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Started By
Message
The Confederacy was a con job on whites. And still is.
Posted on 3/7/17 at 11:06 am
Posted on 3/7/17 at 11:06 am
LINK
quote:
I’ve lived 55 years in the South, and I grew up liking the Confederate flag. I haven’t flown one for many decades, but for a reason that might surprise you.
I know the South well. We lived wherever the Marine Corps stationed my father: Georgia, Virginia, the Carolinas. As a child, my favorite uncle wasn’t in the military, but he did pack a .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun in his trunk. He was a leader in the Ku Klux Klan. Despite my role models, as a kid I was an inept racist. I got in trouble once in the first grade for calling a classmate the N-word. But he was Hispanic.
courtesy of Frank Hyman
As I grew up and acquired the strange sensation called empathy (strange for boys anyway), I learned that for black folks the flutter of that flag felt like a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. And for the most prideful flag waivers, clearly that response was the point. I mean, come on. It’s a battle flag.
What the flag symbolizes for blacks is enough reason to take it down. But there’s another reason that white southerners shouldn’t fly it. Or sport it on our state-issued license plates as some do here in North Carolina. The Confederacy – and the slavery that spawned it – was also one big con job on the Southern, white, working class. A con job funded by some of the ante-bellum one-per-centers, that continues today in a similar form.
You don’t have to be an economist to see that forcing blacks – a third of the South’s laborers – to work without pay drove down wages for everyone else. And not just in agriculture. A quarter of enslaved blacks worked in the construction, manufacturing and lumbering trades; cutting wages even for skilled white workers.
Thanks to the profitability of this no-wage/low-wage combination, a majority of American one-per-centers were southerners. Slavery made southern states the richest in the country. The South was richer than any other country except England. But that vast wealth was invisible outside the plantation ballrooms. With low wages and few schools, southern whites suffered a much lower land ownership rate and a far lower literacy rate than northern whites.
My ancestor Canna Hyman and his two sons did own land and fought under that flag. A note from our family history says: “Someone came for them while they were plowing one day. They put their horses up and all three went away to the War and only one son, William, came back.”
Like Canna, most Southerners didn’t own slaves. But they were persuaded to risk their lives and limbs for the right of a few to get rich as Croesus from slavery. For their sacrifices and their votes, they earned two things before and after the Civil War. First, a very skinny slice of the immense Southern pie. And second, the thing that made those slim rations palatable then and now: the shallow satisfaction of knowing that blacks had no slice at all.
How did the plantation owners mislead so many Southern whites?
They managed this con job partly with a propaganda technique that will be familiar to modern Americans, but hasn’t received the coverage it deserves in our sesquicentennial celebrations. Starting in the 1840s wealthy Southerners supported more than 30 regional pro-slavery magazines, many pamphlets, newspapers and novels that falsely touted slave ownership as having benefits that would – in today’s lingo – trickle down to benefit non-slave owning whites and even blacks. The flip side of the coin of this old-is-new trickle-down propaganda is the mistaken notion that any gain by blacks in wages, schools or health care comes at the expense of the white working class.
Today’s version of this con job no longer supports slavery, but still works in the South and thrives in pro trickle-down think tanks, magazines, newspapers, talk radio and TV news shows such as the Cato Foundation, Reason magazine, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. These sources are underwritten by pro trickle-down one-per-centers like the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch.
For example, a map of states that didn’t expand Medicaid – which would actually be a boon mostly to poor whites – resembles a map of the old Confederacy with a few other poor, rural states thrown in. Another indication that this divisive propaganda works on Southern whites came in 2012. Romney and Obama evenly split the white working class in the West, Midwest and Northeast. But in the South we went 2-1 for Romney.
Lowering the flag because of the harm done to blacks is the right thing to do. We also need to lower it because it symbolizes material harm the ideology of the Confederacy did to Southern whites that lasts even to this day.
One can love the South without flying the battle flag. But it won’t help to get rid of an old symbol if we can’t also rid ourselves of the self-destructive beliefs that go with it. Only by shedding those too, will Southern whites finally catch up to the rest of the country in wages, health and education.
