I really liked this comment John Hennings left last week about Brad Paisley’s “Accidental Racist”, so I thought I’d highlight it here.
Noah, I agree in general with your points about this song, and I enjoyed this essay, but I think you got the title wrong. You correctly assert that country music got more racist, but you don’t explain how. At the risk of stating the obvious, I think it was an unfortunate side effect of the polarization during the Civil Rights Movement. But I don’t think that’s the whole story of what happened to country music, and I don’t think racism, per se, is the problem with the song.
You and my fellow commentators are right to point to country’s current vacuity as one source of the trouble. Country music is far from uniquely Southern and Western, but it is identifiably so. Like other forms of music from the poor, rural places, it is borne of hard times. Despite the current economic struggles, times aren’t as hard for most of us hillbillies as they were in Hank Snow’s day, so country music now has less to say. We’re also not as isolated, so country music is less distinctive.
The culture that made Jimmie Rodgers and Louis Armstrong the men they were is severely endangered. The Starbucks reference in “Accidental Racist” is a good indicator. Prosperity and progress have made the lives in the flyover states (regardless of color) more similar to those on Long Island or in Orange County than to those of Roy Acuff or DeFord Bailey. Many rural kids listen to pop, hip-hop and rock growing up. They don’t start voluntarily listening to country until they get jobs and families. Country music now talks about the responsible grown-up lifestyle more than other music, so we mature into people for whom country music speaks.
Had “Accidental Racist” been the integrated, honest modern equivalent of “Blue Yodel #9?, Paisley and LL Cool J would have commiserated over the petty politics of their homeowners’ association, or the difficulty of getting your children into the best schools. Those aren’t compelling issues, but they’re genuine.
In the South, we also listen to country because it is identity music. So are related forms like southern rock, gospel, blues, dirty south hip-hop, and gangstagrass. We associate country with our traditional culture — the slower pace of Southern life; the connection to the land; and the greater emphasis on family, community, hospitality, and faith. The attraction is even more powerful if none of those things describe our lives anymore. The irony of this nostalgia is that when we were children, the homogenization had already begun.
I grew up in classically (not to say stereotypically) rural Southern surroundings and circumstances. I love “The Ballad of Curtis Loew” maybe more than any other Lynyrd Skynyrd song. For me, that is saying a lot. The Ballad is about a homeless, black, blues guitarist and the white child who would scrounge money and defy his parents to hear him play. It could easily have happened in the racially mixed town I grew up in. In my mind’s eye, it did. It is an honest song that makes a statement about human equality. That statement may not be quite as organic or “accidental” as the statement in Blue Yodel #9, but it is nearly so, and it is neither preachy nor flat-footed. “Accidental Racist,” in contrast, seems more like the narrative of a frustrated suburbanite, awkwardly stumbling through race issues for which his primary preparatory life experiences were those very special episodes of “Diff’rent Strokes” and “The Facts of Life.”
On second thought, maybe it is an honest song, after all.
I’ll add one more word of defense for Brad Paisley. When he and I were kids growing up, white and black Southerners considered the Confederate battle flag a symbol of the South and Southern culture. More defensively, it was a badge of our us-against-them attitude toward those who believed themselves our superiors. White supremacist groups actively re-branded the flag and made it a symbol of slavery and racism. Where I lived, that took effect a little before I graduated high school, much to our vocal lament. I don’t know if that was contemporaneous with the rest of our society. This was pre-internet; we were frequently behind y’all when it came to zeitgeist awareness.
Interestingly, with the notable exception of England, Southerners in many European countries also lead simpler, more agrarian, lifestyles than their more cosmopolitan countrymen. So when football teams from southern Italy or southern Germany play their northern rivals, you can expect some fan to fly the Confederate battle flag.
This is a very thoughtful, enjoyable reflection. And the point about economic prosperity is really the most relevant point brought up in the comments. But, though not from the South, I spent many childhood summers traveling throughout the South with my mom, who was from Chattanooga, Tennessee.
I never hung out with black children, despite all the middle-class white children I met. Hip-hop may be the place to look for Southern cultural integration, rather than country, but I have yet to witness it.
And I am skeptical that black Southerners have ever had more sympathy for their fellow Southerners who were white than the migrated northern African-Americans, who frequently come back to visit. I don’t odubt that the battle flag has changed in the eyes of white Southerners, but I kind of doubt that it has for blacks. But I could be wrong.
I don’t know about other European countries, but in France flaunting the Confederate flag is a deliberate statement of racism, and it occurs both in North and South France. It’s like showing a swastikaa.
Greece is another European country where the south is richer than the north. The Athenians and the Islands are much more cosmopolitan while the little villages in the north, like the one my family is from, grow their own food and raise their own livestock. No Confederate flags, as far as I know.
The only context I ever saw for Europeans using Confederate flags was on this Scandanavian black metal sitcom. I did not feel comfortable about it, but it may have been a well-placed dig on ignorant black-metal white-supremacism.
Noah and Bert, thanks for the validation as always. Someday I’ll be original enough to write something here that’s not a response.
I heard the story about the Confederate battle flag and European football complete with interpretation more than ten years ago from a southern Italian émigré friend. Another denizen of Europe later confirmed it. Today, I perused some news sites and soccer forums. There, I learned that the use of that flag now has even more interpretations in European football than it does in America. Intended messages included the following:
1) Pride in Southern heritage and antagonism to northern rivals (as I said)
2) Supremacist ideology (as many Americans automatically assume)
3) Nationalism – or more specifically, that everyone on our country’s football team should be from our country
4) The flag-waver’s cool and rebellious nature
5) The brandisher’s love of country music, bringing this discussion full circle. Admittedly, this was only one cited instance wherein the poster asked the flag-waver why. I still like it.
Southern rappers (including, prominently, Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz) sometimes display the Confederate battle flag. They say it’s a display of Southern pride. Some have argued their real intent is to stir album-selling controversy. I don’t think those reasons are mutually exclusive.
Bert, I’m not saying “that black Southerners have ever had more sympathy for their fellow Southerners who were white than the migrated northern African-Americans.” I just don’t think the one precludes the other. In my experience, southern blacks and whites are quite sympathetic toward one another when transplanted – or even back home, when confronted with a common adversary.
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson, is a great book about the migration of southern blacks to the industrialized north. It came out two years ago and won multiple honors, including the National Book Critics’ Circle Award. You may think Bert’s comment a weak excuse for such an obvious plug. You’d be correct, but the book is excellent, and the publicist for it is one of my favorite cousins.
Others identify me as white. Like many Americans, my heritage is a slightly more variegated than one can tell by appearance. I didn’t hang out with black kids as much as I hung out with black kids growing up, but I did hang out with both. Interracial friendships are even more common in my hometown now. The two last bastions of segregation – romance and worship – are also beginning to collapse. Line-crossing in these areas still engenders grumbling, but not the shock and outrage they sometimes did when I was young.
Correction: “I didn’t hang out with black kids as much as I hung out with black kids…” should read “I didn’t hang out with black kids as much as I hung out with white kids.”
That’s quite a subconscious slip of the tongue, John. My psycho-algorhythms are still processing it.
