is flying a confederate flag a "redneck pride" thing or just being "racist"?

[Bootes Void]

Id say both

[progressive85]

I think it's a cultural symbol for many and I don't believe every person that has a Confederate flag does not like black people.  I think it's been mainstreamed as not just "Southern" or "country" but also as "rebel" and "outlaw".  

Living in Pennsylvania for a long time, I saw a lot of them and that was a Union state!

I would never wear a Confederate flag or carry it around or fly it from my house, but I know of people who live in houses with them and are either good friends with black people or do support civil rights for all races.

[Santander]

Not the first time I've quoted this post from a very liberal, non-redneck poster:

If I can build a bridge between you and West Virginian rednecks, though I think flying one is pretty moronic and not very thoughtful, I don't think the Confederate flag is a straight-up hate symbol.

The redneck students that I teach mostly aren't racist and actually occasionally have some black friends, they just have this at least partially misguided idea that 1) the South is awesome and they are so lucky to be there and 2) thoughtlessly don't connect the flag with slavery or a moronic, misguided rebellion for the purpose of oppressing black people and instead see it as like a regional flag.

So it really depends. It can be flown as a symbol of regional, or as you say, "redneck" pride, or it can also be flown as a hate symbol, just as the flag of the United States can be flown as a symbol of national pride, or as a symbol of hate, in the hands of extremist militia groups or the rioters at the Capitol.

The main difference is that the Confederate Battle Flag is emotionally hurtful to many people in the US, while the US flag is merely emotionally hurtful to people burying their relatives in Iraq.

[Hope For A New Era]

Most of the people who fly it view it as a "redneck pride" symbol, even if that's not what it really is. Most of them are not trying to make a racial statement by flying it. They're all over rural America, including ancestrally Unionist places, such as literally all of Kansas.

The "Don't Tread On Me" flag is similar. It has taken on a generic "god and guns" meaning.

[Illiniwek]

Intentionally redneck pride. Subconsciously racist.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

sometimes it means:

[S019]

Obviously both

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Probably my favorite anecdote from the Confederate flag debate was a conversation I had with an elderly gentleman with a thick Southern accent dressed in overalls and a red t-shirt, who said of the Confederacy, "I think they're traitors, and the people who fly that flag today are traitors and terrorists."

[dw93]

Probably my favorite anecdote from the Confederate flag debate was a conversation I had with an elderly gentleman with a thick Southern accent dressed in overalls and a red t-shirt, who said of the Confederacy, "I think they're traitors, and the people who fly that flag today are traitors and terrorists."

He's not wrong about people that fly the Confederate Flag being traitors and the events of last week showed them being terrorists.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

WC voters are mostly wealthy and they don't understand that poverty is hurting the Black and Brown community that's why we have huge pockets of homelessness.

They only care about reelection of Trump and keeping their money to themselves

[DC Al Fine]

Probably my favorite anecdote from the Confederate flag debate was a conversation I had with an elderly gentleman with a thick Southern accent dressed in overalls and a red t-shirt, who said of the Confederacy, "I think they're traitors, and the people who fly that flag today are traitors and terrorists."

This is true, but Americans complaining about rebel traitors is just a bit much.

[Santander]

Probably my favorite anecdote from the Confederate flag debate was a conversation I had with an elderly gentleman with a thick Southern accent dressed in overalls and a red t-shirt, who said of the Confederacy, "I think they're traitors, and the people who fly that flag today are traitors and terrorists."

This is true, but Americans complaining about rebel traitors is just a bit much.

Wrong flag.

[Antonio the Sixth]

If it has become a symbol for "rednecks", it would probably do us good to ask why. Because it clearly wasn't meant as one.

[Ferguson97]

Reminder that the modern display of the Confederate flag was a response to the Civil Rights movement in the 50s/60s.

Like, South Carolina began flying the flag at the state capitol in 1962, nearly 100 years after the Civil War.

It is a symbol of racism, unquestionably.

[Samof94]

Reminder that the modern display of the Confederate flag was a response to the Civil Rights movement in the 50s/60s.

Like, South Carolina began flying the flag at the state capitol in 1962, nearly 100 years after the Civil War.

