Rebel Flag meaning

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Nov 09 - 01:55 PM

In black and white they look quite similar. Which wouldn't be true of the Stars and Stripes.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: Greg F.
Date: 02 Nov 09 - 10:53 AM

...the Confederate Flag simply because it looks like the Scottish Saltire.

Except that the design and the colours are completely different, that is.

Looks a bit like the Swedish flag, too.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: Greg F.
Date: 02 Nov 09 - 08:18 AM

With all precincts reporting... 65 percent favoured keeping the 1894 flag, while ... 35 percent, wanted to replace it....

Which makes one wonder what sort of people the 65% of the population really are who thought it a good thing - or even a permissible thing - to deal the other 35% a positive slap in the face each and every time they're regularly confronted by their state flag flying at public buildings, schools, etc..

Insensitive at best, no?

Such is the nature if institutionalized racism.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: GUEST,Allan Connochie
Date: 01 Nov 09 - 06:25 PM

As to how the Union Flag is viewed in Britain - well of course that depends on what part of Britain you are in. The Union Flag itself has less BNP or NF connotations in Scotland. Here some view it, along with the Red Hand Of Ulster and the Irish Tricolour, more as a sectarian symbol. There have been those who have demanded that all these flags are banned at football matches etc. Of course I think that is more of a Scottish and Irish thing. Would anyone wearing a Union Flag to a sporting event in let's say Leeds be mistaken for being anti-Catholic? Of course the idea that everyone displaying a Union Flag in Scotland is sectarian is absurd. The vast majority won't be but it does carry that stigma somewhat. Symbols mean different things in different places. You also see Confederate Flags displayed around here though I don't think I've ever seen them used other than folks wanting to show they like American music etc. I also think the Scots, and the British in general, have a soft spot for the defeated. Hence it would maybe be much more glamorous to be a Jacobite than a Hanovarian; or a Confederate than a Union soldier. Rightly or wrongly I don't think many British who have a Confederate Flag would think on the actual politics or issues themselves. Plus I think some Scots maybe identify with the Confederate Flag simply because it looks like the Scottish Saltire.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Nov 09 - 05:34 PM

If the American Revolution had failed would the banners of those who fought for it be seen that differently from those of the Confederacy?

Here is Boston King, one of the many thousands of escaped slaves who fought on the losing side, writing about the end of that war:

"Peace was restored between America and Great Britain, which diffused universal joy among all parties, except us, who had escaped from slavery, and taken refuge in the English army; for a report prevailed at New-York, that all the slaves, in number 2000, were to be delivered up to their masters, altho' some of them had been three or four years among the English.

This dreadful rumour filled us all with inexpressible anguish and terror, especially when we saw our old masters coming from Virginia, North-Carolina, and other parts, and seizing upon their slaves in the streets of New-York, or even dragging them out of their beds. Many of the slaves had very cruel masters, so that the thoughts of returning home with them embittered life to us."

(From here.)

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: Greg F.
Date: 01 Nov 09 - 05:13 PM

...many folks who fly the flag, or wear it on jackets or as front licence plates... don't do it as a racist symbol...

Those folks need to educate themselves.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: PHJim
Date: 01 Nov 09 - 02:54 PM

I started this thread by wondering what the flag brings to people's mind when they see it. I stated what images came into my mind when I see it. I'm quite sure that many folks who fly the flag, or wear it on jackets or as front licence plates... don't do it as a racist symbol, but that's what it brings to my mind.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: GUEST,pattyClink
Date: 31 Oct 09 - 09:24 PM

Good research, McGrath! It does sound like open-shut black-white voting, doesn't it. However, there were a bunch of white liberals voting down the flag and black conservatives voting it up, hence the 'surprisingly close'.

I was thinking about this whole 'it must stand for hate' assumption. I'm sure there are some Native Americans to whom the American flag symbolizes genocide from 200 years ago. So was everyone who ever fought under that flag a hateful racist out to do evil to the Native American?

