...The Confederate flag should bother people. Confederate monuments do and should continue to bother people, but here's the rub; People don't understand what these things mean to our future. Not our past, our future. These things are signposts on the road we began walking centuries ago. They are warnings not to do what they stand for, what they represent. They are lessons. People continue to remove these lessons because they deem them offensive, and this is unhealthy. Along these same lines, do we outlaw bratwurst because it may offend those of Jewish faith? Do we outlaw sushi because the Japanese attacked us on December 7th 1941? These things are not offensive to most people but the symmetry is there. Our history is a framework for our...
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...prohibiting Mississippi teams from pkaying against black athletes, but legislators threatened to withdraw funds from schools violating this unwritten law. The university of Mississippi, ranked number two, would not play Michigan State, ranked number one, in the bowl game to determine the nation’s top football team in 1961” (Paul 284-5). This long and fought off integration of the university’s football program derives from its deep history of racism. Many of the predominant and well thought of symbols of Ole Miss football are directly related to slavery, white supremacy and racism. The Confederate flag was seen at all football games and carried by both fans and cheerleaders. The lyrics of the school’s unofficial fight song, “Dixie,” tell of the times of the slavery ridden South. The team’s nickname, the Rebels, arose as a result of the Ole Miss students who sacrificed their lives for the Confederate army. The nickname for the school itself was the name for Ole Master’s wife during the slavery age (Oriards 80). Michael Oriards explains it best...
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...The Confederate Flag was adopted by the Confederate States of America around February of 1861 to serve as the official flag of their movement towards the expansion of utilizing enslaved African people forced into America through the slave trade. “We know, as Confederates knew, that their dream of independence and liberty was based on a social and economic foundation of black labor” (Binnington 4) The south had their ‘black labor’ for years; however, soon this did change. The March after the Confederate States succession, Abraham Lincoln was elected president and, though stating he would not try to end the use of slaves, he ran on a platform that was against the expansion of slavery. Ultimately, this led to the Civil War between the anti-slavery...
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...Confederate Flag Issues There has been a lot of controversy over whether the Confederate Flag should be allowed to be flown or if it should be taken down and banned. I think it should be allowed because everyone has their own opinions of what the Confederate flag represents. Nobody is going to have the same opinions about everything. The most important thing is the Confederate Flag doesn’t represent slavery its represents a status as a memorial to the Confederate soldier. There were several flags of the Confederate States of America used since 1861-1865. The first official flag of the Confederacy, called the "Stars and Bars," was flown from March 5, 1861, to May 26, 1863 (Coski 1). What is now often called "The Confederate Flag" or "The Confederate Battle Flag”. It is also called the "rebel", "Southern Cross, or "Dixie" flag, and is often incorrectly referred to as the "Stars and Bars" the actual "Stars and Bars" is the First National Flag, which used an entirely different design (Coski 1). The First Amendment and the history of its interpretation of the United States has what comes closest to absolute protection of free speech of any country. Many...
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...The flag was first flown in 1962 to signify the governor’s protest against desegregation. On June 22, the Governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, had called for the Confederates flag’s removal from any grounds belonging to the state. There were then many calls for the Confederate flag to be removed from any government building, and well as many discussions on the actual meaning of the flag by several figures in our country, including some such as Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, and even President Barack Obama. On June 20, thousands of people rallied in front of the South Carolina State House in protest of the flag. 370,000 signatures were also collected on an online survey to ban the...
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...Is the Confederate Flag a modern day symbol of Southern culture or a symbol representing Racial injustice the violation of a right or rights of another? This is actually a question that comes up quite often, people want to know what the confederate flag stands for. Many people think different reasons that the confederate flag is still flown, in this paper i’m going to tell you why I think that the flag Is a sign Racial Injustice the violation of a right or rights of another. Some the reasons I will talk about are, What the Confederate Flag stud for during the civil war, why the flag represents racial injustice, what it means today. What did the confederate flag stand for during the civil war? The confederate flag was a symbol of the 11 states that seceded from the united states in 1861. They wanted a flag to represent their states before and after the civil war. “The confederate states seceded from the union to preserve slavery and political liberty for whites” according to, History.com Staff. “Confederate States of America.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2009, www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/confederate-states-of-america. During the civil war and the creation of the confederate flag it stud for what the South believed which was racial injustice the violation of a right or rights of another. That's what the confederate flag stud for during the civil war....
