Thoughts on the Confederate Flag Apologists

The "Good old Days" and Selective outrage.

Whites love to revel in the past. Whites love to sit and talk about their brave forefathers, how hard they sacrificed, the brave wars they fought in, etc. But there’s a catch: Whites only like to do this when they can revel in positive things about themselves, not so much when it comes to their history of racial oppression on it’s modern day effects.

In Southern Florida, it appears that some White NASCAR fans would like to wave their confederate flag during the races. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,522203,00.html
Start to talk to a white person about slavery and eventually you’ll hear “It’s in the past, nobody owns slaves today, why not just let it go?”, or something similar. Start to talk to them about why they wave the Confederate flag and you’ll hear a litany of reasons, but they’ll never think to say “It’s in the past, we lost, we were defending something (slavery) that was an abomination to humanity, let’s move on”.

White Denial and Rose-Tinted History

You see, Whites who wave that flag (particularly Southern whites) love to go on about the brave Robert E. Lee, go on about the brave men who fought for “states rights” (read that: the right for states to maintain and extend slavery). Whites like to bullshit themselves and sugar coat the past to rationalize their preoccupation with the loss and the fact that they were on the wrong side of the argument of whether humans should be enslaved based off of skin color. The ex-Vice President of the Confederate States himself claimed that White Supremacy was the cornerstone of their culture.

But today Whites rationalize the display of that flag with a number of terrible excuses. The first one being, “It’s a part of Southern Culture and heritage!”

Imagine if a German kid waved the swastika around America or his homeland, claiming it represented his heritage. Why wouldn’t he just wave the German flag? Why does he choose to identify with a flag that took on a completely different meaning from the one of his homelands culture? Similarly, why do Southern Whites not wave the American flag, or even their state flag, to display their heritage and culture? Why wave a flag that represents rebellion against the U.S. and against human rights?

WHOSE Southern heritage, exactly?

One might also notice that it is never Blacks who have generations of family in the south who are making this argument of the flag representing “Southern heritage”. I’ll bet they don’t feel a “cultural tie” to this flag anymore than German Jews feel a cultural tie to the swastika. The truth is that just as the swastika represented a false idea of “Aryan supremacy”, the Southern Flag represents the false idea of “White Supremacy” at any cost, even the rebellion against and separation from the U.S. to maintain it. The confederate flag represents a historical period of White Supremacist rebellion, not "Southern heritage".

So don’t let white people fool you. When they tell you that the Confederate flag represents their heritage, what they’re often saying is either A.) We lost; I’m stuck in the past. Or B. I’m a White Supremacist. Or both.

Just wanted to get that out there.