I tried Google’ing for info on “racist” country music, and found this:
———————
White power music is music that promotes white nationalism and expresses racism against non-whites. White power music adopts the musical conventions, rhythms and forms of non-racist music to advance extreme white racism in various music genres, including pop, rock, country, experimental music and folk. […Folk??] Specific white power music genres include Nazi punk, Rock Against Communism, hatecore and National Socialist black metal…
Country music has spawned several subgenres, including white racist country music — also referred to as segregationist music — which came about in response to the American civil rights movement. The songs expressed resistance to the federal government and civil rights advocates who were challenging well-established white supremacist practices endemic in the American southern states.There were also changes in the music recording industry in the 1940s and 1950s that allowed regional recording companies to form across the United States, addressing small specialized markets. B.C. Malone writes: ” the struggles waged by black Americans to attain economic dignity and racial justice provided one of the ugliest chapters in country music history, an outpouring of racist records on small labels, mostly from Crowley, Louisiana, which lauded the Ku Klux Klan and attacked blacks (generally called niggers and coons) in the most vicious of stereotypes terms.”
The artists often adopted pseudonyms, and some of their music was “highly confrontational, making explicit use of racial epithets, stereotypes and threats of violence against civil rights activists. Much of the music “featured blatantly racist stereotypes that dehumanized African Americans”, equating them with animals or by “using cartoonish imagery associated with “Jigaboos””. Lyrics warned of “white violence” on African Americans if they insisted on being treated as equals. Other songs were more subtle, couching racist messages behind social critiques and political action calls. The lyrics, in the tradition of right-wing populism, questioned the legitimacy of the federal government and rallied whites to protect “Southern rights” and traditions. The song “Black Power” includes the lyrics:
The ones who shout “Black Power” / Would bury you and me. / Yeah, the ones who shout “Black Power” / Should let our country be… / White men stand together and register to vote. / Don’t let them take way our land. / We’ve still got lots of hope.
In 1966, businessman Jay “J.D.” Miller created a niche record label for his company, the defiantly segregationist Reb Rebel Records. It was arguably the most notable of the racist country music record labels…
———————–
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_power_music
Now, I surely do loathe country music, but it hardly seems fair to smear that whole musical “school” because blatant racists sought to use it — and created a “subgenre” — to propagate their noxious views.
What’s next, “How Folk Music Got More Racist”? “How Punk Got More Racist”?
ab, I don’t know what that tells us about me, either. Please let me know if you figure it out.
I mean “Alex,” of course. I’m finally starting to break the simple codes.
All the locals that I grew up with in northern Wisconsin on Lake Superior loved country. They would throw up Confederate flags in the back windows of their trucks. It’s not about being poor. The kids whose parents owned car dealerships and insurance branches were the ones with cowboy hats and boots on. I’ve been in dive bars in New York where everyone (excluding me) knew all of the words to every song on the Rascal Flatts record. So it has nothing to do with North/South relations anymore (if it ever did). As you astutely note, like most “subcultural” cultural products today, country signifies a romanticized “alternative” lifestyle that only ever actually existed in isolated moments in real life. If country ever “belonged” somewhere, that time is long past. I suspect that “traditional” southern culture, as some sort of univocal white post-Civil War simplicity, exists more as a fiction in the country music of today than it ever did in the real world.
I can think of a lot of country songs far more racist than this one, but none makes a better argument for segregation. Truly terrible, but it reminds me of high school where the dudes listening to rap all drove trucks and were in the FFA. They also listened to radio country superstars at the time like Reba and George Strait. I didn’t think at the time that country could get any worse, but I’ve been proven wrong on that score, definitively and repeatedly ever since.
And we had the Confederate battle flag as our official high school flag and symbol. That’s probably the best way to get kids to see it as a symbol of oppression, but my alma mater has since changed its iconography. I’ve since owned a few articles of clothing with the rebel bars on it, a country t-shirt and whatnot. The only objection I ever received was, of course, a white liberal who lived in San Francisco. Slippery signifiers slide, I tried to explain, but he wasn’t much of a deconstructionist. He was a deadhead, though, and anything that upsets deadheads can’t be all bad, I believe.
As for the proper region of country music, Chip Taylor had a good song about that back in 1973: “I Wasn’t Born in Tennessee”.
Beyond the racism prob, everyone seems to hate country on this board?
I love it, except when it’s over-orchestrated Branson style…
“We’re not the Jet Set.
We’re the Old Chevrolet Set.”
“Satin sheets to lie on.
Satin pillows to cry on.
Still, I’m not happy, don’t you see?
Big shiny Cadillac,
Tailor-mades upon my back,
Still, I want you to set me free.”
Great stuff!
But I still can appreciate the following joke:
Two prisoners are condemned to be executed the same day. A week before the fatal date, the Warden summons them to his office.
“Boys”, he says, “you both’ve been model convicts, and now you gotta die. But, if you have a reasonable request for your last day on Earth, I surely will carry out your wish. So what’ll you want?”
Prisoner # 1:
“I’d just before my injection wanna hear ‘My Achey Breaky Heart’ one last time.”
“Done”, says the Warden. And what’s YOUR request?” he asks Prisoner # 2.
“Kill me first”.
I love country…though much recent stuff is hard to take (Patty Loveless and Miranda Lambert have their moments though.)
I kind of think that the Deadhead is right on this one. Symbols of treason and racism are hard to get behind, and the fact that parts of the country have taken them as part of their regional identity has had pretty horrible historical consequences.
Well, I’m not sure ‘treason and racism’ is always what’s being symbolized. Outside of the KKK, I’m not sure much of anything definitive is symbolized by the rebel flag nowadays other than some vague notion of ‘rebel’ or ‘southern’ or ‘country’. It probably helps record sales through the counter-promotion by those who like to take offense and then it helps with fundraising for organizations opposed to its use.
Country is my favorite genre of music, Alex.
————————-
AB says:
Beyond the racism prob, everyone seems to hate country on this board?
————————–
Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton are quite great; at least some of Johnny Cash’s splendid body of work qualifies as “country.” I’ve also found what I’ve heard of old-school country — say, Hank Williams — is something I can respect.
In all fairness, must concede that I detest country — as I hate Rap — from the perspective of mere scattered acquaintance, being subjected to “secondhand country”; stereotyping it as self-pitying drunks crying in their beer about how their woman stole their pickup truck and ran over their hound dog…
—————————-
Charles Reece says:
… Outside of the KKK, I’m not sure much of anything definitive is symbolized by the rebel flag nowadays other than some vague notion of ‘rebel’ or ‘southern’ or ‘country’.
—————————–
Yeah, symbols are awfully malleable things, original meanings prone to dilution or seizure, the better to market them or ride their “emotional coattails.”
What does the American flag, for instance, stand for? Rebellion against injustice, support of freedom? Or rabidly reactionary imperialism? That it’s right-wingers who do the most flag-waving sadly says which group “holds” that beloved symbol these days.
There was an attempt some years back to popularize an alternative version of the Confederate battle flag, rendered in green to indicate it showed affection for that land, rather than a cause; but Google’ing — though some green flags turned up — showed that the seed landed on barren soil; the idea utterly failed to catch on.
A black student reports, “I WILL NOT Take My Confederate Flag DOWN!!!” See http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-709533 .
Ummmm: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uDb8UCC9h6g/T7kSuwBVEHI/AAAAAAAAHUk/7iOTr9DoMWc/s1600/Kermit+with+Rebel+Southern+Confederate+Flag.jpg
———————————
Noah Berlatsky says:
…Symbols of treason and racism are hard to get behind, and the fact that parts of the country have taken them as part of their regional identity has had pretty horrible historical consequences.
———————————
Does everyone putting up a Confederate battle flag thus indicate they support slavery, treason, racism? If so — SARCASM ALERT — those folks who participate in Society of Creative Anachronism re-creations of Medieval times must be in favor of the Crusades, Divine Right of Kings, the Pope as supreme spiritual authority, women being fourth-class citizens…
The rebel flag is a much, much more direct symbol of treason and racism than the SCA. The middle ages was a really expansive time period which lasted for 1000 years. The Confederacy was a particular historical movement with a very particular ideology.
