The Confederate Battle Flag...

Just_Me_D

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I mean no disrespect to you Sean. I like and enjoy reading your posts. But, this actually a terrible analogy to make.

I say this because the Mexican has the freedom to make a 'choice' as to wheter or not he/she will work for that $10 an hour.

He/she can say 'yes' and get to mwing or they can say 'no' and are free to pursue other interests.

Slaves have/had no such freedom. The work when and how they are old. Or there are consequences. Harsh ones.

My view on this is really simple. The flag has no power over me. It should have no power over any individual who chooses not to give power to it.

But, if you ask me whether or not it should be flown from the State's main building, which is supposed to represent ALL the citizens of that state.

Then I would wholeheartedly say no.

The Swastika is a symbol that had been is use for 5000 years before the Nazi party made it their symbol. It's just a symbol.

And yet you don't see a Swaztika hanging from any State buildings.

Every black person back then was not a slave, especially those living north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Alex Haley's version of events was not universal. If the Confederate flag has no power over you and shouldn't have power over anyone else, why then should it not be flown? Nowadays, we welcome immigrants from all over the world and tell them that it's okay to bring their culture with them, yet, we're quick to remove elements of our own culture from our own homeland under the guise of tolerance, and the drummed up Confederate flag controversy is another casualty of it. As for the Swastika, it is not an 'American' symbol like the Confederate flag.
 

Soeasy

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If the Confederate flag has no power over you and shouldn't have power over anyone else, why then should it not be flown?

You're misconstruing the context of my post.

I never said it should be flown ANYWHERE. I said it shouldn't be flown on State Capital Buildings that are supposed to represent ALL of it's constituency.

That Capital building is funded by the tax payers of that state.

Example:

Let's say all the African Americans in SC decided that they did NOT want their tax dollars used to provide funding for maintenance, staff and upkeep of the State Capital Building as long as that flag were flown there. Should they have the right to say where there tax dollars go?

i'm here in NYC. I honestly don't care about the flag itself.

I'm more engrossed in the theory of the principle behind it.

And you're correct, we do welcome everyone. During the World Cup, you can't walk into a bar in the city that's not playing the games and everyone is wearing the colors and flags of their countries.

But those flags aren't flown at City Hall here, nor at the State Capital Building in Albany.

You're throwing everything in to the pot and trying to make an argumens without looking at the individual parts of what you're asserting.

Just my two cents.

Happy Sunday to you.
 
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Ledsteplin

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How do you know that? How could you possibly know that to be factually true?

Just curious.

Most slave owners treated their slaves well. What you saw in "Roots" was the exception. Most were treated as family. So, yeah, 'D is right about that.
 

Just_Me_D

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How do you know that? How could you possibly know that to be factually true?

Just curious.

Being that I have never been a slave, I cannot provide personal experience and neither can you to the contrary. Having said that, common sense dictate that unlike nations of people who became slaves after being conquered, whereas slaves were darn near innumerable, American slaves were a commodity and an investment. People take care of their investments.
 

Soeasy

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Being that I have never been a slave, I cannot provide personal experience and neither can you to the contrary.

I never professed to have any ability to comment on the conditions of African slaves in this country. Your statement seems to indicate that you do. so I asked.

As for common sense. Well I'd prefer facts over someone's interpretation of what common sense is or isn't.

Your assertions aren't vetted out by the facts.
 

Just_Me_D

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You're misconstruing the context of my post.
Nope. I am not.

I never said it should be flown ANYWHERE. I said it shouldn't be flown on State Capital Buildings that are supposed to represent ALL of it's constituency.
True, but neither did I. I asked why shouldn't it be flown?

That Capital building is funded by the tax payers of that state.
Then it's safe to conclude that those taxpayers include those who prefer the flag to continue being displayed.

