Another old blogcomment record: The Rebel Flag

David Neiwert of Orcinus had a post in February 2008 on Those Confederate Values and the use of the Confederate flag as a symbol. He wrote:

Why would the Confederate flag be an issue in northwestern Washington? Because it is a symbol of white supremacism for people well outside the South as well. This is why phony arguments about its meaning are only cover for the stark reality that anyone -- particularly anyone of color -- who is confronted by the flag knows all too well: The Confederate flag is meant to intimidate -- to trumpet the values of white supremacy. The "heritage" which it harkens back to is mostly rife with the charred corpses of lynched innocents.

My comments:

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I must respectfully disagree. My knowledge is second-hand, based on the experiences of my husband.

He grew up in Atlanta -- so he saw plenty of Confederate Pride first-hand -- but he is also Jewish and grew up very well aware of its dark side.

It's his opinion that the Confederate-flag-on-the-pickup-truck guys do not necessarily choose that emblem as a symbol of white supremacy, but because they think of themselves as "Rebels". It's not about *State's* rights, either, it's about their personal rights not to do what other people say. That's one reason the flag goes along with the gun rack on their iconic pickup -- both are there to demonstrate individualistic cantankerousness.

So when you say the flag can *only* symbolize racism, I don't think that's true.

My husband also believes haystack is incorrect, it's not about "a deep-rooted respect for my elders" -- because the self-styled Rebels don't have much use for judges, teachers, or anyone else who tells them what to do. And they're just as willing to defy their state government as they are to defy the Feds -- it's just that defying the Feds is easier. It's a poor, petty, basically cowardly symbol of rebellion -- but that *is* an important part of what the Confederate flag symbolizes, and why those guys get so mad when people say it's all about race.

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But what are they rebelling against? Let's be honest here, they are rebelling against those so called P.C. special rights that blacks have.

My native informant is of the opinion that many of them are rebelling against *everything* -- it's a generalized, free-floating rebellion, for a generalized, free-floating resentment.

Yes, the racism is there, and the sexism, and the anti-Semitism. But that's not what they're *thinking* of -- they're thinking of the Dukes of Hazzard, just good ol' boys fightin' the System, as they see it.

Now the fact that their actions & rhetoric end up supporting the System is thorougly ironic -- but they're not really ironic guys and they're piss-poor at perceiving social structures. So telling them that the flag on their pickup or on the roof of the General Lee can only be an endorsement of slavery will make them mad, and they'll also think you're stupid for not understanding them.

They think they're just Rebels. It's more of an emotional stance than a political attitude: Don't Tread on Me is another popular symbol used in pretty much the same way.

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Not Celtic, exactly, as we will learn if Mrs Robinson has time to get around to the next parts of Albion's Seed.

Briefly, people from the Scots & Irish border areas of the UK came to the US backcountry. For centuries they had lived in a region swept back and forth by wars over which they had little control, and the result was a culture xenophobic, resentful, organized around family bonds and feuds, and libertarian. Borderers cling to custom and the idea of the past, but don't treat elderly people particularly well. They're culturally conservative but resent authority, especially when it gets all up in their faces.

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As for the “rebellion” pose, why do these supreme individuals use the Confederate battle flag instead of the Jolly Roger?

Well, some *do* use the Jolly Roger, and others use the "Don't Tread on Me" flag.

As several people in this discussion have suggested, outside the area of the old Confederacy the Confederate flag is more likely to be a purely racist emblem. Inside, it's all mixed up with "Rebellion Without a Clue" (*well* put, Mitch) and local pride.

It sounds like Doctor Science is saying that the “rebels’” adoption is as ignorant of the meaning behind the symbol as that of other “rebels” who buy scrawled circle-A gear at Hot Topic.

Pretty much. There's a stronger element of pride in one's own ignorance, of willfully ignoring what might make you feel bad about yourself or your ancestors.

The thing is, I predict that in November there are going to be a surprising number of guys who will drive to their polling place in a truck with a Confederate flag decal -- and vote for Obama. And they will do this with no particular sense of dissonance, even if it makes *my* head explode thinking about it.

Obama appeals to these guys, because he makes them feel good about being American -- he makes them feel hopeful, he makes them feel like they can walk away from the past. That feeling is more important to them than the color of his skin.

Blogcomment record: Racism; Equal marriage

Two comments left at Orcinus:

1. To the post on The threat of difference, which is mostly about Jonah Goldberg's statement that the "Darwin fish" is offensive:

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Dave: I have to disagree with you here:

when in fact no gay marriage on the planet harms a single straight marriage

Same-sex marriage harms traditional marriages two ways:

1) It threatens the closeted.

To the Ted Haggards and Jim McGreeveys, same-sex marriage is a taunt: you didn't have to settle for the closet. Orson Scott Card's diatribes against same-sex marriage have this flavor: he says het marriage is intrinsically more difficult than gay marriage, so hets need to be rewarded or they won't do it. If you feel like you're in prison, seeing other people free really is a threat.

2) Things that are equal to the same thing are equal to each other.

