In this one looks like they can't make up their minds:
The National Klan flag.
If Google image searches using the combinations of Klan, Flag, KKK show far more stars/stripes than stars/bars.
Posted on 02/17/2004 5:44:59 AM PST by stainlessbanner
As a child growing up in an all-black Tallahassee neighborhood, the sight of a truck rumbling up my street with a Confederate battle flag in the window made me and my friends shudder in fear.
Maybe the pickup had a reason for passing through, but the combination of the Southern cross and a gun rack always was seen as a harbinger of violence. Usually, I ran in the house.
Some 30 years later I shudder because people are still holding on to this symbol of racism. Controversy about the flag has arisen at Tarpon Springs High and Hudson High. Integration and other significant steps in racial progress have not deterred people from passing along a remarkable sign of hatred to another generation.
When people argue that the fight over the flag creates healthy dialogue, I think back to when I was given that opportunity. My boys were 5 and 7 when we went to dinner at Buddy Freddy's, on a day when a Confederate organization was meeting in the restaurant's banquet room. Ethan saw the flag in the other room and exclaimed, "Look at that cool flag."
For the rest of the dinner, I had to explain why the flag wasn't cool. Young minds, more accustomed to learning about phonics, soaked in lessons about slavery, freedom and a time when Americans killed Americans.
By meal's end, the restaurant's hostess had given the boys toys from the gift shop. I think she wanted to reward them for listening patiently as their father struggled to explain the inexplicable.
Of course, the flag represents more than just the South's struggle against the North, and some long-rooted Southerners identify with it in a way that transcends race. But, for decades, it was used by the Ku Klux Klan as a banner for segregation and persecution. And white supremacists still embrace it today.
When will I believe that this flag is about heritage and not hate? When I see people from Confederate organizations seriously confront racists who use the flag to espouse bigotry.
Those who wish to take pride in the South should find a less divisive icon. Hasn't our region evolved beyond the infighting and intolerance that the flag symbolizes? Why define the South by a dead Confederacy when we have Kitty Hawk and Bourbon Street and Memphis barbecue and Basin Street jazz and collard greens and Coca-Cola? If you want to show pride in the South, paint a plate of grits on a T-shirt and wear it to school.
Even SEC football and NASCAR, institutions once rooted in segregation, have made significant strides toward diversity. It's the progress of our present, not the failures of our past, that should be championed.
And for all the talk about fighting for liberty and American's second revolution, the Civil War was a failure. A rare and total loss of the humanity we have typically shared as a nation.
Consider the horrific Gettysburg battles that resulted in 50,000 casualties. Fields were strewn with dead soldiers, and the air held the screams of Americans whose limbs had been amputated. Maybe if the battle flag brought to mind those images, someone wouldn't have raised it over Hudson High.
Even if I could look beyond the racist overtones of the flag (and I can't), the rebel cross of stars would still represent American history's most divisive period. A different outcome could have brought dire consequences not only for this country, but for the entire world. Could the Allies have won World War II dependent on two separate nations instead of one United States?
History has proven there is strength in our unity, and now, more than ever in this post-9/11 world, any symbol that threatens that unity should be voluntarily abandoned.
It's been said that those who oppose the war in Iraq lend comfort to our enemies. Yet true comfort for the terrorists must come when they see a new generation of Americans divided over a 141-year-old symbol that should have been buried at Appomattox.
No, the Confederate flag should not be banned in schools. I would never deny a person's right to freedom of speech. But for those who feel compelled to wear it to school, I ask only one thing: Think about what you're doing.
That's all I'm saying.
- Ernest Hooper can be reached at 813 226-3406 or Hooper@sptimes.com
Didn't get past the first couple sentences. Shudder in fear, hogwash! Thirty years ago was the '70s, the 1970's. He's such a baby, in more ways than chronologically. What he should shudder in fear with is black on black drive by shootings. He should shudder in fear about the lack of black men not able to keep their pants zipped and not taking the responsibility to raise their children in a two parent working family. What he should shudder in fear about is that black children are worshiping rappers and drug dealers. A piece of cloth isn't going to harm him, but his lack of responsible journalism will.
In this one looks like they can't make up their minds:
The National Klan flag.
If Google image searches using the combinations of Klan, Flag, KKK show far more stars/stripes than stars/bars.
He's lying. He would if he could pull it off.
It's not the flag at all which is dividing us, it is the wholesale purchase of victimhood by black America from the Democratic Party's plantation general store.
Of course he's lying. Didn't the FSSC rule the flag was not a divisive symbol deserving to be banned? I'd put a dime to a donut his attitude would be different had the court ruled the other way for the school system....
And who takes them seriously? Go live in Oakland, as I have, and deal with Black Supremacists that automatically hate you for the color of your skin. Big whoop. I knew then as I know now. Everybody isn't going to like you. Some who dislike you do so for really stupid reasons. That's their problem, not yours. And it isn't 1955 anymore.
When will I believe that this flag is about heritage and not hate? When I see people from Confederate organizations seriously confront racists who use the flag to espouse bigotry.
What would you have them do? Most or all of them have taken positions against the loons who abuse the flag. What're they going to do, join hands with all of the ultra-leftists at a 'diversity rally', so they can get spat upon and called names by the faux-tolerant crowd?
Those who wish to take pride in the South should find a less divisive icon. Hasn't our region evolved beyond the infighting and intolerance that the flag symbolizes?
The divisive infighting that I hear is all coming from liberals who have a half baked, agenda-soaked knowlege of history. The subtext of this sentence is, "Roll over, do things our way."
Why define the South by a dead Confederacy when we have Kitty Hawk and Bourbon Street and Memphis barbecue and Basin Street jazz and collard greens and Coca-Cola? If you want to show pride in the South, paint a plate of grits on a T-shirt and wear it to school.
Sir, you need to dig a little deeper into your history, and I don't mean by reading agenda-driven screeds by liberal professors that you're predisposed to agree with anyway.
A plate of grits on my shirt? Yes, I'm really moved by the deep history, devotion to country and sacrifice of plates of grits.
I think he makes a very good point about legitimate heritage organizations not taking the yayhoos to task. After all, don't we have the same criticism of "peaceful Muslims"? They should denounce their extreme elements if they want to be taken seriously. Similarly, legitimate heritage organizations should denounce those who are stealing our proud symbol and using it as a banner of hate.
Besides, it's good manners to not intentionally offend someone.
They do. They wear it with pride, pride of their ancestors, who refused to bow down a lick the hand of their oppressors. They have pride in those men and women, white, black, yellow and red, that thought enough of self-government and freedom that they sacrificed everyhing, simply for the right to be left alone, to worship their God, and to keep the hands of the government out of their pockets.
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