Do wounds remain in contemporary Southerners about losing the American Civil War?

With weirdo extremists, maybe, but not your average person

I think they see themselves as victims. Otherwise, why all the Confederate flags and concern about monuments, many of which were put up in the 20th century.

In that Shit-Town podcast from TAR /Serial, the interviewee Tyler, who had those ritualistic S&M tattoo sessions with the main guy John, had Confederate Flags tattoos, and blacks are banned from that the bar where he hung out.

None of this was mentioned in the podcast. Is it relevant? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But the omission of it is.

I imagine a not insignificant proportion of Southern people are still pissed about what losing the war resulted in. They are clearly “triggered” by the byproducts of it (black popular culture, the erosion of unsustainable small town agricultural life, insular poverty, clinging to a rigid class-based society) which informs their history and affects their identity.

There’s a lot of rage there.

The Southern region of the U.S. is sort of like the Russia of the ex- Soviet Union. Their failings are not their fault. They’d be great and powerful if only others hadn’t meddled, betrayed them, been immoral in their quest to destroy them, etc. I grew up in rural Texas. Lived in Russia for a couple of years. I saw so many similarities. The victim mentality, the overwrought bravado, the belief in preposterous conspiracy theories, the impulse to say extremely obnoxious things to get attention, the internal duel between their superiority complexes and inferiority complexes (“Russia is greatest country in world and why the hell would you willingly come here and could you help me get the fuck out of here?”)

Suffice it to say, if I'm going to read a book about southerners it's not going to be one written by some mook from Massachusetts who, like all book authors, can be guaranteed to have exaggerated much of what he wrote so he can sell as many of his books as possible. And sadly nitwits all over will fall for it.

I'm 65+ years old and have lived in the south all my life, with a couple of 3 year part time residencies outside the south. In all my years in the south I have never heard anyone say one word about being sad or in pain about the loss of the Civil War. The very idea is ludicrous. I'm sure if you dig deep enough into the hills and hollers of Appalachia you'll can find a few who pine for the days what were. But those types are certainly in no way representative of the typical southerner.

What a load of hogwash.

I'm in my 60s and have lived in the south all my life, mostly in Mississippi. I've never heard anyone mention the war. What I've heard (and still hear) is blatant racism, irrational resentment of African Americans over just about everything - they supposedly get all manner of things they don't deserve - job preference, welfare benefits, blah blah... And I've heard, from young and old, that they're thieves, cheats, drug pushers, violent assaulters and murderers... It's just ridiculous. I think sometimes it's projection - they know it's wrong that they hate an entire race of people who were brought to this country against their will to be enslaved. Any decent person would feel compassion... well, I'll never understand it.

I did live in Ireland for a while and they spoke about the British hating the Irish - one lady called that "racism." She had been to Majorca on holiday and British woman sneered at her when she heard her accent and said, "What are YOU doing here?" Also the attitude toward the Roma - that reminds me a bit of racism against African Americans.

Anyway, I do think Vicksburg is a bit of an anomaly with its preoccupation with the war. It was a besieged city, with an enormous cemetery full of war victims -- a kind of place obsessed with what happened to it. I never felt that in other Mississippi cities/towns I lived in. Like I said, it just never came up. (but the seething racism did - every day)

Oh, and before World War II, more than 50% of the population of Mississippi was African American. They have a history of living in fear that there will be an AA "take over" - and perhaps, subconsciously at least, they may fear there will be revenge taken (which I personally think would be understandable.) There was a partial "take over" during Reconstruction when the North forced the Southern whites to let AAs vote, elect officials, etc. That left a scar (and a desperate fear).

R3 nailed it

My family lives in a small, rural town in the South - on land that we've owned since before the civil war . I've never encountered anything like the Vicksburg episode, but I agree a simmering anger remains - not so much about "losing" the war - but the racial and economic ramifications of the loss. And yes, the same group supports Trum and to judge our local community FB page - the need for a wall at all costs.

We love our confederate flag!!!! The south shall rise again.

The white anger over minorities seemingly getting what many call "free handouts" from government programs is certainly not just a "southern thing". Southerners might be a little more vocal about it, probably because there are more poor minorities in the south who take advantage of those benefits, but there are white people in every state in the union who seethe with that anger. I'd say the vast majority of Republican voters in the USA live with rage about their tax money going to help poor minorities. One has to only look at the current occupant of the White House and until this year the majority GOP controlled Congress to see that attitude in full action. White Republican politicians have been foaming at the mouth for decades about all the money that goes to the poor (meaning poor blacks but they just wan't say it) and getting their base inflamed over it with the promise they will stop it (which they never do).

People whine about the south still trying to fight the Civil War. But southerners got over it long ago. It 's always people outside the south who start the arguments over the Civil War. We'll undoubtedly see many non southerners do that very thing before this thread dies.

Yes, they wear the new Confederate flag on their heads , but instead of the Stars and Bars, there is a simple slogan - MAGA.

Without realizing it, Eisenhower's interstate highway system was the greatest promoter of cultural and racial integration that this country has ever seen. It effectively scrambled the country's population like nothing ever had. I live in North Carolina and, except for the dispute about a Confederate statute at UNC-Chapel Hill, one would not know one is living in the "old Confederacy." Heck, a morning drive will get you across the Mason-Dixon line. There are just to many people who have come here from northern states, so the cultural differences between say New Jersey and South Carolina become ever less pronounced. I imagine it will become as irrelevant in the future as whether your English ancestors supported Cromwell or Charles I. There will always be "Lost Cause" people but more and more they will just be seen at conventions of the inbred. On the downside, the interstate highway system was a gift to the rash of serial killers from the 1970s and 1980s. Thanks to smart phones and other such recording devices, not so much anymore.

The only people who mention it at all anymore besides historians are either southern extremists who use it as a Trojan horse to deliver their ugly agendas ...

... or northerners who are sick of the south putting extremist rightwing governments in place, and wish the south had won the war so we’d be rid of them (and their drain on the federal economy).

southerners are butthurt because they are stupid buffoons

A slightly different point of view: I've only been exposed to this sort of logic a few times, and it never really registers with me. I just tell the person that my ancestors didn't even arrive in this country until long after the Civil War, and it flummoxes them. One of the really sobering facts for me (a white person with German ancestry) is that my boyfriend (a black guy) has ancestry that goes back much, much further (farther?) than mine. So, by some strange logic, he's more American than me. And our country owes a huge debt of gratitude to his ancestors for contributing so much (probably unpaid) to building this country. No sympathy to white Southerners from this Yankee. I'm polite, but I won't buy into that nonsense.

