I can’t say I was a big fan of Marietta’s Bobby Franklin. The man knew how to put the “far” in the far right. But he said something during Georgia’s infamous flag debate that has always resonated with me.
The compromise flag that emerged was the idea of one of the most conservative members of the House, Representative Bobby Franklin, Republican of Marietta. A former member and camp commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Mr. Franklin wrote recently that ”allowing hate groups and white supremacists to hijack the Confederate battle flag and pervert it into a negative symbol without publicly and repeatedly repudiating them has been a grievous moral failure.”
In other words, organizations like the Sons of Confederate Veterans that want to insist they’re taking an honorable stand by defending symbols and standards of the Confederacy fail to recognize they lost the moral high ground they believe they’re entitled to occupy when they didn’t fight to preserve their integrity as unsavory groups appropriated those same symbols and standards for their own racist ends. And that’s why folks like the Sons of Confederate Veterans aren’t entitled to the benefit of the doubt now when they try to reclaim that position.
It’s also why, as much as I’m willing to acknowledge there are plenty of people of good will who are sincerely offended by the latest racial incident that occurred at Ole Miss – ironically, complete with that very Georgia state flag Bobby Franklin wrote about – I’m having a hard time working up a lot of sympathy for Hugh Freeze about the difficulties incidents like that may cause him on the recruiting trail. As John Pennington notes,
Fair or not, the University of Mississippi’s history is tied to racism. The Confederacy’s economy — everything about the Old South, for that matter — was based on slavery. Yet the school’s athletic teams are called the Rebels in a reference to the Confederate States of America. The school’s athletic teams often wear gray in addition to their red and navy colors. Hell, the statue of Meredith isn’t far from a memorial to Confederate soldiers on the UM campus.
It is impossible to separate the school or its sports teams from the Confederacy and the racism that was ingrained in that institution.
Ole Miss coaches have complained about this unwanted legacy since Billy Brewer’s time. That it’s still a perceived issue for the school says a lot, sadly.
Get The Picture 
Ole Miss brought this on themselves, and I also don’t have any sympathy for them, as they’ve been slow to make needed changes and still have a long way to go. Along with the aforementioned Rebels nickname and confederate monument on campus, there are other reminders or symbols throughout campus—isn’t Confederate Dr. one of the main campus roads as well? At some point all of this will indeed be changed; its just a matter of time depending on how long TPTB at Ole Miss continue dragging their feet over all of this. Whatever needs to be done eventually should be done immediately—that’s a philosophy I’d suggest the Ole Miss folks adopt.
When visiting for the UGA-Ole Miss game in Oxford a few years back, I really wasn’t all that surprised by the attitudes I encountered among the Ole Miss fans. Both young and old fans alike, when engaged in conversation, did a lot of bellyaching over the so-called continued infringing on their heritage, such as the removal of Colonel Reb, the elimination of playing Dixie by the band, and so on. There were even a sprinkling of confederate flags about too, though honestly not quite as many as I anticipated.
Either way, though we’re members of the same conference, the overall differences between UGA and Ole Miss are total night and day.
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I was in Oxford for that game, too and the Ole Miss band did play Dixie several times. Played I Saw the Light a lot more, though. Maybe the old timers didn’t think the band played Dixie enough
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“Allowing hate groups and white supremacists to hijack the Confederate battle flag and pervert it into a negative symbol …”
Yes, indeed. Here’s the thing, though: I attended an SCV meeting in Marietta back in the 90s to see if it was a good forum for me to commemorate my Confederate heritage. I was far from racially enlightened at that point in my life, but was appalled by the angrily racist tone of the meeting. It seemed that most, if not all, of the chapter members were more interested in expressing resentment about the present than honoring the past. And, sad to say, the vast majority of flag wavers I’ve met (and they’re all over – not just the South) have been the same. There may have been a time when you could separate the stars & bars from racism, but alas, certainly not anymore.
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Racism is alive and well in almost all of society…And it’s not limited to any particular race, state or campus. Some of the same things cited against Ole Miss can be cited against UGA…(See ABH Nov. 9, 2013). Had this happened at Ole Miss it would have been a much bigger story. Also, is there not a Confederate Monument on Broad St. in Athens? I don’t think a town having a Confederate monument makes it racist. While there do seem to be many more “hangers on” to the Old South at Ole Miss, I know there are a heck of a lot of good and well meaning people there too. As usual, a few fools get to paint a whole society of people.