Frank Hyman lives in Durham,where he has held two local elected offices. He’s a carpenter and stonemason and policy analyst for Blue Collar Comeback. This essay originally appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch and is reprinted with permission.
Posted on 3/7/17 at 11:08 am to Phat Phil
Fox News is literally white supremacy. What a joke!
My ancestors fought and died for the Confederacy. I love the Confederacy and the South, and I always will. If you don't like it, you can kiss my arse!
My ancestors fought and died for the Confederacy. I love the Confederacy and the South, and I always will. If you don't like it, you can kiss my arse!
This post was edited on 3/7/17 at 11:10 am
Posted on 3/7/17 at 11:08 am to Phat Phil
This thread is where TLDR and DGAF create a comfy symbiotic relationship.
This post was edited on 3/7/17 at 11:10 am
Posted on 3/7/17 at 11:09 am to Phat Phil
tSouth did nothing wrong!!!!
Posted on 3/7/17 at 11:09 am to Phat Phil
I agree with that. And I read it, it wasnt too long
Posted on 3/7/17 at 11:12 am to Phat Phil
the south will rise again!!!! yeeehaawww
and nurp did not read
and nurp did not read
Posted on 3/7/17 at 11:12 am to ksayetiger
quote:
Fox News is literally white supremacy. What a joke! My ancestors fought and died for the Confederacy. I love the Confederacy and the South, and I always will. If you don't like it, you can kiss my arse!
White supremacy?
Posted on 3/7/17 at 11:12 am to TbirdSpur2010
If only this guy was half as smart as he thinks he is.
Posted on 3/7/17 at 11:12 am to Phat Phil
quote:
The Confederacy was a con job on whites. And still is.
Isn't this the "The Free State of Jones"?
Posted on 3/7/17 at 11:12 am to Phat Phil
Cleansing history is never the answer, regardless of how many statues or flags come down.
Posted on 3/7/17 at 11:13 am to Phat Phil
quote:
Today’s version of this con job no longer supports slavery, but still works in the South and thrives in pro trickle-down think tanks, magazines, newspapers, talk radio and TV news shows such as the Cato Foundation, Reason magazine, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. These sources are underwritten by pro trickle-down one-per-centers like the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch.
Author is an idiot.
Most people don't give a shite about the confederacy. Also, this intellectual midget throws Cato and Reason in with Limbaugh. Dude probably gets kid info from the Daily Los.
This post was edited on 3/7/17 at 11:19 am
Posted on 3/7/17 at 11:13 am to stlslick
Did you read the article? The retard is saying that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are the modern day plantation owners. What a load of horse shite. I don't even watch Fox News.
Posted on 3/7/17 at 11:15 am to Phat Phil
Oh nooow they wanna talk working class. Getting ready for 2020, eh?
Posted on 3/7/17 at 11:15 am to Phat Phil
I agree. The war was largely fought by the poor, to uphold the right to own slaves of which they had very little vested interest.
I do not agree that southern conservatives are the only victim of modern day trickle down propaganda.
I do not agree that southern conservatives are the only victim of modern day trickle down propaganda.
Posted on 3/7/17 at 11:16 am to Phat Phil
Unfortunately, just like many events on the wrong side of history (Macarthyism, The South, etc.), only the bad things can be talked about and none of the things that made the South good.
The South was an honor culture at its base. There should be some happy middle ground that respects that "heritage" without the inherent racism that often comes along with that.
Most of what he said I agree with until he starts spouting the modern day analogies. It's 2017. Time to let it go.
The South was an honor culture at its base. There should be some happy middle ground that respects that "heritage" without the inherent racism that often comes along with that.
Most of what he said I agree with until he starts spouting the modern day analogies. It's 2017. Time to let it go.
Posted on 3/7/17 at 11:16 am to RogerTheShrubber
quote:
Also, this intellectual midget throws Cato and Reason in with Limbaugh.
Yeah, that is odd.
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