Exactly, r9

[quote]I'd say the vast majority of Republican voters in the USA live with rage about their tax money going to help poor minorities. One has to only look at the current occupant of the White House and until this year the majority GOP controlled Congress to see that attitude in full action. White Republican politicians have been foaming at the mouth for decades about all the money that goes to the poor (meaning poor blacks but they just wan't say it)

Compare the way that drug use among blacks is perceived - say, the 1980s “crack babies” scare and whites. The opioid epidemic, which affects all racial demographics but very tragically the poor, rural, whites, whose towns are decimated by lack of industry. Just ask Kellyanne Conway.

R14 should know all about stupid buffoons since he is clearly a member of their Royal Family.

Is “Rebel” flag just a different way of saying Confederate flag?

Do I give a shit, OP? No. Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis should have been hanged as traitors.

[quote]To him, it's the U.S. always betraying American principles, like limited government. The founding fathers would be aghast at a government that regulates lightbulbs and toilet flows, he says.

[quote]There's one group Sawyer dislikes: "I'm prejudiced against Yankees." What about the moral abomination of slavery? Earnest said it disappeared throughout the Americas, and would have disappeared here, too. A financial settlement between north and south could have achieved that more peacefully than Lincoln's invasion — "in a practical way."

[quote]There's something people must understand about southerners' psyche, he said: They hate being told what to do. The best way to get southerners to do something, like on civil rights, is the soft sell. He resents the northern sense of moral superiority.

A financial settlement? This is only one whacko guy, but why would the South deserve government handouts as a impetus to eliminate slavery - and coming from someone who despises Big Government?

R6, I'm from Mississippi,too. You are spot on. The hatred for AA's is stunning. I'm not racist one but but everyone in my family is. It's completely illogical.

One bit

Clark Duke’s college-aged character on ABC’s ‘GREEK’ was a Confederate fanboy. He even hung a flag in his dorm-room. This show aired in the mid-2000s, for context.

[quote] DALE: Can anybody tell me why this class is worth three units? Every first-grader in Wetumpka knows that the pig is whipping that guy because of lustfulness.

I lived in northern Louisiana and I was shocked by the amount of racism. It's pervasive through every part of life. Even in the grocery store, whites are supposed to go to the white checker and blacks to the black checker. Things like that are wholly alien to someone who did not grow up in the segregated South.

No one talks about the Civil War but in two ways it's relevant.

For one, the power structure that was put in place in say 1890 still holds today. By that I mean the same families, black and white, call the shots today that did then. There's been virtually no in-migration and there is no economy apart from county hospitals, prisons and Dollar General. In that way think it's very similar to Mississippi, and unlike southern Louisiana.

The other way the Civil War is relevant is in parades around the time of Juneteenth. There's usally a black community that celebrates Juneteenth and the whites hold a "white-oriented" parade either before or after, usually with the help of the Sons of the Confederacy.

A book that has long been considered a classic: "The Mind of the South " by Cash.

R24. Dollar General. Lol. So fucking true.

It’s not that anyone is opposed to Civil Rights, per se, but some find a lot to complain about things related to Civil Rights and how it eventuated.

There’s an “otherness” to identitfying as “Southern” and a defiance. There’s nothing particularly Southern about ‘nice’ manners and floral fabrics and hard liquor but put them all together and you have Reese Witherspoon and a lifestyle brand. One the South’s defining facets is Not Being A Yankee/Californian/etc. Are Southern values very different from other Americans? The positive ones, no. The negative aspects of any demographic are much more specific and defining.

I recall a Rhode Island to Florida road trip in the early 1990's. During that trip we were in a Lincoln Continental with RI plates on it. We pull into a gas station in South Carolina except it was a combination fireworks and gas station. Inside there was a huge confederate flag with a skull and cross bones that had the motto "The South Shall Rise Again". And I said out loud "And the North shall promptly kick your ass back into the stone age."

That was fun.

Go fuck yourself Boris

They refer to it as "The War of Northern Aggression," for the love of God.

r12 “... so the cultural differences between say New Jersey and South Carolina become ever less pronounced.” You keep thinking that, Dearie.

I was in Charleston in 2009, and walking into the posh main town between the hostel I stayed in (the “ghetto” neighbourhood, which aside from a bunch of elderly of black men hanging out in the convenience store under the air conditioner was no different to anywhere else) I passed several old houses with Confederate flags pasted up in the windows in lieu of curtains.

Eye opening for a foreign tourist. We took some furtive photos as if it were an American quirk, which I guess it was.

In more rural parts of the south you will probably find stronger memories of the war than someplace like Atlanta, local battles were some of the most memorable events in those areas, and a lot of descendents of families alive at that time still live in those areas.

I'm a white Yankee who lived all my life in a northern state except for three years in the early 2000s when I lived in a small city in Tennessee. I have relatives in Tennessee. My experience was that the Southerners like to good naturedly make fun of us Yankees and joke about how they had to hide the silver when they saw the Yankee army coming, etc. There are a lot of passive aggressive subtle feelings toward the North and Yankees. But I must say every Tennessean I met or knew was nice and friendly and good natured toward me and I certainly never took any of their Confederate sympathies personally. It must be hard to live with the knowledge that your "country" (the Confederate States of America) lost the war and was humiliated by the hated Yankees. I can't blame them for having a little bit of resentment but the vast majority of Southerners that I knew have buried the hatchet and are nice, good people. Of course there still are the real hard core racist, white supremacist, states rights, the-South-will-rise-again extremists but they are a small minority now. I never met one. But it's true that the whole time I lived in Tennessee I felt that I was living in another country, a different country, not the real America. One thing I noticed though is that real Southerners still refer to the Civil War as The War of Northern Aggression. So yes, the wounds are still there, deep down.

I lived in the deep south for 12 years (Tallahassee). It was an eye-opener to me. (I'm a native Westerner). I would describe the southerners I met as too complex to categorize. First of all, in regard to one-on-one relations, most white southerners I met were more polite to black people than white people I had known during my time in NYC. Why? Because the percentage of black people in the south is much larger than it is in the north, and white children are raised by black women - either as servants in their homes, or as the cafeteria workers, etc, in their schools. So, in a normal exchange, you wouldn't say "wow, what an extreme racist that person is". However, let a black person aspire to the same economic/social status as white people already have by virtue of birth in the south, and the gloves would come off. Behind closed doors, a lot of bad-mouthing of black people in general. (Lazy, shiftless, the men are rapists of white women to be feared, drugs, unintelligent, spongers, etc)

Southerners of a certain economic class cling to the image they have sustained of themselves as cultured and refined. They think of their manners and their polite language as indications that they were superior to those damn uncultured Yankees. Poor southerners, of whom there were many before the increase in industry in the south in the 50s and 60s , were raised in just as dire circumstances as the blacks, but cling to their racial superiority as the one thing that has made their lot bearable.

