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Stars & Bars: Ignorance or Pride

Worcester Is MAJOR!™: Stars & Bars: Ignorance or Pride

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Stars & Bars: Ignorance or Pride

I always have mixed emotions when I see the confederate flag.

While watching the news about the coal miners that are trapped in the
mine in West Virginia, I noticed the "Stars & Bars" on one of the
trapped miner's sons shirt.

What do the "Stars & Bars" mean to you?

Please post a comment or email us directly at
WorcesterIsMAJOR@gmail.com.

posted by Dee Wells at 3:15 PM

2 Comments:

Blogger Nicole said...

This is something my husband and I talk a lot about.

I find the flag to be offensive, but it also always makes me think of my own ethnic background. For much of WWII, the Romanians were on the Axis side, and there were a good deal of Romanians with fascistic leanings. This doesn't mean that I don't have national pride, but it is tempered somewhat. When I look at a Confederate flag, I think of the positive (here's someone who has a measure of 'national' pride) as well as the negative (this is also a symbol that hurts a great deal of people).

My husband feels that much of what we tell children about the Civil War is sanitized or simplistic (i.e., that it was the "good" Northerners freeing the slaves from the "bad" Southerners") and that flying the flag and holding Confederate history month are ways for these people to reclaim what they consider good in their society. I personally feel that many Northerners benefitted (indirectly) from slavery, but that we tend to look at slavery as a Southern problem from which we were/are somehow exempt.

I also find it ironic that many of the types who are most proud of their Confederate heritage are from a poorer financial background, and that they are celebrating a culture that also (I think) oppressed their ancestors to a certain extent.

Sorry for the length of the response. The flag (and the Confederate-pride stuff) makes me extremely uncomfortable, but I also try to put that feeling aside and think about why people continue to feel so passionately about it.

April 9, 2010 at 9:33 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

That's what I love about America.

A foreigner comes here and then starts criticizing American history and culture, based on some racist professor he encountered here in America.

Maybe that professor friend of yours has a few insights to share with the non-black population. Sorta put it all in perspective so we all should feel gulity.

If you’re soooo offended by it, go back to Jamaica. You’d have a lot less stress in your life.

Nicole, what’s this, “My husband and I…” nonsense?
Wow, what an intellectual lifestyle.
We’re so envious.
Nicole, who’s ass haven’t you kissed?

April 9, 2010 at 11:25 AM  

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