Example:

Let's say all the African Americans in SC decided that they did NOT want their tax dollars used to provide funding for maintenance, staff and upkeep of the State Capital Building as long as that flag were flown there. Should they have the right to say where there tax dollars go?
They have the right to voice their opinion, but they do not have the right to decide the fate of something that everyone in the State pays for, at least not without winning a majority vote that everyone participated in.
i'm here in NYC. I honestly don't care about the flag itself.
Your replies indicate differently.

I'm more engrossed in the theory of the principle behind it.

And you're correct, we do welcome everyone. During the World Cup, you can't walk into a bar in the city that's not playing the games and everyone is wearing the colors and flags of their countries.

But those flags aren't flown at City Hall here, nor at the State Capital Building in Albany.

You're throwing everything in to the pot and trying to make an argumens without looking at the individual parts of what you're asserting.

Just my two cents.

Happy Sunday to you.
I threw everything into the pot, as you put it, to show how ridiculous the Confederate flag controversy really is. Anyway, that's my 2?, and Happy Sunday to you, too.
 

Just_Me_D

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Your assertions aren't vetted out by the facts.

So when you make Comments like the ones below, you're stating 'facts' and not unvetted opinions, right?

Soeasy said:
White Wall street guys hate everybody than is not a White Male. Asians, Middle Easterners, Jews(but never to their faces. Because they would say the Jews run everything), Arabs, Women(even the white ones. Unless they're trying to sleep with them, so women become objects of conquest) etc...
 

Soeasy

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I never saw Roots.

But, I did have a concentration in sociololgy while pusuing my Masters.

I have to say that I when individuals use terms like 'most', I grind my teeth.

You have ZERO emperical data to base that statement on anything other than your own personal speculation and opinion. And yet, you state it as an absolute fact of history that "most"(being at least 51% or the majority) were not actually treated poorly. Or treated like slaves.

I would say that since there are numerous actual records or male slave owners fathering illegitmate children(including several of our Presidents), numerous actual records of slaves as young as 9 being sold away from their families. Actual records of extremely young females slaves being used solely for the purposes of sex by slave owners, numerous actual records of males slaves and forced breeding, where the female would be tied and bent over a bench and the 'bucks' would be lined up in the attempts to impregnate said female, I could just as likely claim that what you believe isn't actually a matter of historical record.

And, since you say "Roots" was wrong. I'd kindly ask you to provide information or data to back up that claim.
 
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Soeasy

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So when you make Comments like the ones below, you're stating 'facts' and not unvetted opinions, right?

Because those were my actual/factual experiences. Locker rooms, dinners, airplanes, meetings. Conference rooms. Strategy meetings.

These were my actual experiences.

Example:

When I was an Asset Manager at JPMorgan Chase, my Senior Vice President told a group of us(white males) that there was a certain woman in the office that he wanted to 'bang'. That was 9 years ago and I still remember his quote to this day.

"She's the only Asian I've ever seen that doesn't look like she'd been hit the face with a frying pan."

And I rose through the ranks at different firms, Morgan Stanley, Smith Barney, etc... on my way to Managing Director, I can repeat that same experience 100s of times. Gays, Lesbians, Blacks, Hispanics, hell I'm sure they'd find a reason to hate goldfish.

My observation, coupled with the observation that minorities/women often received less pay and were promoted less ofter, is borne out by actual experiences.

I was never a slave and have had no interactions with one. To the best of my knowledge.

So I would never assert to know what the life of one was/is like.
 
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dchandler

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I agree with what Charlie Daniels has said about this whole issue. I think the flag does represent a bit of defiance against untruths spoken about southerners over the years. I see it on Twitter all the time. We get called "Racists" just because we live in the South. There's definitely that element. And they are wrong. We're not like that at all. Here's what Mr. Daniels had to say:

"The recent senseless act of slaughter in a church in Charleston, South Carolina awakened America to the ever-present lunacy and evil that walks among us, and it has also reopened some old wounds and deep feelings on both sides of a long festering situation.

