The Confederate Flag

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by DrPhil

For clarity's sake:

This form of the swastika



Not this form of the swastika




/turning into MysticCat

You win awesome points for the day!

Originally Posted by Leslie Anne

Being a Northerner, I just don't get it. How can anyone possibly be proud of their Southern heritage to the point of flying a Confederate flag (the obvious one) without that being based on racism? How can you be proud of ancestors who participated in something despicable?

I really don't know what to say other than it is obvious that you don't get it, and to be honest, I don't have the energy right now to try and explain it. Like some others here, I tire of non-Southerners dismissing the whole thing with an "I just don't get it."

Suffice it to say that symbols can have different meanings to different people. The wise and thoughful person is aware of that and takes into account both what they themselves understand a symbol to mean and what they know others might understand the symbol to mean. And that can work both ways.

Originally Posted by Leslie Anne

I completely and absolutely disagree. Yes, these atrocities are very different but if we're looking at flags and what they represent I would hardly call centuries of slavery, unspeakable violence, rape and murder a "molehill".

Again, flags represent different things to different people.

I'm sure that you know that participation in the slave trade and all the atrocities that went with it was not limited to Southerners. It involved people from all over America (not to mention the British and many other non-Americans), and it was sanctioned and supported by federal law. Does that mean the American flag is tainted?

To be clear: I'm not so much trying to defend any Confederate flag, much less the Confederacy itself, as I am trying to highlight this point: I think one of the biggest hinderances to understanding other people or other perspectives is the phrase "I just don't get it," or its cousin, "I just don't understand how people can think that." If no effort has been put into trying to understand another's perspective, it's a cop-out and that just reinforces one's own biases. Understanding another's perspective doesn't mean agreement with it, but it does mean being open to the possiblity that maybe, just maybe, there is more than one way to see things.