who had posted pictures of himself posing with the Confederate flag prior to his attack.
Ms. Haley said …
“Here is this guy who comes out with his manifesto, holding the Confederate flag and had just hijacked everything that people thought of. We don’t have hateful people in South Carolina. There’s always the small minority who are always going to be there, but people saw it as service, sacrifice and heritage. But once he did that, there was no way to overcome it.”
Let’s call a spade a bloody shovel here. The Confederate flag never stood for “service, sacrifice and heritage”. It has always stood for a lifestyle that included slavery, the ownership of other human beings simply because of the colour of their skin. Period.
Ms. Haley’s argument was that the Confederate flag was noble until Dylan Roof made it appear to represent white supremacy. IT DOES represent white supremacy, fool! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, shot back on Twitter …
“Really, Nikki?! The Confederate Flag represented ‘service, sacrifice and heritage’? To whom? The black people who were terrorized & lynched in its name? You said it should never have been there. Roof didn’t hijack the meaning of that flag, he inherited it.”
Racism, folks … it’s alive and well in the United States of America.
Seema Verma has flown beneath my radar since she was appointed by Trump, then confirmed by the Senate in March 2017 to the position of Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). This is the agency that oversees Medicare, Medicaid, and the insurance markets.
Now, Ms. Verma came into the job with some conflicts of interest, and had the Senate done its job, she likely would not have passed muster. She is the founder and previous CEO of SVC Inc., a health policy consulting firm, which was acquired by Health Management Associates (HMA) just prior to Verma’s nomination to head CMS.
One of her first actions was to send a letter to the nation’s governors urging them to impose insurance premiums for Medicaid, charge Medicaid recipients for emergency room visits, and encourage recipients to get jobs or job training. In her role as CMS administrator, Verma spent more than $2 million of taxpayer funds on Republican-connected communications consultants and other expenses to boost her visibility and public image. She has made numerous speeches and attacks against the concept of Medicare-for-All … enough so that she is now the defendant in a lawsuit claiming she is in violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal officials engaging in political activity.
But what placed her on my radar was a trip she took back in August. She claims that jewelry, clothing and other possessions, including a $5,900 Ivanka Trump-brand pendant (that she owned one speaks volumes about her character, in my book) were stolen from her luggage during that business-related trip. Okay, fine … if that were me or you, we would file a claim against the airline and maybe, if we were lucky, get reimbursed for some small portion of it.
But, Ms. Verma decided that We the Taxpayers ought to reimburse her for what she claims was the value of her ‘loss’. To the tune of $47,000!!! More than most of us make in a bloomin’ year! And what sort of a numptie (been listening to my Brit friends too long) takes things of that value on a business trip anyway? And why is it my fault or yours? And why should we pay for her ignorance??? Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Her claim included $43,065 for about two dozen pieces of jewelry, based off an appraisal she’d received from a jeweler about three weeks after the theft. Who takes 24 pieces of jewelry on a business trip, then fails to insure them? And the claim further included $2,000 to cover the cost of her stolen clothes, a $325 claim for moisturizer and a $349 claim for noise-cancelling headphones. My entire wardrobe does not consist of $2,000 worth of clothing. My moisturizer costs $4.99, and my headphones are Skullcandy, $29.99 at Best Buy! Just one more alligator in the huge swamp that Trump built.
Not to worry, though, for the federal health department that oversees her agency decided to reimburse her for only $2,852.40 of OUR money.
Owen Shroyer … ever heard of him before? Neither had I. He’s a host on Alex Jones’ Infowars program, which I thought had long since met its timely demise since being banned from Apple, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Apparently, they still exist somewhere on the fringes.
It would seem that there is no screening process for entrance to the impeachment proceedings, for Mr. Shroyer managed to get in yesterday. Moments after Representative Jerry Nadler, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, opened the hearing, Shroyer rose from his seat in the packed hearing room and shouted …
“Jerry Nadler and the Democrat Party are committing treason against this country! Trump is innocent!”
