
MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars - bdz
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/30/21308677/microsoft-forza-player-ban-confederate-flag-hate-symbols
======
soraminazuki
While it's emotionally pleasing to see racists being kicked out of online
platforms, another side of me feels wary of these tactics.

For starters, being deplatformed from major online players today would have
serious consequences. Although it's true that these platforms are "private
property," the entire society has become too reliant on them to be seen that
way. I think it's dangerous when platforms function like a public utility and
is yet allowed to do whatever it wants because it's _technically_ private
property. If platforms want to censor, there should be at least more oversight
than what we have today.

Another problem with censorship is that it's not always about being right or
wrong. A lot of the time, it's more about power or popularity. Thankfully,
many corporations today are in favor of diversity and inclusivity, at least on
the surface. However, things do change, and it's not always for the better.
There are worrying trends of growing authoritarianism worldwide, and I think
now is a good time to consider how censorship could be used against us.

Finally, racists are racists and no amount of censorship won't change what
they are. I think Snowden had a point when he said that the answer to bad
speech is more speech, not censorship.

~~~
rsynnott
I assume Microsoft never allowed, say, swastikas. There's no reasonable
expectation that you are able to spread racist propaganda in a car racing game
(or for that matter in an actual car race; I think those tend to have very
strict rules around decoration).

I can see an _argument_ that Twitter, say, should be forced to pander to
racists. I don't buy that argument, mind you, but I can at least see the
thought process. I can't see any reason that imaginary car livery should have
to, though.

~~~
sukilot
That's an argument for banning swastikas, not banning anyone who displays a
swastika.

And before you say "come on, swastikas are pretty extreme", remember the moral
panic we just went through when 4chan trolls convinced people that the OK hand
sign was a "one-sided version ofna White Power" sign and got people fired from
their jobs for making the sign.

~~~
FireBeyond
It may have been made up, but I'm willing to bet that a not insignificant
portion of people who are _now_ making it aren't doing so to make a point of
saying "everything is just fine".

My town had an issue with a cop posing out with a bunch of 3%ers at their gun
store. This is in the PNW, and the owner of the store, born and raised in the
PNW, has a Confederate flag neck tattoo. This was during some street protests.

People can't credulously claim that the half dozen or so people there were all
making an "OK" sign then, completely naively, "hey, all good, we're safe, just
guarding our gun store". Or maybe they were just making an in joke based on
the SCUBA store next door?

~~~
donmcronald
This is the first time I've heard of that. I can just imagine being somewhere
loud and giving the ok / perfect symbol to a friend across the room and then
being called a racist.

Damn, that's scary.

~~~
FireBeyond
If that's what you got out of this, I'm not sure what to say.

I even used the SCUBA shop, which is next door, for reference.

No-one that I've seen has advocated that the OK sign be abandoned for divers.
I've been mid mouthful at a restaurant when a server has asked how my food is
and I've made this sign and not been called a racist.

However, should I and half a dozen of my buddies, armed an in full tactical
gear, standing 10 ft from a BLM protest, waving my Confederate flags, all
choose to make this sign for a photo, then a _reasonable person_ may choose to
interpret this as "we know exactly what we're implying here, and we're not all
just telling the cameraman that "everything is perfect"."

~~~
skinkestek
A bloke (and a less privileged bloke at that, 75% non white according to
himself) was recently fired because someone had shot a photo of him resting
his hand out the window of a company truck in what lpoked line an OK hand.

It was discussed here a few days ago. Stop firing the innocent or something,
from the Atlantic.

~~~
Smoosh
oh, come on. "resting his hand ... what looked like" ???

Wasn't the story that people in another car taunted him and urged him to make
the symbol, and they recorded it when he did? He _may_ have not known what the
meaning was (I believe that is what he claimed) but that is an entirely
different defense to make than "I wasn't doing it, it just looked a bit like
it".

~~~
skinkestek
Point is it seems he did it after they kept following him and trying to get
him to do it, it seems the guys in the other car even did it first to try to
get him to mimic it.

And that is before we talk about the problem with firing someone over this in
the first place.