Symbols are somewhat mutable. But neo-Confederacy and Jim Crow as a terrorist enterprise ended within the lifetime of many folks still about. I don’t think that everyone who wears a Confederate flag has to be evil; I don’t even think Brad Paisley is evil. I do think that acknowledging one’s history and the evil done in one’s name and by one’s ideological commitments is fairly important, though. So, for example, sneering at liberals in the name of a totalitarian state which actively murdered idealist integrationists is maybe not ideal in every way.
I suppose if you can write that with a straight face, then you’re not going to get a chuckle out of it. What’s funny isn’t, “oh, these liberals with their opposition to lynching and slavery,” but more along the lines of “look, another liberal is upset at a pop star saying something stupid.”
And people can say they love the Middle Ages without meaning they support everything about that period. At this point, the rebel flag is more a support for “the South” than the slavery the South was once fighting for. It’s a “more direct symbol of treason and racism than the SCA” to you, but not to others. Which means, you can ask the person using the symbol what he or she means by it, or get offended by demanding that they mean what you want them to mean. Even in the case where this person wearing the rebel flag is unaware that the South was fighting for slavery during the Civil War, the fact that he or she is unaware means that the symbol doesn’t mean to them what it means to you. So taking offense about it seems kind of pointless.
So…it’s fine if people start wearing the swastika and then just say, well, I didn’t mean anything by it?
You’re the one who’s always telling me that reality and authenticity have to mean something, Charles. But then, when it’s convenient, suddenly a symbol of treason and racism and totalitarian terror deployed in the name of sneering at the people who just recently were shot under its banner doesn’t have to mean anything in particular, and folks who might say, “hey…my ancestors were killed and raped in the name of that flag, maybe you should pick something else?” are silly and stupid for thinking that history mattered.
Ignorance is not as bad as malice, but it’s not ideal either.
Oh…and when you wear it and you’re laughing at some Deadhead because he’s offended? That doesn’t mean you’re not using it in the name of racism. The deadhead is offended because it’s racist; you’re laughing at him because he dares to care about racism. It’s anti-anti-racism…which is one of the main ways we carry on racism these days.
Yeah, since Sid Vicious was not authentically committed to the Nazis, his wearing the swastika was a cheap attempt at causing controversy that should cause no offense. But since this mock rebellion works with the PMRC-type liberals, people continue to use it. History matters a great deal in the general movement of mankind, of course, but not much when it comes to some kid wearing a symbol that mostly means to him “people are outraged by my wearing this.”
“The name of the flag” — this is the same reasoning given by those who want to make it illegal to burn the American flag. People don’t die for a flag is the typical response.
My friend B, who is black, assumes that anyone who wears/shows/flies the Confederate flag is a racist good ole boy.
And why shouldn’t she? That’s what the flag stood for. To many country lovin’ boys, it still stands for that.
(B is directly descended from slaves owned not two counties over, and she has experience seeing those same whites put that flag up in their pickups.)
Whether you, personally, intend for it to stand for your racism is pretty much irrelevant. There is a hell of a lot of history behind that flag–not just from a hundred years ago, but plenty of actions today.
You can ignore that reality if you want, but that doesn’t mean the other folks will.
I quilt with historical quilt patterns. One of them looks like a swastika, because it is (that’s a very old symbol). I could quilt with that and send it to Noah’s family, but I’d be dumb as a box of rocks to think he’d feel all warm and fuzzy about it just because Martha Washington used it this one time. I mean, lolwhutno. Either I care about how he will perceive my actions, or I guess I don’t. To me, the perceptions are important, so I’ll skip that pattern.
What’s funny about the deadhead (other than being a deadhead) is, once again, not that he was opposed to slavery or racism, but that he gets the map and the mapped confused. It’s his tendency to assume that some symbol means for everyone else what it means in his (dead) head, then making all these exaggerated conclusions about the other person based on the use of that symbol.
“And why shouldn’t she?”
Well, one good reason is that there are black rappers who’ve worn the battle flag. She could say they’re ignorant fools, but “racist, good ole boy” doesn’t seem accurate.
But most of the people who use that flag *are* white good ole boys. I mean, come on, Charles. That is overwhelmingly who uses that flag. They are all over the place here. Fact. It is the flag used by the group who started a civil war in order to keep black people like her in true slavery, with auctions and chain and blood and death. Fact. And it is a flag that is used by people to say they wish that group had won. Fact.
How you can just got not accept that overwhelming this is how many people, including many black people, see this flag is really baffling to me.
The word ‘treason’has been bandied about re: the Stars and Bars.I think the situation is more complex, as shown in the above comments.
But, as an American living abroad,I’mprobably more sensitive to the deployment of the Confederate flag.
And individual American States have been vigorously setting up institutions overseas.
Now, if , say, the ‘Chambre de Commerce de l’Alabama’ decided to fly the Stars and Bars?
Treason.
————————–
Noah Berlatsky says:
The rebel flag is a much, much more direct symbol of treason and racism than the SCA. The middle ages was a really expansive time period which lasted for 1000 years. The Confederacy was a particular historical movement with a very particular ideology.
————————–
I guess that “SARCASM ALERT” before bringing up the SCA was too subtle for some…
—————————–
Charles Reece says:
…Which means, you can ask the person using the symbol what he or she means by it, or get offended by demanding that they mean what you want them to mean.
——————————
Yeah. Is someone hanging Old Glory outside their house thus indicating they’re a Bible-thumping, Fox News-watching right-winger?
——————————
vommarlowe says:
My friend B, who is black, assumes that anyone who wears/shows/flies the Confederate flag is a racist good ole boy.
And why shouldn’t she? That’s what the flag stood for. To many country lovin’ boys, it still stands for that.
———————————
I guess she’d assume this guy — a piece I mentioned earlier — must be a “racist good ole boy”:
A black student reports, “I WILL NOT Take My Confederate Flag DOWN!!!” See http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-709533 .
———————————
Charles Reece says:
“And why shouldn’t she?”
Well, one good reason is that there are black rappers who’ve worn the battle flag. She could say they’re ignorant fools, but “racist, good ole boy” doesn’t seem accurate.
———————————-
———————————–
vommarlowe says:
[to Charles] How you can just got not accept that overwhelming this is how many people, including many black people, see this flag is really baffling to me.
————————————
Who says he’s “not accepting” it? What people on the “other side” are saying is, it’s not necessarily how people view that Southern battle flag; that it doesn’t HAVE to be seen as a racist, pro-slavery symbol of secession. Any more than being into Black Metal means you’re going to sacrifice the neighbor’s kids to Satan.
Oh, but that would mean looking at things in a nuanced, nonsimplistic fashion; permitting “thoughtcrime”…
Sid Vicious was an idiot…and the punk scene was not so thoroughly without racist intent that he should just be excused either.
I don’t really think that the desire to offend and the content of the offense can be separated. That’s troll logic…and I don’t buy it. Symbols are slippery, but that doesn’t mean that you get to say, “I only mean this,” and therefore all the rest of the cultural context disappears.
It’s a free country, and you can wear what you want. But that flag stood for truly heinous beliefs, and is a symbol of the absolute worst of our country, not just during the civil war, but through Jim Crow. You want to tell yourself you’re daring and cool because you can offend people by trumpeting evil and then saying you didn’t mean it…well, that’s a pretty old, tired game, it seems to me.
