SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Many sources are reporting what we can read at ABC News,
NASCAR banned the Confederate flag from its races and properties on Wednesday, formally distancing itself from what for many is a symbol of slavery and racism that had been a familiar sight at stock car events for more than 70 years.
The move comes amid social unrest around the globe following the death in police custody of George Floyd, an unarmed black man in Minneapolis. Protests have roiled the nation for days and Confederate monuments are being taken down across the South — the tradtiional fan base for NASCAR.
[...] The issue was pushed to the fore this week as Bubba Wallace, NASCAR's lone black driver, called for the banishment of the Confederate flag and said there was "no place" for them in the sport. At long last, NASCAR obliged.
"The presence of the confederate flag at NASCAR events runs contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all fans, our competitors and our industry," NASCAR said. "Bringing people together around a love for racing and the community that it creates is what makes our fans and sport special. The display of the confederate flag will be prohibited from all NASCAR events and properties."
[...] The move was announced before Wednesday night's race at Martinsville Speedway where Wallace, an Alabama native, was driving a Chevrolet with a #BlackLivesMatter paint scheme. Wallace got a shoutout on Twitter from several athletes, including NBA star LeBron James, for using the paint scheme in the race.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 11 2020, @02:37PM (14 children)
Tradition, history, etc. Several state flags adopted the diagonal cross symbolism, with varied official justifications such as "In the late 1890s, Florida governor Francis P. Fleming advocated that St. Andrew's Cross be added so that it would not appear to be a white flag of truce hanging still on a flagpole." It doesn't take a huge leap to see the similarity between the shape of St. Andrew's Cross and the Confederate flag. Mississippi is more direct about it.
In the 1970s my father and his parents still harbored Confederate sympathies, mostly because as Florida residents they experienced an annual cultural invasion from Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey and New York when the snowbirds would come down and clog up our roads and act rudely in our restaurants. Others took it much further and hated yankees without reason, black and hispanics on sight, jews and catholics if they knew about it, etc. and some of those hate based personalities adopted the Confederate identity as a symbol of their pride (I might add: screwing it up for Yankee go-home types like my ancestors...)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday June 11 2020, @03:51PM (2 children)
Or, for the matter, with Union Jack, which also sports the St Andrew cross?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 11 2020, @04:54PM (1 child)
And the Swastika traces back to Sanskrit...
Generally, the most local reference in space-time is the most relevant one.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @05:08PM
Context: the argument of "In the late 1890s,..."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday June 11 2020, @09:10PM (10 children)
The tradition that the Confederate flag has always stood for was white supremacy. The history that the Confederate flag has always stood for was the institution of slavery.
After approximately 1960 or so, when there began to be a majority opinion that white supremacy was bad, all the people who had flown the Confederate flag in the cause of white supremacy started nod-nod-wink-wink talking about "tradition" and "history". And yes, that included the state governments in question. But none of that changed what they meant by flying it.
One way you know what it means is that you will pretty much never see a black person flying the Confederate flag, because that would make about as much sense as Jews sporting swastikas.
And yes, I include Lynyrd Skynyrd in this history: When they decided to officially abandon the Confederate flag, they lost a large percentage of fans who thought that they were racist.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 12 2020, @02:10AM (9 children)
That's one perspective.
From the perspective of four people born in backwoods Eastern Tennessee in the 1910s (my grandparents) it stood for: GTFO and don't tell me what to do and not do. They weren't so sophisticated or educated as to frame it in terms of state's rights or whatever, they just didn't like being told by the feds, or even the state level politicians, anything about anything, and they didn't usually care much for the local taxman/government either. Now, as much as they may have hated Yankees, and openly supported the Confederacy, they also didn't go around sporting the Confederate flag, or any flag for that matter, because: like discussing religion or day-to-day politics, mostly that's just good at pissing people off.
Yes, a lot of racists have picked up the flag as their symbol, but it's a bit different than the Swastika - which started out as a focused symbol of an ideology with racism and genocide at its core.
From my perspective, the racist focus on the Confederate flag has been increasing over the last 50 years - to the point that now almost exclusively racists fly it. That wasn't the case 35+ years ago.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday June 12 2020, @07:31AM (1 child)
Not true, you need to read more [wikipedia.org]. I don't recall the Nazi party being around thousands of years ago:
It has also had several meanings more recently meaning 'peace' and 'friendship' before it was adopted by the Nazi party.
I'm not sure if the racism and genocide label was meant when it was used by American military units [bbc.com]:
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 12 2020, @11:44AM
If you want to go pedantic on the origins and uses of the Swastika then focus yourself on the Nazi symbolism that is banned by German law.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday June 12 2020, @05:07PM (6 children)
In 1910-1930, that would have been one of the most racist times in America, and to openly support the Confederacy at that point in history was to be a supporter of segregation, Jim Crow, lynchings, and the Klan. By the 1950's, when your grandparents would have been in their 40's, odds were decent that they generally agreed with Bull Conner and the folks who beat up Freedom Riders and the students doing sit-ins. And yes, they would have talked about that in terms of not wanting outsiders telling us how to run our town and such, but that meant in no uncertain terms that they didn't want to have to allow black people to exist in said town.