Context is important.

I have had to tell my kids more than once that when an elderly person use
their middle finger to point at something it isn't offensive because they grew
up in a time when it didn't matter. That elderly person sure doesn't mean "F
__* you " as they are pointing their middle finger horizontally towards
something while saying "look there".

In fact I think we _all do something every single day_ that would be
considered offensive by _someone at some point_.

------
i_am_proteus
Interesting that the Japanese rising sun flag is mentioned alongside the
swastika and the stars and bars; the rising sun flag remains in contemporary
use by the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force.

~~~
umvi
At the risk of being controversial... I'm going to go ahead and say that Japan
doesn't care about racism like America does. Japanese people are extremely
racist, but you just don't know it because Japan is 99+% Japanese with <1%
being ethnic minorities.

But the ethnic minorities that _do_ live there live in segregated apartment
complexes, etc. to prevent "mixing with the natives".

~~~
ricktdotorg
> But the ethnic minorities that _do_ live there live in segregated apartment
> complexes, etc. to prevent "mixing with the natives".

source for this?

my experience: my wife is Japanese, i have visited JP many times, we know a
ton of non-Japanese immigrants living in Japan and they all live wherever the
heck they want to live.

i've never heard of non-native minorities being segregated either officially
(government) or privately (landlord collusion) other than perhaps stories of
illegal immigrants being packed together in the seedier parts of town. is that
what you're referring to?

~~~
jfarmer
[https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2017/07/02/issues/no-...](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2017/07/02/issues/no-
foreign-tenants-not-much-can-you-can-do/)

[https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/housing-
discrimina...](https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/housing-
discrimination-against-foreigners-in-japan-ministry-of-justice-survey/)

[https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/04/17/national/social...](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/04/17/national/social-
issues/half-foreign-nationals-tokyo-experience-discrimination-survey-shows/)

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-discrimination-
fore...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-discrimination-
foreign/foreigners-in-japan-face-significant-levels-of-discrimination-survey-
shows-idUSKBN1720GP)

~~~
ricktdotorg
wow! this is indeed quite eye-opening! while i was aware of non-native
discrimination in Japan in terms of employment, i had not heard of housing-
specific discrimination! i asked for receipts and boy, you delivered!!!

thank you for opening my eyes. will read and discuss w/our family :)

~~~
innocenat
To be honest, it's not really to the 'segregated' level. It's not like one
building for foreigner and the other for Japanese.

Officially, it's illegal to deny rental based on nationality. In reality, you
don't want to live in an apartment if the owner doesn't want you there anyway,
even though you could push for it in the court.

------
reaperducer
Why ban the players, and not just the design?

I once ran a large online forum and set up a word filter to replace certain
phrases with "fluffy bunnies" and other absurdities. It did a remarkable job
of improving discourse once the foul-mouthed types realized their hateful
messages were being massaged.

Microsoft could use some kind of super-cool AI-drived ML-based image
recognition to replace the flag with a rainbow flag or something.

~~~
fzeroracer
In your online forum case, what exactly do you do when toxic users wisen up
and start working around your filter? Do you ban them or just continue letting
them flaunt the rules?

~~~
fpgaminer
I've seen the replacement filter on a few forums, and it's _surprisingly_
effective. People just ... didn't bother working around it. No idea why, it
seems like they would, but I guess they just couldn't be arsed.

Don't forget that the replacement filter is just for banned words.
Toxic/abusive behavior would be covered by the usual manual moderation. Though
I don't recall ever seeing someone banned for working around the filters on
the rare instances that they did.

EDIT: This is in stark contrast to normal filters which just remove or blank
out words. Those were _always_ worked around. For whatever reason people feel
affronted by those kinds of filters, but the silly replacement filters were
"fun".

------
drtillberg
For the next act we'll censor images of the pyramids of Egypt, which were
constructed by slave labor. And then we'll ban texts of the First Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution which was influenced by an enlightenment thinker,
Voltaire, who also supported the slave trade. And for our next act we'll ban
images of Washington, D.C. with its columns and white marble, which glorifies
Roman slave-owning society.