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I hope you’re not equating a racial slur on a Facebook page with what just happened at Ole Miss.
Any place in the South might have issues, but UGA didn’t wrap itself in the Confederacy the way Ole Miss did. No school did. That’s why OM continues to get tarred by the action of a few racist idiots the way it does. It may not be fair, but history is a bitch sometimes.
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No I don’t equate that. My point was probably out of place here, as this seems to be about the amount of racism at an institution and not just an isolated instance.
Ole Miss is under a microscope that other SEC schools have avoided. It is their own fault to the point that they have been reluctant to purge the school of official Confederate symbols.
I know some Ole Miss alumni that are horrified at all of this. It seems that any progressive steps they take are undermined by shit-birds doing stuff like this.
It may be to the point that Ole Miss has to ask not to be referred to as “Ole Miss” any more….but any progressive steps will just inflame the fools that are determined to love the past.
I agree….history is a bitch sometims
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Surely, Senator, you are old enough to remember “Play Dixie. Fire Dancz!” But then, we did let James Brown do halftime. I seem to remember his handler chick wearing some kind of Robert E. Lee on acid outfit complete with a rebel flag at homecoming one year as she walked him out of the stadium.
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Was at the game when CBS interviewed a student leading this No more Dixie at Georgia. Wallace Jackson who passed away a few years back was the student. He went to my HS in ATL. Your right Senator, we did not tie ourselves to the Confederacy the way Ole Miss always has.
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Prejudice, bigotry, or racism (there is a difference between the three that 99% of Americans would be unable to discern) indeed isn’t limited to a particular school or state, but its certainly more prevalent in some areas than in others. There’s a stark difference in overall attitudes between places like, say, Seattle and Minneapolis compared to Oxford.
I live in a state (Virginia) that was without question the most important and influential confederate state, which included the capital of the confederacy, Richmond. Yet Virginia today is far more open minded and tolerant than most locales throughout the deep south. There’s a Robert E. Lee statue in downtown Charlottesville, where I reside, but using that as a basis in comparing C’ville to Oxford is utterly asinine.
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UNC Chapel Hill has a very prominent Confederate War Memorial (Silent Sam). Every fall there is a small protest to remove Silent Sam and about 20 people show up, counting the news cameras and reporters. Yawn. Its hard to get worried about imagery at a campus where everyone wears powder blue.
The Senator is correct that no school has wrapped their legacy around the confederacy like Ole Miss, but I think it mostly has to do with the general population of the state, specifically the most ignorant of the population.
There’s a line somewhere- 35%, 40%, 50%, such as if the bottom 40% of your state’s population is racist, your university HAS to do away with confederate imagery.
Universities are supposed to be about enlightening their constituents.
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You’ll certainly never hear anyone say ‘Mississippi; Land of Equality’. Also, spiders…
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“There’s a stark difference in overall attitudes between places like, say, Seattle and Minneapolis compared to Oxford.”
No, there’s not; there are just small black populations in those cities. I lived in Seattle, and there’s racial tension in parts of it just like anywhere else. I’ve witnessed more venomous racism in Boston and Chicago than Atlanta, and the endless slagging on the South needs to stop.
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“and the endless slagging on the South needs to stop.”
Do what?
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Sadly, you are wasting your time, sir. Racism, bigotry, and racial prejudice occur only in The South – and only among whites – and only against blacks. It is “settled science”. Or something like that.
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Agreed, but as pointed out below, this is not the meme they want to carry forward.
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+1000
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Honestly, I don’t live in GA anymore, but having grown up there until I moved away at age 27, I still think of myself as a Georgian. As a result, I was always frustrated when GA was ever lumped with AL and MS, where racism and hatred seemed to exist in far greater quantities than GA.
That said, I am far more disappointed in the fact the state has created a Sons of Confederacy vanity license plate. I expect it at Ole Miss, and the further we can distance ourselves from them the better. The fact that we did something that brings us closer to them is horrible.
