Petitioners protest Confederate flag [flown by homeowner]

[SilentLi89]

Im just making a parallel that if they believe the confederate flag is racist and represents evil, then why dont they extend this to the stars and stripes.

I already told you why. The Confederate flag was/is flown when racist hate crimes were/are being committed. The Ku Klux Klan often flies the Confederate flag. The crazy hick who shoots "n*ggers" with his sawed of rilfe flies the flag...etc Elsewhere either no flag is waved or it is again the Confederate flag that was supposed to remind black people of their place before the Civil War and to remind them to stay in it. The US flag never came to represent this because people didn't fly it to make that point.

My grandfather's parents would tell him to come inside and lock the door whenever white men carrying a Confederate flag were nearby, obviously because there was most likely going to be a hanging and fires. They did in fact wave it when my their own crops were burned and his father shot. The only time white people came through with the US flag was when the political candidates were passing through. So I hope you can see why families like my grandfather's would come to hate the Confederate flag and see it as evil.

 

[quadraphonics]

Doesn't make what they did right, but these people, including Thomas Jefferson, were not evil.

Sure they were. Not in the cackling super-villain way, but in the banal way that almost all evil people are evil: selfishness and expediency.

Indeed, if you look at the ending of Slavery, it was coming to an end in the world and would have come to an end in the South as well, with or without the war.

Again, slavery never ended. There are more people held as slaves right now than there ever were in the anteBellum days.

The suffering and death toll of blacks following emancipation was horrendous.

As was their suffering before emancipation. Do you think you can find a single black person who would complain about emancipation on those grounds?

But you just go on as if this MAGIC of FREEDOM is the Be All and End All and that the destruction of much of the South and the deaths of almost 700,000 people was a price worth paying for this Magic elixor.

Haven't implied that it's an elixir, just that it's a basic, universal human right that needs to be respected for people to advance and live decently.

And, yeah, it was cheap even at the price that was paid.

But the fact is, had the North been COMPASSIONATE and actually cared about the Blacks, then they would have worked with the South to find an equitable way out of this for not only the Southerners whose economy depended on their labor, but more importantly, for the Blacks so they could get a fair start at a new life.

I don't recall saying that the North was some avatar of sweetness and light. The fact remains that the South was qualitatively, unacceptable more evil.

And the Civil War came only after nearly 100 years of abolitionists trying to compromise and work within the system for a peaceful, non-disruptive end to slavery. The Slave Power was not interested - it meant giving up their power and influence, which was the entire point of having acquired slaves in the first place. It came to war exactly because no other option worked, and the impasse was crippling the development of the nation.

We had the money, we had the land, we had the time to do so, and though you might not believe it, conditions in the South were not so bad that we didn't have the time to figure this out.

So exactly how many generations of continued bondage should the slaves have been subjected to, in order to find a nice, quiet way to allow their masters to let them off of the hook? This argument borders on racism, to the extent that it's even serious.

If you care to see what freedom with nothing meant to these poor people.

Can you find me a single black person who would prefer slavery with nothing to freedom with nothing?

Really, had Southern States seceded and a war not started, you think there would STILL be slavery in the Confederacy?

150 years is a bit too long for concrete predictions, but it would have lasted many generations longer than it did. It is not inconcievable to me that it would still be in force today. Although the more likely outcome by now would be some form of debt slavery, as is most modern slavery. The Southern political order was basically a feudal system, and absent some overturning of such it would have remained basically that.

All of the original states allowed slaves,

And all but the Confederacy had done away with the practice within a single generation of Independence.

your focus on the South as Evil is ill founded and your moral indignation at this late date is pointless.

It seems that the date is not so late, when the Battle Flag is still flown, history and culpability denied and equivocated, and fascist governance sustained by a bloc of racist old-confederacy voters. Race slavery and its aftermath have always been The Big Issue in American politics, and look to remain so for the foreseeable future.

 

[adoucette]

NO, there would not be slavery in the South today with or without the civil war and if you are too narrow minded to see that then there is no point in discussing the fact that a truely compassionate nation would have figured a way out of slavery that would not leave the blacks with NOTHING.

You apparently have no appreciation for what it was like for these poor people to be told they were free, and then FORCED off the only home they knew, with no money, no job, no place to live. NOTHING.

I feel sorry for someone who is so pathetically blind to the pain and suffering these people went through and at the same time so smug in their feeliing of self-rightousness.

Arthur

 

[quadraphonics]

NO, there would not be slavery in the South today with or without the civil war and if you are too narrow minded to see that

Was there supposed to be some argument in there, or are we just supposed to accept your proclamations as divine revelations? Not going to address any of the points I made, but instead claim that I'm the narrow-minded one?

then there is no point in discussing the fact that a truely compassionate nation would have figured a way out of slavery that would not leave the blacks with NOTHING.

If you're going to wait for the arisal of a "truly compassionate nation" as a precondition for ending slavery, then you're just guaranteeing that slavery will never end. Nations are not compassionate things - they are political entities, who use systematic violence to attain their ends. One might as well have just waited around for the slave owners to convert to Buddhism and attain enlightenment.

