Comments

1. trinichic wrote:

   In general, I think people don’t see themselves as the ‘bad guy’. This guy doesn’t want to think of himself as a racist, so in his mind he’s separated “racism” from his obvious racially biased fears. I don’t honestly think there’s anything you can do about people like this… sad as it is, they’re completely blinkered to anything but their petty version of “truth”.

   Posted 07 Sep 2006 at 6:24 am ¶

2. gatamala wrote:

   ‘We all cannot be doctors, lawyers, and so on, we each take a different road and it is not the government’s fault that we do. We all have the opportunity to advance to where we wish to go; only many do not take advantage of doing this. I myself did not take advantage of the education that I could have had. We have no one to blame for this then our own selves.’

   That’s true Leon, then you end up on an ignorant site writing the shit that you do!

   Posted 07 Sep 2006 at 8:14 am ¶

3. IkoIko wrote:

   “Proud To Be Ignorant” was my favorite song by Victim’s Family in my hardcore punk phase

   Posted 07 Sep 2006 at 11:06 am ¶

4. dcase wrote:

   This essay reminds me of stuff my colleagues and me see daily. I have a friend who teaches a composition course at my university and this author is a poster boy for the stuff written in undergrad composition courses. It is even worse in the economics classes I have taught; asking students to write papers on topics such as poverty, welfare etc. ultimately results in litany of stereotypes and are dumbfounded when called out on how problematic their papers are. As for this guy, I could hardly understand his argument besides the point he is not a racist. The statistics he spouts are also nonsense. There is no reason to take someone like this seriously because he is preaching to the choir and if he is not racist, he is helping to confirm the beliefs of someone who is.

   The people we need to be careful of are intellectual racists who, under the guise of passionless objective inquiry, put forward a more manicured argument that if one is not sufficiently vigilant in thinking through the logic, can be seduced into the type of racist thinking that this author tried to get us to agree with but failed.

   Posted 07 Sep 2006 at 12:21 pm ¶

5. gatamala wrote:

   aaaamen dcase! I would also add that those intellectual racists will rely more on euphemisms than explicitly stating who they are talking about - hence preserving the veneer of objectivity.

   Posted 07 Sep 2006 at 12:38 pm ¶

6. IkoIko wrote:

   Ditto!

   Hey, look what we all missed this past July– “Forward the Colors” by… Leon Puissegur (PublishAmerica)– 5 oz. 84 page book filled with all stuff you never knew about “the” Confederated Battle Flag. It’s currently #1,226,386 in Books on Amazon.com.

   (Book Description)

   Starting with the Confederate Battle Flag the book delves into the flag’s beginning and abuses. It next goes into the history of slavery and how it was first legalized and why it continued. It covers the attempts at the 13th Amendment from the Crittenden Compromise to the 13th Amendment of 1865. It covers Abraham Lincoln exposing his ideas about the blacks and what he really felt about them along with exposing the “Emancipation Proclamation” as the lie it was. It covers the real reasons for the War for Southern Independence, also called the War Between the States, and Civil War. It covers the parts played by the NAACP and the KKK in relation to the Confederate Battle Flag. In the last chapter, it covers facts seldom if ever shown in school or textbooks.

   FWIW: As a person of color (and who isn’t, I know, I know) Weird thing about identity, race, the South, being American, and flags is that, in the South, history, culture, philosophy and experience have taught me that I won’t ever be able to cleanly reconcile this crap.

   There are huge disagreements even today among Southerners, not always from denial, but from genuine dislike, about the racist elements associated with their cultural past yet their wanting to have some way to maintain a link to that part of their identity warts and all. Cherry picking, yeah, but difficult to find people who don’t gloss over the unsavory bits.

   All the Confederate flags– there were different ones for different purposes– were originally intended as a symbol of pride in ancestral resistance and sacrifice against the North. It was associated by blacks and social reformers with slavery, oppression, and segregation.

   They were asserted in defiance by Southerners against political and social changes in general, taking on a racial tinge when protecting segregation became one means towards maintaining the old ways.

   That’s why the actual meaning and intent is hard to figure out. Look at our own flag– different perspective, same country, same context for the same contradictions.