It’s especially depressing because the south really does have a great and honorable history of integration which it could trumpet instead. Choosing the confederate flag is a deliberate decision not to be true to the South, but to be true to the worst in the South. Which, again, I find really disheartening.
when black rappers wear a confederate flag it’s a pretty safe bet that nobody will mistake it for support of slavery or jim crow policies. do you think it’s as clear when you wear it, charles?
——————————–
Noah Berlatsky says:
Sid Vicious was an idiot…and the punk scene was not so thoroughly without racist intent that he should just be excused either.
———————————
Thus: GUILTY!!!
———————————
I don’t really think that the desire to offend and the content of the offense can be separated. That’s troll logic…and I don’t buy it. Symbols are slippery, but that doesn’t mean that you get to say, “I only mean this,” and therefore all the rest of the cultural context disappears.
———————————-
The “rest of the cultural context” is indeed there; but what of taking into account that the “defendant” (may as well call him that; this argument reeks of the jargon of the courtroom, or Peoples’ Tribunal) may be an idiot, or insensitively/dumbassedly focusing only on a harmless aspect of the offensive symbol?
Unlike those who think there is only one “correct” way to think about things, I’m aware many viewpoints can be held: http://i1123.photobucket.com/albums/l542/Mike_59_Hunter/CowboysAndIndians.jpg
…Even by the same person!
I personally consider sporting the South’s battle flag is noxious, a trivializing and “selective memory” view of a foul cause and time; found a Tim Kreider cartoon of General William T. Sherman atom-bombing the South delightful.
However, if someone dresses like a Puritan for Thanksgiving, are they to be condemned for endorsing the persecution and murder of supposed witches, the slaughter of Native Americans? Wearing cowboy, Conquistador, Catholic priest, executioner or Nazi costumes at Halloween, are they likewise to “not be excused” because “the desire to offend and the content of the offense cannot be separated”?
————————————–
Simon Reinhardt says:
when black rappers wear a confederate flag it’s a pretty safe bet that nobody will mistake it for support of slavery or jim crow policies. do you think it’s as clear when you wear it, charles?
—————————————-
Does it have to be? Ooh, but someone might think the confederate-flag-wearer is a racist! And their head then explodes, upon the senses-shattering revelation that “racism still exists!”
What about all those blacks who collect racist and slavery paraphernalia? Somehow, they have no problem facing ugly realities…
Or, this sensitive person might think badly of the flag-wearer! We can’t have anyone getting the wrong impressions about other people, can they? Only totally non-confusing, unambiguous symbols should be worn, or placed on bumper-stickers. I suggest mathematical equations:
http://history.nasa.gov/JPL-93-24/eq5p54.jpg
Oh, but some will rage about the “hegemonic, Eurocentric, white heterosexual male able-ness” of it all…
I love country music, and I feel fine saying “Fuck the Confederate flag.” That might upset some poor white people with very real problems, including being screwed over on their veteran benefits by the U.S. government, unfairly imprisoned, etc., but ultimately I feel confident in my statement.
But I am also fascinated by Noah’s use of “treason.” It calls to mind Noel Ignatiev, an anti-racist guy known for pretty interesting dialogues with white supremacists, who said “Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.”
This isn’t about excusing Vicious, but about the proper level of offense given his attire. I have a hard time mustering the amount of outrage you seem to require. To me, offense at such an idiot is kind of idiotic, too, unless what’s causing the offense is that idiots typically rise to the top in pop culture. Then, I’d be sympathetic.
I just don’t get the offense at a symbol that isn’t being used to mean what is actually offensive. Basically, you’re offended because some symbol that has meant something offensive in the past is now being used, period, regardless of the meaning of its current usage. If you want to assume someone else means X (some offensive idea) every time they use the word P even though they mean Y, then you’re going to be offended. It’s the way solipsists do cultural critique. I can understand why many people might assume X (racism) based on historical connections between it and P (rebel flag), but the game that’s largely being played these days is people know that X isn’t really being intended, yet they’re going to be offended anyway — as if this arbitrary connection (between symbol and concept) is some kind of rigid designation. It’s pseudo-outrage. To wit:
Noah: “You want to tell yourself you’re daring and cool because you can offend people by trumpeting evil and then saying you didn’t mean it…well, that’s a pretty old, tired game, it seems to me.”
Yet, realizing this, you’re still “offended.” Again, my high school used the confederate battle flag as its official flag for football games, etc.. This wasn’t a rare occurrence throughout the South. It makes the flag fairly innocuous to many, changes its meaning over time — until, that is, people insist it means what it used to mean and needs to be erased from our collective memory.
(I have no problem with changing a flag because it causes division among the people in the group for which the flag is supposed to stand. If a significant section of a population can’t forget the “other meaning,” then dump the flag. Who cares? Ultimately, it’s just a flag.)
Simon: “do you think it’s as clear when you wear it, charles?”
My t-shirt was a tourist shirt from Tennessee that said, “home of country music” on it. I don’t think it’s all that difficult to distinguish the rebel design’s non-racist use from its racist use most of the time. There’s also the dipshit use, which exists largely to bug people like deadheads.
Also, regarding the possibility of selectively offensive vs. inoffensive: I can think of all kinds of books that promote far more awful shit than whatever vague idea of country rock Kid Rock is selling with his use of the battle flag, but academics would take offense at anyone who objected to these books being taught in college. However, what’s more offensive: an adult admiring the writings of, say, de Sade and teaching them to teenagers and young adults or some kid wearing sneakers with a confederate design? I mean, if you’re offended by the latter, then the former should really bother you where there’s no question of what de Sade supported. Then there’s Heidegger … whooboy. Most people still read him despite the truly heinous shit he was committed to. In fact, they quite often never even bother to mention the heinous shit every time he’s brought up in a paper or book. Just like a Southern teenager, most book-learning people — even academic left-leaning types who’d never be caught dead around a rebel flag — can read through and around or just ignore heinous content for other purposes all the time. Just not here, I guess.
That ‘racist use’ link doesn’t work, but surely everyone can find a relevant pic on their own.
Well, the issue then, since the semanticistss of the “political correctness” debate seem to unfailingly be on the “freedom to offend” side of things, is whether a Deadhead has the “right” to express offense, versus the descendant of actual slaves.
Or does that descendant of actual slaves have to ask about the T-shirt wearer’s intention before being offended?
Oh, and Heidegger, Ezra Pound, Philip Johnson, have some serious problems. I would discuss them, as I would discuss the Confederacy, but I would not wear a Heidegger T-shirt.
I know, that makes me Stalin.
And, I do acknowledge nuance. As I’ve mentioned recently, Neal Pollack’s character who plays Van Halen and offends Michael Stipe who calls it “rape music” says, “good”– not unlike the Deadhead situation. That is hilarious to me, but it has everything to do with the situation– I must confess that if a rape victim had said it I (almost certainly) would not have found it hilarious. Seth Green is good at prodding that gray area (insert joke/penis here).
Er… Seth MacFarlane I meant. But Seth Green too.
Charles, I would totally support people studying about the Confederacy, and reading or teaching writings by people like, say, Hitler. To me, that seems a little difference than wearing a swastika, calling my football team the Nazis, and then getting offended because folks point out that hey, maybe I’m establishing my personal identity on something that looks kind of like white supremacy, and perhaps if I thought that genocide was a bad thing, I should stop.
I don’t really think these distinctions are especially difficult to figure out, honestly.