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I’m more disappointed that they have University of Florida vanity plates in Georgia now.
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THAT. We won’t even schedule a home and home with them because we can’t stand to let them in our state.
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I’m disappointed that they have University of Florida vanity plates in Florida (but thanks to Boom and Jimbo, I’m noticing fewer new UF vanity tags)
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Indeed. Is the state THAT hard up for cash that it has to pimp our license plates to Florida, Clemson, AU, Alabama, etc. fans?
Instead of giving them special plates, I say we just put a block on the MV-1 form that asks for which college football team do you pull. Everyone that answers a non-Georgia based team should have to pay an extra $100 “shared responsibility payment” because those morons are clogging up our roads. If they don;’t like it, there’s always MARTA!
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I agree. It’s one thing that Georgia has license plates to honor fraternities and sororities, amatuer radio enthusiasts, all college and professional sports teams in the area, and pet sterilization. But honoring the dead (most of whom didn’t own slaves) who tried to protect their families from military occupation is just getting ridiculous.
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“Heritage or Hate?”
I’ll take Door #2, Monte!
http://www.hlntv.com/video/2014/02/21/confederate-flag-license-plate-georgia
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Sure. The average citizen-soldier of the Confederacy wasn’t interested in protecting his family from Sherman. He was interested in preserving the slave trade that he wasn’t involved in.
If you can’t trust your seventh grade history teacher to break down American history correctly, who can you trust?
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“who can you trust?”
Confederates in the Attic and Bats in the Belfry. I find the Oldest Confederate Widow Living in the Attic useful whenever I need a Wargasm and Andersonville souvenirs
“The result is an adventure into the soul of the unvanquished South, where the ghosts of the Lost Cause are resurrected through ritual and remembrance.
In Virginia, Horwitz joins a band of ‘hardcore’ reenactors who crash-diet to achieve the hollow-eyed look of starved Confederates; in Kentucky, he witnesses Klan rallies and calls for race war sparked by the killing of a white man who brandishes a rebel flag; at Andersonville, he finds that the prison’s commander, executed as a war criminal, is now exalted as a martyr and hero; and in the book’s climax, Horwitz takes a marathon trek from Antietam to Gettysburg to Appomattox in the company of Robert Lee Hodge, an eccentric pilgrim who dubs their odyssey the ‘Civil Wargasm.’
http://tonyhorwitz.com/books/confederates-in-the-attic.php
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Right, just like American soldiers who fought in Vietnam were fighting for Vietnamese self-determination and to prevent the spread of Communism in SE Asia.
Our wars are always for a noble cause.
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Wait…. why is this just coming up now ? Those license plates are not “new”, I recall seeing them (although not often) for at least a couple of years now….
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Bobby Franklin, who lived, not in Marietta, btw, but in East Marietta and has been dead almost three years would be thrilled his voice is still being heard.
That Ole Miss continues to glory in an unspeakable past is a fitting tribute to a perpetual SEC bottom-dweller.
Racisim, hatred and class fear are live on in the minds of little people everywhere.
I can’t do anything about that.
I can, however, worry about rain for Clemson, wet, heavy balls and all.
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Having lived most of my early life in the orient it was quite a culture shock for my Dad to finish his career at RAFB, GA. Warner Robins HS had recently transferred all the kids from the all black Pearl Stevens HS to WRHS. I didn’t talk like the local kids and I wasn’t black. I didn’t know anyone and no one seemed too interested in getting to know me. It was a bumpy ride until baseball season started. Thank goodness for baseball and the ability to pitch and hit. You’d be surprised at how many friends you can make if you can play a sport. The following year a kid that I played ball with in Okinawa Dad transferred to RAFB. Small world. Lot of guys retired at RAFB. He was a third baseman and turned out to be a good db for the Demons. He was also black. We were quite a pair.
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was your nickname “Sunshine”? 😉
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The compromise flag that emerged was the idea of one of the most conservative members of the House, Representative Bobby Franklin, Republican of Marietta. A former member and camp commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Mr. Franklin wrote recently that ”allowing hate groups and white supremacists to hijack the Confederate battle flag and pervert it into a negative symbol without publicly and repeatedly repudiating them has been a grievous moral failure.”
