The Confederate Flag and NASCAR

[SlowwHand]

I never said racism was dead, and I certainly do talk to Blacks. A very good friend of mine, who is a Black minister, performed my wedding ceremony. I've known and loved him for 30 years. Don't suppose all these things, Jon.

Yes, racism exists, and not just Whites against Blacks, but the reverse. And not just in the South, but also in the North.

I didn't ever say stupidity was gone, I said it wasn't a Southern only thing, and I'll tell you something I have heard from many Blacks.
They prefer the thought process in the South. If a Southern person has ignorant thoughts, at least they speak them. This is not my experience, it's what Blacks have told me. At least they know how a person is.

[Jon Miller]

Yeah, I have also heard that the nonActive form of racism is much more common in the north. In the south you have virulent racists (many of whom fly the confederate flag) and people who are basically not racists.

While you have less virulent racists in the north, you have a lot more of the type that just freeze blacks out.. make them feel unwelcome.. etc.

JM

[SlowwHand]

Exactly. If someone doesn't like me, I'd just as soon know it.

[Nubclear]

Sure. But the Confederate Flag, to many people, doesn't stand for being upfront with people

[SlowwHand]

Well, Tass, had you been paying any attention, you'd know you're an idiot.

That flag doesn't mean the same to all people in the South; and for the ones who display it in ignorance, the people they're being ignorant about, know it.

[Nubclear]

Really? It seems like many in this thread support the Confederate Flag, despite knowing what it stands for to so many people....I wouldn't call them "ignorant", but instead something else.

[SlowwHand]

Call it what you will.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by Mrs. Tuberski
I dont see the swastika either cause it means nothing to me.

The swastika means nothing to you?

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Mr. Fun, I don't see why you feel you have the authority to talk down to the rest of us by sharing us your enlightened ideas.

I really wish you'd remember you aren't one of us yet. I respect that you have an opinion on the matter, but keep in mind you're a foreigner. Drop this "us." stuff, cuz you ain't us.

[SlowwHand]

Says the Cuban refugee.

[chequita guevara]

Is that all you got?

[SlowwHand]

Pretty much.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Mrs. Tuberski
Are you choosing not to hear what im saying

It might have something to do with the incoherence of your ramblings. I do my best to follow along, but you frequently lose me.

You seem to be totally stuck on the idea that people are things in and of themselves, utterly devoid of environment and context and history. Thus your argument that the naval jack of the CSA carry no inherent meaning. That's definately true. Nothing, at all, carries any inherent meaning. If the human race died today, and aliens landed. None of our works would have any meaning. None of our symbols, none of our books, our recordings, nothing.

Things only have meanings because people put meanings on them. Sometimes, people put meanings on things that are insane. I knew guy who had a head injury who became sexually arosed by hoop earings on a woman and had to touch them. It led to a lot of trouble for him.

Generally speaking, however, people put meanings on things because of historic association. The English language has meaning because a group of people have been speaking it for 1500 years and teaching it to others. If I try to claim that certain English words don't have the meaning other people think they have, they aren't going to buy it because there's a history attatched to those words.

The 2nd Naval Jack of the CSA didn't pop into existence a few years ago. It wasn't the brain child of some rebel come lately who liked watching cars go round and round. It was created 143 years ago, with the express intention of representing a government and society organized around the ownership and oppression of a specific class of people and the most violent war in our history. The destruction would be as if seven and a half million Americans were killed between 2001 and 2005. That's a lot of bad blood on that flag.

Between 1915 to the 1970s, that flag represented Jim Crow, a system of organized violence which resulted in thousands of extra-legal murders, such as the one in the picture Comrade Tassadar posted, the ruining of tens of millions of lives and was so pernicious that both the Nazis and the South Africans modeled their racial laws upon it. It was flown by the governments of the Southern states specifically to show their opposition to the ending of that evil. Those governments were elected by the legal majorities of those states. If the people of the South opposed those policies, they could have elected people to abolish them. Instead they rallied behind them and behind that flag. Again, as their forefathers did 100 years before them, they rallied behind a flag to defend their right to oppress a specific group of human beings. We aren't talking about a handful of kooks running around in white sheets. We are talking about tens of millions of of people, the vast majority of the population. It is for this reason that the white supremicist groups today fly the flag. They didn't steal the flag. They're keeping it true to its history.

. . .

I'm a communist. I'm proud to be a communist. I am in no way under the deluded notion that people out there that hate me are ignorant.

Communism has the blood of millions on its hands. That's real, and it doesn't go away just because I think the movement was hijacked by a bunch of butchers who went against everything we were and are about. I understand that what it means for millions of people. I'll never call Saras ignorant. I'll never say, that's just the meaning he puts on it. He real, lived experience with Communism is not something I would ever dare dismissively put down, as you do to millions of people who have a visceral reaction to the Confederate flag. I may disagree with him, but I don't disrespect him. You disrespect the millions of victims of the Confederate flag's supporters when you simply put it on them. That's disgusting.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Pretty much.

Where are my boots?

[SlowwHand]

I haven't forgot. I even put on note pad.



Che. quote:
Originally posted by SlowwHand
Size?
10 1/2 wide