Just because somebody doesn't say the n-word doesn't mean they weren't racist or weren't part of a system of racism.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 12 2020, @05:27PM (5 children)
My dad's dad (1915-1998) by the time I really knew him (1972+) was basically colorblind, he would still use the N-word occasionally but wouldn't treat one different from any other person.
My dad's mom (191?-2015) never did get over it entirely - she was fine with me having black friends, but was still concerned that "you ain't never gonna marry one of 'em are ya?"
As for "how to live their lives" concerns, they were more concerned with regulations about how to operate their farm than anything about the color of people's skin. Until granny opened her beauty shop, they weren't the kind of people who hired others to work for them and even then granddad did all the "n" work around the shop for her.
Part of a system of racism? Well, I guess we all still are that today, aren't we? And, as long as racially based equity programs exist, it will still be a racist system.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday June 12 2020, @07:28PM (4 children)
So to summarize: Your grandparents who were flying the Confederate flag were in fact pretty racist, even if they didn't do any of the dirty work of racism themselves. That didn't make them unusual for their time and place, and it sounds like they did tone it down after open racism became socially unacceptable, but it doesn't mean they weren't racist or weren't flying the Confederate flag to show their support for racism.
For instance, how many black people did your granny hire to work in her beauty shop when she did get around to hiring people? My guess is none. And I'll note that barber shops and beauty parlors are *still* extremely segregated in most places, not officially but in practice. And the fact that there was a concept of "'n' work" is a perfect example of the attitude that a lot of folks from their circumstances had about race relations.
And of course, the fact that your granny was concerned you might marry a black person is an indication that she thought they were all inherently somehow beneath you. As in, if you'd introduced her to somebody who was smart, good-looking, capable, financially successful, morally upright, completely compatible with you, and black, she'd want to keep them out of the family and hate any kids you had from that as the result of "miscegenation".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 12 2020, @08:17PM (2 children)
If you would read, the grandparents didn't fly any flags.
To summarize my perspective: where was all this outrage 6 months ago? I've been raging against the machine and its injustices to minorities for the last 15 years, the pigs seem to be in heat at the moment, but the rest of it is business as usual, nothing surprising or new. I do hope that y'all bein' "Woke" can actually move things along a bit at the ballot boxes.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday June 13 2020, @03:02AM (1 child)
The outrage has been there for a long time: Colin Kaepernick was protesting years ago, for example. My guess as to why it hadn't spilled into protests in the same degree mostly because the people protesting now used to have jobs to go to.
And yes, it shows up in the ballot box too, e.g. the House being run by Democrats. I'm also reasonably convinced that a major reason Hillary Clinton didn't win in 2016 was that Bill Clinton was big part of creating the current police state that are the targets of these protests, and that meant that many black people who would normally vote for a Democrat stayed home instead.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 13 2020, @03:28AM
The house turns over every 2 years, thankfully it appears that T(he)rump is already sinking the Red party - let us have a moment of silent prayer in hope that this continues, and accelerates. They're far from perfect, but at least the Blue party doesn't openly spout "Trickle Down, thousand points of light" bullshit and expect that people should like it and accept that that is all they're ever going to get.
One of my bigger disappointments in the Obama reality was that the federal standard for integration of schools was quoted to me, by the "newly empowered, reenergized, Obama backed, federal whoever they are (lacking even the respect of remembering their name because of how f-ing useless they were, and still are)" that as long as "some" disabled students are served in the main school building, and "some" non-disabled students are served in the portable farm out by the mud dropoff circle with the hole in the fence entrance, that is considered acceptable integration of the two classes. So, the county being far more cognizant of this than me, did indeed populate 14 portables with their disabled students, one portable with a token non-disabled class, and one token disabled class in the main building with the other 60 classrooms of non-disabled students. I don't know if you saw the picture of the Trump Whitehouse intern staff, but it was 98% white, with one token black guy and one indian girl - standing as far from him as possible - that's the standard that Trump is not ashamed to show the world, but when Obama was president that same standard was as far as the federal government was willing to go to enforce equality for minorities and disabled: as long as it's not 100% separated, that's good enough to keep the feds away.
Oh, by the way, this same county is similarly segregated black and white on the east and west sides of town - we got transferred to a black elementary school, and the disabled room in the black elementary school actually had dysfunctional plumbing that released sewer gas into the classroom - when you walked in and saw all the faces you would assume it was a diaper issue, but no, it was actually the plumbing, and that condition had persisted for years. I became aware of it about 3 months before we left town for good, otherwise I would have made a stink about it at a schoolboard meeting, but... we had already cast our lot by uprooting after 7 years in the town to GTFO. I understand that the teachers and aides who worked there feared that they would lose their jobs if they made waves about something like that (it happened frequently), but why the parents of those 20 kids never said anything is beyond me. We transferred there willingly because it was an opportunity for our son to be placed outside of the disabled room, in with normal peers - I didn't experience the disabled room until just before we left town.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 12 2020, @08:19PM
There's some biological / engineering technical background for that: the hair is different, the products are different, the skills are different.
When it came to weekly maintenance granny had granddad to do that for her - on the occasions when he was unable, I believe they did hire a black man to sub for him.
🌻🌻 [google.com]