Now listen, Mississippi. No one is saying we’d like to forget that you were racist secessionists who fought for the losing side! Hell, we want to remember that pretty much always and forever, to be honest. We’re just saying that maybe celebrating that you were racist secessionists who fought for the losing side is a suboptimal thing to put on your flag, particularly given you have the largest percentage of African-Americans of any state in the country. If you’re all worried about making sure that your flag honors some long-distant part of your past, you could have always gone with one of the 12 bills that proposed you return to the magnolia flag, which, while it existed during the War of Northern Aggression, is not quite as aggressive a piece of racist fuckwittery as your love affair with the Confederate flag. http://whatwouldjackdo.net/images/Only-confederate-flag-racism.jpg
No matter how much progress may be made toward a better future, there are always those mired in a past far better in their own minds than it ever was in reality. They live in the memory of a time that never was, and dream of a sense of virtue and moral probity that lives on only in their imperfect and highly selective memory.
It seems that some folks, no matter how much overwhelming evidence to the contrary may assail them, cling to that nonexistent past. They neither recognize nor acknowledge that we now live in the 21st century, and that Tara is a plantation that only existed in Gone With The Wind. It was a world in which virtue triumphed over evil, Negroes knew their place, and never was heard a discouraging word.
Fast forward to the 21st century, and we find ourselves living in a world in which even South Carolina, that bastion of (not) Liberalism and (in)tolerance, has acknowledged the offensive nature of the Confederate flag and taken it down. Ah, but it would appear the good, God-fearing White folks of Mississippi aren’t so sanguine about giving up the symbol of the failed state and social system that got its ass kicked in the (not so very) Civil War. It seems they’re pretty attached to the soft, warm embrace of a flag that to African-Americans represents slavery and oppression. So they’re just going to stick with that rebel battle flag, thank you very much.
Then again, what else could one reasonably expect from a state whose Governor just declared April to be “Confederate History Month?”.
Stay classy, Mississippi!!
Mississippi’s state flag will include the Confederate battle emblem for the foreseeable future, after state lawmakers on Tuesday said they didn’t have enough support to remove the controversial symbol.
There were 12 different bills in the Mississippi Legislature to either redesign, change, or remove the Confederate symbol from the state’s 122-year-old flag. But they all died on Tuesday, which was the deadline for lawmakers to act on bills that were stuck in legislative committees.
In what must have felt to Mississippi’s African-American community like being on the receiving end of a big “#@$% YOU!” from the state’s White-dominated power structure, Mississippi will continue their fine, long-standing tradition of flying a state-sanctioned racial slur for the world to see.
Mama must be SO proud…because it’s not like anyone outside the Magnolia State is.
Of course, I suppose racism, bigotry, slavery, and oppression aren’t problems…as long as you’re not on the receiving end. For African-Americans, this is no abstract concept, particularly in Mississippi, which has never managed to cover itself in glory when it comes to racial issues and race relations.
Judging the the near-Neanderthal attitudes of some who still support the Confederate flag, White still makes right.
There is still significant support in Mississippi for keeping the flag as-is. In January, pro-Confederate groups held their own rally at the state Capitol, also drawing about 200 people. Supporters argued that removing the flag would be “akin to communists rewriting history.”
I’m not certain where to even begin with that “argument,” other than to say it seems to prove the theory that “Idiocracy” wasn’t just a movie…it was a documentary filmed in Mississippi.
Someone might want to check their knuckles for scabs. Just sayin’….