I think the Civil war is retreating too far into history for most contemporary southerners to hold a grudge about it, but I knew a woman (now dead), VERY religious, who would say things without a trace of irony, such as "it wasn't about slavery - it was about PROPERTY and compensation". (I guess slaves being property didn't offend her religious sensibilities in the slightest). However, the internet, here as elsewhere, has been a great tool for encouraging people to take on old grudges and make them their own.

Regionally, one of the better selling magazines in the south is "Blue & Gray" and the added line: For Those Who Still Hear the Guns!

I imagine people in MAGA hats are the top buyers.

Probably for crazy racists

My experience after living in Appalachia: The racism towards 'Mexicans' was open and virulent while almost all whites were polite to blacks. I took it to mean it was only OK to hate black folks in private.

Good God R34 & R35 I've never read a more made up bunch of garbage in my life. I have lived in the south all my life. I have NEVER heard anyone refer to the Civil War as "the war of northern aggression". The few times I've ever heard anyone in the south bring it up they (like everyone else) call it THE CIVIL WAR. I know you think it made your post seem more interesting, but you're lying through your teeth and you know it.

Fact is you two are simply liars who want so badly to join in on the bullshit that is most of this thread that you've concocted this fake scenario you claim to have experienced during your time in the south. It's people (mainly people from the Northeast) and people like you (if you're even what you claim to be) who keep the Civil War going. It's your way of trying to make yourself look superior. It only makes you look like fools and be laughed at.

If the south was anything close to the way you two and the other nitwits on this thread claim, it wouldn't be full to the brim with people who've flocked here from other areas of the country who, if you ask the vast majority of them, would never even consider going back from whence they came.

[quote]There’s a new kind of racism think many people were appalled at what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia, because they thought America had moved past such performative displays of white supremacy. But I wasn’t surprised at all. Living in the Deep South has taught me that racism never really goes away. It just changes forms.

[quote]I recently visited the Jefferson Davis Presidential Library and Museum, dedicated to the president of the failed Confederacy during the Civil War. The library, located in Biloxi, a six-hour drive from my house to the Mississippi Gulf Coast, is dedicated to preserving and celebrating his memory. Like many rich Southern men, Davis owned people. Few placards mentioned slavery at all; several of them simply praised Davis’s beneficent care of his human property and their unfailing loyalty to him. Most of the exhibits ignored the war’s root causes in slavery.

[quote]In his illuminating look into the Southern mind, Baptized in Blood, historian Charles Reagan Wilson describes the South’s Lost Cause narrative as “a mythic construct that helped white Southerners define a cultural identity in the aftermath of Confederate defeat.” The civil religion of the Lost Cause is on full display at a place like the Jefferson Davis Museum, recasting Confederate history as heroic and virtuous.

[quote]And the Lost Cause isn’t just a Southern myth; it’s a national one. This is why you see Confederate flags in Maine. It’s why the current president can say “they are trying to take away our history and our heritage” at a rally in Phoenix, Arizona, and still get wild applause. It’s why the domestic terrorist who rammed his car into counterprotesters in Charlottesville was born and raised far away from the South, in Ohio. It’s why cities from Birmingham to Brooklyn are grappling with what to do about their Confederate monuments.

[quote]Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, put it well: “The North won the Civil War, but the South won the narrative war.”

Millions of black people who left the south in the 30'-50's flooded back to the south in the 60's-80's because they were sick and tired of the way white people up north only pretended to be nice to them while they were in the same room.

Like white folks, they moved for lower costs and lower taxes.

OP, no one living in the South now remembers the Civil War. Neither do their parents or their grandparents. The public education there is not good enough to have inculcated in them an accurate understanding of the actual pain and deprivation that follows any war.

What they are angry about is change. No one changes until they are pushed to. And when pushed, people resist. What they are angry about is Brown v. Board of Education, The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. They don't like the Americans with Disabilities Act, either. It's all an ignorant response to necessary societal change. Of course they push back. That's what people do and that's why change is slow and incremental. Two steps forward, one step back.

[quote]Millions of black people ... flooded back to the south in the 60's-80's because they were sick and tired of the way white people up north only pretended to be nice to them while they were in the same room.

r41, just upthread r35 and other said that some white Southerners do the same - in public blacks receive politeness provided they "know their place", behind closed doors the frustrations and stereotypes emerge.

Southern v. Northern Racism" "we don't care how close they get as long as they don't get too high; they don't care how high they get as long as they don't get too near."

No, not normal people.

Southern Culture is nothing but wounds - and great food and music.

Like Alan Thicke wrore: you take the good, you take the bad, and then you have ...

Interesting to see all the white so-well-bred Southern boys come out and defend their land -- oh no, we never think about race. We never think about that old war. We are so kind to our colored folk.

Actually, they all believe that the North is evil, that blacks should know their place, and that the world would have been so much better off if the South had won. I spent a few years living in South Carolina and learned that the only difference between poor whites and rich whites (well, besides money) is that the rich ones were taught how to hide their racism and anger.

[quote] the only difference between poor whites and rich whites (well, besides money) is that the rich ones were taught how to hide their racism and anger.

Hmmm, sounds suspiciously just like white people in New York City, Philly, Washington DC, Chicago, LA, Seattle, and every other city in the USA.

I worked as a gofer for my Dad about 1976 in an appliance store. A customer brought an appliance in to be fixed. It was a minor item that was broken, but a major component died in the shop. It rarely happened, but the odds caught up with this lady, the owner.

When Dad told her, she started swearing up and down about us “Damn Yankees”. She was from Tennessee, but she went right to that victimization place. Today, he’d get a bad review.

R48 you are full of shit. I grew up in Texas and was never taught to consider the North evil and was never exposed to racism personally as a child. Granted, my father was educated and had a job exposing us to all different cultures and races.

I love how people still hold these stereotypes about southerners and ignore the fact that racism is pretty bad in the North and Midwest too and I can recall yesterday posts telling others to not paint with a broad brush in regards to certain religious groups. That goes for all groups.

I have stereotypes about NY’ers but I know it’s a place full of individuals so I don’t let that influence me.

they are still fighting the war because they think they can still win it. It may have subsided somewhat in larger areas where northerners have migrated.

I went to Southern VA in 1985 (I know long time ago) and was off the beaten path. I was shopping and the clerks ignored me and when I paid for an item they threw my change at me because of my Yankee accent. they were just nasty. I have avoided the South since.

I have a friend who moved to Alabama a few years ago and she was in a bar. A guy came up to her and said where have you been my whole life and she said Pennsylvania. She said he got a look of horror on his face and couldn't run away from her fast enough. She just laughed.

I think it is mostly a cluster now of the most Southern states and backwoods (TX excluded, they seem far more progressive)

Ditto 51. I grew up in the South and now spend most of my time in New York and mid Atlantic coast. Its often a case of 'the pot calling the kettle black'- that's an old Southern saying.