I have always felt that way about the Flag. I am glad we moved on.
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Just came back from Open House tour of Ole Miss. Saw diverse student population interacting with each other and heard from diverse members of same student population that call themselves members of the ‘Ole Miss Family’. Funny how everyone outside of Ole Miss is trying to tell them what their problems are and how it is not acceptable. In the words of Jimmy Buffet,’DOn’t try to describe a Kiss concert if you’ve never seen one.’ Before making general assumptions spend more time at Ole Miss outside of the once in a blue moon UGA vs Ole Miss game in Oxford.
And FYI I’m a UGA grad 84′.
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The people at the DM probably know the student population better than you do, no?
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Yes, much in the same way that the AJC editorial board knows me.
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Really? The DM is the student newspaper there.
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Clearly, the Ole Miss Daily Worker has been infiltrated by Leftist Agitators
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Can I take that as your admission that the AJC editorial board is populated as such? 😉
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Yes. Especially so with Bark Madly who is completely out of control and knows no limits or boundaries.
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Yes, really. I know we are talking about the student newspaper. I was merely making the point that those who write for the student newspaper quite likely aren’t a faithful slice of the student population at large in any meaningful demographic, social, or ideological way. They certainly weren’t when I was in college – even though that may not be a good example, since the newspaper was scratched onto the back of a shovel with a piece of coal in those days.
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Respectfully, I re-read the DM editorial and to answer your question, yes they probably do but your question to me is not in line with my comment which is directed at those on the outside who make “expert” comments when they probably have spent all of say 6 hours on the Ole Miss campus in the past 8 years. Does OM have a hole to climb out of in terms of a sterotype, yes. But such could be said of all the SEC members. It is regretable that the actions of a misguided minority has, as the DM expressed, once again brought forth an issue that does not accuratley portry the typical present day OM student.
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Took my college bound daughter for a tour of OM last year, too, and had a similar experience. And had a similar experience at the quite progressive “Washington and Lee” in Virginia.
I suspect Ole Miss, like the state in which it sits, has a higher percentage of virulent racists than, say, my alma mater. But I also think that, like the South in general, it may also have a higher percentage of people truly committed to the concept of “let’s get along” than other parts of the country. There’s just less room for a middle ground in the South, given our history. And probably damn small room for it in Mississippi.
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It’s ironic that, of all the virulent racists in Mississippi, it was three freshmen from Georgia who apparently vandalized the statue.
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They felt like they fit in better at Ole Miss.
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They also probably couldn’t get in to UGA.
UGA is without its flaws though. I know for a fact that a frat throws a party every year where many of the guys dress up like confederate soldiers, the girls wear antebellum dresses, and they listen to country music and revel in “Southern heritage”. They also hire a lot of old black guys to dress up in nice clothes and serve drinks, pick up trash, etc. I was backing a band at that event one year and was pretty uncomfortable.
It was the exact kind of event that makes the South look bad and makes it look like we miss the 1850’s. It’s weird. I saw some football players, but only white ones. And they were brought in the house pretty quickly when they did show up.
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Oh good Lord, I used to receive visitors at UGA as well. If the open house tour is what we judge a university by, then every university in the US is a diverse and tolerant intellectual paradise just on the cusp of a top-10 ranking.
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“In the words of Jimmy Buffet,’DOn’t try to describe a Kiss concert if you’ve never seen one.”
Gross.
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On a semi-related note, I tip my hat to the tricksters in the Georgia DOT who have put “CHATTAHOOCHEE RIVER” signs right in front of the “LESTER MADDUX BRIDGE” signs so that old bigot’s name is covered up as you pass from Cobb County into Fulton.
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MADDOX. Whatever.
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You can thank Jimmy Carter for giving us Lester Maddox.
Bo Callaway would’ve been elected if not for Jimmy.
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I understand Bo won the popular vote but not a majority. The race was decided in the legislature and those folks just had to have a Democrat. On another note, Lester did do more for funding public education, including UGA, than any governor before or since.