~~~
softwaredoug
The sole cause of the confederacy was defending the right for white men to own
black slaves.

All those other things were not solely about defending slavery.

~~~
beervirus
That's not even true. The confederacy also stood for the cause of self-
determination, and the right of a state to remove itself from the union that
it had voluntarily entered.

~~~
fpgaminer
The second and third (final) confederate national flags were white to
represent the supremacy of the white race:

> In explaining the white background, Thompson wrote, "As a people we are
> fighting to maintain the Heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the
> inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematical of our
> cause."

([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Confederate_State...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America))

It's absolutely clear that the confederate was about white supremacy.

It's also hard to argue that the confederate was about self-determination in
any way when their very constitution is a litany of laws banning things, like
a state's rights to regulating slave ownership.

> No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the
> right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.

This idea that the confederacy was founded for any other reason than slave
ownership is absurd and a complete fabrication, unfortunately perpetuated by
Texas school books used throughout the United States public schools.

~~~
philwelch
One might say the true final Confederate flag was the white flag of surrender.

------
vessenes
This means that somewhere on the Azure cloud there is a resnet instance that
only looks for confederate flags.

I am inspired to write it a haiku:

poor descent machine

seeking orange tradition

longs for better things

~~~
ebg13
Orange?

~~~
notatoad
on the lookout for the General Lee charger i guess? i can only assume that
counts for 99.9% of the confederate flags on forza.

------
shultays
Interestingly hammer and sickle is not in the list

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
I think mainstream historians would argue that Soviet Communism was terrible -
but it wasn't an ideology based on hate or subjugation. Displaying the Hammer
and Sickle _likely_ means you stand for unity with the working-class and seek
an egalitarian society - or you have grievances with the current system of
capitalism - and not that you hate on any particular group of people, and
especially not for any of their immutable characteristics.

I know Tankies and Holomdor apologists exist - and their calls for
guillotining billionaires are concerning - but I compare that to a person
proudly displaying a (non-Hindu) swastika: it means that person is either a
fascist who actively supports genocide - or is being an edgy teenager.
Similarly proudly flying the Confederate battle-flag means they either
actively support white-supremacy and subjugation of black people - or they're
very ignorant of history and bought into the post-reconstruction
propagandizing by Confederate apologists.

That's the difference between what I feel those symbols mean.

~~~
djsumdog
It's still entirely subjective.

> "but it wasn't an ideology based on hate or subjugation"

This is really stretching. I doubt may people who supported the Nazis early on
would have thought their party was going to commit genocide. You don't see
cognitive dissonance while you're in it.

The Confederate Flag does represent Treason and many declarations of
independence mention defense of slavery explicit in the first two paragraphs.
However, if the Confederates has succeeded, there's a good chance they would
have ended slavery anyway. There were a lot of moral concerns around slavery
at that time. The Constitution and Declaration of Independence, at that time,
did not directly mention the word "Slave," not to mention it started to fade
internationally not long after.

In that case, slavery could have been seen as just an artifact of a previous,
ignorant group of their population, that also founded the country. And no
mistake, between Iraq, the Iranian-Contras, the School of the Americas,
MKUltra .. the Union/US has done terrible terrible things around the world to
extract resources in the name of democracy.

You can't say something is going to turn out while you're in the center.
Looking at the current anarco-anti-cap left groups right out, some of their
action are fascistic.

Inhibiting the freedom of people to speak their minds and express their
unpopular or controversial opinions is a dangerous path to go down, and many
on the progressive-left are already showing contempt for the freedom of
speech.

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
> However, if the Confederates has succeeded, there’s a good chance they would
> have ended slavery

[citation needed] do you have some sort of source to back this claim up?

Why would a region willingly give up it’s main source of economic power a la
slaves? The south was notorious for avoiding investment into public
infrastructure like roads, rail, foundries, etc. Why would they enter into a
civil war over slavery if they were “about to give it up” anyways? This take
flies counter to everything I’ve read about the confederate south

------
hamandcheese
I’m not convinced that everyone who displays a Confederate flag is doing so
out of hate (despite the history behind the symbol). It seems classifying it
as a hate symbol and banning it only gives it more power as a hate symbol, and
will also upset plenty of non-raciest southerners in the process.

~~~
throwanem
I was born and raised in Mississippi. You're wrong. Maybe you wouldn't have
been when I was a baby. But that's been a long time ago now.