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 31 Oct 09 - 05:22 PM

There is indeed a lot of historical nostalgia involved in some of the State flags: I was most interested to discover that Hawaii maintains the Union Jack in its top-left corner.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 31 Oct 09 - 03:28 PM

This news story from the (English) Independant paper gives some information about that vote in 2001 -
Mississippi votes to keep Confederate flag flying:

...With all precincts reporting, 488,630 voters, or 65 percent, favoured keeping the 1894 flag, while 267,812 voters, or 35 percent, wanted to replace it....

...The Mississippi vote was largely split along racial lines. In DeSoto County, an 86 percent white county in the Memphis suburbs, the old flag won by a 6–1 margin. In Hinds, a majority black county that is home to the state capital, went almost 2–to–1 for the new design.

In a few majority–black counties, the vote was surprisingly close. The predominantly black Delta went for the new flag, but not overwhelmingly. Mississippi, with 2.8 million people, is 61 percent white and 36 percent black.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: Greg F.
Date: 31 Oct 09 - 01:17 PM

Here in Mississippi we voted to keep the stars and bars in a corner of the state flag, and with a considerable portion of the Black vote going towards 'keep it'.

Interesting, if true.

Is there an official web-site maintained by the state election commission or similar entity or other official source where the actual figures on this vote, broken down by race, can be verefied?

I'd like to take a look.

Also, can you provide any information about what the NAACP, Urban League, Southern Poverty Law Center & such like organizations thought about this issue and the vote?

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: GUEST,biff
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 08:31 PM

Siouxsie of the banshees infamously wore a swasticka and never lived it down. an attempt to show others their own shadow through a wearing of the shadow? keep calling everything racist or a hate crime and you will have continually diminished free speech. watch for use of the word "crazy" to be considered hate speech sometime in the next 8 years. oh yeah, look for words to be off limits in songs and literature too. it might hurt the children. maybe, and I might be crazy in saying this, but maybe people are tired of the mass judgements on everything and just want to say "f- you" by rebelling and the confederate flag is one way of doing this. sensitivity issues carried too far lead to sensitivity legislation which is definitely a mixed blessing. personally I'd rather live in an imperfect world rather then one that is so legislated that all is secure and non hurtful nor demeaning. human attempts to create perfection in society inevitably lead to an overly rigid legal structure. a healthy society may need some tolerance for expression that others object to. let the tree bend in the wind.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 07:32 PM

You don't have educated racists? I wish I believed that was the truth.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: Bobert
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 06:21 PM

We sang "Dixie" as well in school... We also sang "Old Black Joe"... The Confederate flag was used at lots of high school football games...

But then again this was much different time in terms of our history...

I'd like to think that we have come a long way since those days... And most of us have... There are always holdouts who will go to their graves thinking that white people are the superior race... Problem is that these holdouts are still teaching their kids the same prejudges and hatreds... I guess if being a bigot is one's heritage then these folks are half right when they say "Heritage, Not Hate"... Problem is that it is hate... Just as swastika represents hate...

No I think the folks who defend these symbols had eductaed people in their ranks they might be able to present a better case... But that is not the case... The haters are the least educated... And the least employed... And the least motivated to be good citizens...

Very sad commentary on our country to have folks who are so steeped in hatred of others because of their race or choic of religion... Bigotry is bigotry is bigotry is...... No two ways about it...

B~

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 04:48 PM

The Indian swastika turns up as jewellery. I was sitting opposite an Indian girl wearing one round her neck in a London Tube carriage where every other person was black or Asian.   Nobdy was seeing it as an offensive symbol.

Context is everything.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 04:07 PM

Jack: Thank you for the interesting article about the survival of the Swastika symbol and the picture of the beautiful woman who has its name. I found these very encouraging and life-enhancing...

