Who here thinks the Confederate flag is racist and why?

Question

I don't think it is racist in any way. Just curious about other opinions.

Answer 1

Yes and no.

To begin with, what we today call the Confederate flag, or the “Southern Cross,” was not the national flag of the Confederated States of America. The flag we’re familiar with was a battle standard for various Confederate armies, including Robert E. Lee’s famed Army of Northern Virginia.

Secondly, The Civil War was not initially fought over slavery. It was a war to prevent the secession of the Confederate states. President Lincoln was willing to let the South keep their slaves if they would only remain in the Union. Most people don’t know that Lincoln allowed four “border states,” Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, to keep their slaves as long as they did not join the secession. Ultimately, he did sign the Emancipation Proclamation but did not reveal his intention to do so until July 1862, after the first full year of war. And he did not make this decision public until September 1862, a month after the battle memorialized here. So when this particular battle was fought, slavery was not on the table, not explicitly.

Many Southerners would tell you that the war in that first year was fought over the right to secede from the Union, and to defend their home states from the invasion of Northern armies. They would tell you they fought to defend the Southern way of life.

However, if one looks at why the southern states seceded, it becomes clear that they were seceding to protect the supremacy of “states’ rights” over federal authority; and the right they wanted to exercise was the right to own slaves.

The entire decade that preceded the war was filled with battles over slavery—some in the courtroom and some on the ground—including the Missouri Compromise, the Dred Scott case, the Wilmot Proviso, the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Law, violent border conflicts in Missouri and Kansas between pro- and anti-slavery groups, and John Brown’s raid on the armory at Harper’s Ferry in Virginia. The outbreak of the Civil War was the climax of that conflict over slavery.

Furthermore, the idealized “Southern way of life” that was being defended—aristocratic and elegant, pastoral and poetic—rested on the foundation of wealth and leisure produced by slave labor. It’s true that most Confederate soldiers were not wealthy and did not own slaves, but this is only because poor men have always fought rich men’s wars. The Southerners with the power to initiate secession were mostly wealthy white slaveowners. So, to say the Civil War was not fought over slavery is neither accurate or honest.

Vivien Leigh and Hattie McDaniel in Gone With the Wind
Source: http://cghs.dade.k12.fl.us/african-american/twentieth_century/mammy.htm

More recently, racists in the 20th century, including the Ku Klux Klan (founded by former Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest), have adopted the Southern Cross as a symbol of their hatred. Many southerners consider these hate groups to be deeply odious defilers of their sacred flag, but it’s undeniable that the Confederate battle flag is now inseparably linked to people who fought tooth-and-nail to defend racist Jim Crow laws in the 1950s and 1960s.

For the sake of comparison, consider the Hindus and Buddhists; they may deplore the Nazi adoption of an inverted swastika, an ancient Indian symbol representing good fortune, but they cannot deny the 20th C. association and must consider the modern-day context before exhibiting the symbol today. Similarly, the 20th C. use of the Confederate battle flag by racist segregationists like the Ku Klux Klan has indelibly tarnished whatever more admirable symbolism its defenders might claim for it.

Here's a 1962 photo of racists waving the Stars and Bars. If you're angry about people thinking the flag is racist, blame idiots like this guy: http://www.viscom.ohiou.edu/moore.site/Pages/olemiss4.html

Answer 2

The Confederate Battle Flag (which is the proper name for what is most commonly referred to as the Confederate Flag, there were several flags adopted to represent the Confederacy) is only a symbol of racism because certain racist groups have adopted it as one of their symbols. To descendants of Confederate Veterans, both black and white, it represents a southern way of life (which didn't have anything to do with slavery) and a heritage that they choose to remember. It's unfortunate that certain groups have attacked it as a racist symbol. With that said, I will say that the Battle Flag doesn't belong on a flagpole flying from any U.S. Government building. If we want to remember our heritage in the south. Why not choose the Third National Flag of the Confederacy? It was, after all, the final edition and a more appropriate symbol of heritage.

Answer 3

The flag that we know as the confederate flag is St. Andrew's cross, which was just a battle flag. The original confederate flag is what is now GA's state flag (3 bars: 2 red, 1 white.). I don't think that white people from the era picked it to represent a hatred for black people, as much as a symbol for whatever else they believed in. I'm a very pro-Black, Black Man, be I believe that we as black people have given meaning to something that otherwise had none, and that's why some hateful white people today try to use St. Andrew's cross in a provocative manner.

Answer 4

No one flies or sports the real flag of the confederacy. But the stars and bars is not a racist flag. The civil war was originally over taxation of the southern states not slaves. Those who don't know that should revisit their history books. The flag of the confederacy had a white background.

Answer 5

How could a flag be racist? Its the people who carry it that want you to believe that it represents racism. It is not the "Confederate" Flag either. Check it out.

Answer 6

The flag itself isn't racist. Unfortunately, some racist people use the flag as a symbol of slavery and 'better times' as they may say. Even in the 21st centry, we have people who believe minorities are inhumane beings.

Answer 7

"The confederate flag is just the symbol of states' rights." Yeah, and the swastika is just a good luck charm.- Robin Williams
Although think of it of as the Japanese War Flag its not usually appropriate

Answer 8

This flag is not racist it's a symbol of the old south. Unfortunately some racist people have taken it to be their symbol as well.

Answer 9

I don't either. It is just something else for people to whine about. Poor me give me something or change something. Look around to where you live and if you don't like it. push off. That flag had nothing to do with racism. Now some have made it stand for that, but I bet the peole that had risked their lives in that war are very dissappointed in their country now.

Answer 10

It's associated with racism because in the Civil War, the South fought to perpetuate slavery.