   If the COnfederacy was fighting for independence, they were rebels commiting an act of treason. But if they were fighting as patriots, expressing dissent at an unjust corrupt order, for freedom and liberty, then weren’t they doing the same thing our colonial patriots were when they did they same thing?

   Except slavery and segregation and racism makes it hypocritical for anyone fighting for freedom and liberty– just like the colonies under the “Stars and Stripes”!

   After all, slavery also didn’t only exist down home on the South, given indentured servants throughout the colonies the 150+ years before the war.

   So let the old boy wrap himself up in whatever he chooses, totally has that right to in a country where I can proudly wave the banner of whatever I want/

   The nice thing about flags, like history, is that they can be redesigned over time…

   Posted 07 Sep 2006 at 4:52 pm ¶

7. Ben wrote:

   I got this far: “Can it be wrong to think this way since over 95% of crime is done by blacks to blacks?”

   95% of crime? If true, that figure is astounding! Why, at only 13% of the population, that means a black person is 125 times more likely than a non-black person to commit a crime! So non-black people can hang back and commit like one crime every four months; blacks gotta be doin it on the daily! Who you callin lazy? PLUS we gotta find other black people to be victims… but they always be out meeting their quotas too. No wonder I can’t look for a job - I’m busy tryna keep up with expectations!

   So yeah, if you actually think that 95% of crime is done by blacks to blacks, you’ll probably believe anything.

   Posted 07 Sep 2006 at 7:51 pm ¶

8. jen chau wrote:

   hysterical ben….and you are so right, dcase…the “intellectual racist” is probably far more dangerous. i still argue that none of this is good though. even though this guy’s writings are a bit nonsensical, i am sure there are others out there like him who read his stuff, agree, and then feel justified in their thinking (and therefore strengthened in their racism). i’d rather not have such racist notions confirmed in writing, honestly. ~JC

   Posted 07 Sep 2006 at 10:21 pm ¶

9. Adrianna wrote:

   Imagine If all Black folks came up with the dumb logic that all white people are in fact card carying member of the KKK and that we should fear all white people? This man is stupid and i can’t beleive he got published. Let’s lump the entire race, because we all know that only black people are capable of violence against one another. So 95% of blacks commit crimes against one another, interesting that means that other communities have nothing to fear from us since we only killl other black people. White people can breath easily when around us, they have to fear other white people because black people are to busy kiling one another and being poor and lazy and stupid and abusing the government welfare program .

   what an ass !!!

   Posted 07 Sep 2006 at 10:33 pm ¶

10. gatamala wrote:

    iko I don’t really get your point

    PET PEEVE. You talk about southerners as if being southern is synonymous w/ white. I am southern and black. There have always been southern Latinos, Native Americans and Asians. I seriously resent attempts by white southerners and all non-southerners (hell, the rest of the damn world) to characterize southern culture as solely gonew/thewind type shit. The fiddle dee dee white southern confederate culture was a socioeconomic system based on slavery. There is no separating it. Blacks endured kidnapping, torture, murder, and rape by that culture AND fight against its modern incarnation. I will not afford the purveyors, inheritors and beneficiaries of that culture (which includes all Americans) the privilege of severing it from its hateful underpinnings.

    Let me make myself crystal clear: There is no southern culture without Blacks. We were the labor source, the scapegoat, we grew/harvested/cooked their food (and ate the scraps), we invented the music, we nursed and raised their children while ours were sold, we suffered rape so that white women could have their precious womanhood protected.

    IF this flag is about “heritage” not “hate”, then why do these proud people not protest the use of the flag by neo-nazis, klansmen etc……….I asked one of these folks that once. He had nothing to say.

    “They were asserted in defiance by Southerners against political and social changes in general, taking on a racial tinge when protecting segregation became one means towards maintaining the old ways.”

    I assume you mean the re-hoisting of the flag on State govt buildings in 1954. The flag was re-hoisted directly in response to white resistance to desegregation efforts. There was no “political and social changes in general” with a “racial tinge”. This was direct, deliberate and intentional. There was nothing subtle about the rehoisting of the that flag (in all its incarnations)

    This “defiance” you talk about is not against some bullshit Yankee tyranny. It is defiance of an emerging social order that did not involve human bondage. It is this defiance that is the “orginal intent” behind Confederate flags.