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: GUEST,pattyClink
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 04:01 PM

Good point, McGrath. Here in Mississippi we voted to keep the stars and bars in a corner of the state flag, and with a considerable portion of the Black vote going towards 'keep it'.   It's a historical artifact. We have no more business banishing it from the earth than we do tearing down Beauvoir or the Illinois monument at Vicksburg.

For some people it is a symbol of racism. For many more people it is a symbol of Dixie, of a region they love, and fallen ancestors they honor. And the vote frankly was more a statement of "Don't Tread On Me" than anything else.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 03:15 PM

I have a feeling that if the American Revolution had been defeated, the flags they used might have had a similar subsequent history, and might have been seen as inextricably linked with "the American custom of slavery".

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: mg
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 03:06 PM

I would not put a Nazi flag on a grave. I would put a German or Austrian flag on the grave and I would honor the person there, not knowing if he or she was an evildoer or someone who was born on the wrong side of the river.

The meaning of the American Civil War is probably crystal clear to those with finely honed filters. To those who don't, it is murky and horrible and brave all mixed in together..bad intentions mixed with good, bad people mixed with good, bad causes mixed with a desire to not have one's neighbors slaughtered. mg

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 02:38 PM

The meaning of the American Civil War was clear. 1. To abolish the Southern custom of slavery and 2. To preserve the Union which we today call the U.S.

Surely it was the other way round.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: Stringsinger
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 02:09 PM

You wouldn't want to see a Nazi flag on a grave. Why would anyone want a Confederate Battle Flag there? To commemorate Rebel soldiers seems an exercise in futility and belies this distasteful heritage. The Daughters of the Confederacy seems like an organization to enable the tradition of Southern bigotry. You might as well have a faction of a Nazi woman's organization.

The meaning of the American Civil War was clear. 1. To abolish the Southern custom of slavery and 2. To preserve the Union which we today call the U.S.

Any defense of Southern Confederate "values" is a total whitewash of history.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: Jack Campin
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 01:52 PM

The swastika may be unusable in most contexts in Europe, but it's doing just fine as a Hindu symbol in India.

The swastika in Kerala

This rather appealing young lady even answers to it: Swastika Mukherjee

(There have been stushies about European Hindus using the symbol. As far as I can tell, those Hindus have nearly always been in the right; they genuinely are just using it the way they always have).

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 01:04 PM

But sometimes older symbols do get taken over and polluted and are never again usable in their original context. That is what happened to the Swastika — originally the oriental mystic sunwheel — you will find it embossed on the covers of Macmillan's and Methuen's original Kipling editions. But it can never be used in any sort of innocent or innocuous context again, having been hijacked as dreaded symbol of the Nazi party.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: mg
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 12:48 PM

If something was an unbroken tradition, like being similar to the Nazi salute, then go back to its original lmeaing. In my church it was never seen until recently, so it is just in the last few years, and no reason at all to do it when you could make up your own symbols..even it it was done 500 years ago it is not an unbroken tradition and has been usurped and so I say don't resurrect that ever, but if you have always done it that is different. mg

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 10:55 AM

I've got a couple of black shirts and a brown shirt as well. I trust no one will get offended when I wear them, or take as some kind of expressioin of allegiance to Fascism or Nazism.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: Jack Campin
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 10:47 AM

the Nazi salute, which a version of was done in my church until recently, calling it a blessing. I would point out to them that the blessing was identical in appearance to the Nazi salute but they went by intention more than obviously what it looked like..but I think they were dead wrong to permit this.

I've seen that once, by the minister at a Church of Scotland funeral. It was for a friend of mine who had been in the Gay Christian movement, and who wouldn't personally have gone for that minister's utterly traditionalist approach, but funerals are for the living, and I presume his family did. It seemed a bit weird to me, but it would never have occurred to me to ban it. The Kirk has presumably been doing it at funerals for more than 400 years, so why should they let the Nazis take it away from them?