Before I go any farther with this piece, I wish to express my love and admiration for the people of Charleston, who have, in the face of immense pain, shown a restraint and a common sense seldom seen in tragic situations involving race.

When I saw the pictures of the people who had been murdered, I made the statement, "I know these people," which I didn't mean literally, but figuratively. They were the kind of Christian people I have been around all my life ? worked with and sat in the pews of churches with ? salt of the earth folks, who not only professed to know the Lord Jesus Christ, but lived their faith every day of their lives.

These are the kind of people you want to have praying for you, the kind who know how to put their arms around a hurting person and comfort and console. They are the kind of people who raised their families to turn to Almighty God in times of trouble and heartbreak, proven by the forgiving words spoken by family members in court to the monster who had wantonly murdered their loved ones.

As in all Satan inspired iniquity, God has the ability to bring great good, and in this situation, the people of Charleston, South Carolina have shown the depth of common sense and class that exists in that community. More importantly, they showed the world what being a Christian is all about.

I feel sure that a jury of peers in South Carolina will see that Dylann Roof gets what?s coming to him, and justice will be served and meted out to the full extent of the law.

In relation to the main crux of my column today, I would like to relate an experience I had in a Midwestern city when the band was appearing with the local symphony orchestra.

In the evening before the show started, one of the venue staff came to me and said, "There is a gentleman out front who is offended by the confederate flag on your piano."

I responded that we didn't have a Confederate flag painted on our piano.

The upshot of the whole thing was that Taz, our keyboard player, had an American flag and a Tennessee flag with the flagstaffs crossed on the front of his piano, with a drawing of his namesake, a cartoon Tasmanian Devil, and the phrase "Yessiree, Tennessee" painted under it.

The point I'm making is that this gentleman was probably the kind of person who looks for something to be offended about and sees things that aren't even there.

Of course, the situation concerning the Confederate flag in Charleston is a much more serious situation with justifiable feelings that go back a century and a half, and the problem has the potential to be a racially divisive one.

The bottom line is that the flag in question represents one thing to some people and another thing to others.

Far be it from me to advise the people of South Carolina or any other state as to what they should fly over their capitol buildings, or anywhere else in the state for that matter, but I truly hate to see the opportunists move in and create a symbol of hate out of a simple piece of cloth.

Of course, we know most politicians are going to chime in and glean whatever political hay that is available, but in my book, the corporate rush to rid their shelves of anything with the Confederate battle flag on it is pure hypocrisy.

If they felt that deeply about the subject, they should have done something years ago, and I notice they have no problem accepting the profits from the merchandise they have on hand.

I have received many requests to do interviews on this subject and had a lot of tweets asking me to comment, but I declined, wanting to take the time to explain my feelings in detail, without having to answer other people's loaded questions or express myself in a 140-character limit on Twitter.

This will have the potential to be lengthy, so bear with me and I will try my best to relate my honest feelings on the Confederate flag in question, which was actually the battle flag carried by several Confederate army regiments ? and was not the official flag of the Confederacy.

I was born in 1936, a mere 71 years after the Civil War ended, when the South was looked upon by what seemed to be a majority of the Northern States as an inbred, backward, uneducated, slow-talking and slower-thinking people, with low morals and a propensity for incest.

This was in the days before television, and about all the folks up North knew about Southerners was what they heard. There were a lot of people who took great pleasure in proliferating the myth, and some still do it to this day.

As you might suppose, people in the South bitterly resented this attitude of superiority, and in some quarters the words ?damn? and ?Yankee? became one word. And a somewhat fierce type of Southern pride came into being.

The Confederate battle flag was a sign of defiance, a sign of pride, a declaration of a geographical area that you were proud to be from.

That?s all it is to me and all it has ever been to me.

I can?t speak for all, but I know in my heart that most Southerners feel the same way.

