Here is part of Mississippi's Declaration of Secession:
"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. "
It astounds me that there are large numbers of whites in this country who think the Civil War was about anything other than slavery. The Confederate flag represents and evil institution and represents the evil intent of white Southern power brokers 155 years ago.
I don't have an opinion as such on Apple's decision but let's not pretend that the Confederate flag is anything other than a symbol of overt racism.
I don't have a horse in this race - I'm a 'Northerner' who doesn't fly the Confederate flag and has never been a fan of people who do, but I never felt like it was my place to call others out. As such, I don't particularly take issue with the removal of the flag from public institutions. It's probably a good thing.
However, I do take issue with narrow oversimplifications, and as such I would encourage you to do some research before making such blanket statements.
I have some people close to me who once wore t-shirts that had elements of the flag on them. If I were to ask them why they wore it, they would not answer or think anything along the lines of "overt racism." They're just people who have a bit of a redneck streak, are into country music, hunting, etc.
Symbols are what we make them to be. As someone in the design world I am very aware of this. Perhaps your experience is that everyone around you who sports the flag is an overt racist, but that hasn't been the experience for me. Do I still think it's misguided to use the flag? Personally, yes. But I think to paint the issue with such a broad brush doesn't do anyone any good.
Same thing about those "who think the Civil War was about anything other than slavery" - I think there's a solid case to be made for that among the "power brokers", but as is the case in history, things were much more nuanced, particularly for the rank and file. Search around a bit for why your average non-slave-owning Southerner signed up for the war, or even look at a guy like Robert E. Lee.
If you're interested in the nuances of the secession question, check out http://history.stackexchange.com/q/2056 - lots of good points on either end of the spectrum.
TL;DR: History is complex, be careful about blanket statements.
I specifically mentioned the power brokers because their words are known. I quoted some of their words. As such I'm not making a blanket statement about everyone in the South at that time.
The flag at its inception represents something overtly racist. People used it to rally others when opposing the Civil Rights Act and desegregation. Now they use the coded language of 'Southern pride' and 'Southern heritage'. In much the same way that the famous Southern Strategy of the Republican party in the 80s used coded language to talk about race. Welfare queens, ghetto kids, etc.
Can you find a knowledgable person who flies that flag who isn't a racist? Knowledgable about what the declarations of secession actually say? I haven't encountered such people.
I met a lot of people in the South who I never thought of being racists. But their racism was subtle and underneath their outward appearance. At my first job the manager was a very nice gentleman. Then one day he gave me a promotion and said to me, "I'm giving you this promotion because all we have here are a bunch of sorry niggers." I'm white. I had many other such encounters. In secret when others weren't around, if you gained enough confidence, it came out.
> They're just people who have a bit of a redneck streak, are into country music, hunting, etc.
I know what you're saying, having grown up in the non-deep south. However, I disagree with you.
The flag makes a lot of people very uncomfortable (and for very good reasons). Placing one's sense of self-importance/rebellion above other's feelings of safety and belonging in a community that has historically enslaved and murdered them shows a profound lack of sympathy. Punk kids might just be ignorant of that reality, but grown adults should and do know better.
For that reason, I absolutely believe any adult who flies the flag is being racist in their wilful neglect of the traumatizing history it rightfully represents, in the same sense that all holocaust deniers are anti-Semitic regardless of whether they would perpetuate another holocaust.
Some things really are black and white. Flying a symbol of racial terrorism is one of them.
The link you provided did not talk about the reasons for secession. It was about the legality of it from an American Constitutional perspective. Look at the top rated comment of this discussion on history.stackexchange.com. [1]
Secession was about preservation of slavery. I don't think there exists a cogent contrary argument.
I think I agree with you on this point. The last answer attempts to provide some nuance but even at the root of those is...slavery.
I also think that I've seen a lot of rhetoric thrown around online and this is the first time I posted about it, so perhaps I was attempting to speak to the "flag symbolizes treason too" argument that you never made.
>The Confederate flag represents and evil institution
The US flag represents slavery as well. We changed it to something more socially acceptable, but we moved it to the prisons, stocked it with racist laws, and to this day continue to profit off of forced labor. To say nothing of the slavery American countries profit off of by outsourcing.
Of course, prison slavery isn't as bad. Instead of being born a slave if your parents are, you just have a much higher chance of ending up in prison. Instead of being for life, it is for only a portion of your life with strong incentives to bring you back once you are out. But it is still quite horrible.