It went along a phrase about hope in the resurrection, spoken as the coffin went into the incinerator. If those words and the accompanying ritual offered some comfort to the guy's family, I'm fine with that.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: Greg F.
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 10:32 AM

And what, precisely, Art, have I posted that is "without factal basis"?

Are you looking for citations? I've given you several. Have you checked them out? Would you like additional ones?

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: artbrooks
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 10:15 AM

Please continue to maintain your personal opinion, with or without factual basis. I'm out of here.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: Greg F.
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 10:13 AM

Mary, please do check your history.

Memorial Day- or more properly Decoration Day - was the creation of the Grand Army of the Republic for decorating the graves of the UNION dead.

It had nothing whatsoever to do with "the ladies of the post-Confederacy".

And furthermore the systematic desecration of the graves of Union soldiers buried in the South was continued up until very recent times.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: Greg F.
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 10:05 AM

in the century and a half after the American Civil War, it has been co-opted by racists and bigots as their symbol, leaving those who wish to commemorate the individual valor of Southern soldiers...


Oh, please, Art, I think you're smarter than that- the flag was not "co-opted" after the fact- it was since its inception a symbol of racism and bigotry.

Have you ever read the works of Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens or the South Carolina Ordinance of Seccession among other things?

What about the works of that great Confederate patriot Nathan Bedford Forrest, the father of the Ku Klux Klan?

There are PLENTY of other options for those who
"wish to commemorate the individual valor of Southern soldiers".
Just so long as the commemoration doesn't erase or pervert the meaning of The Cause that this valor was exercised in aid of.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 07:22 AM

I see some Australian bikers use a better Rebel Flag, as used at Eureka Stockade and favoured by Ned Kelly.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: wysiwyg
Date: 29 Oct 09 - 11:35 PM

Susan, you have a well established habit of trying to shift the premise when you are not sure how to answer. Your response to this was a grand example. You attempt to move to my "style", appearing a wise and gentle counselor, instead of responding to the post. It is patronizing and insulting. Deal with the issue and let me seek therapy for my well intentioned, but misguided ways, OK?

Huh?

WTF.

~S~

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: Hrothgar
Date: 29 Oct 09 - 11:01 PM

In Australia, the Rebel flag is used by the Rebels motorcyle gang, with whom a sweet innocent young man like myself does not associate.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: mg
Date: 29 Oct 09 - 01:50 PM

1. I do not believe the Confederate flag is a harmless symbol. No flag is. Wave the Danish flag in an intimidating way, perhaps in Galway, as if to say we got you once and we will get you again, and that is intimidating. Most people would find the Danish flag to be non-intimidating. Waving the flag at a particular person is an act of intimidation at times. I think a better analogy would be waving the German flag at someone in a hostile way. The Nazi flag should be banned forever, as should the Nazi salute, which a version of was done in my church until recently, calling it a blessing. I would point out to them that the blessing was identical in appearance to the Nazi salute but they went by intention more than obviously what it looked like..but I think they were dead wrong to permit this. Germans did some horrible things in WWII..but not all of them, and I would permit the German flag to be flown and put on graves etc. It is hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, the baby from the bathwater more often than not..to separate people who loved their farms and mountains and fellow countrymen and those who did awful things..and the two groups could be composed of the exact same people.

2. As I said before, I would not permit the Confederate flag to be flown on public lands..with the exception of small ones on the graves of the fallen. It is the least we can do. The flag has multiple meanings and symbolism. There is a lot of gray area..perhaps there should be a permit as to where it can be flown..I think on Memorial Day, which was spread by the ladies of the post-Confederacy honoring all the fallen, North and South.

The bitterness and anger that is behind the use of the Confederate flag is often against the Yankees..or some would say the Damn Yankees. There were terrible abuses in the war and in reconstruction, and an abused people do not easily forget. How we treat our vanquished is a good measure of who we are as a country. Stripping them of all heritage, dignity, ways to earn a living etc. has repurcussions far into the future.

