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posted by martyb on Thursday June 11 2020, @01:27PM   Printer-friendly
from the A-See-Change dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Immerman on Thursday June 11 2020, @05:55PM (9 children)

    by Immerman (3985) on Thursday June 11 2020, @05:55PM (#1006450)

    Sorry, you've fallen for Confederate attempts to re-write history. Try reading some actual well-researched history rather than the propaganda you've been swallowing.

    It was about one specific "right" - the right to keep fellow Americans as slaves.

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @06:03PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @06:03PM (#1006456)

    Go easy on these fools, many of them came from areas in the US that have schools teaching "states rights" and "war of northern aggression" as the reality of the Civil War. So they went most of their adult lives angry at all the liberal assholes trying to spin their states as nasty slavers, and now that the vast majority of people know better it is tough for them to drop their long held school taught beliefs and realize their community lied through their teeth.

    The Confederacy was about owning slaves and white supremacy.

    That is a tough pill for people to swallow when they've been taught everything was hunky-dorie their whole lives.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @06:39PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @06:39PM (#1006493)

    Wow, you are REALLY ignorant. STUPENDOUSLY ignorant.
    A key factor in the run up to the Civil War WAS slavery, but not as you are saying.
    Lesson: The USA was in a period of expansion, taming and settling the rest of the continent (and clearing Indians off it, by the US Govt).
    The question was: would the NEW states admitted be free or slave? There was no push at all from the US govt to "abolish slavery" where it already existed.
    See Missouri Compromise:
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missouri_Compromise [wikipedia.org]

    This and other issues such as taxation and protectionist policies forcing Southern states to sell cotton to Northern mills where they could otherwise have gotten a better price from more sales to Britain (the big cotton consumer in Europe, probably the world [someone can check this], with 80% of its cotton supplied by the South) lead to a rivalry between the North and South. The two regions were very different in their economies and demography.

    So no, the Civil War was not fought to "free the slaves." This is the propaganda taught to justify putting down an independence movement, and that doesn't sit well with our founding myth of a nation that fought a war of independence with Britain so we could be free. (Bear in mind that we were a slave nation during our time as rebel Colonials, with many Yankee states [Connecticut, etc.] being slave states!)

    So the South made a bid for independence by seceding. Lincoln entered the Civil War devoted to keeping the USA in one piece, not eliminating slavery.
    Proof in his own words:
    "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that...."

    The Emancipation Proclamation was only issued well into the war in 1863, and it only applied to the slave states that were NOT in the Union. It was an attempt to foment a slave uprising in the rebel states (but not the slaveholding Union states) and to retcon a moral cause for the North which was getting tired of fighting as invaders and losing.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @08:58PM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @08:58PM (#1006592)

      > So no, the Civil War was not fought to "free the slaves."

      For the south, the war was entirely about maintaining slavery.

      Initially, some in the north, including Lincoln were not eager to free enslaved people, but facts on the ground and the need for additional troops changed, at least, Lincoln's mind. But, even if Lincoln wasn't among them, there were a large number of Republicans, in the north, who were abolitionists (before that party switched from a left progressive party to the far-right racist fascist party it is today).

      So, the north's motivations were not all goodness and righteousness, but the south's were entirely evil and vile.

      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @10:09PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @10:09PM (#1006620)

        "were entirely evil and vile"

        That isn't fair, they had other reasons but the problem is slavery was such a part of society that the overlap means they couldn't be untangled completely.

        That said, just like we don't bother discussing the valid reasons the German public allowed the Nazis to come into power we in the US shouldn't bother wondering what valiidity there was to the pro-slavery Confederacy.

        If some of the same issues are around today like state's rights then those can be addressed separate from the Confederate flag and the slave owning assholes that split the country.

        • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @10:33PM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @10:33PM (#1006635)

          The real reason we know the South was morally wrong is because they lost the war, and the winner writes the history books.

          If the South had won (meaning they got their independence), they would be a nation that fought for its freedom first from an oppressive United Kingdom, and a second time from an equally despotic empire called the United States that sought to deny them their freedom to leave the Union just as they had entered it, as free states. Slavery would have ended before the 19th Century was over due to increased mechanization as mechanical harvesters replaced slaves by being cheaper and much faster, allowing greater profit. You'd still have the problem of a redundant black workforce to deal with and its anybody's guess how that would have ended. Maybe they would've been sent back to Africa in Liberia.

          Point is, we (the USA) won our independence from Britain, so we claim moral superiority. If we had lost, the history books would have written about a war cooked up by Britain's age old enemy France using ungrateful, easily manipulated Colonists.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2020, @09:55AM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2020, @09:55AM (#1006805)

            You mean the "French and Indian War"? Of course, with such a wacko reading of the scumsucking treason of the slave-owning south, I guess you ♪♫ "don't know much about history"♪♫ [songlyrics.com]

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2020, @02:49PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2020, @02:49PM (#1006885)

              If you are an American, your country was founded on treason by fighting a war of secession against Britain.
              The North (New England in particular) was at the forefront of this treason.
              "Treason" is determined by who loses in a war. If the war is won by their side, they are patriots.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2020, @10:00PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2020, @10:00PM (#1007104)

      Also if any stupid people try to play the "secession wasn't just about slavery" card feel free to use this quote from the vice president of the CSA himself, Alexander "Shitface" Stephens:

      Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science.

  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 11 2020, @06:57PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday June 11 2020, @06:57PM (#1006515)

    As usual, there are a great many perspectives on any large topic.

    Was the Civil War about slaves? Sure, for some folks - particularly the slaves and the Federals who granted the slaves their freedom - that's a big part of the war.

    Down on the farm, it was a whole lot of us vs. them. Some of my family was quite ashamed that their boy went off to war and drew a pension when it was over - not that they didn't welcome the pension money, just that they didn't want the neighbors knowing which side Johnny fought on when he went off to war (only one side paid a pension.)

    When it was over, it continued to be about us vs. them, and them did plenty of carpet bagging when it was all over - don't kid yourselves: money drove that war as much as it drove any other.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]