[quote]TX excluded, they seem far more progressive

Texas seems to be its own beast as much South-Western in terms of culture than only Southern. It's also very industrial and multicultural.

I live in rural Virginia; my county has but one stoplight (but three Dollar Stores). The largest employer here is a prison.

Many here still pine for the 'safety' of the Eisenhower years when family (and Church) were king, and blacks were not uppity. I overheard a hushed conversation outside the grocery store not too long ago about the "good times" of the 1840s and 1850s when blacks were provided free housing, jobs and health care by their owners.

The wounds are not really about the War Between the States any more; they are more about the imposition of Northern morays on the Virginia/traditional way of life.

There is also resentment here about how Virginia is becoming more Democratic (thanks to the growth in population in the DC suburbs). These Traditionalists are staunch Republicans, Evangelicals, and white. They see 'their Virginia' and being lost to the 'Come Heres' who are moving into Virginia from other parts of the country and bringing their non-traditional thoughts and practices. The recent fury about the Civil War statues as seen in Charlottesville and elsewhere, I feel, it more about frantic clinging to vestiges of the past (and white superiority) than any appreciation for the bronze artwork or a love for the deceased veterans themselves.

Never have I seen a better example of queens on a chat board exaggerating and outright making crap up in order to be part of the crowd, than this silly thread. This thread fairly stinks of all the BS being slung around.

r56 I am assuming you are a southerner.

I remember seeing a politician from Mississippi before Trump was elected who was trying to get his state recognized as the new South and not the old one. He was saying that the people weren't racist like they used to be and were educated etc.etc. I felt so bad for him because he was young and I knew he believed everything he was saying and just wanted good things for the people of his state. I think of him often and wonder what he thinks now after all that he has seen. Has he given up? Is he still trying? Sometimes it isn't just the politicians but the people that cut off their nose to spite their face.

Born in the 60s, I grew up in San Antonio. We didn't have a thing about being southern/Civil War in the city. But when we moved to the growing suburbs in HS where new homes were being built that were still a part of S.A. but pulling some rural kids into the HS it was like culture shock. They were called shit kickers (the cowboy boots and farm living I guess) and they had the confederate flag on the cars and shit like that. To be honest, we just thought of them as poor and low class. There wasnt really a correlation between that and racism, some of the rich kids were racist. We just thought it was so stupid to be so invested in an old time war that was over a 100 years old. It was like WTF? So my experience with confederate memorabilia was that there was a tendency for it to be a more rural thing.

Ah yes Texas, the land of progressives.

My family is from South Shore Long Island and they are the biggest bunch of resentful racists I have ever met. Every single thing any institution does for the poor (on Long Island, the poor are all black or brown), is thought of as proof that the whole world is out to get white people.

Boston is super racist. But the south is worse

[quote]it wouldn't be full to the brim with people who've flocked here from other areas of the country who, if you ask the vast majority of them, would never even consider going back from whence they came.

People flock there because the cost of living is so much cheaper. They wouldn't consider going back to whence they came because they can't afford to.

Very interesting ......

Ladies and Gentlemen, the poster children for triggered snowflakes. They lost the fucking war and still allowed to fly a loser's flag.

[quote] They see 'their Virginia' and being lost to the 'Come Heres' who are moving in.

Sounds just like my home country in England R55. Natives here do not like incomers, whom we call “from Off”. No matter if they’re gentry, townies (city folk who commute to and fro), Gypsies, asylum-seekers or migrant workers from Eastern Europe - they’re all the same Evil to locals. It’s xenophobic and backward, but at the same time the fear of being pushed out of one’s own community of birth is a real one.

I’ve heard this place called the ‘The English Kansas/Kentucky’ before, but from what you’ve said here perhaps West Virginia is really the more apt conflation.

Ah STILL shed tears each night over The Lost Cause!

Sometimes ah hear the door a-knockin' late at night, and mah first thought is, "Whah, ah bet it's one of OUR boys, needin' help and succor!" But it's almos' always jes' the pizza delivery boy! Still, ah offer to bandage him and care for his achin' bones in mah boudoir!

If the Confederacy had won the Civl War it would have been the United States' biggest debtor nation.

Except R65 no one gives a shit about the confederate flag except deplorables/rednecks. No one in the south sits around and bitches about it except them.

[quote]Millions of black people who left the south in the 30'-50's flooded back to the south in the 60's-80's because they were sick and tired of the way white people up north only pretended to be nice to them while they were in the same room.

And they all returned to Pennsyltuckyginny because....they preferred to be openly treated like hot garbage?

I call bullshit.

Fun fact: Nazis in Germany can't legally fly the Nazi flag. So they fly the stars and bars instead.

Other Nazis know what they mean.

Of course wounds remain. That’s why the South is so defensive and reactionary. The North kicked their ass and humiliated them handily, so the South clings to all their backwards ways - God, guns, religion. What else do they have? They’re a dead-end economy and a dying breed - the angry old white person. They continue to elect ruby red cavepeople and they resent/ mistrust education. Any openly gay person want to move there, want to live there? No thanks. Unbelievably primitive and unaware - toothless, tattooed and inbred.

It’s weird to see Kentucky folks flying the Confederate flag - do they not know their own history? But we know the real reason.

They can wear MAGA hats now

"Northern morays." Oh, dear.

They usually warm saltwater environments, which contain reefs.

Yes, son: wounds remain.

I live in Tennessee, and the people who are saying the South is over the Civil War are either in denial or outright lying. A few examples of the way it lingers:

1) "Lee/Jackson Day" is a state holiday in Virginia, honoring Generals Lee and Jackson. It is the Friday before MLK Day.

2) Confederate Memorial Day is a holiday in Georgia.

3) Mississippi uses the Confederate flag as part of their state flag.

4) All those state laws forbidding the removal of Confederate statues and memorials. Almost all of the memorials were built in the 20th century, and almost all of the laws were passed in the last decade.

5) The immediate defense of the Confederate flag as being "heritage, not hate" any time it is challenged.

6) People threatened to boycott Dollywood when Dolly Parton changed the name of the Dixie Stampede restaurant to Dolly's Stampede.

7) Tennessee offers a Confederate flag vanity license plate. State records show that orders for them have increased over the last five years.

The main problem is that Southerners were never taught to be ashamed of themselves as a slave owning society. Northerners, at least out loud, claim guilt over their slave owning past, but Southerners lament the loss of their heritage. They don't view Confederate soldiers as traitors or terrorists, even though they claim to hate both of those.

[quote] 2) Confederate Memorial Day is a holiday in Georgia.

