I noticed they did NOT bring up Mosque bombings, killing Sikhs in Milwaukee, or the setting of traditional black churches in the south in the past decade. While gun violence does have something in common with the crimes I have sited, the underpinning reasons do not. Roof, in many ways, answered the dog whistle of racism found in FOX, Beck, Rush. Breitbart, WND, and Daily Caller.
‘Institutionalized Racism’ — It ‘No Longer Exists’
How comforting…sigh.
- The square version of the “Southern cross” was actually the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia. A rectangular version was adopted as the Navy Jack in 1863 and by the Army of Tennessee at some point as well. It’s the best-known flag among the many, many that the Confederacy used, and also the most popular with Southerners at the time. There were actually three different versions of a national flag, none of them ever very popular.
The first one, the Stars and Bars itself has a number of different versions. It started out with 7 stars, but then new stars were added as new states joined the Confederacy. Then there got to be disagreements as to how the stars should be arranged, or even how many there should be. Eleven states joined the Confederacy, but the flag eventually grew to 13 stars, the extra 2 being for Kentucky and Missouri. (Missouri had a rump legislature that had voted to join the Confederacy, and Kentucky later had representation in the Confederate legislature, though the state never officially seceded.) But some stuck with 11 stars, and Nathan Bedford Forest had a 12-star version, because he had sworn not to include a star for Georgia as long as a single Yankee remained on Georgia soil. And then there was a 15-star version which included stars not only for MIssouri and Kentucky, which did have some claim to them, but for Maryland and Delaware as well. Purely delusional, but that’s in line with much about the Confederacy.
The “Stars and Bars” was unpopular with a lot of Confederates because it looked too much like the US flag, and that was its problem on the battlefield as well. That led to another version of the national flag that was a white rectangle with the Southern cross in the corner (“the Stainless Banner”); that one looked too much like a flag of truce or surrender. So then there was a third version with a wide red bar running vertically along the end opposite the Southern cross (“the Blood-Stained Banner”). And there probably would have been a fourth version, except that version 3 wasn’t adopted until March, 1865, and the war ended in April.
Probably the Confederate government would have been better off spending more time trying to deal with the war and the hardships on the civilian front, and less time diddling with the flag, but that’s just my opinion. (Where is Betsy Ross when you need her?)
- Yeah, I doubt even South Carolina could have gotten away with flying a Confederate flag while it was still under occupation by the US Army. And most of the actual Confederate veterans were quite happy to be back in the Union. All that Confederate flag-waving had to wait for a generation that didn’t remember the war, for one thing, and the Civil Rights movement coinciding with the centennial of the war probably gave the additional impetus for it break out then.
2 Likes
You are such an interesting person. Your post is absolutely fascinating. I’ve been hearing snippets of history because I had a vacation day today and put on MSNBC while I did other things.
I learned a lot and was touched so many times today, particularly when the family members spoke up in the arraignment … their graciousness stunned me.
As a phrase, “institutionalized racism” is as intentionally misleading as the phrase “weapons of mass destruction”. Back in the day, prior to the 1965 Civil Rights Act, the accurate and useful distinction between de jure [by law] and de facto [by deed] racial segregation was commonly used. Is the WSJ implying that “institutionalized racism” narrowly means de jure racism only; in which case, their statement is true.
However, there had been an awful lot of de facto racism going on, and an awful lot still goes on “off the law books” seemingly everywhere in these United States; enough so that it could reasonably be called “an enduring American Institution”.
4 Likes
Point number 2 is absolutely correct. It was a move made by an all white legislature to make a statement against segregation. Which, given that absolute history, makes any arguments about “rememberance of a nobler historic time” total nonsense. It was hoisted up specifically to “Hell No!” to black people.
1 Like
That “editorial” reads like an Onion piece. Don’t ever forget that the WSJ, once respected, is now little more than just another Rupert Murdoch rag. It smells more like a fetid cesspool of the Murdoch ilk daily.