~~~
hamandcheese
I was born and raised in northwest Florida, which has plenty of the same sort
of people.

------
softwaredoug
I don’t see how you can make a good faith argument the confederate flag is any
different from a swastika. Both represent institutions built solely for racist
motives and the subjugation of another race.

~~~
henriquez
Slavery was not the primary factor of conflict in the Civil War. Both Union
and Confederate states owned slaves and engaged in slave trade. Conflating the
Confederate flag with racism or white supremacy is a popular, but historically
ignorant viewpoint.

~~~
morley
There's the old saying that if you know nothing about it, the Civil War was
about slavery; if you know a little about it, it was about state's rights; and
if you know a lot about it, it was about slavery.

The "states rights" trope was a deliberate attempt of a few Southern,
revisionist historians to blunt their racist past. The truth is that the South
seceded because their states wanted the right to hold slaves.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy)

~~~
henriquez
Yes I believe slavery was the straw that broke the camel’s back but it wasn’t
the primary factor of conflict. Slavery and protecting the property of rich
plantation owners was not the reason poor southern kids were fighting and
killing their own family members. To completely dismiss the more prominent
factors at play including states rights as “historical revisionism” is itself
historical revisionism.

~~~
jcranmer
> To completely dismiss the more prominent factors at play including states
> rights

Question #1: Name three states rights the South supposedly aruged for.

Question #2: Count how many of those rights they actually granted to their own
states.

For it being supposedly such a major factor in their succession, states rights
are conspicuously silent in both the ordinances of succession, contemporary
oratory, and in the text they wrote in their own Constitution.

~~~
henriquez
Your questions miss the point. The Confederate states wanted to be free from
federal economic control. Such a freedom is not an individual liberty that
would be conferred by the state upon its citizens but rather an organizational
mainstay that would define the state’s relationship with the federal
government.

Slavery was the tipping point but the conflict goes much deeper than that.

~~~
jcranmer
The only federal economic control they objected to was the abolitionism
movement that would rid them of slaves. At an extreme stretch, maybe you could
claim objections over federal industrial policy and internal improvements, but
you'll have to observe that there was zero mention of this in their ordinances
of succession, they were avid supporters of this on the state level, and
despite their constitutional prohibitions against it, they enacted such
policies during the Civil War due to their abysmal infrastructure. And as a
footnote, it is worth pointing out that a large part of the animus against
internal improvements is driven by fear of the dilution of wealth in the
slaveholding elite.

------
monocasa
For those talking about AI models

> Microsoft will not automatically ban players that create designs with these
> controversial images; instead, the original designer will need to be
> reported by submitting a ticket.

Sounds like it's a manual process right now.

------
kevsim
Image recognition people - is the approach to detecting something as "regular"
as a particular flag any different than any other image recognition task? Or
are you still just pumping in a ton of training data and doing hotdog/not
hotdog?

~~~
ebg13
> _is the approach to detecting something as "regular" as a particular flag
> any different than any other image recognition task_

It can be. It doesn't have to be. Image recognition research existed long
before the current trend of throwing the kitchen sink at a neural net.

Practically speaking, the best outcomes always come from applying as many
different techniques as you can justify and applying a controlled failure-
scenario-aware synthesis to the results.

------
Semaphor
Heh, I wonder how many Germans will get hit by this. Because here, the
confederate flag can imply you are a racist, but it can also mean that you are
someone who likes country and truckers and has little to no knowledge of US
history.

We get many confused Americans on Reddit’s /r/Germany asking what’s up with
all the confederate flags they see.

------
otterley
“...and nothing of value was lost.”