It is a symbol of racism, unquestionably.

Mississippi adopted that flag due to Lost Cause beliefs. The Lost Cause is about as valid as Holocaust Denial.

[Grumpier Than Thou]

I mean, one implies the other.

[Santander]

Reminder that the modern display of the Confederate flag was a response to the Civil Rights movement in the 50s/60s.

Like, South Carolina began flying the flag at the state capitol in 1962, nearly 100 years after the Civil War.

It is a symbol of racism, unquestionably.

Popular culture (produced, financed, and promoted by Northerners) also helped popularized it as a Southern/redneck symbol. So there really are two branches of modern usage that sometimes overlap.

[DINGO Joe]

Probably my favorite anecdote from the Confederate flag debate was a conversation I had with an elderly gentleman with a thick Southern accent dressed in overalls and a red t-shirt, who said of the Confederacy, "I think they're traitors, and the people who fly that flag today are traitors and terrorists."

This is true, but Americans complaining about rebel traitors is just a bit much.

Canada took are traitors then, would you like the latest batch?

[DC Al Fine]

Probably my favorite anecdote from the Confederate flag debate was a conversation I had with an elderly gentleman with a thick Southern accent dressed in overalls and a red t-shirt, who said of the Confederacy, "I think they're traitors, and the people who fly that flag today are traitors and terrorists."

This is true, but Americans complaining about rebel traitors is just a bit much.

Canada took are traitors then, would you like the latest batch?

We took in United Empire Loyalists...

[Goldwater]

Probably my favorite anecdote from the Confederate flag debate was a conversation I had with an elderly gentleman with a thick Southern accent dressed in overalls and a red t-shirt, who said of the Confederacy, "I think they're traitors, and the people who fly that flag today are traitors and terrorists."

This is true, but Americans complaining about rebel traitors is just a bit much.

The difference is that our rebellion was successful.

[Former President tack50]

The difference is that our rebellion was successful.

Well yes, history is written by the winners. I am sure if the Trump riot was successful, the MAGA people would be called the patriots while the people who oppose them would be the rebel traitors and be moving to Canada

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

The difference is that our rebellion was successful.

Well yes, history is written by the winners. I am sure if the Trump riot was successful, the MAGA people would be called the patriots while the people who oppose them would be the rebel traitors and be moving to Canada

Considering how successful the UDC have been in supplanting the real history of the Civil War with their revisionist nonsense in textbooks and popular histories over the past century, I would say clearly not.

[Lechasseur]

Reminder that the modern display of the Confederate flag was a response to the Civil Rights movement in the 50s/60s.

Like, South Carolina began flying the flag at the state capitol in 1962, nearly 100 years after the Civil War.

It is a symbol of racism, unquestionably.

Mississippi adopted that flag due to Lost Cause beliefs. The Lost Cause is about as valid as Holocaust Denial.

I never really understood what the Lost Cause was.

What exactly is it? I know it's about the South and the Civil Wae, but what exactly it is never seemed clear.

[Alcibiades]

Reminder that the modern display of the Confederate flag was a response to the Civil Rights movement in the 50s/60s.

Like, South Carolina began flying the flag at the state capitol in 1962, nearly 100 years after the Civil War.

It is a symbol of racism, unquestionably.

Mississippi adopted that flag due to Lost Cause beliefs. The Lost Cause is about as valid as Holocaust Denial.

I never really understood what the Lost Cause was.

What exactly is it? I know it's about the South and the Civil Wae, but what exactly it is never seemed clear.

Essentially that the Confederacy’s fight in the Civil War was a heroic, but ultimately doomed, cause, struggling to preserve the “noble” Southern way of life and the institution of slavery (which they held was actually better for slaves than being free), but that the South, in spite of its superior chivalry and horsemanship, was always going to lose against the more industrialised North.

As you can see, a load of BS.

[PSOL]

The CSA kept those not with a trade nor living in the cities, the absolute majority of the white population, in a state of abject poverty and destitution. It isn’t a redneck symbol but one of a now revisionist nationalism espoused by the same type of currents not recognizing that the Third Reich is gone in Germany.

The connotations are negative, and no amount of false “reclamation” will change that.