Police quickly removed him from the room, during which time he was livestreaming to his personal Twitter account and yelling at the top of his lungs …
“So I’m being arrested right now for disrupting Congress. I’m a criminal for my First Amendment rights.”
Is there any doubt in anybody’s mind that Alex Jones was behind this, that it was naught more than a publicity stunt? At what cost?
Oh, and by the way, Mr. Shroyer actually called for President Barack Obama to be lynched just this past June …
“Barack Obama is a treasonous…he belongs in jail. He belongs in Guantanamo Bay. I mean look, I’m not saying this should happen but Barack Obama, you know, find the tallest tree and a rope.”
All my life I have been a proponent for 1st Amendment rights to free speech, but in the past year, maybe two, I have begun to re-think it. It has been abused so much, by so many unsavouries such as Mr. Shroyer, Mr. Jones, Mr. Carlson and a few thousand others, that I’m coming to believe there must be limits. As our friend Roger said to me the other evening, “Free speech is not a right; it is something which has to be earned.” I’m not so sure the people of this nation have earned it. Rather a damn shame for the rest of us who use our rights responsibly, don’t you think?
I had one more, but … I shall stop here and give you a chance to breathe. Make America great again, says Mr. Trump? I think not … I think he has placed the United States in the worst light it has been in in all of its 232 years.
Stupid Remark of the Day …
When Ms. Nikki Haley was governor of South Carolina, I had some admiration for her, based on what little I knew of her. While Ms. Haley had not, in the past, been supportive of removing the Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds, after the Charleston church shooting where Dylan Roof murdered nine African-Americans, Haley changed her stance with good grace …
“These grounds [the State Capital] are a place that everybody should feel a part of. What I realized now more than ever is people were driving by and felt hurt and pain. No one should feel pain. There is a place for that flag. It’s not in a place that represents all people in South Carolina.”
She also refused to support anti-LGBT legislation that would have required transgender individuals to use restrooms based on biological sex instead of gender identity …
“These are not instances… Y’all haven’t reported on anything. I haven’t heard anything that’s come to my office. So when I look at South Carolina, we look at our situations, we’re not hearing of anybody’s religious liberties that are being violated, and we’re, again, not hearing any citizens that feel like they are being violated in terms of freedoms.”
She called for Donald Trump to release his tax returns, and in turn was the victim of Trump’s verbal assault.
And that was most of what I knew of Haley, and I liked what I saw. However, when Trump named her to the position of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, I had grave concerns. First, she had no experience in foreign policy and her limited experience, I felt, would ensure that she was in far over her head. But, Donnie didn’t listen to me, so there she sits.
What respect I once had for Nikki Haley has long since evaporated, for a number of reasons, the main one being that once named as Ambassador, she quickly lost her values and became just another of Trump’s lap dogs, doing the tricks he trained her to do. But this week, she said something so unconscionable, so stupid and ludicrous, that I have to call her on it.
In 2016, 15,000 Syrian refugees were admitted to the U.S. In 2017, that number dropped to 3,000. And by the end of the first quarter of 2018, fewer than 12. Given Trump’s xenophobic, Islamaphobic immigration policies, is it any wonder that they are afraid to come to this country? But no, says Haley, the reason they have stopped coming is because they would rather stay in Syria. I want to let out a primal scream on this one, but I am trying to remain calm, to use my words rather than shred my vocal chords.
Dear Ms. Haley,
I have had the honour and pleasure to live next door to a family of Syrian refugees – father, mother, and three sons – since December 2014. Normally, I would expect a person in your position to have a greater understanding than I on this topic, but since you obviously do not have any understanding, please allow me to enlighten you.
This family spent years taking turns staying up all night and watching … watching for soldiers, listening for gunshots, listening for planes overhead so that whichever adult was on ‘watch duty’ that night could awaken the others, and they could herd the children to the nearest place of safety. They saw friends and family killed. They had no electricity much of the time, no refrigeration ever. They came to this country, after a long wait, because they wanted to give their boys a life free of bombs, soldiers, chemical attacks, and fear … always fear. They wanted a better life for their children, just as we all do.