    “All the Confederate flags– there were different ones for different purposes– were originally intended as a symbol of pride in ancestral resistance and sacrifice against the North. It was associated by blacks and social reformers with slavery, oppression, and segregation.”

    NO. The Confederates associated their flag with slavery, oppresion and later segregation themselves by enslaving, oppressing and segregating. Blacks and social reformers are just calling it for what it is.

    You have really bought into this scarlett o’hara birth of a nation view of American history. Fighting a “corrupt, unjust order” — please tell me what that corrupt, unjust order was. As a descendent of people who were enslaved by these “patriots” I’d sure as hell like to know. As for history being “redesigned”, you have certainly regurgitated the mythology of a group of people who either justify or deny their forefathers/mothers and their own cruelty by repackaging it as resistance against imaginary tyranny.

    Also, yeah the North had slavery…so that somehow mitigates the racist connotations of the Confederate flag????

    I could give a rat’s ass if this clown wraps himself up in this flag. However, as an American and Black person, I object to a flag created in the wake of secession from the US being flown over public (govt) property.

    Southern history doesn’t have racist elements and unsavory bits. Southern (& American) history IS racist and unsavory.

    Posted 08 Sep 2006 at 3:02 pm ¶

11. IkoIko wrote:

    You passionately conveyed the pain and ugliness you felt with the symbol as a manifestation of pride in racism and slavery– and do know as a fellow Southern Black, I agree with many things you feel on a level. But you won’t do justice to your points by loading dated stereotypes and thrusting musty imagery (and not very accurate ones) in an misguided effort to somehow associate those who identify with the flag in different contexts, with anyone who would even dare simply to suggest a more complex rationale behind that symbol you find offensive.

    You got me, it’s true: I talk about all Southerners who would proudly embrace a Confederate flag for a complex range of reasons, and assume for the most part they are white for one simple reason: there were more ethnically white people in the population in the Census to start with before the Civil War. After the war, well, different story, as there were fewer people all around…

    And it’s true: I said the reasons people embrace things that disturb others won’t always have to do with racism, even if the symbol has a racist connotation, because the symbol at issue didn’t start off with a racist intent. Connotation doesn’t equal original intent, regardless of what one might think. Subsequent intent or appropriation by other parties is another matter, as I’ll point out below…

    For some folks, this thing really is a source of pride. For others a political banner. For others a weapon of racism. For others some combination of the three. Just because you can’t associate with this symbol, don’t like it, or choose not to accept it doesn’t make this fact of life any less true.

    For those who clung/cling to “the flag” as a source of “ancestral pride” amid a time of great uncertainty post WWII. In a fast-paced society today, it’s hard not to focus on the Civil Rights Movement without excluding other political, social, and economic shifts that occurred in a condensed period of time (think women’s lib, youth counterculture, industrial change, for starters). Thankfully upsetting old orders and institutions to us but terrifying the hell out of the establishment n less than 40 years isn’t going to make people cling to things they associate and imbue with pride?

    For those who view it solely as a political banner, they sincerely do run their reasoning along the same lines as colonial patriots. The original Confederate national flag really did look too much like the US flag in battle so they needed another design. Slavery at the outbreak of the Civil War was a *national* political $^^#&*@$, not just North and South (we had an East and West at the time too).

    Mix these elements with other factors and the very alignment make the contradictions in our own country’s founding principles that much more telling and disturbing, no? When you then think that people of color and standing would willingly fight for either side under either banner during that time period, and why their descendants feel linkages to this day, I’d be curious to want to learn the range of motivations, wouldn’t you?

    For those who love that dang flag which riles you so as a racist weapon, who/what are you actually referring to? Blanket assertions without context become blank assertions and miss the point. It’s more complicated than simply saying “racist” every time. Not only does doing so blunt any inquiry, it also potentially diminishes the force of “racism” when it actually matters more, and robs the word of its actual force and charge. Simple formula. Not all Confederates were/are White. Of those that are, not all are White Supremacists. Of those that are, not all are KKK.

    The Sons of Confederate Veterans, originally organized in 1896 in Richmond, VA as an apolitical genealogical and fraternal group for direct descendants of Confederate soldiers. Mostly tending Confederate cemeteries and monuments, studying Civil War history, and organizing field re-enactments, they kept to themselves for nearly 100 years before taking any policy stance on anything.

