[quote]Alrightmiami19c wrote:
I was going to stay off of this thread, but I could not help but see it diminish into a debate over a stupid flag just like the national conversation. How do we (as a nation and on this thread) go from talking about nine people killed while at a bible study, to arguing about a dumb flag?[/quote]
Pretty simple: there isn’t much to say about the shooter and his victims. The former is evil, the latter are tragic. The survivors and family members, too, are tragic (and also remarkably strong). Nobody is going to argue with any of this, and, if someone were to try, that person wouldn’t be worth arguing with.
So the debate turns to things that are related and also controversial. Guess who put that flag into this story? Dylann Roof. You’ve seen the pictures, and, if you understand history, you know that Roof had a more accurate historical understanding of the Confederate battle flag and the ideology it represents than many people in this thread. For example, from his very mouth:
[quote]
I have read hundreds of slaves narratives from my state. And almost all of them were positive. One sticks out in my mind where an old ex-slave recounted how the day his mistress died was one of the saddest days of his life. And in many of these narratives the slaves told of how their masters didnt even allowing whipping on his plantation.
Segregation was not a bad thing. It was a defensive measure. Segregation did not exist to hold back negroes. It existed to protect us from them. And I mean that in multiple ways.[/quote]
Every single word of the foregoing excerpt is lifted directly from ideologies that are attested a thousandfold in the literature of the Confederacy, for which, again, the colors in question were born.
Why does any of this matter? It’s too obvious for me to spell it out, so instead I’ll offer a hypothetical that corresponds well in every important way: Suppose the state of New York were flying, on public property and before its State House, a flag with the Black Panther logo (the BP’s have a long history in the state of NY, after all). Suppose further that a guy who reveres that very logo – and, more importantly, reveres what it stands for – were to visit a New York church, killing nine white people for the explicit reason of their whiteness. What reaction might we expect from PWI? I’ll tell you: You wouldn’t even need the killing. The flight of the flag alone would be enough to send this board into whirling, pants-shitting paroxysms of tears and self-sorrow. Screeching whines about the persecution of the white man would echo unto the ends of the Earth.