Yes, they miss Syria, miss their homeland, their friends, their families. And no, given different circumstances, they would likely not have chosen to come to the U.S. where they are taunted and teased for their dress, their language and their religion. But make no mistake, they did come here seeking a safe haven, and others would as well … certainly more than a dozen in three months. But we no longer welcome them. We have a cruel man leading the nation who has promoted hatred of immigrants, who has encouraged violence against refugees, so they are now nearly as afraid to come here as they are to remain in Syria.
“They want to stay as close to Syria as they can so that when, God willing, this fighting stops and when there is finally stability and peace in that area, they want to go rejoin their family members. They want to go back to what they remember.”
Ms. Haley … under what circumstances do you actually see the fighting in Syria stopping? Do you truly believe there will ever, in your lifetime, be peace in Syria? Because if you believe that, you have just proven my initial conclusion, that you are highly unqualified for your position. Peace in Syria in the next 50 years is about as likely as me sprouting wings and flying.
No, Ms. Haley, Syrians have not stopped coming to the U.S. because they prefer to stay in Syria and live in fear day-after-day. Syrians have stopped coming here because the ‘man’ sitting in the Oval Office, your boss, has made the U.S. a living hell for Middle Eastern immigrants. We should be ashamed, and the majority of us, myself included, are.
My neighbors, by the way, are among the kindest people I have ever known. They are constantly making special treats for us, I am free to use their car any time I need to, we share meals on holidays, and when I had my eye surgery, they brought me a bouquet of flowers. They are as worthy as anybody I know to live in this country, and I am proud to call them ‘friend’.
As for you, Ms. Ambassador, I suggest you seek advice from some former State Department officials who may be able to help you understand the Middle East before you open your mouth again.
Sincerely …
That confederate thing was about slavery
More than once I have opined that we are sliding backward in the area of Civil Rights, that we are losing ground in the fight for equal rights for all. Lately we have seen a rise in white supremacy, violent protests against moving Civil War statues, and other disturbing trends. It has been said that the Civil War was not about slavery. Our friend Keith wrote an excellent post, and whichever side of this argument you stand on, I think his post and the comments at the end will give you some food for thought. Please take a few moments to read this excellent post and add your two cents in the comment section if you feel so inclined. Thank you, Keith, for sharing this and for permission, implied, to share!
Being raised in the South, I was taught the Civil War was more about states’ rights and northern aggression rather than slavery. I saw a recent poll that showed 48% people believed that states’ rights was the principal reason for the war and only 38% said it was about slavery. This recasting of history by groups promoting white supremacy or merely teaching a white-washed message is influencing too many people. To be frank, of course, it was about slavery.
Why do I say that? One needs only to look at the formal declarations of the states who seceded from the United States of America (see the third paragraph from Texas’ declaration below*). In those documents, the words to preserve the right to own slaves (or something similar) can be consistently found. The states’ rights argument was used in support of the need to perpetuate slave ownership. If people think otherwise, let…
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A Scene Out Of The Past …
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” – Martin Luther King
Last weekend, a protest rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, proved once again that racism is alive and well in the U.S. In fact, I am going to go so far as to say that in some pockets in the U.S., bigotry in its many forms is even higher now than it was during the Civil Rights Era.
What led to Saturday’s rally started back in 2015, after white supremacist Dylan Roof shot and killed nine black parishioners in a Charleston, South Carolina, church. After the shooting, South Carolina lawmakers voted to remove the Confederate flag from statehouse grounds. Alabama confronted the issue by taking down Confederate flags from the state Capitol, while other states ended Confederate specialty license plates. At least 60 publicly funded symbols of the Confederacy have been removed or renamed since the mass shooting in Charleston, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The removal of the monuments is not without critics who claim that the emblems and landmarks represent history and heritage, and that efforts to remove them is political correctness run amuck. Most, however, say the monuments are painful, and pay homage to slavery and racial injustice. Some states in the south are drafting state laws that would bar local governments from removing any more Confederate monuments and symbols. Other states, notably Tennessee and North Carolina already have such laws on the books.