I have no desire to reinstate the Confederacy. I oppose slavery as vehemently as any man, and I believe that every human being, regardless of the color of their skin, is just as valuable as I am and deserves the exact same rights and advantages as I do.

I feel that this controversy desperately needs to be settled without federal interference and input from race baiters like Al Sharpton. It's up to the individual states as to what they allow to be a part of their public image. What the majority of the people of any given state want should, in my opinion, be their policy.

Unfortunately, the Confederate battle flag has been adopted by hate groups ? and individuals like Dylann Roof ? to supposedly represent them and their hateful view of the races.

Please believe me when I say that, to the overwhelming majority of Southerners, the flag represents no such thing, but is simply a banner denoting an area of the nation and one's pride in living there.

I know there will be those who will take these words of mine, try to twist them or call them insincere and try to make what I've said here some kind of anti-black racial statement, but I tell everybody who reads this article, I came up in the days of cruel racial prejudice and Jim Crow laws, when the courts were tilted against any black man, when the segregated educational system was inferior and when opportunities for blacks to advance were almost nonexistent.

I lived through the useless cruelty of those days and did not get my feelings out of some sensitivity class or social studies course, but made my own decisions out of experience and disgust.

I hold no ill feelings and have no axes to grind with my brothers and sisters of any color. The same God made us; the same God will judge us; and I pray that He will intervene in the deep racial divide we have in this nation and make each person ? black or white ? see each other for what we truly are, human beings. No better, and no worse.

It's time to do away with labels: Caucasian-American, African-American, Asian-American, Native American and so forth.

How about just a simple "AMERICAN"?

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels"

Very well said
 

Just_Me_D

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"She's the only Asian I've ever seen that doesn't look like she'd been hit the face with a frying pan."
That comment is at most a bad attempt to be funny. Hate-filled toward Asians? Nope.

And I rose through the ranks at different firms, Morgan Stanley, Smith Barney, etc... on my way to Managing Director, I can repeat that same experience 100s of times. Gays, Lesbians, Blacks, Hispanics, hell I'm sure they'd find a reason to hate goldfish.

I take that to mean you were complicit and didn't speak out against the behavior while rising through the ranks?
 

Soeasy

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That comment is at most a bad attempt to be funny. Hate-filled toward Asians? Nope.



I take that to mean you were complicit and didn't speak out against the behavior while rising through the ranks?

You think an Asian would feel that way. And honestly, again, how do you know how he felt about Asians or anyone else for that matter?

My opinion is based on my observations having worked very closely with him for 3 years.

Yours is based on how you've interpreted a comment he made that I conveyed to you.

It might be interpreted that you are prone to believe what you believe without the need for facts of any sort. And that's completely within your rights to do so.

Absolutely! My own survival was my paramount concern! I was a young man who wholeheartedly believed that Capitalism was the answer to all the worlds evils. Like socialism and collectivism. LOL!

Fast foward 18 years: I'm a partner in my own consulting firm now and not afraid of losing a paycheck or having someone more powerful/influential than myself crush my career with the snap of their fingers.

I'm older, and hopefully wiser. And understand that, sometimes we have to stand up for our fellow man when he's unable to stand up for himself.

Even if it means ruffling a few feathers.
 

Just_Me_D

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You think an Asian would feel that way.
I have no doubt that some would.
And honestly, again, how do you know how he felt about Asians or anyone else for that matter?
I don't, and unless he stated to you that he hated Asians or non-whites, neither do you.

My opinion is based on my observations having worked very closely with him for 3 years.
It is still only an 'opinion'.

Yours is based on how you've interpreted a comment he made that I conveyed to you.
That's true and that's why I stated, "That comment..."

It might be interpreted that you are prone to believe what you believe without the need for facts of any sort. And that's completely within your rights to do so.
I suppose that's possible, but then again, I try not to put my foot in my mouth too often.

