Editorials & Other Articles

struggle4progress

(118,273 posts) Wed Mar 9, 2016, 05:46 AM Mar 2016

Fighting over the confederatew flag

Jim Huffmann ... says that at some point he visited a cemetery where a lot of his ancestors are buried. "It was there that I realized just how many of my forebears died in the Civil War. And then I started reading history books." Suddenly he exclaims, in very pedantic fashion, just how important it is to read the "right" books, namely those written by southerners. "We all know that there are always different ways to interpret things" ...

The former teacher refuses to accept the feelings that black citizens express when they talk about the flag. About the fact that the flag under which their ancestors were humiliated, lynched and abused flies above the schools that their own children now attend. Huffmann asks, "Why should the feelings of a minority be more important than ours?" ...

"It's not allowed to fly a flag with a swastika on it in Germany, is it?" For months, Carlos E. Moore has been living and working for one thing: To see that the flag, under which the southern states fought to uphold slavery, is finally banished from Mississippi. At least as far as official buildings are concerned ...

Moore is a lawyer. He lives in Grenada, Mississippi. It is the last state in the USA in which the flag still waves over post offices, schools and police stations. For him and many other African-Americans it remains a symbol of slavery. "Even if we have racial equality on paper, we will still be degraded as second-class citizens as long as the flag exists. That is unacceptable" ...

http://www.dw.com/en/more-than-a-piece-of-cloth-the-confederate-flag/a-19102752

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