It is an UNOFFICIAL non recognized holiday in Georgia (no observance & no day off from work for state employees). Most people in Georgia have no idea there is such a holiday as it's just another day. It is an OFFICIAL holiday (state workers get the day off) in Mississippi, Alabama, & South Carolina. In Texas it is called Confederate Heroes Day and a semi-official holiday there. It's a "skeleton crew holiday" so state offices are not closed but employees have the option to take the day off with pay. Those who choose to work that day can choose another day to take off. If the holiday falls on the same day as MLK day when state offices are all closed they can not take another day for Confederate Heroes Day.

[quote] Northerners, at least out loud, claim guilt over their slave owning past, but Southerners lament the loss of their heritage.

What a load of complete bullshit. You really are a complete fool who is just making up facts to suit your own purposes. The fact that you went through all the trouble to look up all that (mostly misleading and/or false info) shows that you're a mental case. You're as bad as some white guy who has a pathological hatred of minorities. Get professional help. God knows you need it.

There are no Confederate Heroes.

The generally accepted (outside the South) context of a rebellion is that it is an illegal act of insurrection. Leading the insurrection is a criminal act. Approximately 620,000 soldiers lost their lives because of the illegal actions of the Southern populace through their state governments and their militias and their subsequent Confederate Army.

They should be vilified, not celebrated, not honored. Whatever their grievances, their actions were criminal.

No, because those crazy people don’t accept that they lost and they believe “the south will rise again.”

A couple of years ago I drove through the south. I stopped at a large gas station with a convenience store. Inside the front part of the store, prominently displayed was a large cardboard container holding a bunch of large paperback books.

The books were one of those conspiracy theory items. The civil war being about slavery was a complete myth made up by the left coast right coast elites.

I thought it was weird and I thought how such an item could never be displayed outside of the South. I saw the same display with the same books in several other similar stores during my trip.

Creepy.

R80 Is anyone forcing you or anyone else to celebrate or honor Confederate history? You don't like it so you don't want to vilify anyone else who does like it. You're no better than straight homophobes who don't like homosexuality and want it and us washed from humanity. You and those like you are the ones who keep the War Between The States going after all these years, not people in the South. Even though these holidays do absolutely nothing to make your life any worse or better. It's a pathological mental fixation with you. Fact is, you're just another type of prejudiced bigot. You've just picked a different set of people besides blacks and other people of color to hate. Unfortunately us gays are well known for our bands of hate mongers, especially on the internet. Pathetic.

I don't know about now, but my dad said that in his unit during ww2, many of the southern guys would get heated up in combat and start doing the rebel yell and calling the Japanese "Yankees."

This made dad nervous as he was from Ohio.

An article about the appearance of the Confederate flag in many post-Civil War conflicts

[quote] No, because those crazy people don’t accept that they lost and they believe “the south will rise again.”

Well apparently it has, since huge numbers of people seem to be moving to the south from other parts of the country.

The Confederate flag has some surprising fans:

This time, let’s just allow them to leave the United States, no questions asked. Good riddance

For Christ sake!? Do you think all southerners are stupid racist pigs? I certainly hope not.

Well I grew up outside New Orleans on a former plantation and I NEVER remember any hatred toward the North or, really, any mention of the CW growing up. We have one relative still alive who is pretty racist (she's 97 and blames the fall of the department stores in New Orleans not to changing tastes, but integration) but for the most part, we all recognize that there are good and bad people of all races. New Orleans has a large minority population so you won't get very far is you have refuse to deal with black people.

There was a big hullaballoo about Mitch Landrieu removing out monuments and when the first list came out, I had to think real hard to remember them. The only one I remember was the statue in the park, because I played on it as a child. The others were in fairly obscure or overlooked positions. Nobody every really thought about the Lee in Lee Circle. It was a tiny statue on the top of a tall pedestal. It could have been Spike Lee, Stan Lee, or Sara Lee for all we knew.

Of course when you turn on the TV, they've found the one blithering idiot with the confederate flag spouting off that they are trying to take away his "heritage." But most of us could give a shit.

R86 The “south rising” isn’t about people moving there. It’s the idea of a national culture distinct and separate from that of the United States, based in the region’s historic creole mix of genteel manners, unusual brand of protestantism, lush estates and a privileged class marked by the reestablishment of a racial divide that automatically puts white men at the top of the economic, social and legal hierarchy, resurging. Today, northerners and immigrants are flooding parts of the south such as NC and FL, and they’re transforming those places into (NC) more liberal and (FL) less white places, which is most certainly not what southerners mean by the south rising.

R91, that's just your take on it. You can believe what "the south will rise again" means whatever you want. But it'll still be nothing more than something you believe and not necessarily the truth. Your beliefs do nothing more than serve your own purposes.

The only people in the USA who give a fat rat's ass about all this Civil War/Confederacy bullshit are mealy mouthed bitchy queens on the internet who know they can't say hateful things about minorities (who they very likely hate too) and get away with it, so white southerners have become the last available targets for their bigotry.

Yes, R93, the racists can’t be racists so they’ve turned on white Southerners. That makes zero sense. You just proved the white southerner victim complex.

And the fact that you infer that all white southerners are racists shows the stupidity and bigotry and prejudice of some people outside the south like you who always have to have someone or some group to hate, mainly to make yourselves feel superior.

Some of my dad’s family in NC still call people north of DC “yankees” in a derogatory way. They are Christian churchgoers but they absolutely hate everyone from NY and NJ who move to NC even if they are churchgoers. They see “yankees” as people they do not want to associate with. I didn’t make it up, R92, this is what my own family down there have said in front of me. Sorry if that bothers you, but it’s my personal experience.

Of course you're going to find some people in the south who dislike northerners. And as we can see from this very thread you're going to see some northerners (probably at a much higher rate) who dislike southerners. Tit for tat, and all that.

So are you saying it's okay for northerners to dislike southerners but not vice versa? My my my, what a slippery slope.

Seems like r97 needs a mint julep or three!

I don’t dislike all people from the south. Southern culture though has some very nefarious aspects that are specific to it. Not to even mention that the whole southern half of the US plus the western mountain states are the ones that culturally worship guns. Even after Columbine, Parkland, Pulse, UVA and all the other disasters, in these regions people insist that guns keep us all safe. As they say in the south, bless their hearts, it just makes me so swimmy headed to think about.

Too many Yankees. We should have built a wall circa 2000.

Ya mama was nothin' but a sorry up nawth waitress!

Southerners like R79/R83 only prove what the rest of are saying about them.

"SHOOT HER WARDELL, SHOOT HER IN THE HEAD!".

R79: Shut up you southern fried bitch. I notice you didn't refute ANYTHING R77 wrote. What is made up about it? In detail and with citations, please. Oh, who am I kidding, you'll just scream at me cause you're a filthy troll, as R102 above easily points out.

