Then burn your fucking confederate flags and realise they celebrate slavery to every other human being walking the earth.
The Confederate flag only "celebrates" slavery to white supremacy groups, and the profoundly ignorant. "Every other person" realizes it represents history and tradition, and was never designed or intended as a celebration of slavery.
History and tradition are very important things for us to remember. It is how we grow as a people, as a collective society. It is through how we view the past, that we can move ahead in our future. It is our understanding of where we've been, which helps us forge our way ahead. Representing and remembering the correct history, is vital in our need to understand mistakes of the past, so as to not repeat them in the future.
Walter Williams, a black economics professor at George Mason University, argues that black people in America should be 'grateful' for slavery. Because of the fact that white Europeans brought slaves to this continent, you enjoy the freedoms and liberties of America, where you would otherwise be chucking spears in an African jungle somewhere. Aren't African-Americans markedly better off than African-Ethiopians or African-Kenyans? Before you jump on me, I am not saying this, it came from a black economics professor. It illustrates an interesting perspective, and the point is, find a 'positive' in things that happened through history, don't dwell so much on the negatives.
The American Civil War is an important event in our nation's history, and it is also very important to the Civil Rights movement. But we need to remember the war itself was brutal and long. More American boys died fighting under the Confederate flag than almost any war in American history, and none of them ever owned a slave. Much like the boys who died in Vietnam or Iraq, they were just soldiers doing their job. Their personal viewpoints had nothing to do with the reason or purpose of the war itself, those are two entirely different things, and it's important to remember that. I have a problem with 'burning my confederate flag' because I have two relatives buried in Confederate cemeteries, who died fighting in honor for their homes. I know for a fact, they didn't own slaves or even know of people who owned slaves, they weren't much better off than slaves themselves, in fact, probably worse off, because they didn't rely on a plantation master for their food and shelter, they had to fend for themselves. They were mixed race, a combination of peasant Black Dutch, Indian, and Creole. I can't imagine they ever "lived the good life" in the Old South. Yet, they went off to die in war because that is what you did back then, it wasn't a choice, it wasn't about what you believed in, or what you thought about the political issues of the day... just as it is that way today. It is a
choice whether to serve today, but back then, it was your duty and obligation.
Erasing our history will never make it go away. You can burn all the Confederate flags and rid society of them completely, will that change the history? Will that make you feel better about the future? How can we move forward if we have no recollection of our past? When you see a Confederate flag, it should remind you of the price this country paid for Civil Rights. 600,000 Americans died, so that our nation could resolve itself to the founding principles that ALL men are created equal. Be grateful we had a Civil War, that the Confederate flag did wave, and we moved ahead to a better society as a result. From my perspective, you undermine the significance of just how important the Civil Rights struggle has been, when you seek to deny history and attempt to have it erased or re-written to suit your political agenda or personal bigotry and bias.