You apparently have no appreciation for what it was like for these poor people to be told they were free, and then FORCED off the only home they knew, with no money, no job, no place to live. NOTHING.

I do appreciate that. I also appreciate the oppresion of chattel slavery - something you seem to diminish unduly. So, without minimizing the difficulties of freed slaves after the war, can you find me a single descendent of said freed slaves who'd prefer that their ancestors had been kept in slavery longer than they were?

I feel sorry for someone who is so pathetically blind to the pain and suffering these people went through and at the same time so smug in their feeliing of self-rightousness.

Hey, looks like you're talking into the mirror.

Meanwhile, I'm over here, accepting that there was a downside to ending slavery the way we did, and judging it to have been both unavoidable and worth it.

 

[superstring01]

You apparently have no appreciation for what it was like for these poor people to be told they were free, and then FORCED off the only home they knew, with no money, no job, no place to live. NOTHING

So, conversely, out of compassion, whites should have continued to keep slaves for a few generations more! Just until the darkies were ready to be free men.

Brilliant!

~String

 

[spidergoat]

Most of the Southerners fighting for slavery were too poor to even own a slave.

 

[adoucette]

So, conversely, out of compassion, whites should have continued to keep slaves for a few generations more! Just until the darkies were ready to be free men.

Brilliant!

~String

No, as the people that bought and brought them over to this country in chains and then kept them in servitude for hundreds of years and during that time denied them the abiltiy to amass any wealth or the basic education necessary to read and write, it was incumbent on the people of this nation, that if they wished to end this practice of slavery that they do so in a manner which would result in the blacks getting a reasonable compensation for their years of servitude so they would have a chance to compete with the other members of the society who had property and were educated.

To simply declare that "You're Free, Good Luck and Fuck You" was CRUEL on so many levels that I simply am amazed that anyone can't see that.

What an absolutely HORRENDOUS way to end slavery. Show up one day at their quarters and give them the boot, forcing them out of the only homes they ever knew without a cent in their pockets and no decent prospects for making a living.

In the years following emancipation the former slaves lobbied for meaningful payment for all their years of labor if emancipation was to have any real meaning besides a legal one. And Legislation was passed by Congress providing reparations to former slaves but it was vetoed by President Andrew Johnson.

What came out of these hordes of homeless, penniless blacks was incarceration, followed by a system called "peonage" which is essentially no more than forced convict labor.

In peonage, a black man would be arrested for “vagrancy”, but this was just another word for virtually every one of the emancipated slaves.
The court would impose a fine which of course the penniless former slave could not pay, so they were put in jail.

Of course the next day a plantation owner would offer to pay his fine to get him out of jail and he would have to work for him until he could pay off the fine, but of course, he was then charged for the same quarters that the slaves used to live in, and the food, and the tools, etc, so even a small fine could take an entire season or more to pay off.

Typically they now erected fences around the shacks and these people were now locked up at night, and if he ran away, the law would chase them down and return them because they had not paid off their debt.

Interestingly, the value proposition of those in Peonage had changed, the owners no longer cared a bit about their families, or indeed about any aspect of their life, and since they would eventually pay off their debt, they really didn't care if they were totally worn out at that time.

Yes, Brilliant indeed!

What amazes me is how brainwashed some people are to think that emancipation, the way it was handled in the US, was in any way, shape or form, a good deal for the blacks.


Arthur

 

[quadraphonics]

Most of the Southerners fighting for slavery were too poor to even own a slave.

Sure, but no matter how poor they were, there was always somebody lower down the totem pole than they were: the slaves.

That sort of thing is exactly why the slavery was so crucial to the political and social order of the South, and why they fought for it despite the seeming economic and political irrationality of doing so. It was as much about ensuring the allegiance of the non-land-owning white population to the slave-owning aristocrats as it was about labor costs of agriculture. And likewise, the reason that those non-slave-owning southerners fought for slavery was not because they personally benefitted monetarily from the ability to own slaves (they couldn't afford it), but to ensure the loyalty of the slave-owning aristocracy to the white masses.

None of this is uncommon in its general form. The way essentially all polities work is by dividing the world up into an in-group and an out-group, and then setting up structures to reinforce the solidarity of the in-group through violence directed at the out-group. Southern plantation slavery was just one strong instance of this, wherein the out-group is captive and present (which allows the reinforcement to be that much more pervasive and powerful). And in that sense the attack on slavery was very much an attack on southern "civilization" or whatever they want to call it. It was a direct blow at the foundation of the southern political order, and the specific engine that drove social solidarity and political comity amongst the free population.

 

[superstring01]

What amazes me is how brainwashed some people are to think that emancipation, the way it was handled in the US, was in any way, shape or form, a good deal for the blacks.

Wait. Which one of us claimed that the treatment of former slaves, and thus the "way" it was handled, was good? I don't regret the Civil War nor the instantaneous manumitting of the slaves one bit, just what happened soon thereafter.

I, personally, think that Andrew Johnson was a traitor and the worst American president in history. My only regret was that his impeachment did not result in his removal from office. Would that he were assassinated like Lincoln. At least we would have ended up with Schuyler Colfax as POTUS, who was even MORE an obsessive Reconstructionist than Lincoln. Debts to former slaves would have been paid. Occupation and Reconstruction would have continued for at least his term in office, and quite possibly well after.