Hon at R104, take a Midol and shut the fuck up.

[quote]Do wounds remain in contemporary Southerners about losing the American Civil War?

More like bitterness. It's why you have white idiots with no money voting Republican - that's their pathetic way of clinging onto supremacy.

R105: HAR HAR. Better idea, why don't you take this paddle to calm your attitude problem.

R100 We agree, and unlike Mexico, we will pay for your Mason Dixon wall.

So how many of you identify more strongly with a “regional identity” as opposed to just consideting yourself an “American?” And not necessarily just “southern” or “mid-western” or “northern” - could be your state or your city.

I realize this is somewhat contextual - a guy who says he’s a Midwesterner in CA could say he’s an American in France. My question is, for yourself, what do you consider yourself.

I grew up & have lived most of my life in NYC and feel I’m a New Yorker much more than an American - even when things in Washington were much less odious than they are currently. I’m not sure this is actually best for the health of our nation, but I know it’s how I really feel.

I have a large and extended "white trash" southern family and I dont know one that gives a shit about the civil war,black people or anything other than just living. Until the blacks decided the confederate flag was an "issue" I rarely even saw one. Like prohibition,as soon as you tell an american they cant do something they are determined to do just that. ignorance has no state line,youll find bigots everywhere . These threads are always so tiresome and full of fantasy anecdotes "I saw KKK pamphlets in a convenience store!" .Isnt it funny that I,a born and bred southerner,with family from Alabama to Tennessee and all points in between,never see these things. Oh thats right,Im deliberately blind to the seething racism that permeates every aspect of southern living!

The Confederate flag was more history until the 1950s when the segregationists made it a political banner (incorporating it into their state fags, etc.)

[quote]Until the blacks decided the confederate flag was an "issue" I rarely even saw one.

So you're blaming "the blacks"?

R62: "Boston is super racist"

Which must explain why Massachusetts was the first state to abolish slavery 1783.

Which must be why the first black regiment organized to fight in the Civil War was from Boston (see "Glory")

And it certainly explains why Massachusetts voters elected the first black US Senator, Ed Brooke in 1966 after he'd been the state's Attorney General since 1962.

And why they elected Deval Patrick as Governor in 2007.

And why they elected Ayanna Pressley as Boston's Congressional Representative in 2018.

Every state has racists and racism. Few other states have done as much about it (in a positive sense) than has Massachusetts.

R110:

I'm a resident of a northern state whose family has always had a second home in Florida. As a consequence, I have flown, rode the train, and driven to and from Florida through Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida at least once a year year since the age of four or five, meaning since about 1955 and I have seen and continue to see plenty of both Confederate flags and black folks and have for more than 60 years. And most of those years were a century after the Civil War ended.

I saw and continue to see (and have plenty of photos showing) Confederate flags all along the way as well as on my other travels throughout the South. If you don't see these things, either you're blind or they've become invisible - part of the background to you. They're not invisible to anyone with eyes who can see.

And even if you were correct (something simple observation refutes), and few if any Confederate flags were or are visible in the South, since you now know their continued display is an "issue" to African-American residents, one that is deeply offensive to them, why do you continue to see them fly? If you and your family don't know anyone "who gives a shit about the civil war,black people or anything other than just living" why then is it still an issue? If it doesn't mean anything, why do you care?

Because you have greater regard for the treasonous acts of your dead ancestors than you have for your living, albeit black, neighbors?

Not exactly indicative of people looking to promote racial harmony. Or even to practice "live and let live."

Just a bunch of bitter crackers.

That’s because they had to r113. And their reputation is hardly stellar today.

R93's white victimhood should be in textbooks for instruction.

I'll just leave this here for r79.

The loss of the Civil War is a major thread in southern culture and life. They don’t mention the Civil War, but it’s subconsciously present.

They know the North looks at them as racists, backward people who need more welfare money.

They are constantly trying to believe they are really wonderful (“Don’t mess with Texas!” And “we’re so great that so many Northerners are moving down here!”)— the typical stuff people with low self esteem do.

They are so embarrassed they went to war to protect slavery that they try to create a completely new narrative about why the war started (states rights!)

It is interesting how the Southerners got as hysterical about protecting slavery as Jews get about protecting illegal immigration.

Cui bono? -- Cicero

I think the problem is a failure to recognize that the Southern cause was evil, come to terms with the moral failings of their ancestors, and put it in the past like most Germans (at least western Germans) have done. They want to believe their ancestors were heroes. That requires all sorts of mental gymnastics. These failings in critical thinking lay the groundwork for Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Trump.

Depending on who wins, illegal immigration and those who promote it might one day be seen as evil as slavery.

Im 58 fucking years old with dozens of relatives spread over the southern states,and I have never heard a ONE talk about the goddamn civil war . Not once. These threads piss me off because they are so full of liars and southern bashers and ignore those of us who LIVE here and always have. Yet the influx of yankees is never ending. Go figure.

Y’all bitches still arguing about this? Holy shit.

Let's get to the more important question. What are Southern gentlemen really like in bed? I'm knowing to know.

OP - you should have told that old bat in Vicksburg that it was YOUR choice to eat rats rather than surrender and stop enslaving other humans.

[quote]These threads piss me off because they are so full of liars and southern bashers and ignore those of us who LIVE here and always have. Yet the influx of yankees is never ending.

But this thread has many southerners responding.

[quote]Let's get to the more important question. What are Southern gentlemen really like in bed? I'm knowing to know.

Miss Florence King has written extensively about this -- straight and gay alike.

R125 is lying, clearly.

I'm 63 and have lived in the Deep South almost all my life, mostly Mississippi, and I never heard anyone mention the war, let along the "war of Northern aggression." That's too gramatically complicated for my kith and kin.

They spout racist epithets every goddamned day but never a peep about the war. I think one reason is they're so patriotic - disgustingly so imo. They might put the rebel flag on the truck or whatever, but come 4th of July or Memorial Day or hell, some of them have it up every day - the American flag is waving all over the trailerparks and 2 bit suburbs. If they couldn't win, they decided to pretend they, and they alone, own the whole damned country - or they should. Their precious Lord Jeebus said so!

* grammatically. Oh well - I come by it honestly, the lousy spelling I mean.

Southerners after the Civil War overran the military (again) to prove they were good Americans (again).

Sort of like the unfortunate Japanese-Americans did during ww2 by joining the 100th/442nd and fighting so hard, they got decorated (and killed) at three times the rate of the soldiers whose families were not in US concentration camps

I don't know if you can really trace the ethos of the American South to the feisty Scotch-Irish and borderland English, but some historians do. Think of the old Hatfields vs McCoy clans' feuding. It sure seems like these people down here love nothing more than feuding and fighting, drinking moonshine and hating. The main target's black people but they don't stop there - right now, oh my god they hate the Mexicans (fuelled by Fox News etc. but they're like a primitive fighting tribe on the hunt for any target they can find, Jews, Catholics, liberals, "feminazis", Muslims whoo boy they hate them maybe most of all...) And when a new group comes along, they'll be fightin' mad at them too.

