Confederate symbolism in Georgia

[struggle4progress]

Posted: Saturday, October 17, 2015 4:52 pm
Richard Alexander Banton

... For too long, African-Americans across the South have had to wake up in states where a piece of fabric disgraces the bloody history of their past. In Georgia, the state flag still sports a version of the first Confederate National flag, a circular arrangement of stars and red and white stripes. Revisionist history has now become the rule and not the exception ...

The mantra of Confederate flag supporters is that the flag is the symbol of a rogue nation defending states’ rights, but history can’t be divorced from its context. The origins of the Civil War reside in a white supremacy that’s unmistakable. The westward expansion of the mid-19th century, predicated on white men’s supposed divine right to claim land, caused slavery to become a wedge issue that divided the more industrial North and the agrarian South. The issue of whether or not western settlers had a right to own slaves increased regional tension and spurred violence. The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed territory residents to vote on the question, undid the tenuous compromise that had so far held the Union together ...

... Perhaps the word “slavery” has been spoken so often that the word no longer holds sufficient weight ... Slavery was hell. For many slaves, their captivity became synonymous with physical and psychological abuse. It is estimated that nearly 10 percent of slaves died on slave ships during the Middle Passage, where they were shackled together, enduring weeks of hunger, disease, persistent stenches of death and violence. The descendants of the survivors were whipped, branded, torn apart from their families and deprived of education.

... the removal of a Confederate statue is still a point of contention while the millions of slaves that built King Cotton remain nameless. In 2015, this discussion should be a distant memory. Instead, it’s the subject of debate, in both federal and state governments ...

http://www.redandblack.com/views/dueling-debates-confederate-symbolism-in-georgia-confederate-flag-and-other/article_ed9750e0-7510-11e5-8b9a-df05bf6b4c9a.html

[HassleCat]

1. Look at the secession statements

When the various states left the union and joined the confederacy, they published their reasons for doing so. Most of them mention the ability to hold slaves as the premier "right" they are being denied. Also, look at the conflicts that took place as new states joined the union, and whether they would join as slave states or free states. The whole thing was about slavery, and anyone who says otherwise doesn't know squat. Just ask them to name a "state's right" other than slavery.