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My initial reaction to the post was not to touch it but I’ve been stewing about this all morning. I have no special insights or viable solutions to the problem but I have lots of opinions, many of them not shared by many other people. I have the “advantage” of living my early life in Pennsylvania and then moving to Virginia. I am aware that negative racial stereotypes are a problem everywhere, not just in the South, but we do seem to be a little more sensitive to them down here and they are often a little more public. I remember a junior high history teacher in Virginia, upon finding I had grown up in Pa, pulling me aside to make sure I understood the Civil War was not about slavery but about states rights. I have since learned that the Confederate constitution does make a reference to the right to own slaves so maybe that is one of the rights they fought for. I’ve had the experience of sitting at the dinner table and hearing an aunt, whom I loved, make negative comments about African Americans (not the term she used). I’ve seen some really ugly racially based incidents at UGA and it hurts deeply to observe things like that. Fortunately, not as much recently. I love the University of Georgia. The longer I live, the more I appreciate the quality of the education I received there in graduate school, especially compared to what people I know got from other places with really sparkling academic reputations. We provide a much better education than many people know and, in many ways, our national reputation is much less than we deserve. I’m grateful that, in recent years we have avoided many of the attention grabbing incidents like the ones at Ole Miss. I’m not in favor of pulling down, or even relocating, Confederate monuments. That’s history and we need to know about our past, not ignore it. If you examine the lives of Confederate heroes, there are things to admire along with things to criticize. Isn’t that true for all of us? I agree with Bobby Franklin that the Confederate battle flag has been coopted by idiot racists. It’s a mystery to me anyway why anyone would want to use the battle flag to celebrate the positive values of the South. How about the stars and bars, the national flag of the confederacy, if you want a better symbol? I know of no magic formulas. All I can do is speak up when unfortunate events like the ones in Oxford occur. That’s probably the most any of us can do. I am now climbing down off my soapbox.
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“It’s a mystery to me anyway why anyone would want to use the battle flag to celebrate the positive values of the South. How about the stars and bars, the national flag of the confederacy, if you want a better symbol?”
It’s too confusing. Battle flag proponents would argue that the Second National Pattern flag should be used instead of the First (Stars and Bars) because the volatility quotient of First is simply too low to get the message across.
I know how hard it was for me to get my Yankee girlfriend to wear my battle flag KA jersey even though I told her that was what gave me superpowers in intramurals. Luckily she had never seen me operating in the arena where I was mostly a REMF. She had such a great talent for recognizing bullshit and flag patterns that I liked to call her my very own Betsy Ross but not to her face of course
http://www.moc.org/collections-archives/flags-confederacy
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The aspect of the controversy over Confederate nostalgia that doesn’t get mentioned often enough (though the title of the Senator’s post, taken from Oxford resident William Faulkner, alludes to it) is how strange it is for so many people to have concentrated their regional identity on four violent years that led to the abject failure of a bad cause. The Planters’ Revolt wiped out the endowments of our universities (the best in the country before the war), destroyed our infrastructure, and killed and maimed a large portion of an entire generation. Even if it were not so closely associated with later (and contemporary) racism, it would be far past time to put The Lost Cause back in its very limited place.
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An abject failure of a bad cause reminiscent of the first cosmotose sentence from Allan Kolsky’s winning entry in the 12th annual Faux Faulkner contest,
“The (Auto) Pound and the Jury — Or — Quentin gets his First Parking Ticket”:
“For the fifth time in as many minutes, the bright shapes slowly passed us through the somnolent dust, each moving left to right, each in its ordered place. As we (once again) passed beneath the grim and merciless statue of the Confederate soldier (that still unravish’d sentinel of quietude, his implacable marble hand forever shading the inscrutable carven eyes) our hearts sank a little deeper, not because we now realized that our quest was futile, but because it always had been, because we now seemed doomed forever to circle this postage stamp of land like slow planets orbiting some inescapable star.”
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2001-07-22/news/0107200524_1_soldier-thumping-good-read-deaver
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“… his implacable marble hand forever shading the inscrutable carven eyes) our hearts sank a little deeper, not because we now realized that our quest was futile, but because it always had been, ”
h/t to the professional clarinetist from New Orleans. And to a well spent $8000 bounty.
