Politics: Whistling Dixie
The Associated Press had an interesting item floating around this week about how the drive to bring back a lot of the symbols of the Confederacy could stand to harm the American South in a lot of ways. My wife and I have interesting discussions on the subject, as she's a southerner and I'm a Yankee-Arab, which is analogous to 'dirt' for some jokesters in the South.
There was an example of what my wife would call the first problem. The American South is already saddled with a constant bad-rap, because of red-neck jokes and NASCAR jokes and everything else that people just throw at the South because it's funny. The reality, she asserts, is that there is racism and evil all over the USA, and you certainly don't need to cross the Mason-Dixon line to discover some. She is correct.
But I was making the point the other day that the South has a lot on the line these days, and getting out from under those assumptions and mental short-changes of the South is a big part of what's at stake. The South has made huge strides, has represented America on the world stage, has become a center of banking and commerce, and has challenged much of the north for dominance in American politics and life. Culturally, the capitals of the South compete handsomely against non-niche (non-NYC or LA) cities in the rest of the US. And the South was significantly handicapped economically by the Reconstruction, which was essentially a public policy bombing into the stone age by the north.
But by the early part of the 20th century, the South was experiencing a revitalization. It grew steadily, and endured well because it wasn't yet so business dependent when the Great Depression struck. The next challenge for the South was the civil rights movement, and this is where I think an important thing occurred. The South had seen itself move forward at a certain rate of progress, race-relations-wise. This rate was beginning to intimidate the White establishment in the South, and the action they took, especially in response to Brown v. Board of Education, was to readopt a lot of the symbols of the Confederacy.
This action had the surprising effect of undermining any argument that the Confederate battle flag was an important symbol of cultural heritage. By legally re-adopting the CSA battle flag onto their state flags in response to desegregation, Southern states were conceding that the stars and bars were meant to tell blacks that they aren't welcome in the schools, restaurants, buses, etc. Any valid comparison to an American with English heritage flying the Union Jack was stripped -- regardless of the particular flyer's intent -- when the states endowed the flag adoption with the weight of racial backlash and Jim Crow.
Fast forward to today. The civil rights movement wasn't deterred by the adoption of the CSA battle flag. Instead, the rate of integration accelerated, continuing with spasms of violence, and fits of enormous understanding. As the AP piece positions it:
Exactly. The return of this 'symbol' will do nothing but cast Georgia, Sonny Perdue and his right-wing supporters as Jim Crow nostalgists with an amazing inability to grasp what kind of damage this action has. No 'racial reconciliation' can come of this action. The Stars and Bars may very well have represented the southern cultural heritage before the Ku Klux Klan in the 20s and 30s and the segregationist movement in the 40s, 50s and 60s replaced all the flag's meaning with acrid hatred. Atlanta -- long regarded as a city on the civil rights vanguard and a powerful center of banking and industry in the American South -- could lose some of its stature and much of its revenue over Perdue's dubious maneuver to bring back the rebel flag.
The Associated Press had an interesting item floating around this week about how the drive to bring back a lot of the symbols of the Confederacy could stand to harm the American South in a lot of ways. My wife and I have interesting discussions on the subject, as she's a southerner and I'm a Yankee-Arab, which is analogous to 'dirt' for some jokesters in the South.
There was an example of what my wife would call the first problem. The American South is already saddled with a constant bad-rap, because of red-neck jokes and NASCAR jokes and everything else that people just throw at the South because it's funny. The reality, she asserts, is that there is racism and evil all over the USA, and you certainly don't need to cross the Mason-Dixon line to discover some. She is correct.
But I was making the point the other day that the South has a lot on the line these days, and getting out from under those assumptions and mental short-changes of the South is a big part of what's at stake. The South has made huge strides, has represented America on the world stage, has become a center of banking and commerce, and has challenged much of the north for dominance in American politics and life. Culturally, the capitals of the South compete handsomely against non-niche (non-NYC or LA) cities in the rest of the US. And the South was significantly handicapped economically by the Reconstruction, which was essentially a public policy bombing into the stone age by the north.
But by the early part of the 20th century, the South was experiencing a revitalization. It grew steadily, and endured well because it wasn't yet so business dependent when the Great Depression struck. The next challenge for the South was the civil rights movement, and this is where I think an important thing occurred. The South had seen itself move forward at a certain rate of progress, race-relations-wise. This rate was beginning to intimidate the White establishment in the South, and the action they took, especially in response to Brown v. Board of Education, was to readopt a lot of the symbols of the Confederacy.
This action had the surprising effect of undermining any argument that the Confederate battle flag was an important symbol of cultural heritage. By legally re-adopting the CSA battle flag onto their state flags in response to desegregation, Southern states were conceding that the stars and bars were meant to tell blacks that they aren't welcome in the schools, restaurants, buses, etc. Any valid comparison to an American with English heritage flying the Union Jack was stripped -- regardless of the particular flyer's intent -- when the states endowed the flag adoption with the weight of racial backlash and Jim Crow.
Fast forward to today. The civil rights movement wasn't deterred by the adoption of the CSA battle flag. Instead, the rate of integration accelerated, continuing with spasms of violence, and fits of enormous understanding. As the AP piece positions it:
While other Southern cities exploded in violence, Atlanta came through the civil rights era with remarkably little strife. Civic leaders used to boast that Atlanta was the city "too busy to hate."
But now that image is in jeopardy over a symbol of the Old South.
Gov. Sonny Perdue, Georgia's first Republican governor in 130 years, has proposed a referendum on bringing back the old state flag next year with its big Confederate emblem.
Exactly. The return of this 'symbol' will do nothing but cast Georgia, Sonny Perdue and his right-wing supporters as Jim Crow nostalgists with an amazing inability to grasp what kind of damage this action has. No 'racial reconciliation' can come of this action. The Stars and Bars may very well have represented the southern cultural heritage before the Ku Klux Klan in the 20s and 30s and the segregationist movement in the 40s, 50s and 60s replaced all the flag's meaning with acrid hatred. Atlanta -- long regarded as a city on the civil rights vanguard and a powerful center of banking and industry in the American South -- could lose some of its stature and much of its revenue over Perdue's dubious maneuver to bring back the rebel flag.
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