There are families who still revere their ancestors, probably more in the South than elsewhere. That is a huge factor.

And a factor, that no one is denying, is that there are racist and violent people who have always used that flag to stir things up and do bad things, and new groups who have appropriated it.

You have this whole murky mess. Some feelings are noble and some are inhuman.

Perhaps there should be a disclaimer on it that says this is meant to honor our dead and our heritage, which has admittedly shameful aspects to it. It is not meant to approve of racism, prejudice, violence, etc. etc....and then really limit how it can be used...

I don't have all the answers except no to use in public arenas, yes to small flags on graveyards of the fallen and to certain groups in Memorial Day parades and probably no to most other considerations. mg

It is very important to get what people are actually saying in these cases. I get mightily irritated when words are put in my mouth (I am not saying they have been here).

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: Big Mick
Date: 29 Oct 09 - 01:27 PM

Fair post, as usual, from Art. My point, once again, goes to the central question posed in this thread. That is, what has it become today?

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: artbrooks
Date: 29 Oct 09 - 01:23 PM

I don't think that anyone here has said that "the Confederate flag is a harmless symbol of history". Rather, I (and others) have said that it is unfortunate that, in the century and a half after the American Civil War, it has been co-opted by racists and bigots as their symbol, leaving those who wish to commemorate the individual valor of Southern soldiers with nothing.   I am, by the way, neither a "neo-Confederate apologist" (whatever that is) nor personally interested in commemorating the Confederacy in any way.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: Lighter
Date: 29 Oct 09 - 11:01 AM

Wordless symbols mean whatever people think they mean. If your interpretation is different from most, watch out.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: John P
Date: 29 Oct 09 - 10:49 AM

Will someone who thinks the Confederate flag is a harmless symbol of history please respond to the comment that waving the flag at a black person is very much like waving a Nazi flag at a Jew?

Like I said earlier, everyone I've ever talked to (admittedly not many) who was displaying the flag was a racist. And every black person I've talked to sees it as a gross insult.

And the other question: Why would anyone display a flag that they know (or should know) is seen as a racist symbol by lots of folks?

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 29 Oct 09 - 07:44 AM

Sorry - Lebanese national flag

Falangist logo

And, to show it's not just fascists use the cedar image, the Lebanese Communist Party flag.

And I'm not suggesting that Jack Campin's friend wasn't quite understandibly freaked out by the cedar tree symbol - but I thought it as well to set the record straight, in case anybody misunderstood its normal significance on a Lebanese flag they might encounter, say on some demo.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: GUEST,bankley
Date: 29 Oct 09 - 06:47 AM

that was me

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Oct 09 - 06:46 AM

I have a Romany flag decal on the headstock of my guitar... it's the only flag that will grace that axe... earth, sky and a wheel in between
no stars, no country.... Yanko gave it to me.... there's a great picture of him in his younger days carrying it to the UN with Yul Brynner holding the charter when they were trying for NGO status for the Roma...

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: Gervase
Date: 28 Oct 09 - 12:49 PM

In Britain, it is almost never used by private citizens except as a fascist emblem, and non-white people in Britain have every reason to react to it as Jews do the swastika - it stands for being spat on and beaten in the street, gang attacks and firebombs.
Fascist like the new Mini, the dresses the Spice Girls wore, the Last Night of the Proms, the flag that Lewis Hamilton and Amir Khan draped around their shoulders...?
Maybe for a while in the Seventies and early Eighties the Union flag was hijacked by the NF and other Far Right organisations, but I don't think it's got that connotation now.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: Greg F.
Date: 28 Oct 09 - 11:23 AM

I do not believe we in the UK have anything at all to learn from Americans about what that flag signifies.

Excuse me??? "I reject objective reality, and substitute my own version".