~~~
ggreer
Isn't there a famous racing car that has the design?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Lee_(car)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Lee_\(car\))

~~~
Lendal
Dukes of Hazzard was my second-favorite TV show as a kid, (next to CHiPs.) It
saddens me that the symbol was foisted on me and millions of other kids
throughout history and not just from the TV show. Turns out there was never a
time that that flag stood for anyone's "heritage." It always was a symbol of
hate. I don't know why people would do that to children.

Now memories of my childhood are darkened, and millions of adults are confused
and don't know why. Because people who are long dead thought it would be great
fun to raise a generation of f3cking racist kids who would grow up and raise
another generation of f2cking racists. It f8cking sucks to be in this
situation.

Thanks for nothing, ancestors.

~~~
ars
It was not used as a racist symbol in the show. That's what this whole
discussion is about. For example:

"After the first season, it distressed producer Gy Waldron that the cast was
entirely white. So in subsequent seasons, visiting federal agents that
investigated Boss Hogg were black, as was the sheriff of the adjoining
Chickasaw County."

[https://www.neatorama.com/2011/05/04/23-facts-you-might-
not-...](https://www.neatorama.com/2011/05/04/23-facts-you-might-not-know-
about-the-dukes-of-hazzard/)

~~~
Lendal
Maybe they had innocent motives, or maybe they didn't. It's irrelevant.
Attempting to normalize a symbol that for millions of people stands for
brutality, terrorism and oppression, doesn't change its nature for that
population of people.

Now you might say that it doesn't matter how those people feel. They're not
us. They have their culture and we have ours. Well, what if 10 years down the
road there was a new hit show in the Arab world where the characters were all
very charismatic, wholesome and diverse, but their car had an ISIS flag on it?

~~~
ars
> Now you might say that it doesn't matter how those people feel. They're not
> us.

What?? How in the universe are you getting there? Talk about a strawman!

The real explanation is much simpler: They didn't know the flag was racist.
Because, despite attempts to rewrite history, until recently most people did
not know that flag was racist.

I mean, even the producer of the show, who went out of his way to hire black
actors, did not even realize that about the flag.

Today, things are different, I think most people know the flag is racist. But
in the past? I suspect the vast majority did not realize it.

~~~
themacguffinman
> Because, despite attempts to rewrite history, until recently most people did
> not know that flag was racist.

I find this extremely unbelievable. The American Civil War is a milestone in
American history that has been taught in schools for a long time. Most people,
despite attempts to rewrite history, know that the Confederacy fought for the
right to own black slaves.

~~~
ars
That's true, but most people don't realize the flag is a symbol of slavery,
they just think it's a symbol of the South.

For example take a state flag from a rebel state (and assume the flag has not
changed since the civil war). If someone flew that flag today, would you think
they are implying state rebellion, or just pride in their state?

It's the same with the confederate flag, to most people it's just a flag that
symbolizes a group of southern states. To northerners it means rebellion,
specifically for slavery, but it doesn't mean that for everyone.

~~~
themacguffinman
A state flag can be ambiguous because it refers to a state, which is an
ambiguous entity with a long and varied history.

The Confederate States of America (CSA) is not an ambiguous entity. From
beginning to end in its short 5 year history, it was made to fight for black
slavery. It existed for no other purpose and was subsequently disbanded when
slavery was abolished. Literally the only heritage the CSA created in its
short life is rebellion and racism.

If you are aware of this widely-known history, it's obvious what this flag
narrowly represents. The argument that the CSA could conceivably represent
Southern pride is a joke. Ask any non-racist southerner if the most racist
institution in US history and its deepest shame is a good stand-in for
Southern pride.

Here's a thought experiment: if a group of Germans claimed that the flag of
the German Reich represented their pride in Germany's independence and the
valor of its veterans, would you be defending it like you are now? Would you
use the same excuses?

I can accept that some people may be completely unaware or are too dim to put
2 and 2 together. I simply expect that once they do learn about it, they
understand why it's indefensible.

~~~
acdha
I’d even go as far as acknowledging that many people were miseducated about
the history of the CSA - our local used bookstore just had a kid’s ABC book
about Virginia stating that Lee was anti-slavery - but that doesn’t excuse
what happens when you learn the truth. The decent reaction is to apologize and
stop using it; people who don’t change are just saying they’re okay with the
racism but don’t want to have any personal accountability for it.

