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Journal pudge's Journal: Symbols 19

Journal by pudge

Howard Dean is taking a lot of flak for his statement that he wanted to be the candidate for people who have the Confederate flag on their pickup trucks. What resulted was a discussion of whether or not Dean should be courting the votes of racists.

The Confederate flag is not, in any absolute sense, a racist symbol. The Confederate flag has many meanings, to many people. To some people it is a racist symbol. To others it is a symbol of secession. To others, a symbol of the South, just as a state flag is a symbol of a given state. To others, it is a combination.

What is often lost in discussions like this is that symbols have no inherent meaning. Meaning does not exist in symbols, it exists in people. YOU have a meaning for the Confederate flag, but IT has no meaning in itself. And your meaning for the flag might be different than mine.

So fine, you may be offended by the Confederate flag, either because to you it is racist, or because it is a symbol of secession. Both are fine reasons to be offended. But do not assume that everyone who flies that flag has those meanings. The Dukes of Hazard had neither meaning to the flag, and most people I've met who display the Confederate flag have neither meaning for it, as well. And when you tell them "that flag is bad" you are simply incorrect, unless you qualify it with "to me."

In this sense, I will defend Dean (*gasp!*): he was not talking about racist people, he was not talking about secessionists, he was talking about people with Southern pride, who are often poor, who often do display the Confederate flag, and who often vote Republican. And Al Sharpton and John Edwards took offense, because they say that is stereotyping poor whites in the South, because it is calling poor whites in the south racist, because they either cannot understand that to them race and the Confederate flag are not tied together, or they do understand that, and are merely pandering.

This discussion was created by pudge (3605) for no Foes, but now has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

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  • I imagine the flag you and Dean are referring to is not, in fact, "the Confederate flag." If you are referring to what is popularly known as the "Stars and Bars," that was one of many Confederate battle flags. It was never officially adopted. In fact, in most of its incarnations during the war it was square.

    The Confederate Navy had a similar flag in rectangular form, but today's rectangular version was flown principally by the Confederate Army of Tennessee. It is known to historians as the Johnston flag,

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • I agree that the meaning of a symbol comes from within the person, but you can't just wash that away by saying "that doesn't mean that to me". You're negating the entire life experience of the other person. To some people, that's fine and valid. To me, it's not. Not when it concerns something like that flag.

        What you are failing to understand is that by telling someone it is not fine to have a different meaning for the flag than you have, that YOU are "negating the entire life experience of the other perso
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • And I do agree with your other points as well, but trying to 'reason' with the redneck in the pickemup truck with the gun rack? Yes, it's a stereotype, but it's who we're talking about, right?

            I dunno, if we can get through to a liberal, we can get through to a redneck. :-)

            In this instance, who loses more by displaying the flag? I would say black people.

            I absolutely agree. And that is perhaps the next part of the argument, once you get them to see that different people see it differently, and that bot
    • Many people incorrectly refer to the battle flag as the Stars and Bars. The Stars and Bars [usflag.org] was actually the first national flag of the Confederacy. The battle flag was created because the national flag was too similar to the Union flag and caused confusion in the battlefield.

      You very occasionally see the Stars and Bars in the South today. One gets the impression that those who fly it remain pro-secession to this day. However, it has experienced a bit of a renaissance recently, because Georgia adopted a

    • But, its meaning, as your grandparents will probably recall if they are from the South, is: resistance to civil rights.

      Please rethink this statement, as it is incorrect. Its meaning TO SOME PEOPLE is that. It has no inherent meaning. You are denying simple truth when you say that this its meaning, when you deny that for many people, its meaning has nothing to do with this.

      So what would you say about the Nazi swastika flag, which originally stood for bigotry, racial war, and hatred? It might be intend

      • Its meaning TO SOME PEOPLE is [resistance to civil rights]. It has no inherent meaning.

        Ignorance is not a point of view.

        If there is somewhere a young child, or a well-meaning dullard, waving the Nazi swastika flag, proclaiming it to be "the German flag," and trying to tell onlookers it stands for freedom, that poor soul is simply wrong. It is not "the German flag," and -- if anything, anywhere, can be said to stand or not stand for anything -- the swastika does not stand for freedom.

        The solution is t

        • Ignorance is not a point of view.

          You are the counterexample!

          Ooooooo, snap.

          The solution is to educate this ignorant person as to its meaning.

          To educate someone as to its meaning -- the implication being that they have the incorrect meaning for the flag -- would be to educate them to falsehoods. You are wrong here.

          The one difference, which I will grant for the sake of argument, is that there are more well-meaning but ignorant Southerners flying the stars and bars.

          That is the key difference. How d
  • Some people need to take the time to find these things out. I remember a party I was at a few years ago at a good friends house. He had a Nazi flag in his bedroom. Well, of course someone brought a black guy who was offended. He and his other friends all left after only a couple of minutes. But...had he taken the time to find out, he would have found out that my friends granfather stole that flag after invading one of the german strongholds during WWII. It's meaning had changed from a symbol of repres
  • As pointed out yesterday by Roger Hedgecock on the Rush Limbaugh program is that the South's succession was led by Democrats. Democrats started the civil war, Democrats ran the war, Democrats were finally defeated by the North, Republicans. The flag means what it means to different people because of the hows and whys. There war was started NOT because of slaves, but because of unfair taxation of Southern ports.

    Those who twist the facts of history, are more doomed to repeat it than those who forget it.
  • Didn't Bill Cosby buy the rights to the Dukes of Hazard simply to ensure that the show is never displayed ever again? Probably due to one of the reasons you mention.

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