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.
- Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederate States of America
This is the “heritage” that they value.
We were not taught this speech or exposed to this in our desegregated (as of 1965) classrooms in my public schools (70s and 80s). I was in “honors” history in the 80s and stuff like this would be skipped over or minimized.
The actual teaching of events is covered quickly and on easily tested facts/dates. There were no in depth ethical debates about why any of it happened. If a student tried, this would last at most a few minutes of of the school year on that subject.
Sometimes that’s enough to get someone into the library or asking questions outside of school. But most students during this time have and had no idea who the Confederate VP was, let alone what he said.
BUT - there are people (white supremacists) who are proud of the Stephens heritage. Nowadays they say quiet parts out loud (Internet helped with that) when they used to save that for special occasions.
The one I met in the early 90s claimed the klan was like the NAACP for white people. I shit you not he claimed they were not against Other People having rights, just making sure white folk didn’t lose rights in the process. This scared me a lot because it was, excuse the pun, whitewashing their murderous history to make it easier to recruit.
Tl;dr; My point is that you are correct, but also somewhat wrong in that for 80% of us that wasn’t what we learned - we barely were taught anything. It was mostly treated in real life like rival football teams. (At least, if you were white and not getting a daily dose of racism) The ones that were taught this stuff, it was coming from specific groups not public classrooms.
Even shorter tl;dr; - there’s a lot of cognitive dissonance and not a lot of actual education.
I’ll take oof for 800 Alex.
Checkmate
LincolnitesConfederate sympathizers!
I love telling them that the eight years of the Obama administration was almost twice as long as the lifetime of the Confederacy, making it a much bigger part of their heritage.
“Heritage” lmao
Americans are funny
“Heritage” lmao
It’s even funnier when I hear that in my neck of the woods - it’s like these idiots don’t understand why there’s a West Virginia or why a new state right on the Mason-Dixon line might have been formed in the middle of the country in 1863. Like for fucks sake, we literally became a state to avoid joining the Confederacy, how the fuck is a Confederate flag part of our heritage?
Hell, I’m from Wisconsin, and our “heritage” is sending the Iron Brigade to the Second Battle of Bull Run only to be badly outnumbered, but fucking holding, anyway. People from Baraboo apparently weren’t impressed and still wave around the Confederate battle flag.
Fuck Baraboo. Nobody would give a shit about you if not for that grifter in charge of that circus.
Like for fucks sake, we literally became a state to avoid joining the Confederacy, how the fuck is a Confederate flag part of our heritage?
It’s the repulsive symbol of the reason for your very existence! Burn it, piss on it, do anything you want to it to continue your heritage of disliking the Confederacy and their symbols!
Yeah that’s as bad as the Cincinnati confederates. Like, motherfucker why do you think your city has a slavery museum? Go to it, it’s depressing but you need it
Pogs were a thing for longer than the confederacy
why are you mocking them?
can’t you see their proud heritage of land stealing, white supremacy and genocide? /s
Don’t do that. Part of the reason white America is whinging out at the moment is they feel tribe-less. Every human is as ancient a culture as the next, it’s simple math! Imma just assume you’re some euro trash. Go suck on a macaroon!
Now obviously we should find something better to celebrate than some asshole slavers who lost a war they started… Devils always in the details.
I saw more Confederate battle flags running around Indianapolis than I did in Atlanta. It’s not about muh heritage.
Also, fuck Indianapolis. Atlanta, you’re cool.
Atlanta, you’re cool.
Atlanta is actually the opposite of cool, it’s not called hotlanta for no reason!
It’s so fucking hot there, all the time
Granted. I was there for DragonCon, and like a lot cons, people complain about sweaty nerds who don’t use deodorant. And I get it, but it’s also Atlanta in the summer. You can take three showers a day. It does not matter.
Their logic is so stupid.
You know for fuck sure that if I flew an Iraqi flag (hell, it could be a Italian flag with “scribbles” in the center), they’d pitch a fit, even if I try to defend it as “Middle East heritage”.
I’d argue that it’s not even about racism.
It’s about them wanting to trigger blacks and libs. They don’t know shit about the history of their Confederate flag. I’d even venture to say they don’t know shit about the Confederacy but I’m not about to debate “history” with a bunch of racists.
I think that defining the heritage of a group of people in political terms is always a fascistic idea. Commonly, we don’t really do that.
To use a classic “muh Western huritage” example, when someone talks about ancient Greek heritage, they mean cultural heritage - food, music, art, theater, sport, architecture, religion, philosophy - and cultural values like democracy, patriarchy, social hierarchy including class-based slave ownership, etc. A specific ruling group, governing document, or even a specific war doesn’t really belong in that category - those are a part of the history of that group, but not core to their identity as a group.