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...The Confederate flag has been one the most controversial and divisive symbol in American history. Recently, in the wake of the Charleston church shooting, the country has been in an uproar over the confederate flag. The shooting sparked discussion on whether the flag is hateful or represents the south’s history. Numerous people wanted the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina state house. Many people believe that the confederate flag represents southern pride and southern history, but in the mind of many others the flag represents slavery and the years and years of the oppression of African-Americans and other minorities. One of the reasons the confederate represents represents hate is that many hate-groups use it. Today, more than 500 extremist groups use the Confederate flag as one of their symbols, but the most known hate group that uses this flag is the KKK. The Ku Klux Klan’s predominant goal is to establish white supremacy in the south. Most of the KKK hate crimes target African-Americans, multiracial families, and interracial couples. The KKK also torched black churches and lynched mostly African-American people, or people that went against their beliefs....
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...Recently, the Confederate Flag has been the center of a major controversy that has spanned the entire United States. Many writers, when speaking on the subject of the Confederate Flag, now use words like “racism,” “controversy,” and “a symbol of hate.” Other writers, like John M. Coski, use words like “cultural property” and “a very practical banner.” The Confederate Flag that we know today was actually not the official flag of the Confederacy. Instead, the “Stars and Bars,” as it was nicknamed during the Civil War era, was actually the battle flag. The design was adopted by the Confederate Congress in March 1861 because of its resemblance to the American Flag. So how did this Civil War era banner spark so much controversy within the American...
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...“Confederate flag was the flag of traitors” by Dean Obeidallah appeared in the CNN opinion section on October 25, 2013 as a special to CNN. CNN is one of the very few cable networks that do news coverage 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. It has won several awards such as the TCA award for outstanding achievement in news and information, several EPPY award presented by Editor and Publisher, and three Emmy awards. CNN was started in 1980 by Ted Turner and gets around fifth teen million hits per month on its website. CNN covers everything when it comes to news coverage all the way from politics to world news and is seen to have a neutral view on subjects in the news. Obeidallah’s article covers why he believes the confederate flag is the flag of traitors by stating “you can debate whether the confederate flag is a symbol of racism but you can’t dispute the confederate flag was flown by traitors that killed more than 100,000 U.S. soldiers. He continues by saying the confederate flag wasn’t even the flag of the confederacy and was the battle flag of the northern Virginia army. Obeidallah shows why he believes the confederate flag is the flag of traitors by giving speeches that the president of the confederacy saying that they would kill any U.S. troop that stepped foot into the confederate nations. He even threatened General Ulysses S. Grant by stating “Our cavalry and our people will harass and destroy his army as did the Cossacks that of napoleon, and the Yankee general, like him...
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... 2015 The Confederate Flag On June 17, a man named Dylann Roof was part of a crime scene. He shot and killed nine black church members in Charleston, SC, and injured 3 more. This young man was a white supremacist who took action against what he thought were the enemy. He was a known white supremacist among his peers. He would go on rants about the shooting of Trayvon Martin and the Baltimore protests that occurred earlier this year. His rants stated that “blacks were taking over the world” and that he told planned to kill people. He had a lot of pictures with the confederate flag in them, and he stated his support of racial segregation in the United States. Roof also had a website that was registered to him. On this website he had pictures of himself posing in front of a confederate battle flag holding a handgun, along with “a nearly 2,500-word manifesto in which the author criticized blacks as being inferior while lamenting the cowardice of white flight” (Robles para 3). Dylann Roof used the confederate flag as a symbol for white supremacy. He used the image in multiple places, including his website and on his car's license plates. This usage of the confederate flag shows how it could easily be used in hate crimes, and it is known to be a popular image among white supremacist groups. Valley Forge flag Co. is a business that produces and sells flags. This company has a huge presence in the United States with 4 locations and 300 employees. “It's American flags have been with...