I’ll point out too, maybe, re political correctness, that the right to be offensive seems to only work in certain ways. That is, you have the right to wear a confederate flag and offend other people…but if they then tell you you are an ass, then they are being repressive jerks, and you are totally within your right to be offended and denounce them…as long as you loudly proclaim the whole time that you’re actually too cool to be offended, and are just trolling.
The joys of anti-anti-racism….
————————-
Bert Stabler says:
…does that descendant of actual slaves have to ask about the T-shirt wearer’s intention before being offended?
————————-
People get offended by all manner of things, most of them utterly idiotic, often through asinine misunderstandings. So are we going to demand that…
A. No one ever do, say, wear, draw, write anything that anyone might find “offensive”
B. Every utterance, graphic, etc. that might be misunderstood carry an “advisory label”; i.e., “Even though I’m wearing the Flag, I’m not a right-wing jerk”
C. http://bigotherbigother.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/comic-book-legal-defense-fund-ad2.jpg …?
The amusing assumption is that American blacks are considered such fragile flowers that they need ultra-liberals to protect them from having their sensibilities traumatized by seeing some redneck’s flag. Puh-leeze.
From an old thread:
There are a lot of African-Americans who enjoy collecting racist tchotchkes; a tale of the ultimate such collector, and the museum he filled:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/04/new-racism-museum-reveals-the-ugly-truth-behind-aunt-jemima/256185/
“The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia”: http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/
——————————
There are about fifty thousand collectors of “Black Memorabilia” — an umbrella term which includes any object related to the African American experience. Black memorabilia, especially the older artifacts, include a disproportionately large number of racist anti-black collectibles. Since the 1970s there has been an upsurge in interest in black collectibles, especially blatantly racist objects. The high demand has led to an escalation of prices…
—————————–
http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/newforms/
However, those loathsome white hetero males are considered “fair game” in some quarters; their very condition equates oppressiveness, abusiveness, evil; we are told our very society is a “rape culture.”
To male anger about this ad — http://shine.yahoo.com/love-sex/samsung-s-primitive-husband-angers-men–is-it-sexist–173827672.html — we got the response:
——————————–
Gail Dines, an expert on sexist images in the media and a professor of sociology and women’s studies at Wheelock College in Boston…argues [that] men, who are in power in our society, cannot legitimately cry sexism. “You can say [this ad is] prejudiced, in bad taste, insulting, not funny,” she said. “But it can’t be sexist. Just like a black person can’t be racist.”
——————————–
Turns out this “a black person can’t be racist” stuff is all over the place; in the ultraliberal Matrix, anyway:
“A prominent UK race relations activist has claimed that black people in Europe and UK can’t be racist”: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/04/07/lee-jasper-race-relations_n_3032829.html
———————————
Rev. Jesse Jackson had allegedly claimed that black people cannot be racist because they are not in power or because they have suffered terribly at the hands of white racists or whatever.
I’ve seen a lot of white right-wingers get worked up and wounded over that claim.
However, black people are completely capable of being racist, as…Leonard Jeffries has demonstrated, with his claims that blacks are nice “sun people” and whites are nasty “ice people”.
More generally, there’s a folly called the “superior virtue of the oppressed”, that Bertrand Russell once wrote about. It’s in an essay with that title in his book Unpopular Essays. He wrote it over half a century ago, but there are plenty of more recent examples.
As he noted, back in the nineteenth century and thereabouts, many Europeans romanticized various stateless nationalities like the Irish, the Poles, the Hungarians, the Italians, and the Greeks. That was until they became autonomous or independent or unified, and when they did so, they demonstrated that they could be as bad as everybody else.
————————
http://www.secularcafe.org/showthread.php?t=23614 (More about that Russell essay later)
Here’s another black activist who says blacks can’t be racist; Malik Zulu Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party. Get a load of the enlightened wisdom (SARCASM ALERT) of the group’s leaders:
————————–
“Our lessons talk about the bloodsuckers of the poor… It’s that old no-good Jew, that old imposter Jew, that old hooked-nose, bagel-eating, lox-eating, Johnny-come-lately, perpetrating-a-fraud, just-crawled-out-of-the-caves-and-hills-of-Europe, so-called damn Jew … and I feel everything I’m saying up here is kosher.”
— Khalid Abdul Muhammad, one of the party’s future leaders, Baltimore, Md., Feb. 19, 1994
“Kill every goddamn Zionist in Israel! Goddamn little babies, goddamn old ladies! Blow up Zionist supermarkets!”
—Malik Zulu Shabazz, the party’s national chairman, protesting at B’nai B’rith International headquarters in Washington, D.C., April 20, 2002
“I hate white people. All of them. Every last iota of a cracker, I hate it. We didn’t come out here to play today. There’s too much serious business going on in the black community to be out here sliding through South Street with white, dirty, cracker whore bitches on our arms, and we call ourselves black men. … What the hell is wrong with you black man? You at a doomsday with a white girl on your damn arm. We keep begging white people for freedom! No wonder we not free! Your enemy cannot make you free, fool! You want freedom? You going to have to kill some crackers! You going to have to kill some of their babies!”
— King Samir Shabazz, head of the party’s Philadelphia chapter, in a National Geographic documentary, January 2009
————————
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/groups/new-black-panther-party
What, these are just some small group of extremists? Google “racist rap music” and a bit of searching will turn up head-exploding stuff. not from fringe groups or performers — as is the case with racist country music — but major, mainstream stars.
John H. McWhorter is black, so he’s allowed to say “How Hip-Hop Holds Blacks Back”: http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_3_how_hip_hop.html
Re Bertrand Russell; his argument described thus:
—————————
There’s no rational reason to believe that one segment of mankind is morally superior to another. But many moralists like to think better of groups to which they do not belong, and especially oppressed groups such as “subject nations, the poor, women and children” – or noble savages.
————————
http://readingrussell.blogspot.com/2007/11/unpopular-essays-chapter-5.html
————————
In an analytical moment, Bertrand Russell examined the faults of those who marched with him in favour of liberal causes, and concluded that they had an unerring ability to fall for “the fallacy of the superior virtue of the oppressed”. They could not just say that oppression was wrong, and leave it there. They had to imagine that the oppressed were virtuous; that their noble struggles raised them above the mass of compromised humanity; that their poets were geniuses and their leaders were the most principled statesmen on earth.
Ever the philosopher, Russell worried that the fallacy’s logical conclusion was that, far from causing harm, oppression was good for its victims and the more oppression there was the better the human race would be…
————————-
http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/3877/full
I really don’t think there’s a slippery slope from, “don’t form your identity around the symbol of a racist movement which tortured, raped, and brutalized millions of people over hundreds of years,” to, “don’t ever offend anyone ever.”
I think there is space to say the first without arguing for the second. But maybe I’m naive, I dunno.
I am impressed at the amount of effort Mike consistently puts into proving to a comment thread that he is under no compunction whatsoever to behave as if the bloody acts of our (white people’s) ancestors have no connection to events nowadays.
I work every day in a poor mostly-black neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, and, sorry, I’m just not scared of Louis Farrakhan. Racism now equals “It’s all good, so quit your bellyaching.”
Black president, right? It’s all good.
“Have ANY connection.” I am too putty-minded and liberal to keep up with my own triple negations.
Bert, my point was that every time you find a Heideggerian, you don’t necessarily find a Nazi sympathizer. And this is despite there being a decent case that can be made between his philosophy and his reasons for supporting Nazism. I think you and Noah would probably find it ridiculous if someone were to scream Nazi every time someone made a favorable mention of Heidegger. I’m suggesting applying that sort of judiciousness to the pop use of the rebel flag.