Historically, the borderland between Scotland and England was constantly a battlefield. One historian said the southerners' love of living in trailers is related to the very temporary shacks they'd throw up in the old country because it wouldn't be too many years before the Scots reclaimed the land - or the English battled to get it back etc.... What did they used to call Scots? "The girls from hell." Even the Romans gave up on taking over and built a wall. It seems a bit far-fetched to me but otoh, it's hard not to see the parallels of the hard-drinking hard-fighting clannish dimwits and those jerks long ago (who I'm pretty sure have settled down and are civilized now - but then, with Brexit, maybe there's still a little rebel blood boiling in them - the English in the North anyway, I know Scotland voted against Brexit)

These tales of "I lived in and traveled throughout the South and never saw any signs of racism," are simply incredible. My sister moved to North Carolina in the early 1970s because her husband was stationed in the Air Force there. We're from NY. The county that she lived in was OK because the people from the Air Force base were from all over the country. But, the next county over -- Johnson County --had a HUGE sign when you entered saying "This is KKK Country." When you entered Smithfield, NC, there was another large sign on top of some building in the downtown area that proudly proclaimed, "The United KKK welcomes you to Smithfield." (These signs have long been removed.)

I worked for a summer (1975) at the hospital in Smithfield because my brother-in-law (out of the Air Force) worked there and got me a job. At one point in the summer, the black orderlies (when hospitals still had orderlies), told me that I should not be seen speaking with them or hanging out with them. because I was white and the old battle-ax Director of Nursing was a racist bitch who would call me out for "fraternizing with the coloreds." I was allowed in the nurses' station -- they were not. (I believe that every RN was white.) I told those guys that I was not going to stop talking to them and that I would WELCOME the opportunity to tell old witch exactly what I thought of her and her miserable bigotry. Unfortunately, she never had the nerve to call me into her office. I was pretty mouthy in those days, and would have relished the fight.

But the notion that the South has long gotten over the "Late Unpleasantness" or the "War Between the States" (as they call it) or that race relations were doing just fine is not accurate.

But did people actually bring up the Civil War a lot? They were racist before the war, during the war, and maybe moreso, since the war. But why would a butthurt culture join the American military (the "enemy") in the largest numbers of any region of the country? I say it's because they don't think about the Civil War anymore - the North were not the enemy, at least if they were white. The coloreds were (and are) the enemy, along with Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Mexicans and really all Latinos. White Protestant northerners, not really.

It's all about the racism. Well, I mean there's some animosity towards Yankees but they don't hate them if they're white and Protestant. Those are "decent folks." The others are scum. Kinda the way some Europeans think of the Roma. Thugs, thieves, liars, cheats, lazy, welfare-queens, etc.

South (to blacks): You can come into my house but you can't be better than me.

North (to blacks): You can be better than me but you can't come into my house.

South African Boers (to blacks): You can come into my house but you can't be better than me.

South African English (to blacks): You can be better than me but you can't come into my house.

Miss R136 quoting shit from 40 years ago,not that I believe her anyway. The KKK was a very secretive organization ,I highly doubt they would have had billboards advertising the fact. The modern day KKK is nothing like the old one.

R139 - He R136 speaks the truth: The KKK did in fact have large billboards at the edge of some North Carolina towns welcoming you to Klan Country.

R139 must not be an American if he doesn't know the Klan was out shamelessly in the south. They used to have parades down main streets ffs.

I learned a lot from this documentary.

Yes, I am dredged up incidents from 40 years ago because of people like R110, who deny that any of this happened:

[quote] I have a large and extended "white trash" southern family and I dont know one that gives a shit about the civil war,black people or anything other than just living. Until the blacks decided the confederate flag was an "issue" I rarely even saw one. Like prohibition,as soon as you tell an american they cant do something they are determined to do just that. ignorance has no state line,youll find bigots everywhere . These threads are always so tiresome and full of fantasy anecdotes "I saw KKK pamphlets in a convenience store!" .Isnt it funny that I,a born and bred southerner,with family from Alabama to Tennessee and all points in between,never see these things. Oh thats right,Im deliberately blind to the seething racism that permeates every aspect of southern living!

I recall Klan members handing out leaflets on the street inviting people to the next Klan meeting. In Indianapolis. In the 1980's. (It could still be going on there. I just no longer have occasion to be there.)

These things have not been so conveniently left in the past as some in this thread would like to believe.

One of the gals from my first company's security department was from Southern Mississippi and said there is the Klan you see on TV (beat up white guys with one tooth in their heads) and then there is the *real* Klan, who are wealthy and powerful and quiet.

Didn't Trump's father march with the Klan in New York, in the 60s or whatever? And it started in Indiana, I think. NOT that I'm downplaying its prominence in the South. And there are slightly more respectable auxiliary outfits, like the Citizen's Council. I'm from Mississippi and went to high school in the early 70s - my parents forced me to go to a private school run by the Citizen's Council and brazenly on the front of the student handbook, it said, "Founded for Racial Integrity" (i.e., segregation). This was 1971-73, after Nixon I believe it was ordered the national guard to forceably integrate the schools. For a long time, there had been "school choice" but very few chose to do that and those that did had a miserable existence (about 1% of the public school population was African American under "school choice" - at least in Jackson, Mississippi, where I grew up.)

I dont' know the white population of the public schools in Jackson but it's low - with white flight, the white population of the entire city is low - under 10%?

The will run you down with a Dodge if you try to take down their statues.

Trump's father was arrested for refusing to disperse from a Klan parade in NYC (Queens, I think) in 1927, not the 1960's.

R145 gets it. Thats exactly the truth.

Someone here keeps bringing up Boston but from Instagram most of the people I come across who have disturbingly racist leanings are from Oregon and Washington state.

Idaho has a large population of anti-government, racist militants along with eastern Oregon and Washington R150

The only Confederate thing we miss is our hoop skirts

R19 Good thing that none of the powers that be at that time agreed with you.

Neither Lee nor Davis was a great man. Hanging either or both of them would not have lessened their treachery or erased their infamy. There are some things worse than death.

Robert E. Lee, having been appointed an officer in the Army of the United States, swore he would support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, [bold]foreign and domestic[/bold], and that he would bear true faith and allegiance to the same. He swore he took the obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion and that he would well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which he entered.

