Archive for 28. October 2009

The Confederate Flag

If you took a survey of FGCU not many students, if any, would admit to being a racist and most would likely say that racism doesn’t even exist today. The truth is completely different. So maybe these ignorant people aren’t going around announcing they are racist, but they discriminate against people because of their skin color. There are many different forms of racism from jokes to hate crimes and my personal favorite; the confederate flag.

One argument in favor of the confederate flag is that the flag represents the “rich history” of the south but of all the things in our countries history, you choose to be extremely proud of your ancestors being pro slavery? What about Native Americans who are very important to Florida’s history, or making it to the moon first? My point is that there is so more to be proud of than what I think of as an embarrassing moment in our countries history, The Civil War.

Hard core pro confederate flag advocates say that the civil war didn’t have anything to do with slavery and that it was an economic confrontation. Yeah, economic as in if they lost their slaves they wouldn’t have anyone to do their dirty work for them,  such as picking cotton which was The South’s biggest money maker, there for a serious problem for the economy of the south.

Let’s just say that the civil war really didn’t have anything to do with slavery and it was something to be proud of, the use of it by hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan race turned it into a symbol of racism in today’s society. Before Hitler, The Swastika did not represent hate and murder but rather life, power and strength. What the Swastika used to represent doesn’t matter anymore, what matters is how society views this symbol and relates it to The Holocaust. It wouldn’t be socially acceptable to display a Swastika anymore but why is okay to display the confederate flag? There are many people in The United States with German background but they don’t celebrate the Holocaust as being an important part of their history just like The South shouldn’t be proud of slavery.

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