And yes, any offended party, regardless of color, should have a solid basis on which to determine their offense. Asking is one way of determining that basis, but not the only way (see above examples).
“Mike consistently puts into proving to a comment thread that he is under no compunction whatsoever to behave as if the bloody acts of our (white people’s) ancestors have no connection to events nowadays.”
To give it a more favorable reading: Mike’s suggesting that excessive white guilt can ghettoize a minority member’s potential reactions to racially related issues. This member has to go along with what’s deemed his identity, rather than the possibility that he’s thinking for himself. He’s expected to represent his minority status. Consider: would anyone think it relevant to bring up a white friend who has no issue with the wearing of a rebel flag? But a black friend is relevant.
Noah, as I said before, if you want to see every use of the rebel flag as an advocation of white supremacy akin to Neo-Nazis then you’re going to be offended by a lot of silly stuff and I’m going to think you’re being ridiculously thickheaded. I have a hard time equating Kid Rock’s concert to a Klan rally. I’d say we’re spinning wheels, so let’s just agree to disagree with a promise to make fun of each other once again in the future …
Kid Rock concerts are not a Klan rally. But country music continues in many ways to reify whiteness as an identity, and to be about reifying whiteness as an identity. You can see the determination to erase the historical components, consequences, and implications of that, and of using the confederate flag to do that, as a sign that those consequences and implications no longer exist. Or you can see it as a way to reinscribe them and revalidate them.
Does several centuries of racism disappear because people using the same symbol say it no longer means what it’s always meant? Or, possibly, is there something duplicitous about keeping the trappings of white supremacy while claiming that all the emotion is gone? If the emotion is gone, why keep the trappings? If it doesn’t mean that, if it doesn’t mean anything, why clutch it so closely? The detemination to defend it seems to belie the assertion that it no longer matters.
———————-
Bert Stabler says:
…the semanticistss of the “political correctness” debate seem to unfailingly be on the “freedom to offend” side of things…
————————
(SARCASM ALERT) Yeah! Why aren’t they defending the rights of people to make inoffensive statements, that nobody would disagree with, like “apples are tasty” and “kittens are cute”?
And get a load of those right-wingers at the ACLU; defending the right of Nazis to march through a Jewish neighborhood!
————————-
I am impressed at the amount of effort Mike consistently puts into proving to a comment thread that he is under no compunction whatsoever to behave as if the bloody acts of our (white people’s) ancestors have [any] connection to events nowadays.
————————
Ah, the classic “accuse somebody of making some outrageous/absurd statement which they in fact did not make, then attack them for making an outrageous/absurd statement” tactic!
What I am mainly arguing for is taking into account that symbols can mean different things, have different aspects, malign and benign. As stated earlier:
Unlike those who think there is only one “correct” way to think about things, I’m aware many viewpoints can be held: http://i1123.photobucket.com/albums/l542/Mike_59_Hunter/CowboysAndIndians.jpg
…Even by the same person!
I personally consider sporting the South’s battle flag is noxious, a trivializing and “selective memory” view of a foul cause and time; found a Tim Kreider cartoon of General William T. Sherman atom-bombing the South delightful.
However, if someone dresses like a Puritan for Thanksgiving, are they to be condemned for endorsing the persecution and murder of supposed witches, the slaughter of Native Americans? Wearing cowboy, Conquistador, Catholic priest, executioner or Nazi costumes at Halloween, are they likewise to “not be excused” because [as Noah put it] “the desire to offend and the content of the offense cannot be separated”?
What we have here is yet another manifestation of an attempt to force an utterly simplistic interpretation upon something that is complicated and multifaceted, and insist that that is the only correct one. The “A = A,” “Mr. A thinking, I regularly encounter here.
Thus the opinion of the masses is shaped and controlled; they are told the American flag is about freedom, righteousness, and all those fine things…come to think of it…
I have here in my hand a book of U.S. Postal Service stamps, bearing identical images of Old Glory waving in the breeze, underneath typeset “Liberty, Freedom, Equality, Justice”
…and the “dark side” of what that symbol stands for is ignored.
I know someone who regards the Christian Cross and only sees it as an “instrument of torture.” Yet, to Christians, it’s not the torture enacted therein, but the self-sacrifice for our sakes, the transcendence, is what is salient to them.
—————————-
Noah Berlatsky says:
Kid Rock concerts are not a Klan rally. But country music continues in many ways to reify whiteness as an identity, and to be about reifying whiteness as an identity.
—————————–
And (SARCASM ALERT, for all the difference it makes) those African dance troupes “continue in many ways to reify blackness as an identity, and to be about reifying blackness as an identity.”
Yes (better put another SARCASM ALERT here) those country-music lyrics about “self-pitying drunks crying in their beer about how their woman stole their pickup truck and ran over their hound dog” are all about “reifying whiteness as an identity.”
Consider the possibility that there routinely is a connection between culture and race, especially in earlier times, when mass media and easy travel did not produce ethnic hodgepodges.
“Riverdance” does not feature loads of blacks and Oriental performers; does this mean that — the perpetually aggrieved and accusing P.C. crowd will certainly say so — they’ve a “Whites are superior” ideology? Or, a reflection that the culture from which it arose was Caucasian in ethnicity?
Well, certainly shrieking that “Riverdance” is vilely racist (and “ableist”; not a quadraplegic in the bunch!) will continue to facilitate a feeling of moralistic superiority, of like Mr. A, clearly seeing the ugly realities that most blind themselves to, add to the “sliming” of mainstream culture and society.
On the other hand, note how in this and many other threads, when I bring up racism, misogyny, homophobia in black culture and Rap there is…utter silence. That the Oppressed People are capable of being jerks in turn is a possibility not to be countenanced.
—————————–
…is there something duplicitous about keeping the trappings of white supremacy while claiming that all the emotion is gone? If the emotion is gone, why keep the trappings? If it doesn’t mean that, if it doesn’t mean anything, why clutch it so closely?
—————————–
So, it either means “white supremacy,” or “it doesn’t mean anything.” There is no other possibility.
Thus, facets such as the Southern battle flag being seen as a symbol for “I’m a rebellious badass,” or “allegiance to a place and culture,” are erased from the equation.
This site (while absurdly arguing that slavery and white supremacy had nothing to do with the South’s leaving the Union) describes how the symbolism of the “Battle Flag of Northern Virginia” is, specifically,
——————————–
…On this big “X” there are thirteen white stars….They represent the thirteen original, united colonies from which the United States began. Each one of these colonies had its own system of self government…
…Do you remember from your grade-school years how the teachers would sometimes ask you to circle the right answers or picture on a work page, or to put an X on a picture or word or other item that didn’t belong in a group? That is the same concept this flag is designed around; the stars are laid out in the pattern of an X, and the blue bands are put on the thirteen stars to show that the southern states no longer wanted to be a part of the union with the northern states. In simpler terms, the message of flag’s design is simply this… CROSS US OUT of your Union! The southern states withdrew from the union in a movement called “secession,” which led to the Civil War.
———————————
http://www.trainweb.org/seaboard/FLAG/confederateflag.htm
So, offended people have to ask the source of their offense to explain their intentions before feeling threatened and hated. I’m glad to know that the lefties are the legalistic ones.
“So, it either means “white supremacy,” or “it doesn’t mean anything.” There is no other possibility.”
There are other possibilities…but I think that they tend to work off of white supremacy in some way, because white supremacy is what the history of the thing means. The rebellious badass…it’s about being a rebellious badass becuase white supremacy upsets people. The regional identification is about identifying with a region because of its particular history of white supremacy.