~String

 

[quadraphonics]

To simply declare that "You're Free, Good Luck and Fuck You" was CRUEL on so many levels that I simply am amazed that anyone can't see that.

Straw man. Everybody can see that. Everybody can also see that keeping people in chattel slavery was even crueler on even more levels. Life is mostly about choosing the lesser of two evils, and I choose emancipation (even on the terms we got it on).

What an absolutely HORRENDOUS way to end slavery.

But not so horrendous as, you know, not ending slavery.

What amazes me is how brainwashed some people are to think that emancipation, the way it was handled in the US, was in any way, shape or form, a good deal for the blacks.

It was a better deal than outright slavery. That doesn't make it "good" in any absolute sense, but it does make it preferable to the status quo.

Again, exactly how many more generations of bondage would you have wished on the slaves, in exchange for what kind of post-emancipation conditions? Can you produce a single descendent of said slaves that would agree with you?

 

[adoucette]

Wait. Which one of us claimed that the treatment of former slaves, and thus the "way" it was handled, was good? I don't regret the Civil War nor the instantaneous manumitting of the slaves one bit, just what happened soon thereafter.
~String

Except what happened soon thereafter was the OBVIOUS result of just saying, "you're free, good luck, fuck you".

Arthur

 

[quadraphonics]

Except what happened soon thereafter was the OBVIOUS result of just saying, "you're free, good luck, fuck you".

And who, exactly, has argued that saying such was a good idea (above and beyond it being preferable to the continuation of slavery)?

 

[adoucette]

Again, exactly how many more generations of bondage would you have wished on the slaves, in exchange for what kind of post-emancipation conditions? Can you produce a single descendent of said slaves that would agree with you?

It wouldn't have needed even a generation, and today there indeed is a movement for REPARATIONS, which at this point would be mostly symbolic, but at the time could have made all the difference.

If you asked any black person today, if it would have been better for his ancestors to have been slowly released from slavery starting in 1865 and finishing by 1880, but then when freed for each adult male will have been given basic schooling to learn to read and write, and then given 40 acres of farmland in the Louisianna Purchase, a mule and $100 for each year of servitude, I'd bet nearly everyone would say ABSOLUTELY.

That's the kind of thing a compassionate country would have done to help transition these people from a life of servitude where they owned nothing to a life where they had a decent chance at building an independent and happy life for themselves.

And indeed, had we done this, we would never have ended up with the Racial divide we have today in this country. We fucked them then, and in the process we fucked the entire country for a LONG time.

Arthur

 

[spidergoat]

All they needed was some goddamn representation, but they were denied it. There were actually some black politicians in the early years, but they were systematically shut out.

 

[Cowboy]

It's her house. If that's the flag she wants to fly, that's her business. Anyone who's offended can refuse to associate with her.

Seems pretty simple to me. :shrug:

 

[Brian Foley]

Slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution and the Supreme Court eventually ruled that the Constitution prohibited the States from enacting Segregation laws (pretty much due to the 14th Amendment).

Mechanization was making slavery redundant and segregation became outdated in the post war USA where blacks only constituted 10% of the population. The constitution just formalized it.

If you take a snapshot of the United States of America in 1850, yes, the Stars and Stripes includes prominently among its representations the institution of and compromises to slavery.

Thank you, the rest is victors interpretation of history, which you are a victim of, propaganda education wins again. Static symbol of slavery or not, protesting a Confederate flag which the woman is flying alongside the Stars and Stripes flag on her porch, and they see no symbolic parallel between the flags, as I do, simply amazes how dense the citizens are.

Did you invent that just to spice up the topic post, then? You know, give the thread some flash at the outset? Or is this one of those mythopoeic elements required to justify your outlook on the issue?

As I said give it time, dense sheeple that they are once confused by her refusal to be bowed by pickets will resort to violence.

I already told you why.

And I have already told you, that protesting the Confederate flag that represented slavery, whilst swearing allegiance to a flag that had segregation existing under it, is ridiculous.

 

[adoucette]

Mechanization was making slavery redundant and segregation became outdated in the post war USA where blacks only constituted 10% of the population. The constitution just formalized it.

Like to talk about things you know nothing about?

http://www.blackdemographics.com/

LOL

Arthur

 

[Brian Foley]

Like to talk about things you know nothing about?

http://www.blackdemographics.com/

LOL

Arthur

And....

'2008 Black Population: 41.1 million* Percent of US population: 13.5%'

Hardly a majority...

 

[adoucette]

And....

'2008 Black Population: 41.1 million* Percent of US population: 13.5%'

Hardly a majority...

LOL

Which would matter if there were FEDERAL segregation laws, or they were in all the states, but Segregation laws were only in the Southern States.

Which contain far more than the 10% you were quoting.

Arthur

 

[Brian Foley]

LOL

Which would matter if there were FEDERAL segregation laws, or they were in all the states, but Segregation laws were only in the Southern States.

Which contain far more than the 10% you were quoting.

Arthur

Whatever....