Richard Spencer
In February, the Charlottesville City Council voted to remove a statue of Confederate Robert E. Lee astride his horse that stands in a local municipal park which is also named after Lee. Last Saturday, 15 May, white supremacist Richard Spencer, president of the National Policy Institute, a white nationalist organization, led a group of more than a hundred people protesting the removal of the statue. The protestors carried lit torches and chanted, “You will not replace us”, “Russia is our friend” and the far-right nationalist slogan “blood and soil”. “Blood and soil”, for those who may not be aware, refers to an ideology that focuses on ethnicity based society. The expression has its roots in Nazi Germany. The torches were, to many, reminiscent of the days of the Ku Klux Klan when they marched, carrying torches which they used to set fire to crosses, homes, and businesses owned by blacks.
Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer released the following statement:
“This event involving torches at night in Lee Park was either profoundly ignorant or was designed to instill fear in our minority populations in a way that harkens back to the days of the KKK.”
Personally, I believe it was both ignorant and was designed to instill fear. But more important, it is unacceptable that even a single person in this nation believe the ideology, if it can be called such, of the white supremacist groups led primarily by Richard Spencer, along with Steve Bannon and his band of thugs known as the ‘alt-right’. The Charlottesville rally was only the most recent in a series of events and speeches this spring — from Berkeley, California, to Auburn, Alabama, to New Orleans and elsewhere — where the alt-right forces, including Spencer, have attempted to galvanize their power on the political stage, sometimes using “free speech” as a platform, to lure and expose young people to white nationalist beliefs and show support for President Trump.
The white supremacists, particularly the alt-right, embrace preservation of Western civilization, opposing immigration and always talking about “white identity” — a calling card for David Duke and many hardcore racists. It behooves us to realize and remember that these people do NOT represent the majority of Americans. But they are loud, they are vocal, and they are spreading the ideals of hatred toward anybody who does not look, act, and think as they do. Most of them claim to be “Christians”, yet I find that to be an oxymoron, since from what I am given to understand, Christianity teaches love and tolerance for ALL people, not just those whose skin is pale.
The danger, as I see it, is that we seem to be headed toward a mentality similar to that of Nazi Germany where Hitler embraced the “Aryan race”. Until the past year or so, I always thought we were better than this. And in fairness, most of us are, but the numbers of those who, with supreme arrogance, believe themselves to be better than others, seem to be increasing, and we need to speak out against it at every opportunity.
Armed White Supremacists Protest the NAACP in Houston: Video
The following is a post from fellow-blogger Rob Goldstein. It sends a timely and relevant message about the culture of fear and hate that exists in ever-increasing amounts in our culture today, as a result, primarily, of the rhetoric of one man and his minions. This is an important post, very short, but very relevant. I hope that you will take a few minutes to read the post and leave a comment for Rob to share your thoughts with him.
Symbols of Hate
Most of my blog posts I also post on my Facebook account, where one or two friends actually read them, like & occasionally comment, most often with a ‘smh’. Yesterday, on a whim, I posted this picture of our cat, named Orange, sleeping in the fruit bowl along with a couple of bananas and apples. If as many of my friends read my blog as liked that damn cat picture, I could be famous! Okay, slight exaggeration, but wihin minutes I had some 13 likes, a couple of comments. I post my blog to Facebook and I can count on 1 like and one comment that goes “smh”, Facebook shorthand for “shaking my head.” My granddaughter has a theory that people do not like conflict and do like cute animals. I suppose she is right, but I do what I do, because it is what I believe in. I believe in speaking out against injustices. I believe that, just as I take my car to a mechanic when it does not work, because he knows cars far better than I do, I pursued an education for years, not just to dust off my degrees every week, but to use my knowledge and education to try to do something good. I mention this only because I was considering it as I started this post and was considering whether I should change the nature of my writing. I realize that I cannot change the nature of my writing any more than I can change my age or eye colour … it is part of who I am.
