Why do people still fly the Confederate flag?

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Posted: Fri Aug 30, 2013 8:48 am

Let the battle start:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23705803

Posted: Fri Aug 30, 2013 9:14 am

I will not comment on the political arguments about its use in the US, but I was surprised to see how often the Confederate flag is seen around the UK and parts of Europe, mainly associated with country music and many country-influenced musical styles rather than anything Southern per se.

This use often causes a lot of friction especially among travelling US musicians who don't respond positively to it, such as Jason Ringenberg's song "Rebel Flag in Germany"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ocCd0DrNFU

Posted: Fri Aug 30, 2013 10:09 am

Because the South's gonna rise again...

Posted: Fri Aug 30, 2013 10:58 am

Auntie Beeb wrote:

For millions of young Britons growing up in the early 1980s, one particular image of the Confederate flag was beamed into living rooms across the UK every Saturday evening.

Oh yeah. So there was. Mr. Green

Baiting Guru Joined: 19 Apr 2007 Posts: 3123

I can offer a different perspective on this, having aspired to be an American almost my whole life.

It's interesting the association with country music is mentioned - personally, there's nothing I like better than sitting with a glass of bourbon with Charlie Daniels blasting out and the Confederate flag blowing in the wind above my porch. I'm not really qualified to comment on the historical connotations of the flag, but I do get very pissed off when people react to it in the same way as one would a swastika.

For me personally, the Confederate flag is almost interchangeable with the stars and stripes - it promises a way of life that is very aspirational.

It is the only flag that conjures an image of 'the South' as a geographical area in one shot, and then all of the things I personally associate with the South come flooding through (sunshine, personal freedom, lots of land, easygoing lifestyle, my kind of politics) - to contrast this with the 'rust belt' of the North (a place I would hate to be).

For me, it's nothing to do with the Civil War or racism - but that just highlights the point in the article that 'the flag has been compared to a Rorschach blot because it means several things at all at once, depending on who is looking at it.'

I know it means a hell of a lot to me, but I won't have someone accuse me of racism as a result.

Posted: Fri Aug 30, 2013 12:59 pm

Hi Craig007, I wondered if this might tempt you out of posting retirement.
My perspective comes from the other side growing up in the midwestern US, definitely northern rust belt country, where the Confederate flag was waved around pretty much only at Klan and other white power marches (loads of them at the time). It's still hard for me to see it as anything else even though I know otherwise.

It was a huge surprise to me once I travelled more extensively in the south to see a different kind of cultural appreciation of it, varying in a complicated way depending who you talked to. And even more so to see it in southeast England as strictly signifying music culture.

P.S. what are you doing drinking bourbon out of a glass? Are you too classy to swig from the bottle?

Posted: Fri Aug 30, 2013 2:02 pm

I'm sorry, but there's just no way this can end well. Like it or not, the topic is inherently inflammatory.

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