The white supremacy can be buried or denied. But it’s not clear to me how several hundred years of history and pain and suffering just vanishes because you want it to. Symbols exist in a cultural context; it’s not just about one person’s intention. Otherwise they’d be useless as symbols; they’d just be hermetic mysteries.
The confederate flag stood for battle on behalf of a slave state. When people see it and think that’s what it means, they aren’t being overly finicky. They’re reacting to what it means. And, again, if it doesn’t mean that, it’s very difficult to see why you would want to bother with it, since all of its subsequent meanings, whether rebelliousness or regional identity, are pretty closely tied to the original one in a way that makes it…not especially credible when folks say that the original meaning just can’t possibly be relevant.
—————————–
Bert Stabler says:
So, offended people have to ask the source of their offense to explain their intentions before feeling threatened and hated…
——————————
Ah, the classic “accuse somebody of making some outrageous/absurd statement which they in fact did not make, then attack them for making an outrageous/absurd statement” tactic!
Rather, I accepted that “People get offended by all manner of things, most of them utterly idiotic, often through asinine misunderstandings.”
And that attempts to circumvent “asinine misunderstandings” would necessitate idiocies like:
A. No one ever do, say, wear, draw, write anything that anyone might find “offensive”
B. Every utterance, graphic, etc. that might be misunderstood carry an “advisory label”; i.e., “Even though I’m wearing the Flag, I’m not a right-wing jerk”
C. http://bigotherbigother.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/comic-book-legal-defense-fund-ad2.jpg
Again, the amusing assumption is that American blacks are considered such fragile flowers that they need ultra-liberals to protect them from having their sensibilities traumatized by seeing some redneck’s flag.
Why, here in the South, blacks must be a quivering mass of fear and pain; “feeling threatened and hated” every time they see some bimbo wearing a Southern flag t-shirt, or glimpse a bit of “The Dukes of Hazzard” featuring its car: http://dev.toywonders.com/productcart/pc/ERTL-Authentics-The-Dukes-of-Hazzard-General-Lee-Dodge-Charger-1969-1-18-Orange-39505-35p6938.htm .
Heavens, the car was called “General Lee”! Therefore, could anything (uh, SARCASM ALERT) be more blatantly racist, white-supremacist, pro-slavery than “The Dukes of Hazzard”? The OUTRAGE!!!
More seriously, is not that dumbass show (I’ve never seen an episode, but can’t escape the impression it’s not Henry James territory) an embodiment of the spirit in which many moderns view the Southern battle flag, and Old South culture, divorced from its “dark side”?
—————————–
It’s time to wave bye-bye to the Confederate flag — from the “Dukes of Hazzard” car, at least.
That’s right, in a somewhat controversial decision, Warner Bros., the studio that owns the theatrical, DVD and licensing rights to the franchise, has decided to remove the flag from all future versions of General Lee…
——————————
http://www.nextmovie.com/blog/dukes-of-hazzard-car-flag/
“*Sob!* Is there no respect for tradition??”
——————————
Noah Berlatsky says:
…all of its subsequent meanings, whether rebelliousness or regional identity, are pretty closely tied to the original one in a way that makes it…not especially credible when folks say that the original meaning just can’t possibly be relevant.
——————————-
Ah, the classic “accuse somebody of making some outrageous/absurd statement which they in fact did not make, then attack them for making an outrageous/absurd statement” tactic!
Did anyone here on the “other” side argue “that the original meaning just can’t possibly be relevant”? No, rather that moderns sporting the South’s battle flag aren’t necessarily making a White Power statement. I’d certainly consider them ahistorical dumbasses, blinding themselves to the mostly noxious associations of that flag, seeing only its “sunny side,” and highly insensitive; but that hardly makes them racist, nor does it erase from existence that “sunny side,” just as the crimes of Mussolini don’t counteract that he suppressed the Mafia, “made the trains run on time.” (I can anticipate the Mr. A-thinking reaction: “YOU APPROVE OF FASCISM!!!”)
Just as Fundie Christians like to see themselves as the few embodiments of utter virtue, beleaguered by the overwhelmingly secular/Satanic forces of Evil that dominate mainstream society…
…thus do feminists maintain this is a frothingly misogynistic “rape culture,” where the Patriarchy bestows its power and boons upon all males, all women trod underfoot…
…and ultraliberals massively exaggerate existing problems and injustices (I can anticipate the countercharge: “You’re saying that these problems don’t exist!!“), the better to rage like Old Testament prophets against all the iniquity and “sinfulness” they are surrounded by.
——————————–
white supremacy is what the history of the thing means….The regional identification is about identifying with a region because of its particular history of white supremacy.
The white supremacy can be buried or denied. But it’s not clear to me how several hundred years of history and pain and suffering just vanishes because you want it to. Symbols exist in a cultural context; it’s not just about one person’s intention. Otherwise they’d be useless as symbols; they’d just be hermetic mysteries.
The confederate flag stood for battle on behalf of a slave state. When people see it and think that’s what it means, they aren’t being overly finicky. They’re reacting to what it means…
———————————-
If we’re going to indulge in “Mr. A thinking,” why just pick on that flag? Why not likewise characterize the “stars and stripes”? The North had plenty of slaves; before and after the Revolution, slavery was an important and accepted part of society there ( http://www.slavenorth.com/ ). The North even had slaves during most of the Civil War, which for most of its duration was not about “freeing the slaves.” Indeed, though certainly abolitionists were a loud voice within its ranks, it was the secession of the South (Northern soldiers frequently referred to their counterparts as “Secesh”: http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20000918 , http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Secesh ) that was what led to its being militarily attacked.*
So if we’re going to brush aside the existence of other possible facets of a symbol, or subsume them all under the Central Foulness (“The rebellious badass…it’s about being a rebellious badass becuase white supremacy upsets people”), why not (SARCASM ALERT) say the American flag is all about white supremacy? That any praiseworthy qualities people see in the symbol are just masks for white privilege? (“Freedom? It’s only freedom for the white man! Justice? It’s only justice for the white man! Equality? It’s only equality for the white man!”)
*In all fairness (’cause I’m more interested in winnowing out truths than scoring rhetorical points), here’s where “leading historian” James Oakes questions the well-nigh-universal belief that only lately “…was the North committed to emancipation…did the purpose of the Civil War expand from the mere restoration of the Union to include the overthrow of slavery.”: http://www.salon.com/2012/08/29/did_northern_aggression_cause_the_civil_war/
————————-
Charles Reece says:
….Mike’s suggesting that excessive white guilt can ghettoize a minority member’s potential reactions to racially related issues. This member has to go along with what’s deemed his identity, rather than the possibility that he’s thinking for himself. He’s expected to represent his minority status….
—————————-
Why, I’ve read how many American blacks dislike the term “African-American,” yet feel compelled to use it among liberal whites. Couldn’t find the original article, but along that vein:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/05/black-or-african-american_n_1255679.html
And here ( http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_3_how_hip_hop.html ) we read white liberal critics fawning over violent, racist, misogynistic Rap lyrics as daringly representing the “black experience.” Heavens, don’t those embody the racist “blacks are violent, oversexed criminals” attitude?