Beyond leading troops against the country in which he was born and to which he swore true faith and allegiance, Lee did not honor that oath and as a result lost his citizenship which was not restored during his lifetime. He was a traitor to the United States who, after the Civil War accepted "the extinction of slavery" provided for by the Thirteenth Amendment but publicly opposed racial equality and granting African Americans the right to vote and other political rights.

Likewise, Jefferson Davis was a traitor to the United States even though he was never convicted. Of course, that would mean that Jack the Ripper wasn’t a murderer, D.B. Cooper wasn’t a thief, Benedict Arnold wasn't a traitor and Osama bin Laden wasn’t a terrorist since none of them were ever convicted of those crimes, either. Davis, however, violated two oaths he had taken before leading the Confederacy, one as an army officer and another as a US Senator from Mississippi. He too lost his citizenship as a result. In 1884 Davis said, “‘Tis been said that I should apply to the United States for a pardon, but [bold]repentance must precede the right of pardon, and I have not repented,”[/bold] in an address to the state legislature. “Remember as I must all which has been lost, disappointed hopes, and crushed aspirations, yet I deliberately say, If I were to do it over again, I would do just as I did in 1861.”

He didn't, however, attempt to flee Union troops in drag as depicted in popular legend at the time. He was wearing his wife's overcoat. Or, as shown below: "How Jeff in his extremity put his navel affairs and his ram parts under petticoat protection."

This thread is positively gleeful.

not sure if you're trolling OP, but yes, White Southerners carry this enormous chip on their shoulder and will never take it off. They are pissed that this is still the United States and will do everything to kill it, given the chance. Yup. They hate this damn country even while shrieking about how much they love this damn country.

The South is a vanquished nation, the sense of inadequacy has never left some southerners, particularly southern men. Of course, a lot of it is just a pose, (to embrace racist views or to be part of a group), I'll bet you that most of the people who fly Confederate flags, etc, couldn't tell you the dates the Civil War started & ended.

I had good friends and roommates in college and in my twenties , who were from southern states: Louisiana and South Carolina. What set them apart for me was the great pride they took in their states. Guys from Texas whom I knew were the same way. I'm from New York, and it seemed to me that people from the Northeast were not as attached to their home states in the same way the Southerners and Texans were.

Looking back now in middle age. there are some things that stick out. When I first visited New Orleans, my college friend pointed out how the statue of Lee faced north either because he kept an eye on the North or because he turned his back on the South! He wrote a term paper on the Civil War, arguing that states' rights were at the heart of the conflict. I went to a 4th of July party in Charleston, where they had the stars and bars flags, as well as the stars and stripes. But I never heard my friends or their families utter anything racist.

What really struck me was a time I travelled to Columbia, SC from Charleston. The Klan marched the same day. I have never been more frightened in my life. They were just marching, but to see men, women, and children wearing those outfits still sends a chill down my spine. Even my friends from SC were shocked.

yup, exactly, r158. I grew up in New York. Don't dislike, but honestly don't much care. Northerners don't care that much. Southerners take that heritage shit SERIOUSLY.

I'm from Mississippi - I don't really hear much pride in the state, lol, but you can imagine there's a lot of embarrassment, even if they'd never admit it.

I've always thought I saw something like that in Middle Eastern men. They know their countries, their culture even, is shit - but it makes them touchy and angry, or even in perpetual denial (that takes a whole lot of effort), insisting that no, there's nothing wrong with them or the medieval or backwards or racist views they hold so fuck you!! But down under all that bluster, they know they're losers. (also reminds me of the incels)

This thread is the answer to your question, OP.

150+ variations of "How DAY-uh you impugn the integrity of a Southern gennulman, suh! How DAY-uh yew???"

R 157. True. There are people who won’t admit that East Tennessee was pro-Union. That minor inconvenience diesn’t kerp anyone from flying their Rebel flag

[quote] Do wounds remain in contemporary Southerners about losing the American Civil War?

I live in Georgia. It seems to me that most of them don't realize they lost. We have the assholes who say it's all about their "history". Fuck that and fuck them. I don't see any Germans that are proud of their "history" and feel the need to celebrate it publicly

The rebel flag shit automatically lets me know who is an ignorant piece of shit. It's like an automatic I.Q test. They have bumper stickers on their cars and/or license plates with the dixie flag on it. Those are the people I automatically fuck over at work. They get the worst assignments from me

I recently drove through central Pennsylvania and upstate New York and saw confederate flags up there, usually draped as curtains in trailer homes. I didn’t get a chance to interview any occupants as to why they had them up, so I can only assume it’s a racist gesture that is universal at this point.

I saw a KKK meeting once, driving home through the back roads of West Virginia towards Roanoke Va. It was late at night and going around a bend in the road ,I saw a circle of men in robes and those pointy hats burning a cross. It was terrifying. However, I’m the only person I know who’s ever seen that and I live in the South. In general, the South isn’t any creepier than any other part of rural America.

A brief reminder of who else likes flying the old stars n bars....

Why do they call it the "rebel" flag anyway?

Memories die hard and the past is never past.

[quote]"Lee/Jackson Day" is a state holiday in Virginia, honoring Generals Lee and Jackson. It is the Friday before MLK Day.

[quote]It is an OFFICIAL holiday (state workers get the day off) in Mississippi, Alabama, & South Carolina. In Texas it is called Confederate Heroes Day and a semi-official holiday there. It's a "skeleton crew holiday" so state offices are not closed but employees have the option to take the day off with pay. Those who choose to work that day can choose another day to take off. If the holiday falls on the same day as MLK day when state offices are all closed they can not take another day for Confederate Heroes Day.

Having a State Rights, Slavery And Cotton state holiday directly before Martin Luther King Day is the tackiest, pettiest shit I have ever heard.

[quote] South (to blacks): You can come into my house but you can't be better than me. North (to blacks): You can be better than me but you can't come into my house. You can't come into my house? WTF?"People keep quoting this, but it's the biggest load of shit I have ever read. And always trotted out by some butt hurt white Southerner who hates Jews.

R168, Virginia changed it to an Election Day holiday this year. This state has changed a great deal in the last decade, but it takes a long time.

"Lost Cause" aside, the issue of white racism is pervasive in all parts of America. Take a drive through rural northern Pennsylvania or upstate New York on secondary roads - not the interstate - and you will see plenty of Confederate flags hanging from porches, in windows, on bumper stickers, etc.

The poster above who mentioned the impact of Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act is correct. I watched my working class NYC family turn from their Democratic roots to vote for Wallace in 1968, because they believed 'the blacks are getting everything.'

And as another poster said, the 'real' KKK are the wealthy and powerful - banks, the real estate industry, and as we are seeing more and more in these times, the health-care industry, all have a tacit understanding about race and the place of people of color. Police forces have traditionally served the interests of the elites in maintaining the status quo. This is just as true in supposedly more progressive regions of the country as it is in the South