Absolutely! My own survival was my paramount concern!
Could you not have found another job and still survive?
I was a young man who wholeheartedly believed that Capitalism was the answer to all the worlds evils. Like socialism and collectivism. LOL!
That's not funny, but I get what you're saying...;)...Anyway, the only thing, off the top of my head, that we should collectively have in common are rights, opportunities and choices.

Fast foward 18 years: I'm a partner in my own consulting firm now and not afraid of losing a paycheck or having someone more powerful/influential than myself crush my career with the snap of their fingers.
So the example you used earlier in regard to Asians is from things that occurred almost 2 decades ago?

I'm older, and hopefully wiser. And understand that, sometimes we have to stand up for our fellow man when he's unable to stand up for himself.

Even if it means ruffling a few feathers.
I agree, but standing up in favor of removing the Confederate flag isn't standing up for the little man. That's being cowardice, and bowing down to the divisive schemes of people with hidden motives. It's succumbing to the notion of others deciding that you should be offended by something that you truly aren't offended by.
 

Soeasy

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1.) I have no doubt that some would. I don't, and unless he stated to you that he hated Asians or non-whites, neither do you.

2.) It is still only an 'opinion'.

3.) That's true and that's why I stated, "That comment..."

4.) I suppose that's possible, but then again, I try not to put my foot in my mouth too often.

5.) Could you not have found another job and still survive? That's not funny, but I get what you're saying...;)...Anyway, the only thing, off the top of my head, that we should collectively have in common are rights, opportunities and choices.

5.) So the example you used earlier in regard to Asians is from things that occurred almost 2 decades ago?

6.) I agree, but standing up in favor of removing the Confederate flag isn't standing up for the little man. That's being cowardice, and bowing down to the divisive schemes of people with hidden motives. It's succumbing to the notion of others deciding that you should be offended by something that you truly aren't offended by.

1.) Factually Incorrect. I DO know that he felt the vast majority of Asians appeared to have been hit in the face with a hard object. The result of which made them quite repulsive. To him at least. That much, with regards to his opinions, I know to be factually true.

2.) Factually Correct. But I do have some measure of corroborating evidence to support my opinion.

5.) That was my "initiation" into the prevailing culture. So it was the one that had the most impact on me mentally. There aren't enough pages on this cite to cover every example of the next decade and more. I could give you one from this past April where a Merrill Lynch Broker asked that we not send my partner to a meeting in Kentucky because he felt the client would object to the Jewishness or my colleague. Needless to say we advise him that if his client had/has a problem with my partner's ethnicity, we are not interested in taking him on a client. But it caused us to wonder, in the office, was it the client who had a problem with Jews or was it the ML Broker.

6.) One could argue that cowardice is not acknowledging the atrocities of the American slave trade, and the impact that period in history still has on AA in this country.

One could feasibly argue that statements such as "American slavery was a cake walk compared..." "Most slaves were treated as family members..." derives from the fear or cowardice of facing the awful truth of the situation. And it's ongoing legacy...

I don't live in SC. I don't know how all African Americans in SC feel about the flag. I do know that some have voiced a very vocal opposition to it.

Guessing as to what some feel or don't feel without any evidence to support it is an exercise in futility.

To me at least.
 

mmcfly23

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The flag is apart of America's history. Should it be flown on state buildings? Imo, I'd have to say no and that's based on what I know and my family's perception of the flag.


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Ledsteplin

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You can't be serious.


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Most lived and grew up together. The kids played together. There were a few bad apples. But, yeah, most plantation owners treated them well. It was a way of life. After slavery was abolished, many slaves stayed where they were. It was home. The biggest tragedy was the 300,000 African slaves that died on the way across the Atlantic of disease or overcrowding. A third of them died.
 

mmcfly23

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I also understand that the flag represents "southern pride" for a lot of Americans. I'm not offended nor do I feel a certain way whenever i see the flag. I can understand arguments from both sides of the spectrum.
 

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