It shouldn’t be long before Lindsey Lohan and Ted Nugent have their own columns complete with an image woodcut at the head.
Even now it should be retitled The Wall Street Urinal.
1 Like
Eff the WSJ cracker crap! The SC flag speaks just for that – institutionalized racism. Find me a black person who also approved it to be intentionally raised over government buildings during the Civil Rights movements, since it was banned to do so after the Civil War.
" in committing such an act today, he stands alone."
No, he doesn’t. He has you, Fox TV, the repub Klown Kar, the NRA, and every other right wing idiot watching his back.
2 Likes
There is a fair amount of de jury being added to the books in recent years. The new voting suppression laws certainly count as de jury racism. The laws attacking the homeless in some cases are racist inspired.
Dead from a racist or from a racist practicing racism makes no difference to the dead, that were just practicing life.
If this act wasn’t racist, what is? Because the KKK aren’t marching proud in the streets any longer in no way means that they have just disappeared. The racism hasn’t died, the pushback against it has grown. It is illegal now to commit acts of racial violence in particular. Hate crimes are almost universally recognized. Racists are only proud of their racism when they are amongst their fellow racists, They are cowards in the light of day that commit cowardly acts of senseless violence and random murders.
Racists should be institutionalized is more appropriate. The whole disjointed, loosely affiliated mess of them.
Only the news side. The editorial side has long been a laughingstock.
We just witnessed how the the entire bureaucracy of the the city of Ferguson Missouri was set up to arrest, jail,and fine black people to use the money to run the city
90% of the people arrested in that city where black, and 70% of the city’s budget came from court fees,and fines paid by black people. I would call that “Institutionalized Racism.” I am sure it goes on in other cities also.
1 Like
The worst, most cowardly kind of racist is the kind who won’t admit he is one. At least this little maggot was better than that; it seems that the modern kind of republican isn’t.
We have not moved beyond racism as long as the Confederate flag flies over the South Carolina Capitol. The glad is not simply a symbol of heritage or history but also a symbol of domination, racism, and violence.
1 Like
What the nation has never confronted is that any distinction between heritage and history on the one hand, and domination, racism, and violence on the other, is an illusion of convenience promulgated specifically to enable us to turn our eyes away from that history.
That false dichotomy is a wallpapering over of a traitorous act conducted to preserve the ability of wealthy landowners to own other people as property. In my view, and I’m sure you’d agree, there’s nothing about that heritage that’s worthy of celebratory symbolism.
So no matter how one looks at it, the flag needs to come down. There is no justification for it whatsoever.
1 Like
Of course, but the readership of the WSJ simply doesn’t shop in Ferguson.
1 Like
If there is no institutionalized racism how is it that the American Swastika, aka the stars and bars, is so prominently displayed even on some government offices?
1 Like
Hey WSJ,
If case it hasn’t been mentioned, the DOJ has indicated the Cleveland Police Dept, and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Dept in Arizona have engaged in racism.
Are they not institutions???
Chammy, I have been reading James and Patricia McPherson’s “Lamson of the Gettysburg” lately, and had one of those coincidental contemporary moments right when the shooting happened.
I had just read Lamson’s letter about his experience helping Robert Smalls, the black sailor who commandeered a CSA steamer in Charleston harbor during the Civil War, along with a crew of fellow slaves, men and women, and navigated right past a fleet of CSA battleships to head out to sea, where he surrendered the ship to Lieutenent Lamson.
One of the reasons Smalls gave for their desperate, quite potentially deadly act was that the slaves around Charleston were being punished so severely, as if they were responsible for the depredations and deprivations from the war that was descending on their wicked masters.
I do believe what we saw recently can be traced to the same sort of evil, twisted projection that made those people so desperate back then. How to describe it or put it into words that don’t encompass some sort of primal evil is difficult. But this moment of history study, at the same time the tragedy took place, put them together for me, profoundly.