I believe there is an important distinction between a country being founded overtly to preserve an evil institution and one founded with much better ideals but still does and has done many bad things. I don't think the U.S. flag represents slavery. There are instances where the U.S. government has conducted and endorsed slavery.
The prison system is atrocious and I'm not knowledgeable enough to know if forced labor in prison can be a good thing or if it is always a bad thing.
The US flag represents a lot of things. For instance the country that declared war on, invaded, and then freed all the slaves in the country represented by the Confederate flag. At a cost of 3.5% of their population as war casualties and 2% of their population as war dead. Not to mention massive social, political and financial upheaval.
I saw a quote from a historian years ago (I wish I could find it) that went something like this:
When I was young I thought the Civil War was about slavery,
When I started to learn more about history I thought it was about more than slavery,
When I really studied the Civil War I realized it was completely about slavery.
It's easy for people to get tripped up by their own ideologies and lose site of the time period that the Civil War occurred in. If you're all about states' rights these days, it's easy to focus on that part of the Civil War because it fits your narrative. Unfortunately it ignores that the only states' right that they were really concerned with was that which kept slavery legal.
I know this because there was definitely a time when I felt that way. Thankfully I eventually realized I was wrong.
Yep. More people need to know these things. Here is another one:
"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."
CNN anchor Ashleigh Banfield this week questioned whether the Jefferson Memorial should be taken down because Jefferson owned slaves. "There is a monument to him in the capital city of the United States. No one ever asks for that to come down," Banfield said.
Fellow anchor Don Lemon responded by saying Jefferson represented "the entire United States, not just the South." But he added: "There may come a day when we want to rethink Jefferson. I don't know if we should do that."
It's an interesting and provocative idea, which I appreciate. But I think a little perspective is in order. Jefferson owned slaves. The confederacy was a nation (or collection of rebel U.S. states, or both, depending on who you ask) founded explicitly on the belief that people of African descent are inferior, that it is their natural and proper condition to be owned by people of European descent, and the (literally) militant defense of the institution of slavery which lead to the deaths of 600,000 people (to say nothing of other ongoing social ills). Both are abhorrent. But the latter is much worse.
Jefferson, unlike most confederate figures and institutions, also made important philosophical contributions to the founding ideology of our nation (besides slavery). So, while I'm all for remembering Jefferson's flaws, I think his legacy is, at worse, far more complicated (and better) than that of the Confederacy, confederate symbols, and confederate leaders.
Actually living in the south, there is still a generational memory of being invaded and occupied. There are still cemeteries where the graves are unknown as the bodies and headstones were thrown aside when union troops dug up corpses to rob jewelry. There are still ruins, largely in remote areas and parks, where people's homes and businesses were put to the torch as part of an inhuman scorched earth policy.
These events are older than anyone alive's grandparent's memory, but emotions surrounding the confederacy are tied up into a lot more than slavery. That an elected Republic was overthrown by an invasion, much like if the American Revolution had been quashed by the British.
It's rare to find someone who truly wants to resurrect these issues, but self-righteous attitudes rub people the wrong way.
No one is saying it isn't. It still represented the Confederate States of America in battle, so if you have a videogame trying to accurately represent a battle in the Civil War, "because it's racist" isn't a reason to make it historically inaccurate.
Perhaps no one you know isn't denying that the Confederate flag represents slavery and racism but there are plenty of people who do deny this. Move to Mississippi to find plenty of such people.
Apologies. I was referring to this Hacker News page. I was born in raised in Georgia, so I'm aware of such people. It just seemed like the argument wasn't strong in this context.
Burying our head in the sand about the nature of our history won't make the racism we have today go away. If anything, it will aggravate it further as racists will find this a tool to promote their agenda.
I concur, and I think it might be doing even more disservice as many will shortly be quick to say "Racism? Racism isn't a problem. We got rid of the Confederate flag."
By removing the visible signs of issues, you remove the easiest ways to talk about and educate others about the issue.
Exactly. No one really talks much about how biracial people are mistreated in the US, but it happens all too often (A couple close friends had to deal with it all their lives). And yet I've had people tell me "But Obama is President, so there can't be racism now." Pfft!
Of course it won't make racism go away. Its banning has the positive effect of making overtly racist symbols less socially acceptable. It will aggravate anger amongst racists but I don't think it will spread said racism.
I'm fairly sure that racism in America is pretty much alive. Racism doesn't always mean calling someone a racial slur or re-enacting the curb stomping scene from American History X, more often it means looking at other people as less than you or more dangerous or unemployable. That racism is still very normal in America and it will take more than a generation for it die out.