“Southern” US cultural heritage is made up of music (jazz, rock, blues, country, just to name a few), regional cuisines like BBQ & Cajun, maybe some historical ways of life that had a lasting impact - like cowboys & ranching culture, landed gentry like plantation owners, chattel slavery & black sharecropping, white sharecropping, Mexican settlers, etc., protestant christianity (specifically Baptist christianity) and cultural values like racial hierarchy and apartheid and its lasting impacts, an old-world sense of chivalry, and rugged individualism - stuff like that.
What doesn’t really make sense is to say that the Confederacy itself is a core component of the culture. Not just because it only lasted for 5 years and non-white Southerners weren’t willing participants, but also because the ideas/beliefs that shaped the Confederacy were a part of the culture of the most powerful group at the time. In other words, it was part of the culture of the South that allowed and enabled the Confederacy to exist, not the Confederacy that created the culture.
Yep, it’s stupid, and nearly all of them have no awareness of the fact that the Confederate Flag was only truly adopted as a cultural symbol as a backlash against the Civil Rights Movement.
But it doesn’t matter.
The last two generations of southerners have taught their kids that that awful flag is, in fact, a symbol of Southern heritage, so the bell can’t be unrung. For many, it is now a fact.
The problem with “Southern Heritage” is that pretty much all of it is stolen from folks they had previously enslaved.
Collard greens are the best greens!
I like this recipe, but I use bacon instead of turkey (though I’m sure a turkey leg would be fantastic too).
I don’t know where you’re from, but in my neck of the woods mustard greens would beg to differ.
They really are. I throw them in soups all the time.
we always used pig’s feet and hamhocks
White guy from the South here. FYI, pretty much all the good Southern food was basically slave cuisine. White Southerners just appropriated it.
Canada genociding the Acadians really helped you guys
funny how my planned obsolescence phone has had a longer lifetime than your “heritage”.
The people flying them are well aware of the reputation. You don’t see civil war collectors flying them
TL;DR: Some folks still don’t know that it’s hateful due to being told and taught garbage, but more people know and understand every day.
Not always true, although it’s probably more true today than it was back when I was growing up and someone outside of the southern bubble flying it definitely knows better.
The insane amount of misinformation given to kids in the southern US is pretty crazy. We learned “states rights” in school (before the internet). The iconography is everywhere. We had schools either named after Confederate generals (Robert E. Lee) or with Confederate iconography as part of their identity (the Rebels, which used to be complete with a Confederate soldier mascot). One of the shows that everyone watched featured a car named after the aforementioned general and was painted up with the stars and bars.
A lot of these folks have never been more than two hours from their house and are in little bubbles that tell them the crazy leftists are coming to take away their weiners. They absolutely do not know better because they grew up with it being glorified.
I got really lucky. I learned a lot when I got out of that hellhole. I understand how my actions affect others and know why that’s a hateful symbol. But I can say with certainty that some of those folks absolutely do not know and really think it’s just about the rebellious spirit of the South fighting against an incompetent and corrupt government. That doesn’t excuse it, but I hope it does explain it.
Luckily, as I mentioned at the beginning, that’s changing. People who are younger than me grew up with a more digital life and a lot of them never adopted the “rebel” lifestyle. They understand that it’s wrong and, more importantly, WHY it’s wrong. That tide is still turning and I’m here for it.
I have nothing to add to this except to agree this was also my experience growing up in the public school system in NC in the 70s and 80s. I had some outside influences undermining it as well, which made it easier to see the truth of things, but it was still a process.
There was a school in Canada that used the confederate flag as it’s flag
Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/racism-georgetown-high-school-sports-1.3992450
Funny thing. The phrase ‘cracker’ was invented by rich whites as a slur against poor whites.
Back in the day, cracked corn was used to make hominy grits and corn liquor. Rich folks used cracked corn to feed their pigs. Since they were eating and drinking cracked corn, the poor were ‘crackers.’
(which, if you read it, disagrees, saying it comes from the Irish craic)
I mean, that’s one explanation. The article lists many. In any case, I don’t think the etymology of the english word is an adequate amount of information regarding why it is used the way it is, or how it came to be so.
This one makes pretty good sense to me, and is what I have believed the actual origin to be. I can’t honestly understand why the term would bug those who are bugged by it using any of the other definitions.
As a white guy, it doesn’t bug me in the slightest.
So Jimmy really did crack corn?
And I don’t care.
Amazing take.
I forgot to say- yesterday we were in southern Illinois and I saw a big pickup truck with a huge confederate flag painted on it and I wanted to go knock on their door and tell them that they were living in the LAND OF fucking LINCOLN.
Heil Hydra!