“…because of emancipation, ‘the Civil War calls for a rethinking of the attitude… that war is always futile, that its rewards never match its cost, that any conflict [must be] immediately decisive and virtually without loss of American lives.'”http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2665754-a-great-civil-war
“War blows a futile horn that trumpets the victor’s spoils and the right to adorn the history books but to the loser mostly the scorn. “
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Weigley’s attitude is exactly that kind of inanity that is better left in the seventh grade, not expanded into 648 pages. Yet, inexplicably, it passes for conventional wisdom.
The only other country that relied on war to end slavery in the West was Haiti. And they’ve been doing just swell. Somehow, the rest of the West ended slavery relatively peacefully. But, if Lincoln hadn’t sent the Union Army to pillage and plunder its way through the South, killing and maiming more people than almost all other wars in American history, combined, then blacks would still be slaves to this day.
A rational person with critical thinking abilities beyond that of a seventh grader understands that, if the Confederacy had been allowed to secede peacefully, slavery wouldn’t have ended in the Confederacy in 1865. But, it would have ended at some point. It probably would have ended during the 19th century. That certainly would have been tragic for the people that the Civil War saved from dying in slavery, or being born into slavery. But, is averting that tragedy worth creating an entirely new tragedy of killing hundreds of thousands of people?
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Good post and well written. I wasn’t sure if you were questioning my critical thinking abilities or not. 😉 It’s a serious subject. Slavery is a tragedy. I wouldn’t want the USA split over it or cotton sales to England. I’ve lived and worked in Africa. Slavery has not ended. Not even close. Not here in the US either.
“The civil war was supposed to end slavery and it did for a while. The Welfare system in the United States began in the 1930s.”
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“The Welfare system in the United States began in the 1930s.”
Yes and I heard they were getting rich off it too leading to the question of how could those starving in the Great Depression pull themselves up by their own bootstraps if they had no boots to eat or wear?
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You are dead wrong about this Senator. I love your blog and you seem like a good guy but like too many Americans you’ve bought the bill of goods the left has been selling. I wish I hadn’t clicked on this one. But I’ll get over it.
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I’m sorry… wrong about what?
As for what the “left has been selling”, Bobby Franklin was anything but a lefty.
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“Now is our time to act, if only we existed.” The Left
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It burns me up how people have decided there is one side of this issue and if you are not on their side of it, that the flag is evil, the. You are afraid and filled with hate. Liberalism is a form of insanity.
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I wouldn’t say the flag is evil, just tainted by the actions of some evil people.
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Indeed, including the Stars and Stripes.
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I’m so sorry. That’s wrong. The correct answer is,
“Liberalism is a form of inanity”
A condition which affects only those in a splinter group originating from the PFJ* running down through the lines of the Hannity clan to which the origin of the word “inanity” owes its existence
[PFJ] People’s Front of Judea
What have the Romans ever done for us?
“Committed to continuing the struggle to Liberate the Parentland from the hands of the Roman Imperialist aggressors. Excluding those concerned with Drainage, Medicine, Roads, House and Education, Wine, Culture and any other Romans contributing to the welfare of Jews of both sexes and Hermaphrodites. If you want to join the PFJ, you’ve got to really hate the Romans.”
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I’m talking about this apologist nonsense. Yes we have some dark (bad) things in our past. The entire country does. Why do we have stop and acknowledge it everyday and whip ourselves in some misguided attempt to atone for it. No, not everybody who displays that flag is a racist and nobody gets to decide who is and is not deserving of the benefit of the doubt.
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When it comes to the flag, “nobody gets to decide who is and is not deserving of the benefit of the doubt”, but when it comes to some folks’ political bent, “Liberalism is a form of insanity”?
If I didn’t know any better, Mike, I’d think you were trying to have this both ways.
Of course people get to decide who deserves the benefit of the doubt. You may not agree with them, but that doesn’t mean they can’t take a position.
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That’s right. I just get tired of the supposedly open minded people being so closed minded. Their position is the only correct one and if you do not agree you are stupid and probably racist. Liberals somehow became convinced that they make the rules for everybody and preach open minded ness and not being judgmental while they judge everyone else and ar close minded. Hypocrisy doesn’t do much to strengthen an argument.