Traditional marriage involves one dominant person with full legal rights and a submissive person with lesser rights. Same-sex marriage is clearly between two people with the *same* legal rights, and there is no cue to say which partner is dominant or submissive. Same-sex marriage is *equal* marriage, and thus really does threaten traditional unequal marriage by being a counter-example.

In other words: cats and dogs, sleeping together, mass hysteria.

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2. In That dialogue on race: the hard part, about the difficulty of talking about racial issues in America, "Jaqueline Quinn" linked to a coffeeandink post on talking about race in fandom. I wrote:

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From another part of the same internet conversation Jackie is referencing:

Baby-stepping away from racism: A guide for white people. Most important in this particular case are baby-steps #2 and #4: "Shut up" -- it's not about *you*; and "Act in a *supporting* role".

One of the many take-home I've learned from the racism conversation among sf/media fans is that references to someone's "tone" (on the internet, at least) are almost always the red flag of Fail. "I would have agreed with her about racism in X if it weren't for her *tone*" -- that usually translates to: "My privilege, let me show you it! My feelings should come first!"

Definitions of isms

From the comments to one of Orcinus' many recent posts about Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism":

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How do we define the "left" and liberalism? How do we define the "right" and conservativism?

My theory, which is mine:

The only political ism that has a consistent definition across historical periods is "conservatism". That definition is: "maintaining the status quo of power."

That's it. What kind of philosophy or policies fall under conservatism will vary, depending on what groups have the most power in a particular society. In mid-19th century Europe, conservatives were on the side of the aristocrats; in modern America, they're on the side of large corporations.

This IMHO is why "classical liberalism" (of the 19thC) looks like modern conservatism: the bourgeois corporations served by that philosophy were not the top of the heap in the 19thC, but they are now. Philosophies follow interest groups, and it's the position of the group in the power structure that's the defining variable.

It's particularly confusing because everyone naturally tends to become conservative when they come into power -- "I support the status quo when it's *me*."

Fascism is more a pathology of authoritarianism than it is "conservative", but, as Orwell says, "rich men all over the world tend to sympathise with Fascism" -- and anything rich men sympathise with is pretty sure to be conservative by definition, because they have a lot of power.

So I'd say both: across cultures, "conservatism" means "protects the power of the powerful", and anything favored by most of the powerful is part of the local definition of "conservative".

In the English-speaking world, at least, we can even use the word "conservative" to track hierarchical status. So the fact that American conservatives are currently opposed to government regulation of business implies that business (or certain businesses) are more powerful than the government -- as is shown by the fact that they pay better.

The Japanese-Americans in my family during WWII

A post at Orcinus reminded me of some family history I want to make notes about.

My mother recently told me that her Japanese-American brother-in-law and his brother were living in the LA area in 1942 (they were in their late teens-early 20s; the rest of the family was still in Hawaii). In other words, they were taken up in the effort to relocate Japanese-Americans from the West Coast. Japanese-Americans in Hawaii were *not* relocated or interned, despite Hawaii's strategic position, because they were just too much of the population. (I believe my uncle's father was killed in the tsunami of 1946.)

Apparently my uncle & his brother were offered the choice between internment and basically internal exile to a city away from the West Coast. They moved to Chicago, which is where my uncle met my aunt. I'm sure the fact that they were both able-bodied young men with no dependents (and no real estate to worry about) made it much easier for them to move to Chicago instead of going to a camp.

The official American euphemism for "internal exile" was "relocation". Internal exile in the Soviet Union during this period meant that the exiled couldn't go into large cities, while the Japanese-American internal exiles could *only* go to certain large cities -- or, of course, to camps.

I don't know if my uncle & his brother ever considered enlisting, or if they were draftable -- I'll have to ask my mother for more details.

Michael Medved on Slavery

David Neiwert of Orcinus interviewed Michael Medved, who recently got Keith Olberman's "Worst Person in the World" Award for his column on slavery in America. One of the things Medved said in the column was:

Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of these voyages involves the fact that no slave traders wanted to see this level of deadly suffering: they benefited only from delivering (and selling) live slaves, not from tossing corpses into the ocean.

When Neiwert brought this up In the interview, Medved replied:

I’ll want to reword that. What I’m saying is that it is horrifying that they had the level of death that they did in the Middle Passage given the fact that they had every interest in keeping people alive. In other words, when you talk about estimates, and I acknowledge, in my piece, that up to one third of slaves in the Middle Passage perished – when you’re dealing with that kind of death when it is clearly not deliberate, then it is even more horrifying than it would have been if it had been deliberate. Because what it suggests is that the conditions were so abysmal and that the risks of oceangoing transport were so huge at that time, that even with every motivation in the world to keep people alive they were unable to do it.

In the comments at the Orcinus, I wrote:

Even if by "every motivation in the world" he means "a very narrow economic motivation", this statement is the most horrific nonsense.

The slave-shippers' ideal was to have all the slaves be about half alive during the middle passage, because strong, healthy people are very dangerous. Their worst nightmare was not that all the slaves would die, but that they'd successfully revolt in mid-ocean.

So the conditions on the slave ships were intended to be almost, but not quite, fatal for the average slave -- which inevitably means that they would kill off a certain proportion. But those were acceptable losses.

Michael Medved is in fact a holocaust (note lower case) denier.