The Last Rebel Yell!
There are people who think the Civil War is over. They even think the North won. All I can say — as a person who grew up down in Dixie — Gen. Robert E. Lee may have surrendered at Appomattox, but the South sure didn’t. Slavery might’ve officially ended, but white supremacy didn’t disappear with the Emancipation Proclamation.
The Confederate flag, what some folks declare as a symbol of southern pride and its honorable heritage, still flies at state capitals and is still a part of their own state flags and license plates. These people will tell you, with a straight face, the War was fought over state’s rights. Not slavery. Oh no, not slavery. Just the state’s right to own slaves. And the War of Independence was fought over soggy teabags, I suppose. These folks think our birthday was yesterday.
The Confederate flag still flies because these people are still fighting the Civil War, still denying Africans, now African-Americans, the vote, equal rights, a proper place in the post-bellum South. They resent the current president, in large part because he’s an uppity black man. Or half black man. Which, for the proud Confederates, is totally black. The Republican Party, happy to jump on the racist bandwagon, what we call the ‘Southern Strategy’, fans the flame that’s been smoldering for 150 years.
This week a few shame-faced Southerners called for banning the rebel flag in light of the killing of 9 innocent black churchgoers by an Aryan nation nazi bigot who paraded himself under that same flag and decided to wage war on the inferior race that was trying to take over his white country. Even Walmart has said it will no longer sell Confederate merchandise, profits be damned!
Germany banned the swastika. Nazism was a national scar that would take generations to heal. But they’re willing to try. The South … not so much. 150 years later and they’re still in denial over the stain of slavery. If you think this is the final surrender, you don’t know the South. Ban the flag, but don’t assume they’ll be saluting Old Glory any time soon. Not in your lifetime anyway. Not in mine. There’s no truce. Just another bitter indignity to endure. Just more salt in old wounds.
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Tags: confederate flag ban, Dixie won the war
The South will rise agin’!
It’s a sentiment I’ve heard for many years, but honestly can’t see it happening for one reason and one reason only. They are bad at math, and fractions in particular.
It all started with the Constitution:
Representatives and direct Taxes… shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
So 3/5=1. That has messed up a load of calculations down South in Dixie, for hundreds of years.
Then as you pointed out, a half black President is all black if you’re ciphering south of the Mason-Dixon Line. By their count it means 1/2=1. Now I know it’s probably easier to teach math when all fractions are equal to 1, but isn’t it about time to lower that Confederate flag and try to get the right answer, rather than the answer that is culturally simplified? If not, I’ll be glad to make a trade involving an equal number of my $10 bills for your $20’s. Equal, because I want to be fair.
My family has a box full of confederate bills, so …. I’d gladly trade you those johnny reb 20’s for your yankee tens. Let me know how many you’d like. Altho, when South Carolina and Texas secede, followed by the whole pack of their yahoo neighbor states, those Jeff Davis denominations might be worth their weight in bitcoins. Or at least what the new Greek currency will be valued at….