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Some Liberals do operate that way. So do some Conservatives. As do some Moderates. Every political orientation has a segment that considers itself All Right and everyone else (including less pure versions of their own ideology) All Wrong. Right?
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Down here we’re too ignorant too realize the North has set the Negro free…. Free to be put in a cage in East St Louis , Hough in Cleveland, Roxbury in Boston.
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It’s interesting that 3 kids can put a noose around a statue of a black man and it makes national headlines. Such a senseless crime, people were very offended by this heinous act.
“Did you see what those ignorant, racist, bigoted, intolerant, southern, hate-filled, privileged white kids did to that statue!!! Oh my god, we need to have a serious talk about race in this country!!!”
What’s equally interesting is that the national media (most everyone really) completely ignores the murder of Mableton, GA resident Joshua Chellow by three black men. These silly, well-meaning but underprivileged black guys made Joshua kneel in front of oncoming traffic and collide head first with a 2 ton car going 45 mph. I senseless act, but not many were offended because it was ignored. I mean get real, it was just murder. It’s not like it was something as awful as a noose. Aren’t black men entitled to murder a few whites from time to time?
http://www.examiner.com/article/media-blackout-georgia-man-killed-black-on-white-hate-crime-attack
So ask yourself, who should be offended here? The statue lives, the white guy with a family dies.
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THEYS CONSPIRIN’ AGAINST THE WHITE MAN AGAIN PAWWWLLL
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Thug Life is the White Man’s Burden. Now, it’s time for pizza…
“Dunn decided Davis was – his word – a ‘thug’ and shot him.”
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/02/19/218627/leonard-pitts-jr-white-fear-trumps.html
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We are talking about the university of the state that just ratified the emancipation proclamation a little over a year ago. Oxford seems alright on the square but it probably gets a little sketchy outside of the city limits.
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2014 and we still can’t have a conversation about racism that doesn’t detour into arguments about the Civil War and accusations of media bias.
I was the only kid in my high school who loved reading Faulkner. I was also the only one who elected to have a black roommate in college – a guy from Long Island who patiently let me figure out that, as opposed to racism as I might have been, I was still harboring a lot of prejudices. What I see in my son’s middle school classmates on that front really impresses me. And I’ve been discouraged to hear my 3rd grade daughter come home and describe some of the crap her classmates dish out to Hispanic students.
On it goes, all over the world.
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Actually, I am going to have to cut that back to “my circle of friends who elected to have a black roommate.”
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Accusations? Are you in complete fucking denial? I would say you are.
But since you are so found of your “enlightenment”, you can continue to ignore the fact that racism exists just as much in the black community as it does the white.
Open your eyes and get your head out of your ass Mr. “I have black friends”.
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Sorry, I am not following you. Did I say false accusations? Stupid accusations? No. I said accusations. And this post is full of people accusing the media of bias. Well, duh. The media has a massive bias. It’s called a profit margin. We call that capitalism. Last I checked, people like that sort of thing around here.
Of course there are racist black people. Did I say “all over the world except in the black community?” Nope.
I didn’t read your post before I wrote mine. I still haven’t. Still angry?
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On it has always gone. There is nothing new under the Sun, and I mean nothing.
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I lived in Jackson, Mississippi for five years as an Assistant Professor at The University of MS Health Center. This was 1978-1983. People wer no more racist in Mississippi then they were in any other state. Unsavory types exist everywhere. So far as it goes, the SCV have african american members. The organization is no better or worse then any other. I am always amused at those who always take the moral high ground. Most of the time they are as ignorant as those whom they condem.
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“Most of the time”? So you’re saying there’s a chance? 😉
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I am saying what I said. You can interperate the post however you so choose. Some people moralize because they may truly believe in a “cause”. Most are full of….well, you know what, Senator.
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easy there, Lloyd.
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The Denunciation Proclamation
“The South was so committed to slavery that Lincoln didn’t die of natural causes.”
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-february-24-2014/denunciation-proclamation
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Ah, The Daily Show. The primary source of information for idiots who are asleep during Saturday Night Live’s “newscast.”
Yes, the North wasn’t ready to kill to stop slavery. “The South was ready to die to keep slavery.” Kind of like Nicole Brown Simpson was ready to die to divorce OJ. That Nicole and those Southerners were just so stupid. 😉
And pay no attention to all the other countries who ended slavery without fighting a war. That never happened. If it had been important, you would have learned about it in the seventh grade.