------
root_axis
Why is this newsworthy? Random video game publisher implements arbitrary rule
in video-game land. Seems to me like the goal of this story is just to stir up
controversy over something that's not at all important. Anyone who plays a lot
of online games knows that game publishers regularly ban users for a wide
variety of arbitrary reasons, even mundane profanity is enough to earn a ban
or suspension in many popular games.

~~~
pfraze
It's newsworthy because there's a pretty significant debate occurring in the
US about how private companies can moderate speech in their spaces. Section
230 of the Communications Decency Act is being actively relitigated by both
parties (though it's not clear yet if anything will come of it).

~~~
root_axis
> _Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is being actively relitigated
> by both parties_

I feel like I am taking crazy pills. We're talking about the creator of a
video game banning the confederate flag in-game, we are a long way off from
free speech rights in the supposed public square of a private enterprise. In
what world can you imagine video game creators not being able to determine
what kind of content is acceptable in their own game. I don't feel convinced
that this is anything other than aggrieved culture warriors trying to make
something mundane into a controversy.

~~~
lopmotr
> In what world can you imagine video game creators not being able to
> determine what kind of content is acceptable in their own game.

You're over-generalizing. If a game explicitly banned players from creating
characters that look like black people, would you still make that comment? I'm
sure you can at least see why others would find that newsworthy.

~~~
root_axis
> _If a game explicitly banned players from creating characters that look like
> black people, would you still make that comment?_

YES! Without a shadow of a doubt I would. In the most extreme case I might say
"Wow, very disappointing, I won't be purchasing any more titles from that
publisher" and that'd be the end of it, I certainly wouldn't regard it as
newsworthy discussion except in a gaming forum.

I'd also add that for the vast majority of gaming history, the vast majority
of games do NOT allow you to create black characters, and while I've heard
activists decry the lack of inclusion, I've never seen the lack of black
characters in a specific video game title presented as a news story.

------
major505
Well, to bad if you wann recriate your own version of The Dukes of Hazzard

------
pathseeker
Honest question. For those of you happy that these censorship policies are
being implemented by companies in reaction to pressure, do you believe that
the ideal end-goal would be 'anti hate speech' laws like those of Germany?

~~~
iameli
Doing so would probably require amending the First Amendment, which I think
would do more harm than good. But Germany seems to have implemented such a
system without becoming a dystopian hellscape. Seems a pretty nice place to
live.

~~~
Leherenn
Not an American, so feel free to correct me.

It seems to me that there are already plenty of laws that breach the 1st
amendment if you interpret speech as absolutely any speech (e.g. death
threats, libel, ...). And it is constitutional because the current
interpretation of speech is narrower than "everything".

Doesn't that mean that, if there were the will to do it, free speech could be
reinterpreted (by the supreme court?) to not include hate speech, thus not
requiring to change the 1st amendment?

~~~
iameli
You're correct about the mechanism through which that could happen — if the
Supreme Court decided it so, they could certainly narrow the first amendment
protections for hate speech. But it's incredibly unlikely that would happen
any time soon, as it would be in contradiction of many many years of free
speech jurisprudence — not an expert but Brandenburg v. Ohio seems to get
brought up a lot in this context.

------
cortic
There should be some legal consequences to including terms like offensive and
otherwise objectionable. They are so very vague and subjective they could be
used to apply bigoted, sexist even racist standards on customers.

------
gentleman11
I am not very familiar with the American civil war. The way people talk about
it seems weird to me though: it is as though the entire southern United States
were overcome by an irresistible race hatred and they started a war in order
to ensure their white supremacy- but mostly out of ignorance of the morals of
this.

I have a hard time believing the entire southern United States was only
fighting for the right to own slaves. Wasn’t that a factor that was emphasized
later? What other reasons were there for the war? (Considering the slavery
issue though, thank goodness they lost)

Edit: thanks for the responses. I couldn’t have imagined the pro-slavery
position was so outspoken and blatant, it’s a bit of a culture shock. Economic
incentives are perverse

~~~
jfengel
The declarations of secession are very explicit that it was about racism and
slavery.