Hey, make up & believe whatever bullshit you want, mate.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 07:22 PM

You accidently hit "V" instead of ctrl-v for paste, Kevin. Can you re-do that kink?

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 06:37 PM

The Cedar symbol as such is used on the Lebanese national flag - here.   The Phalangists use a re-designed version of it - here

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: romanyman
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 04:49 PM

Why oh why does everything have to have a reason. What would be said if i was to wave my romany flag about, or sing some of the original romany songs, many of them are anti settled folk, is that racist, as a minority in my own country, i suppose it is.
Many people wouldnt even know the romany flag if they saw it, how long before some one says some thing about it to suit themselves.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: Jack Campin
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 03:46 PM

I do not believe we in the UK have anything at all to learn from Americans about what that flag signifies. We have our own set of significations for it, which are not yours and which are almost entirely innocuous. If we were to start taking it as seriously as you do, we would simply be handing a weapon to the fascists - they can't now use it as a triumphalist symbol, but if it were made as problematic as it is to people like Stringsinger, they could.

The situation with the Union Jack is almost exactly parallel. In the US, it has no very evil connotations. In Britain, it is almost never used by private citizens except as a fascist emblem, and non-white people in Britain have every reason to react to it as Jews do the swastika - it stands for being spat on and beaten in the street, gang attacks and firebombs. So should we demand that Americans stop it being displayed in public over there? No way. Make a big deal of it, and it would simply provide one more emblem for the American racist right to use, and for their victims to be afraid of.

The most freaked-out I've ever seen anyone get over a symbol display was a friend of mine when we'd climbed to the top of a Scottish mountain. One of the other walkers at the top had a t-shirt from some organization like Greenpeace, with a tree on it. She was terrified it was a cedar. For her, the cedar symbol meant the Falangist militia in Lebanon, the guys behind the Sabra and Shatila massacres, and the fear had followed her right across Europe and to the top of a hill 2000 miles away on a bright summer day. So, do we ban people wearing emblems of trees, anywhere? (She wouldn't argue that herself).

We've trivialized the Confederate flag to death. Dead is good.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: Stringsinger
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 02:24 PM

Mick is correct. Follow the history.

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: Big Mick
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 01:50 PM

I have been busy since my post, and have just read through this. My comments:

Susan, you have a well established habit of trying to shift the premise when you are not sure how to answer. Your response to this was a grand example. You attempt to move to my "style", appearing a wise and gentle counselor, instead of responding to the post. It is patronizing and insulting. Deal with the issue and let me seek therapy for my well intentioned, but misguided ways, OK?

I have heard many comments about the motives of the Confederate soldiers, and the historical facts of the flag. All of them are correct, and as a person who has a bit of knowledge on the topic of armed combatants, I do not doubt any of it. But the initial question never introduced those subjects. What it asked was, "What is the meaning of the Confederate flag these days?......What does it mean to you? Is it a harmless symbol of rebelion? Is it a racist symbol? Is it just a fad? In that context, and IMO, with very few exceptions, it is the symbol of those that decry the civil rights movement. It is almost exclusively used (outside the re-enactor movement) by those who adopt a segrationist and/or and outright white supremacist viewpoint.

I am with Stringsinger on this. The use of this flag says to African Americans, Hispanics, and others of colour, as well as to white folks committed to the struggle for equality, the same type of message that one would get waving a swastika at Jewish folks. All of the rhetoric about its history is interesting and genuinely offered, but it simply cannot be allowed to somehow make this symbol of hate something other than what it is.

Just my tuppence worth,

All the best,

Mick

Subject: RE: Rebel Flag meaning
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Oct 09 - 01:28 PM

Things represent what the people using them intend them to represent. That doesn't mean that at times it might not be wise, when you us a flag etc, to take into account what other people might see it as representing, but it is also wise to hold off from from making assumptions about what people might intend when they use such a symbol.

Most people displaying the Skull and Crossbones are not actually pirates. Most people wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt are not revolutionaries.