Are stars and bars inherently racist?
Many articles have been written in the last few days about the Confederate battle flag and whether it should even be sold or displayed because doing so constitutes some sort of hate speech because that flag unequivocally represents approval of slavery. We believe no such thing. However displaying it on public land makes it a public matter and conservatives might reasonably disagree as to the appropriateness.
Streif writes in a Red State article today about his disagreement with that publication’s editorial support for the decision of South Carolina Governor Nicki Haley calling for the removal of one from a Civil War monument on state grounds. The issue erupted after a white supremacist lunatic killed nine black women and men attending church services in Charleston. The matter is being used as a cudgel by liberal Democrats to beat up on the Republican oriented South. The bizarreness of course extends from the fact that Republicans led the fight to end slavery, indeed that as a party, Democrats “own” slavery and segregation as an historical matter lock stock and barrel. Streif writes (excerpt):
. . . Were this an exercise in denouncing racism, I’d be on board. But it isn’t. I’m not saying racism doesn’t exist, it clearly does. The flags the Charleston shooter, Dylann Roof, posed with were those of Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa. It is difficult to draw any other conclusion about their meaning when worn by someone with no cultural connection with those symbols. But the racism of the Dylann Roof variety is not caused by governmental action or social acceptance. Far from it. Roof, by all accounts, was an outsider. South Carolina has a governor of Indian descent and one senator who is black. Yet despite there being no real evidence of state or community propagated racism or any evidence that South Carolinians are racist, a lot of people, mostly but not exclusively on the left, have used the tragedy to wage an attack on the display of the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia. The motives on the part of some minuscule number of those persons could conceivably be motivated by some high-mindedness, some concern for the perceived feelings of others. This kind of annoying, sand-in-the-butt-crack hypersensitivity does exist. It is why college professors attach “trigger warnings” to course material and why the Supreme Court has allowed school districts to ban the American flag.
In essence this is an Alinskyite assault on a symbol. The purpose of that assault upon a symbol is simple. The Confederate flag is associated with a region of the nation that has, since 1968, voted fairly reliably for conservative and Republican candidates. By connecting the Charleston shooting to the Confederate flag and making that an issue they have effectively connected the South with the shooting. . . .
. . . I understand that some people hold this flag as a symbol of racism. There is no doubt that the Confederate flag — along with the American flag — were mainstays of the Ku Klux Klan but it is particularly associated with Southern resistance to the end of Jim Crow laws. I have no doubt there are some who fly the Confederate flag because of an attachment to the bad old days of “separate but equal.” We are all entitled to assign whatever symbolism we want to any symbol. When I see a black guy wearing a Malcolm X hat or shirt I assume that I am dealing with a dyed in the wool racist. Atheists and vampires feel oppressed when they see a cross. The left sees the Gadsden Flag as a sign of anti-government violence (I do fly that flag). What I don’t have, and neither does anyone else, is the right to demand that others accept their symbology especially when that symbology is simply wrong.
Lest readers think there is nothing to Black racism, consider this report at World Net Daily: ‘Finish the mission, kill slave masters’ Fringe black leaders get racial, threatening, violent The article is about Louis Farrakan and also the Black Panthers. Still more reading