A friend recently shared with me the fact that it is illegal to give a Nazi salute in Germany and Austria. Of course, I had to know more. Turns out, in Germany you face up to six months in prison for this offense, and the law is enforced. It is also against the law to offer the Nazi salute in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, though the penalty is more likely to be a fine than jail time. And there are also lesser restrictions in Switzerland and Sweden. Why? Because these nations are not proud of the part of their heritage that stems from Nazi Germany’s reign of terror, from the Holocaust. It is also illegal in many countries to display Nazi symbols. It is, in my opinion, a very appropriate viewpoint. Each of these nations have many things in their heritage to be proud of … the Nazi reign is not one of them.
Which brings me to the thoughts of the symbols of our own heritage that we can take no pride, only shame in, the KKK and also the Confederate flag. There has, within the past year, been some rather heated discussion about the Confederate flag, what it represents, and whether it should be allowed to fly in such venues as public and government buildings in the south.
First, the KKK. The KKK represents one thing and one thing only: racism. Their current stated purpose is “Keep America American”, and they support white supremacy, white nationalism and are against immigration. They call for the ‘purification’ of society. They are the scourge of the United States dating back to the 1860s. The Klan is as much a pimple on the ass of American society as Nazi symbols are on German society. So why are they protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution? Several attempts have been made in the last 20 years to have the Klan declared a terrorist organization, but thus far none have been successful. Why? The Klan believes that the only true Americans are those that hail from ‘pure’ Anglo-Saxon ancestry, in which case most of us, including this writer, would fail their test. Why is the Klan allowed to exist in 41 of the 50 states in the U.S.? I actually found a recruitment flyer on my windshield when I came out of the grocery store one day. Though the number of KKK members has declined from their heyday in the 1920’s, there are still some 5,000-8,000 members in the U.S.
The Confederate flag is nothing more than a piece of cloth. Yet in reality it stands for much more. It is a symbol of racism in this nation just as much as the swastika is a symbol of Nazi anti-Semitism. Many in the south take great pride in the Confederate flag, claiming it represents ‘southern pride’ and the lifestyle they fought for in the middle of the 19th century. Many believe this. But I would argue that, though that lifestyle includes anti-bellum plantation houses, chivalry and a slower pace of life, it also includes slavery. We cannot remove the history of slavery and racism from that flag, thus it remains, for those who were victims of those institutions and for those of us not affiliated with the south, a symbol of hate. It was the battle flag used by the side who fought for slavery, who believed that African-Americans were less than human. That is the legacy of that flag today, yet so many cling to it, then wonder why there is such discord between black and white, north and south even now, 150 years after the end of the Civil War. Like Germany, Austria and so many others who lived under Nazi rule, the south has much to be proud of: some of the greatest music and musicians originated in the south, good manners & chivalry, wonderful southern cuisine. But the Confederate flag is not one of those things.
In recent months, there has been significant renewed disharmony between those living in the north and those in the south. Much is the fault of state legislatures and governors pandering to the right wing and singular religious groups. Much is the fault of the media. But much of this is attributed to bigotry in all its many ugly configurations. I am not so naïve as to believe that the demise of the Klan and the Confederate flag will solve the problems and that suddenly everyone in the south will open their eyes to the fact that all human beings are basically the same. But I do propose that it will make a start, that the eradication of those two hateful symbols, just like the Nazi salute and the swastika, will remove the daily reminders to both southerners and northerners of the past conflicts, conflicts that still exist today. This nation is represented by one flag and only one flag. It too is merely a piece of cloth, but as a symbol, it represents freedom for all.
The Great Debate: Is the Confederate Flag a Symbol of Hatred or of American Culture?
We speak of the Middle Eastern Culture, or the European Culture, the Hispanic Culture, the Asian culture, and each is defined by certain values and norms. Culture is a composite of many things, including but not limited to, food, music, literature, art, religious rites, symbols & rituals, holidays, dress, and language. We think, for example, of Hispanics as wearing bright colours, being primarily Catholic, and cooking with lots of hot peppers and cilantro. So, when we think of Americans (for the purpose of this essay, I define “Americans” as citizens of the United States, understanding that American can also refer to those from Canada, Mexico, South and Central America), what defines our culture?