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I’m probably going to regret jumping in here, but it seems to me the South seceded over slavery and Lincoln went to war to preserve the Union. I mean, the Emancipation Proclamation came well after the start of the war.
And I don’t get your insistence on how what the rest of the West did about slavery is particularly relevant. How many of those countries saw a portion attempt to split off over slavery?
Anyway, since when did the American South follow what Europe does? 😉
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There are several beliefs that pass for conventional wisdom on the Civil War. First, that war was the only way to end slavery. Second, that slavery was an atrocity so great that all atrocities committed in opposition to slavery were justified, and even noble. And third, that when the states ratified the Constitution, they forever gave up their rights of self-determination.
An analysis of history shows all three of the above beliefs to be false. War wasn’t the only way to end slavery because scores of other countries ended slavery peacefully. Yes, slavery was awful. But I think that freeing the 4 million slaves peacefully over the 30 years (let’s say) after 1860 would have been preferable to freeing them at once, bankrupting the country, and killing over 600,000 people to do it. Finally, after fighting a war against Britain for the right of self-determination, it is ridiculous to assert that the states immediately forfeited that right to a national government.
So, it rubs me wrong when snarky leftists at TDS not only repeat middle school tripe as gospel, but belittle and insult anyone who doesn’t mindlessly accept that tripe and immediately reduce one of the most important periods in American history to nothing more than a morality play of the pure-hearted Union soldiers fighting against the orcs of the Confederacy.
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When the FFs tossed out the Articles of Confederation for the Constitution, that’s exactly what they did.
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Of course they didn’t. James Madison even helped write the ratification of the Constitution for Virginia, which included explicit language allowing the state to secede if the federal government became abusive. At the time, the only question was whether the right to secede should be written into the ratification documents, or whether it was too pedantic to include a power so obviously retained by the states.
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It’s also hard to imagine the sales pitch that the FFs would have used on the states if you are correct that they were proposing a permanent, inviolable union. I can just hear Hamilton and Madison now. “I know the Articles of Confederation didn’t work out so great y’all. But I know just the thing to replace it, a suicide pact. Either the Constitution works out for the long term, or we’ll all just kill each other. What do you say?”
The notion that a national suicide pact would have even been considered seriously, let alone ratified, is laughable.
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I see you went political again today. Please stop. Liberal politics in place of UGA sports is a dang sad trade off.
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There are eleven – count ’em, eleven – posts on the blog today. If your idea that one of them, about one of the more despicable people in college football, is “a dang sad trade off” for the other ten, I don’t know what to tell you.
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I am with you Mike. This stuff can change ones opinions of certain Dawgs.
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There’s a pretty simple solution available to you. Don’t read the post or the comments.
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Can’t stop myself. GTP is my only guilty pleasure.
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It shouldn’t change your opinion of them. If you’ve made friends on a Dawg blog or board, they’re still the same Dawgs even if you find out later that they don’t agree with you politically.
There’s really not a good reason to suddenly slam someone or to hate someone because they have different views. I personally couldn’t care less whether the Senator is a Glenn Beck watching mouth frothing Tea Party nutjob, or a bleeding heart socialist tax and spend radical liberal. I know he’s a damn good Dawg who writes a damn good blog, and that’s good enough for me.
Anyone who allows someone else’s politics to get in the way of friendship or having a good time is acting narrow-minded and stupid. If it’s that important to you, hang up the red and black and go find a political blog full of people who think just like you so that you’ll never see something that offends your poor sensitive self.
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You sure made a lot of assumptions based on my simple statement. Changing my opinion has nothing to do with all the heavy BS you just handed out. You are way off.
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You said, “This stuff can change ones opinions of certain Dawgs.” I said that politics shouldn’t change opinions of other Dawgs. That’s not way off. It precisely addressed your “simple statement.” If you don’t want assumptions made about you, then throw a little nuance into the broad, sweeping, simple statements. Otherwise, don’t complain about “heavy BS.”
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You are full of heavy BS, but do rave on. It is good therapy.
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