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[MetalSlimeHunt]

It's the biggest masking issue I've seen in a long time.

As in, we don't want to actually talk about racism so we're making it about the flag instead?

Confederate flags do not shoot black children for holding BB guns, but we don't want to go to the trouble of helping difficult issues like that. Killing a symbol is much easier than fixing a real problem, and fulfills the actual goal of most angry liberals, which is making themselves feel morally satisfied.

[Frumple]

... and to brush aside the fedora that suddenly impacted my screen from the inside, dealing with symbols actually does help, to a degree. Not as much as consistent engagement, but it makes it that much more difficult to organize and disseminate the attitudes and beliefs that attach themselves to such symbols. When it's particularly difficult to manage the engagement, and the political will doesn't exist for more stringent physical intervention, you get what you can when you can, et al. You just can't let small victories stop you from aiming for the big ones, which is the occasional worry.

[RedKing]

You really think people will stop being racists because the Confederate flag is less prominent? It's not like the Klan is going to stop using it, or that rednecks that have it plastered on their truck are going to remove it. All people have done is further alienate a certain demographic from the mainstream, which makes it less likely that you're going to "reform" them.

When it's particularly difficult to manage the engagement, and the political will doesn't exist for more stringent physical intervention, you get what you can when you can, et al. You just can't let small victories stop you from aiming for the big ones, which is the occasional worry.

In less euphemistic terms: "When nobody in power has balls, and things are hard, they go after the participation ribbons."

We've gone from "not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win" to "Gee, gun control is hard and talking about racial tension is hard, but taking down a flag from a conflict that's been over 150 years is easy. So let's do that instead."

[Frumple]

S'better than sitting around doing fuck-all.

And I think it helps, yes. I've actually bloody seen stuff like that help make inroads -- when regular reminders aren't fucking everywhere fucking always, it's notably easier for minds and hearts to change, or at the very least for the next generation to not be quite so goddamn indoctrinated. It's not a silver bullet or some shit but every little bit helps make the fight that much more possible.

Though honestly, a lot of the "campaign", so to speak, doesn't revolve around reform. It revolves around making sure the latest generations aren't as stuck on sucking racism's teat and waiting for the older generations to goddamn die already. Frankly, alienating that certain demographic from the mainstream works just bloody fine for that.

[Loud Whispers]

... and to brush aside the fedora that suddenly impacted my screen from the inside, dealing with symbols actually does help, to a degree.

To a useless degree, ha

S'better than sitting around doing fuck-all.

Misguided action is actually worse than inaction

[Frumple]

Any degree is better than none.

As for the second, the word you're looking for is can be, not is. I'll take misguided action and legalized same-sex marriage over inaction and jack-all any goddamn day, just as an example. Similarly, pile those gorram fines on companies that shit on the environment -- if it takes forcing them to care about their pocketbook instead of actually giving a damn about the world around them, go for it. Their actions may not be guided, but they're happening instead of not.

If it gets shit needed done, done, I don't give a frig why people are doing it. It damn sure can cause problems -- road to hell and all that rot -- but it doesn't take an ideologically pure activist base to achieve desired goals.

[RedKing]

Because, to use your analogy, this isn't fining companies, this is getting companies to stop using the word "fossil fuels". Doesn't actually mean they'll stop using the fuels, they just won't be as brazen about it. And people will notice less talk of fossil fuels and equate that with less usage of fossil fuels.

Yes, job well done.



Just because the flag is taken down (and again, this isn't banning the flag in civil society, just state government -- something which I have no problem with and should have been de facto 150 years ago) doesn't mean that racism will wither. If anything, it piles on one more grievance to the pile of real and imagined (mostly imagined) grievances that racists already have.

[mainiac]

The flag is a good dog whistle.  Taking dog whistles away makes people honest and that helps.

[Baffler]

Because, to use your analogy, this isn't fining companies, this is getting companies to stop using the word "fossil fuels". Doesn't actually mean they'll stop using the fuels, they just won't be as brazen about it. And people will notice less talk of fossil fuels and equate that with less usage of fossil fuels.

Yes, job well done.

Yeah, doing away with the flag isn't going to do any more than that: do away with the flag. That isn't bad by itself, I suppose, but what is bad is that the 'fair-weather' crowd will consider the issue dealt with and go back to whatever it was they were doing before without thinking too much about it. That's the harm. Valuable, useful political energy is being wasted on what is essentially a decoy.

[SalmonGod]

While I agree with both sides of this, I feel like the disagreement with Frumple is the most unfair side of this thing...  Yes, it is a very shallow manuever to settle for the flag thing, instead of taking any substantial steps against racist actions themselves.  But it seems to me like all Frumple is saying is while this is true, that doesn't mean that flag removal is completely meaningless.

it piles on one more grievance to the pile of real and imagined (mostly imagined) grievances that racists already have.

Because while this is true, I think it's countered by the reduction in visible normalization of racism.  While this won't have any effect on existing genuine racists, it will helps future generations just a little bit to see racism in the things that people say and do, instead of seeing it as simply an intrinsic nature of the world they live in evidenced by the sanctioned proliferation of racist symbols in public space. 

Redking, we had an exchange once about how difficult it is to prevent our kids from absorbing Christian ideas by osmosis just by going to school.  And it's not like the school is teaching religion... but they still sing Christmas songs rooted in Christian theology and recite "Under God" during the pledge of allegiance.  And this has a huge effect on how readily kids who aren't raised religiously will accept religious ideas from those other kids who are.

Racism is the same sort of thing.  It's less likely that a kid will question the racist behaviors of their peers, if it's normalized by display of racist symbols by the institutions that organize their lives.  State display of a confederate flag is the same as "Under God" in the pledge of allegiance.

[Bohandas]

Racism is the same sort of thing.  It's less likely that a kid will question the racist behaviors of their peers, if it's normalized by display of racist symbols by the institutions that organize their lives.  State display of a confederate flag is the same as "Under God" in the pledge of allegiance.

Yes. They're both seditious.

[SirQuiamus]

Relevant: The Guy Flying a Nazi Flag in North Carolina Says He's Not Racist, Just a Fan of Flags

E: GOP wins the 2016 election with flag-waving Southern Strategy?

[LordSlowpoke]

well, putting swastikas on everything until the swastika itself loses any meaning is also a way to go about this

[RedKing]

Yeah, and incidentally the comment section on the same story on HuffPo is full of such gems as "Sherman should have finished the job" and "We should have dealt with the South the way Rome dealt with Carthage -- salt their fields".

Is it any wonder that a fair number of Southerners have stuck with the symbols of the Confederacy when they're still given little to no respect by their erstwhile countrymen? Maybe along with a good, frank discussion of racial issues in this country, we need a good, frank discussion about Reconstruction and what didn't work. Oh, and some chiding reminders about the illiberality of generalization, regional prejudice and collective punishment.

I've long said that being a Southern progressive is one of the most thankless positions there is -- your neighbors and family distrust and disrespect you because you're a liberal, and other progressives distrust and disrespect you because you're Southern.

[nenjin]

While I feel for Southern progressives, basically the other half of the south has routinely invited people to hate on them, with all the "pussy northern liberal" smack talk, belligerently saying they're one step away from trying to secede again and maintaining that Southern culture is somehow still superior.

I'm sorry but, with the exception of New Yorkers and Californians, no one talks as loudly about how superior their culture is compared to the South (Texas basically being the exemplar of this.) Being from the midwest, being stuck between all these regional identities, I sometimes feel like I'm surrounded by cultural blowhards.