I think your comment is really out of place here, because I don't think anyone here is arguing for what you're arguing against.
Regardless, the Confederate Flag is something other than a symbol of overt racism. It is the emblem of the Confederate Army that is most recognizable to modern people. It's certainly because of that fact that the flag is also a symbol of overt racism. When presenting media of a historical genre, to represent the Confederate Army, I think it's appropriate to use the Confederate Flag.
There's a lot of talk about historical accuracy with regard to Apple's decision. Hence it's in context to post what exactly that flag represented to the people at the time of secession. When I lived in the South I never saw anyone other than white people flying that flag. It didn't represent pride to non-whites and the declarations of white people that it was part of their heritage went along with talk about 'those' people.
Here are some things I experienced while living in the South. My first promotion ever was when I worked as a bag boy in a grocery store. I was promoted because, "There's nothing but a bunch of sorry niggers working here so I'm giving it to you." I was told once by an evangelical, white Christian that black churches didn't really count as Christian because they don't truly believe. They don't have the commitment that we do. I was told by another person that slaves were treated well and that the war had nothing to do with slavery.
These are all anecdotes but the impression left was indelible. The people telling me these things were nice people. People I never suspected of harboring such feelings. Whenever the Confederate flag is flown or defended in anyway I think it is appropriate to remind people of just what secession meant to the people at the time. I typically encounter defensive reactions to such reminders and this means, at least to me, that more reminders are needed.
Again, you're like completely ignoring that nobody is disputing the fact that the flag represented a racist ideology. I grew up around people who flew the flag like that, and yeah, they're universally racist assholes. In the North! Apparently they're too ignorant to even know what the Mason Dixon Line means.
But we're talking about depictions of the flag in dramatizations of the Civil War.
I think "heritage" and "history" are different things.
As americans, slavery is part of our history, and the civil war happened. I don't think we should remove the confederate flag from history books, because that is how we know how offensive it is.
So if this game's purpose is to let you imagine commanding the Union army and defeat the Confederate army, with historically accurate battlefields, and this is a teaching tool to help people understand how fundamentally fucked up that war was, I think that's very different from someone who says, "You can't take my confederate flag because free speech!", though as an individual they are correct that they have the right to loudly and proudly declare to everyone who will listen that they are a racist, and I think that's a beautiful thing about free speech.
This is different from free speech IMO, this at least borders on the academic.
> It astounds me that there are large numbers of whites in this country who think the Civil War was about anything other than slavery.
Indoctrination with these beliefs in pretty common at high schools in places like Mississippi and S. Carolina, and even at (rural) high schools in border states. We watched Gone With the Wind in my History class in high school. Not when discussing e.g. "the role of film in civil rights/modern history" mind you, but when discussing reconstruction. It was pretty explicitly treated as a more-or-less accurate portrayal.
I see the Confederate flag primarily evoking three topics: states rights, slavery, and racism. All three were at stake with the Civil war. However, Mississippi's Declaration of Secession shows how racism, not just the "institution of slavery", was at the forefront of their desire to leave the Union. From their declaration, Mississippi probably wouldn't have been as/too upset about losing Irish slaves.
Or, you know, things are sometimes more complicated than the political spin given on them.
(Especially by the winners)
Surely you know that Lincoln didn't care about the slaves (or at least they weren't his highest prority, which is odd for a war that's supposed to be about slavery.):
> “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union…”
It's also a complex situation about taxes, jurisdictions and a supposedly 'voluntary' union between states. I suppose one does not take likely the realization that their voluntary cooperation was in fact hidden servitude.
What boggles the mind is seeing how people on HN are very skeptical of any current politician, but will gladly accept many propaganda issued by past ones.
Do many of you believe that the crusades were really to free the Holy Land? That it was for the good of the people?
> "It astounds me that there are large numbers of whites in this country who think the Civil War was about anything other than slavery."
And it astounds me that a large numbers of whites in USA think that their history was a series of clear cut victories against evil enemies. And when the enemies were from within the borders... well they were also evil. Obviously.
"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. "
It astounds me that there are large numbers of whites in this country who think the Civil War was about anything other than slavery. The Confederate flag represents and evil institution and represents the evil intent of white Southern power brokers 155 years ago.
I don't have an opinion as such on Apple's decision but let's not pretend that the Confederate flag is anything other than a symbol of overt racism.