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...the spotlight, the Confederate flag. Individuals were forced to depart with a piece of their history and a sense of pride while others seen an end to something that offends them or their culture. History or Racism The Confederate flag as we know it was the last of four different flag designs used by the Confederate Army. The current flag that has been used across the nation was introduced in 1863 and stood as a symbol of southern pride until just recently. The flag has been in the middle of controversy for many years mainly due to groups or organizations using it as a symbol to represent hate and racism. Each time it was argued that the flag was not intended for those purposes and it continued to fly above the South Carolina until after a debate over the flag came after a shooting at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina that left nine dead and renewed questions over the meaning of the flag. ("Sc Confederate Flag Taken Down From State Capitol In South Carolina", 2015). Decision to be made After the shooting, the media shined the spotlight on all of the protest that began with civil rights activist after facts were made public about the racial comments made during the tragedy and photos were discovered of him with Confederate flags in the background South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley signed the legislation to remove the Confederate flag on July 9th, 2015 ("Confederate Flag Removed From South...
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...The issue of banning the Confederate flag in public schools is one that is intertwined with one of the most core issues of American politics: the delicate balance between liberty and equality. No matter your personal interpretations, there is no doubt that the Confederate flag has been used to symbolize some of the darkest race-driven ideologies in the history of the United States. Not only do public schools have the legal right to ban such a symbol, they have the moral duty to restrict it to protect all of their students. This flag represents a type of hateful speech that cannot be allowed in schools. One of the core issues of the banning of the Confederate flag in schools is that it can be seen as a restriction of the freedom of speech. However, this concern is a simple issue of context vs. content. A student cannot be stopped from displaying the flag in their own home, but to protect other students from discrimination, they can and must be reasonably limited in the context of a public...
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...For my attended speech critique, I attended Tearing Hatred from the Sky. On February 23,2017, a speaker by the name of Bree Newsome came to speak at the College of Charleston at Sotille theater. Bree Newsome or Brittany Ann Newsome is an American filmmaker, musician, speaker, and activist from Charlotte, North Carolina. She is best known for her act of civil disobedience on June 27, 2015, when she was arrested for removing the Confederate flag from the South Carolina state house grounds. The young woman arrested in 2015 for taking down the Statehouse's Confederate battle flag has been invited to speak at the college about activism and social justice, but opposition to the event was the South Carolina Secessionist Party. They emphasized...
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...some colleges across the United States have problems with freedom of speech and racial tension. He begins to tell about how to students at Harvard University hung up two confederate flags on campus. Some students took that as offensive and racist. After that situation happened, a third student hung up a swastika to protest. A portion of the Harvard students urged to take the offensive symbols down, others wanted them to stay because they believed that it was free speech. Some universities came up with a code that makes these symbols banned because it hurts the feelings of others in the community. Bok claims that we should be able to tell the difference between what hurts our feelings and what is protected under the First Amendment. He says that even though speech is protected under the First Amendment does not mean it is right in any form or fashion. Bok says “I am sure that the vast majority of Harvard students believe that hanging a Confederate Flag in public view—or displaying a swastika—is insensitive and unwise”(p.70) Bok believes that these actions were insensitive. He thinks that just because we do not like a certain form of communication does not mean that we have the right to get rid of it. Cities do have the option to limit their amount of communication in the form of graffiti and too much noise, but confederate flags and swastikas are not under that category. Bok says “If we begin to forbid flags, it is only a short step to prohibiting offensive speakers” (p.70)...
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...The United States of America’s flag has true connotation for the country, yet in America many showcase the Confederated flag because it is a symbol of a heritage of history. Many people in southern states believe it represents their Southern background and dignity, however, others believe it demonstrates slavery and hardship. In the 19th century the southern states had less affiliation with the other states in the Union and the Confederate flag reminds many people that at one time the southern states were disloyal and disobedient nationalism. To many people the Confederate flag represents a depressing and hard time in the country when an emphasis of racism and slavery evolved. This divide between the states would not have ended unless the...
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