Not to defend McCain, but in 2000, when he was running for the Republican nomination for president, a “whispering campaign” was started against him, suggesting he’d “fathered an illegitimate black child.” It cost him the SC primary and I’m guessing he wasn’t prepared to risk that again in 2008:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/19/us/politics/19mccain.html?pagewanted=print
Politics is nasty business and often elicits craven acts of expediency.
“Until about 30 years ago nobody considered the Confederate flag a racist symbol.
Really? How old are you? A lot of us are old enough to remember the Confederate flag being used to intimidate all kinds of people.”
Exactly. As far back as I can remember (I grew up in PA), we were pretty much always horrified by it, I guarantee my parents and grandparents were horrified by it, and we were also embarrassed for you all (y’all?) with your segregated water fountains and buses and restrooms and such. Was there racism in the north - undoubtedly, there were plenty of Archie Bunkers who didn’t want to live next to a black person or have their daughters marry them - but even Archie Bunker felt that the black guy on his way to work should be able to sit anywhere on the bus. There was a specific dehumanization there that lasted for way too long that some people are just a leeeetle too proud of.
Can people change? If Clinton endorsed the flag say, 25 years ago, does he have to be labelled a racist today? And do people who fly the flag today have to hold the same views about segregation and bigotry and the meaning of the flag as the people who flew it 30 years ago?
As a life-long west coaster who was sheltered from any Confederate flag waving, I find this discussion fascinating, and have nothing to contribute to the discussion about the particular flag. But the comments on this thread indicate to me that Northerners and Southerners really seem to still hate each other, with Northerners attacking with their hateful words (racist, redneck, etc) and Southerners attacking in defiance with their hateful symbol (the flag). To me, it leaves Black Americans looking like the pawns in the fight.
Some of us here are transplanted northerners who now live in the south (if you consider Northern VA the south). Some also send their kids to southern schools with no problem. What gets me is how some people in the former CSA choose to ‘honor’ a particularly difficult 5 year history of their state given the entirely of its history, as somehow definitive of their history.
“No, actually, EarlVanDorn, we’ve all thought those Confederate flags were the mark of the ignorant and uneducated for a lot longer than 30 years. They’ve always been something normal people disassociated themselves from. We’ve always snickered at people who wore or flew them. And still do, of course. This isn’t a liberal thing. This is normal in more sophisticated parts of the country.”
Except, I suppose for the Clinton-Gore campaign which used the Confederate flag on a campaign button in 1992.
It’s ironic that all of South Carolina is being branded as racist when they have one of just two African-American senators and an Indian-American governor. More diversity in representation than most states.
And, in stark contrast to Baltimore, the people of Charleston are marching together in unity, rather than burning their city down.
It is an overstatement to say that “all of South Carolina is being branded as racist.”
I do believe people can change. It’s been shown in the polls and through the daily experiences of those who used to frequently experience blatant racism. While I understand people can change, the experiences I have had with those who display the confederate flag and cling to it with all their might, they tend to not care for black people.
Meh, I don’t brand the entire South or South Carolina to be racist. But if I chose to move to a more “southern” town, I’d sure enough be more aware of my surroundings based on how I know people can be. If people are insulted about that, they can stay insulted. I, however, believe it’s misplaced.
Yes, I am guilty. I hate racists.
And now, because the optics are so bad a whole bunch of people are suddenly calling for the Flag to be removed and I am supposed to change my opinion about them? If they truly were opposed to the flag and what it stands that flag (and Mississippi’s) would have been long gone. This goes to the politicians who are suddenly giving back the campaign contributions from the Council of Conservative Citizen, too.
Pathetic, the whole lot of them.
Speak for yourself. I grew up in NC, and while there are many things I love about the south, its Confederate flag and its history on civil rights are not among them.
When I was growing up (…and it was more than 30 years ago…) almost all the people I knew who flew the Confederate battle flag (or had tee shirts/bumper stickers/etc. of the flag) were also racists. Confederate flags are a handy signalling device, as John Oliver said.
It’s not about hating the south or piling on. Every state and region has its skeletons and moment in history that we’re not proud of. That’s the key . . . we’re not proud of. As Washingtonians we don’t harken back fondly to the days of small pox blankets and internment camps. Nobody that I have heard is painting some bucolic vision of the barbed wire at Tule Lake just being more or less like sleep-away camp. Even with economic pressures and all that College Confidential talk about Asians “taking the CS spots” people aren’t thinking times were better when we took their property and sent them all away. The Confederate Flag represents the idea that things were better before those know it alls starting putting their noses in our business and telling us how to run things - back when negros knew their place. It is backward looking and not in a cozy, nostalgic way.