    Nine states currently allow car owners to have license plates with the SCV logo. The local commander of the Florida SCV, father of a biracial daughter, is currently spearheading the drive to make licenses available to every resident in the state who wants one. The proposed license design would include a gold medallion honoring the American Indian troops that fought for the Confederacy.

    Just to make things more interesting: starting in the late 1960s, state SCV chapters were largely apolitical organizations, but did clash with white supremacist groups over appropriations of Confederate symbols because they didn’t want their cultural legacy associated with the white power movement for a range of reasons. SCVs actually do include and proudly support African American and American Indian descendants as members. The first national policy statement from the group: an anti-hate group resolution in 1990. The emphasis on Confederate cultural legacy and the principle under which their ancestors fought is of a separate piece to them.

    In 2002, a concerted push by outside white supremacist factions led to takeovers of SCV national leadership posts, causing moderates to bolt and form a splinter group called “Save the SCV”. That moderate group is waging a pretty bitter public legal and political battle, with the individual state chapters left to sort things on their own as far as what it means. The stakes? A Confederate cultural legacy now actually linked to a modern-day and better-funded white-power movement at the national level, with various factions that want to either destabilize the federal government, create a “White Christian Nation” or are funded by Neo-Nazis, KKK, etc. Similar strands, same broad camp, but not the same thing.

    Believe some of this or not, be curious to learn more or not, with a healthy degree of informed skepticism or not. Reasonable people with different experiences, knowledge, and understanding accept different truths and argue like crazy about them. That’s how history works — you learn, you live, you leave behind that doesn’t square with yours, but you hopefully gain more as you discard.

    The “black” and “white” fabric of Southern– and by extension American– history is way more “gray” with “brown” threads than usually portrayed. But it’s also not just about “what happened” and “who did what to whom”. It has to be more than that.

    I know and acknowledge my own Black, Southern, and American heritage to have many twisted cords (i.e. 400+ years European and Native oppression and intermingling) with many Gordian knots (e.g. ties to Black slave ownership and Black Confederate participation). I’m still learning take the full measure of it, warts and all without sugarcoating, but doing it I am. The legacy of slavery is a vital thread to my past, linking me to players white, black, and mixed. It isn’t the sole primary definer of who or what I am today.

    So back to the gist: why know any of this? Because regardless of personal feelings– or maybe because of them– it’s important to step outside of one’s head and “accepted” versions of events to get to the actual *why* and *how* of perspective, intention, and motivation. Otherwise, the rhetoric that gets tossed around without proof becomes conjecture that stimulates ever more passionate distaste towards the unfamiliar.

    You assume a record of past events to be a hopelessly selective linear narrative by default, ultimately tainted by infusion with the worst of human traits, one that paints its “winners and losers” and “heroes and villains” with the broadest of brushstrokes by a lucky few.

    I embrace a record of past events as a complex organic extension of everyone it affected, not merely those fortunate enough to be reflected in oral or written versions that fit a messier more complex version I believe to be true– or even the agendas and interests of others with which I disagree.

    If American history, particularly the South’s, has a unilinear, morally offensive, racially discriminatory storyline, not just merely comprised of “few naughty bits here and there”, it certainly wasn’t born that way out of thin air. What made that record of events so? The facts themselves or how they’ve been cited over time? The nature or setting in which actions occurred? The personalities or behaviors of those involved?

    History is us. We write “history” everyday. If history is truly not neutral but inherently racist, then it doesn’t bode well for *any* of us. Everyone involved with it– active and passive participants, perpetrators and victims alike– is racist by extension. While that won’t make anyone look good, if that’s what you’re suggesting, I’ll take your opinion for it. But you first have to say what you actually mean by “racist”.

    Nothing happens in a vacuum. Context and an open mind– the same things we require for “our own stories”– are key. Empathy is never required but it helps, if one truly wants to understand any version of events. We don’t have to like what we don’t understand, but there’s more value to actually understanding what we don’t like. Don’t like my spin on that? Try Nietzsche’s:

    “People who comprehend a thing in all its depth seldom remain true to it forever. For they have brought its very depth to light: and there is always so much nastiness to see there.”

    Posted 09 Sep 2006 at 1:23 pm ¶

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