—————————–
…as I said before, if you want to see every use of the rebel flag as an advocation of white supremacy akin to Neo-Nazis then you’re going to be offended by a lot of silly stuff …
——————————
That’s like asking a pundit on Fox News not to see even the most measured criticism of Bush II’s war on Iraq as “I hate America, and I want the terrorists to win” liberal perfidy; a Christian Fundie not seeing the barring of prayer in the schools as an attempt to destroy Christianity…
Ah, the repeatedly saying ‘Ah, the classic “accuse somebody of making some outrageous/absurd statement which they in fact did not make, then attack them for making an outrageous/absurd statement” tactic!’ as if it meant something tactic. I don’t know what you stand for, Mike, but I’ll fight to the death for your noncommittal contrarianism.
Mike, are you good or evil?
I must embarrassedly admit to being “good”; in favor of economic justice, fair and equitable treatment of and opportunities for women, blacks, gays, etc.; respect for and humane treatment of animals. Why, I have literally hugged trees in my time, and found it a spiritually moving experience.
Excerpted from H.L. Mencken’s “An Ethical Dilemma,” From the Smart Set, April, 1920:
———————————
It is still socially dangerous for an American man to have the reputation of being virtuous. Theoretically, he who preserves his chemical purity in the face of all temptations is a noble and upright fellow and the delight of the heavenly hierarchy; actually he is laughed at by women and viewed with contempt by men. Such are the disparities that engage and torture the student of practical ethics in this great moral republic…
———————————-
What seems as “contrarian-ness” is actually an attack on the ideological equivalent of quack medicines, which not only fail to cure the injustices they’re seen as fighting against, but actually reinforce and exacerbate them. (At the flea market yesterday, I found and purchased a copy of “Losing The Race: Self-Sabotage In Black America.” A lengthy excerpt at http://multiracial.com/site/content/view/189/ )
If extremist feminists tell young women that all men are rapists, that the very society they inhabit is a “rape culture,” that no man will ever give them a fair chance, that they will never be able to rise as high as a man could in a world utterly dominated by the Patriarchy, that their only hope is to run off and hide in a safe “womynspace”…
…is that teaching liable to produce strong, self-confident women who’ll fight for their rights, not accept previous limitations, seize their place in the sun…
…or frightened, cringing women, who will see themselves as victims from birth, with the whole world against them, who’ll be afraid to speak up for themselves, assume the worst will always happen out in the Patriarchy’s world?
From Mencken’s 1918 “In Defense of Women”:
————————————
37. Women as Martyrs
…the thirst for martyrdom which shows itself in so many women, particularly under the higher forms of civilization…may be described as one of civilization’s diseases; it is almost unheard of in more primitive societies. The savage woman, unprotected by her rude culture and forced to heavy and incessant labour, has retained her physical strength and with it her honesty and self-respect. The civilized woman, gradually degenerated by a greater ease, and helped down that hill by the pretensions of civilized man, has turned her infirmity into a virtue, and so affects a feebleness that is actually far beyond the reality. It is by this route that she can most effectively disarm masculine distrust, and get what she wants. Man is flattered by any acknowledgment, however insincere, of his superior strength and capacity. He likes to be leaned upon, appealed to, followed docilely. And this tribute to his might caresses him on the psychic plane as well as on the plane of the obviously physical. He not only enjoys helping a woman over a gutter; he also enjoys helping her dry her tears. The result is the vast pretence that characterizes the relations of the sexes under civilization—the double pretence of man’s cunning and autonomy and of woman’s dependence and deference. Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.
This feminine affectation, of course, has gradually taken on the force of a fixed habit, and so it has got a certain support, by a familiar process of self-delusion, in reality. The civilized woman inherits that habit as she inherits her cunning. She is born half convinced that she is really as weak and helpless as she later pretends to be, and the prevailing folklore offers her endless corroboration. One of the resultant phenomena is the delight in martyrdom that one so often finds in women, and particularly in the least alert and introspective of them. They take a heavy, unhealthy pleasure in suffering; it subtly pleases them to be hard put upon; they like to picture themselves as slaughtered saints. Thus they always find something to complain of; the very conditions of domestic life give them a superabundance of clinical material. And if, by any chance, such material shows a falling off, they are uneasy and unhappy…
—————————–
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1270
Now, aren’t the harmful effects to women noted above, in an America infinitely less in favor of Women’s Rights, not similar to those that would result from being taught by feminists that in this supposedly woman-hating society, they are “weak and helpless”?
In David Denby’s “Great Books,” he describes a “Take Back the Night” rally where one rape victim after another tells how her whole life has been forever ruined, that they’ve been utterly shattered, will never be able to love or trust anyone again. Rather than seeing this as a temporary condition to be passed through on the way to healing, the supportively applauding audience and overall theme was of the perpetual victimhood of woman:
——————————-
…the tellers were all victims. That was the only way women at Take Back the Night announced their identity.
…a woman was under siege always — that was the point…
I waited in vain for that insolent note of self-assertion and ego. I waited for the [self-described] “survivors” of date rape to say, “May the bastard who did this to me rot in hell. I will live my life in defiance of his evil. I deny his power over me. For he is nothing; I am everything.” If the women had spoken like that, I would have rejoiced. But instead, many said things like this: “My emotional life has been destroyed. I am always ashamed. I’m traumatized. I cannot get close to anyone.”
…By implication, all women were in the rape community; all women were damaged. One of the campus [rape counseling centers] began referring [to women as] “potential survivors.”
———————————
I find “feeling sorry after yourself” after suffering a terrible trauma a perfectly understandable reaction, and one to be fully, unashamedly felt; expressed rather than repressed. However, if you allow that horrible experience to define how you see yourself, allow it to blight your life forever, those who encourage and support that attitude are no friends of yours, but well-meaning enemies.
I’d read once that parental overprotectiveness can be as harmful as abuse. I’d not go that far, but consider: http://gmwilliams.hubpages.com/hub/Children-of-Overprotective-Parents-Are-Slated-For-Failure
And: http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/22/hover-no-more-helicopter-parents-may-breed-depressio
Oh, and it sure is irritating to defend the brandishing of that dumbass flag of the South; I deeply regret that the North was so genteel and forgiving after having beaten them.
But I consider the idea that American blacks would go into convulsions like a vampire before the Cross, or shrivel up like salted slugs upon seeing some idiot wearing one, or featuring one in a “Forget, Hell!” bumper sticker, is not only absurd, but exceedingly condescending. Blacks are made of sterner stuff than that.
Does even the wimpiest liberal go into a crying fit when confronted with the countless bumper stickers, “Mallard Fillmore” strips, Fox News or Rush Limbaugh invectives attacking them as would-be tyrants who’d like to put all Christians in concentration camps, friends of terrorists, rabid America-haters?
And this is stuff which is explicitly hateful, not something — like the Confederate flag atop the “Dukes of Hazzard” car — which is used in a fashion where no malignity is intended, even if it still is idiotically thoughtless.
I feel confident that you mean well Mike, if vague on details. Brutalized people are frequently both angry and scared, it’s not just one or the other. Feminists are not generally known for cowering in fear.
And in the case of the rebel flag, I am not concerned about black people feeling all mopey. I am concerned about the black person feeling hated, and then concerned about the white person possibly getting their ass beat, even if for a good reason.
Well, I have no problem with a white person getting their ass beat by blacks for wearing a Southern flag, no matter the innocence of their intent. “Learn some history, dumbass!”
Alex, to respond to your point from way back on the fourth, I don’t hate country music. I’m just insufferably picky about it, as I am with cornbread and a few other Southern foods that must be done just right. My two current favorite country songs are “Southern Comfort Zone” and “True Believers.” I decided I liked them when I heard them playing on my wife’s iPod a couple days ago. Then I found out that the first one is by Brad Paisley and the second is by Darius Rucker, who is black. There may be a message in that, but I have yet to figure it out.