And an anecdote . . . I ran into a fellow baseball parent and long time acquaintance at the grocery store. He is African American. We got to chatting and he said that another fellow parent had been transferred to SC by Boeing. He then offered that her grew up in SC and no amount of money could ever induce him to go back there. His experience as a black man growing up in rural SC during the 60s prompted him to move as far away as possible in the contiguous United States. He is also a man who makes his biracial son where a pressed collared shirt at all times because no good comes to a black young man who is wearing a shirt without a collar.
Your acquaintance is an outlier.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/02/24/black-history-great-migration-mobile/23268349/
The area I live in Florida was considered the south end of the old plantation south. Our county courthouse still has a statue of a Confederate soldier on the county courthouse square and it wasn’t too long ago that the county had an official Confederate Memorial Day that county employees got off from work. In the big picture, things have changed for the better in the south so much in the past 50 years or so. Rome wasn’t built in a day…the south is progressing, but still has a ways to go for improving race relations.
Not at all - he left rural South Carolina which is very different than moving to Atlanta or Houston from New York. Attempting to read the fine print it looks like Seattle suffered a net loss of 120 African Americans to Atlanta from 2005-2010 (dates are tough to read). I’m not sure that qualifies as a trend.
I’d much rather live in a southern city than a rural southern town. I can understand the pull large cities and established towns have to Black Americans.
Although I do have a friend who had to follow her work from the PNW to Atlanta and is still shocked at the casual, everyday, assumed racism that she encounters. (she is not black)
Sorry, but that’s a gross generalization. I grew up in the Northeast, have lived on the West Coast and have a kid attending university in the Deep South. My mother’s great-grandfathers fought on both sides of the Civil War, and I have extended family throughout the South and Southwest. Racism (the belief that one “race” is superior to another) is a very vivid and visceral memory of mine. I had a number of family members who were bigoted towards “others” (Jews who were suspicious of Gentiles, whites who believed blacks intellectually inferior, Catholics who despised Protestants and vice versa. You name it, I’ve seen it all–within my own family).
Racists often pick and choose those they find acceptable and those they do not. It’s very difficult to move beyond a racist family upbringing without being willing to step out of what is familiar and comfortable to enlighten oneself. I despise blanket statements being made about ANY group and know from personal experience that there are good people and bad people everywhere, but there is a long and documented history of systemic racism in this country and to deny that, or to pretend it only takes a generation or two to completely evaporate, is to be living with one’s head in the sand.
I don’t think many of you have seen the level of racial hatred that some of the rest of us have seen. We all have different experiences. If your experience is some people locking their car doors if a black man walks by, you may think the flag is not such a big deal.
On the other hand, I have sat in the parlor of a genteel, rich white southern lady who remarked her husband kept a gun in his car so that if he sees “one of them walking out on their own, he can teach them a lesson, if you know what I mean”. Then the genteel southern lady smiled. That’s not someone locking their car door, or staying out of swimming pool because blacks are using it. That’s real, visceral racial hatred that kills people. You think racism was the same elsewhere during the 60s and 70s? I don’t. The flag is a heck of a lot more meaningful when you know that’s the “heritage” it stands for.
But the Deep South I knew also had whites and blacks who risked everything together to bring change. Getting rid of that middle finger to justice, which is how many of us view that flag, well, it’s about time.
I did generalize in my post about Northerners and Southerners hating each other, I don’t deny that. My point was to express my surprise and interest about how strong that sentiment still seems to be for some people. I was ignorant about it until I followed this thread. I assumed that was over.
Apparently, Ebay will now not permit Confederate flag items to be sold. (I don’t care. I don’t/wouldn’t have any in my home).
So I was just googling offensive flags and offensive symbols. In doing so, I googled “hammer and sickle”. It’s odd how the symbol of a regime that murdered more people than any other in the history of the world, has a sort of cult following also. There’s a Hammer & Sickle bar in Minneapolis. There’s Hammer & Sickle vodka, cigars, beer. T-shirts with the Hammer & Sickle are sold online.
I can only conclude that anyone who would buy such things has no knowledge of history whatsoever.
Times have indeed changed. “Real, visceral racial hatred that kills” probably won’t be encountered unless you’re in a sundown town or “too deep in the woods”.
@TatinG I’d find it odd if the regime didn’t have a cult following. It’s surely interesting reading the “About Us” on the products and places. “Drago - Bingo for you capitalists”. “Even in Russia, we make birthday”?