That was an interesting point that you've been making in this discussion. It makes the story complicated though, and generally Americans like issues to be simple. One side versus the other side. You bringing up plantation/slave owning presidents complicates the story. I'm glad that you and others are expressing your opinions about the flag.Opinions that otherwise wouldn't be heard because people are afraid of instantly being labeled.
I think we would all agree that for every Binnie,Dixie and Lalou..that there are others in the world who promote the flag and it's imagery exactly the way the klan and white supremacists do.
My take, speaking just for myself, is that the reemergence of the flag's use in the South coincided with the dawn of American civil rights movement....perhaps when people felt the natural order of things was being disturbed....and Negroes were forgetting their place. From the end of reconstruction to the beginning of the civil rights movement...aka the jim crow era...Blacks were second class citizens in America and not even afforded the rights of citizens in the South. When Blacks began to demand the rights of actual American citizens..the "order" was disturbed and I'm guessing that some Southerners began wanting to connect to the old ways. Confederate battle flag became a symbol of the old jim crow south. You can see the flag being held by people protesting AGAINST civil right demonstrators throughout the civil rights era.
The klan emerged during Reconstruction...when I'm assuming that some felt ,due to "northern interlopers"...Negroes were forgetting their place and the natural order of things was being disturbed.At the end of reconstruction...I'm guessing the klan died down as things went back to how they were.
The reemergence of the klan,in the 1920s or 30s. this time was as much a response to waves of non-Protestant immigration...as it was to gains being made by Black migrants to the North and West.Country was changing socially,culturally and Catholics,Jews, and Blacks were the "scapegoats" There is still strong strain of hatred towards those 3 groups in many parts of the country.
I think to some..the flag represents a time when none of those groups had numbers or power. I think some of the open anti-Mexican sentiment expressed in this country is as much about them being Catholic and further changing the religious makeup of this country as it is about their impact on our resources.And of course, if you feel Blacks are naturally inferior....you hate the fact that your president is Barack Obama.
When that chapter of klan marches later this summer in SC and gives interviews, they will make the case for those calling for the removal of the flag from society. I want them to speak and expose this ugliness that some feel is in our nation's past.
