It's just a Southern thang y'all!

[Rahul]

Why do southerns keep insisting the Confederate flag isn't a racist symbol?

The idea that the Confederate flag is a racist symbol is fairly recent.

As an example, this was a very popular TV show from 1979 thru 1985 yet was never considered racist despite the prominent display of the Confederate Flag.



I mean can you imagine a similar TV show celebrating the Confederate Flag and General Lee coming out today? It would never happen. People would shit themselves in a frenzy to be the first to denounce it in their social circle.

The "Confederate" flag was a military flag, it was never one of the national flags of the Confederacy. I thought it was amusing a few years ago when Georgia was being attacked for this flag:



So they simply changed it to a near exact copy of one of the official national flags of the Confederacy:



No problem. H'okay.

haha. I mean really?

The Confederate flag became to the Southern people immediately following the US Civil War a symbol of a defiance against tyranny.

Now I'm not going into the entire reasons for the war and all that. I'm not starting a debate about the war.

I'm simply stating that right or wrong, it symbolized to the Southern people defiance against an outside oppressor. Not the internal oppression of minorities though that obviously was done for a century following the war. Go back to the 1920's or so and I would dare you to find a Confederate flag flying in the South. It was a very, very rare thing.

Now during the Civil Rights years some Southerners started waving it around in defiance to the federal government enforcing desegregation. That's when it started to be symbolized as racist. However, it obviously took a while. Civil Rights years were in the 60's, but the Dukes of Hazzard still got a pass as a family friendly, non racist TV show in the early 80's.

It's a shame that it became tainted in that way. But unfortunately it has. Though I am a proud Southerner I wouldn't personally display it even down here simply because of all the drama and misinterpretations you would have to deal with.

I don't own one. Not even on a sticker.