[https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-
sources/declarati...](https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-
sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states)

The racism wasn't a sudden thing. What was new was the movement to ban
slavery, especially in new states, which would undo the political balance that
had been put in the Constitution from the beginning. (The Constitution still
gives extra power to those states.) The election of an anti-slavery President
was the impetus that turned it into war before he even took office.

It's not just about owning slaves, but also the belief that some people are
fundamentally an underclass. Poor people didn't own slaves but feared that
they would be put in the slaves' position if the slaves were gone.

So yes, it's a basic racism that goes back to the beginning. It only seems
sudden because the election indicated that the tide of history was against
them.

~~~
neonate
I hadn't read these before and, wow. From Mississippi's:

 _Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the
greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which
constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the
earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical
regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear
exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the
world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization_

------
ApolloFortyNine
It's truly terrifying to see the number of people calling for limits on speech
similar to ones in Germany. [1] The right to freedom of speech was seen as so
important, it was put first on the bill of rights.

For anyone who cares about socialism, there was a time where it would have
been argued that all talk for socialism should be banned. As for Communism,
that undeniably would have been banned in the 50s, if it hadn't been before
then (they did try in the 20s, but was eventually overturned). And countless
other causes that at one time, over 90% of constituents were against.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23715358](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23715358)

------
minimaxir
I wonder if the AI team at Microsoft has built a Confederate Flag Detector.
I'd be curious how they got the training data for that.

~~~
wmichelin
hmmm, maybe, just maybe, they'd feed it pictures of confederate flags

------
boublepop
Next up: Steam will ban players who played as terrorists in counterstrike.

------
winrid
What if you are just being funny? Like you create a truck and put the
Confederate flag on it. It could be intended as humor I suppose.

Are we looking past intent and being too sensitive?

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
I would ask: what’s the joke?

------
racl101
What if you're just a big fan of the Dukes of Hazzard? :(

------
imheretolearn
Just going to leave this here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORp3q1Oaezw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORp3q1Oaezw)

------
Aqua
I'm not American, but I don't understand those of you who support such
decisions. The world of politics is infecting various gaming communities with
politically driven changes that in many cases aren't supported by the actual
users(or majority of the users, anyway). It's worrisome that many companies
succumb to the demands of the mob just because they want to be left alone.

On another note, the fact that it's just the confederate flag and swastikas is
deeply disturbing and acts as sound evidence that those are American problems.
What about soviet symbols? Overall, the total number of soviet victims vastly
exceeds those of Nazis or the victims of American slavery, why is everyone so
one-sided in that aspect?

------
jmpman
Now that I can’t introduce my kids to the Dukes of Hazzard, I need suggestions
for other shows with exploding arrows....

------
swayvil
When they came for the guys who added a confederate flag to their digital
cars, I said nothing...

------
drocer88
What next? Tibetan flags? Uighur flags? Palestinian flags? Basque flags?
Chechen flags? Israeli flags? South vietnamese flags? Taiwan flags? Dominion
of Newfoundland flags? Black nationalist flags?

Who's the judge?

~~~
manuelabeledo
It depends. Which ones represent the right of owning dark skinned people? I
would be happy if they ban those too.

~~~
ggreer
Before it was invaded by China, Tibet had serfdom and what most would consider
to be slavery. Also Tibetan punishment for crimes often involved removal of
eyes or amputation of limbs.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Tibet_controversy#H...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom_in_Tibet_controversy#Human_rights_in_Tibet)

------
aronpye
Soon it will be the American flag itself because someone somewhere will find
it offensive. It’s not hard to imagine how it will go down, the American flag
should be banned because something something slavery, something something
oppression, something something offensive.

------
111234567890
For those who are curious about the confederate flag - that is displayed, that
isn't the confederate flag. It's the Battle flag. I know everyone wants the
confederate flag removed but that isn't the confederate flag which is being
removed.