The United States is a nation of immigrants from all over the globe, therefore it is, perhaps, right and proper that there is no single cultural norm in this country. The Native Americans, of course, had a distinctive and definite culture, but that was overshadowed centuries ago by European immigrants who brought to these shores the cultures of France, Spain, Great Britain, Germany and others. More recently, we have seen waves of immigrants from Asian and Middle Eastern nations, each of whom have contributed to the richness and ambiguity of our culture by adding parts of their own in tandem with adopting parts from other groups in the U.S. So what, then, defines the American culture?
Today, after a tragic, racially-motivated mass murder in South Carolina last week, the big controversy in this nation is whether the confederate flag should be seen as a symbol of racial hatred and banned from government and public areas, or whether it is symbolic of our culture and should be revered and honored as a piece of our national history. Having participated in a number of discussions on this topic, I began to think about the question: what is the “American Culture”? The answer I came up with is that there is no single culture in this nation. Unlike Middle Easterners, who are primarily Muslim, we have no state-supported national religion. Some would argue that this is a “Christian nation”, but I would argue against that, given that the very foundation of our government gives us freedom of religion, to adhere to any or no religion. Our national diet, which some may think of as hamburgers and French fries, is actually an eclectic melting pot of tastes from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and many others. Our music goes beyond definition, at least the music of the last several decades, but prior to that, it was a compilation of the sounds of Britain, Africa, Spain, Germany and others. Our language is a bastardization of the English spoken in Great Britain, spiced in various parts of the nation with regional dialects. And since our nation is a melting pot or a salad bowl, whichever analogy you prefer, this all makes sense and seems perfectly right and proper.
So how does all of this relate to the issue of the confederate flag that faces us today? Well, some southerners claim that it is an important part of their culture as southerners, that it symbolizes “southern pride”. On the other hand, I would argue that, while there are many things about which the south can and should be proud, the confederacy, as represented by the confederate flag, is not one of them. In 1860-1861, after the election of President Abraham Lincoln, 11 southern states “seceded” from the union, declared themselves to no longer be a part of the United States of America. Constitutionally, those states did not have the right to secede and Lincoln refused to acknowledge their secession, but nonetheless they operated as if they were a separate nation, electing their own president and designing their own flag, the flag we know today as the confederate, or rebel flag. These 11 southern states were willing to give up their citizenship in the United States for one main reason, their “right” to “own” slaves, the right to “own” African-Americans who they believed were inferior beings incapable and unworthy of being treated as human beings. I thought, I really wanted to think, that we had all learned in the 150 years since the events leading up to the Civil War, that this was wrong, that in this great nation, “all men (read men AND women) are created equal” and that we all felt great shame from those events. Perhaps I was wearing blinders, seeing the world through rose-coloured glasses, placing undeserved faith in my fellow human beings. Today, many are crying “foul” at the call for a ban on displays of the confederate flag on government and public property. Personally, I think it is a move that is long overdue. Others would argue that such a ban violates their rights to freedom of expression, but to those people I must ask: how would you feel about allowing people to display a swastika on the South Carolina capital grounds?
Since we are already in the throes of the 2016 presidential election, the politicians have all jumped on this bandwagon and are calling for the right thing, but for all the wrong reasons. Many presidential candidates hail from southern states that, in fact, were part of the confederacy. Never before have they called for a ban of the confederate flag, but suddenly they have come to realize that they must be vocal in this issue, be seen as non-racist and eager to appease those of us who are offended by the public display of such a symbol of racism and hatred, so they have jumped on this bandwagon. Fine, I’ll take it. Though I am intelligent enough to realize that this controversy would have gained no momentum if it had come into the limelight in, say, 2002 or even 2012, I am just glad that finally some are seeing this symbol for what it really is, and that is NOT a symbol of national pride.
Filosofa's Word 