What’s Next? Country and Folk Songs That Mention The Confederacy?
I can’t express to you how little desire I have to get into the center of the Confederate flag debate. It’s not even that I don’t have an opinion on it, it’s that the debate has become so contentious, reactionary, and polarized that I would feel stupid for participating. The debate has just become a forum now for stupidity and vitriol to breed, on both sides.
I do see a difference between flying the Confederate battle flag at state houses or other governmental properties, and the right for individuals to peaceably display it in their homes or in their private organizations. The precursor to the whole debate before the massacre in Charleston was a Supreme Court vote in favor of the State of Texas to not allow the Confederate Flag to be presented on state-manufactured license plates. The Supreme Court said since it wasn’t an individual’s expression, but a governmental emblem, they could limit what could and could not be displayed.
There may be nothing that symbolizes free speech more than unfurling a flag. And I understand that however misguided it might seem to some, the Confederate flag is seen as a symbol of racism to a segment of the American population. And if officials elected by the people, or judges appointed by representatives want to say that such symbols should not be a part of official state business, than that’s the business of those particular states and localities. As many Southerners like to point out, the Civil War was not just about slavery, but about state’s rights. So let those particular states decide what they want to do with the Confederate battle flag and their respective state institutions.
But the Confederate flag debate has spilled out into the greater culture, and now is looking to potentially affect the very fabric and foundations of Southern heritage. It’s not a stretch anymore to see its free speech-censoring mandibles reaching into the country music realm, and not just in a matter of weeks, months, or years, but hours at this rate. The way Florida solved the Confederate flag debate was by moving the flag from the state house to a museum. However now the Confederate flag isn’t the only cultural institution being targeted. Statues commemorating Confederate personalities, the museums that are supposed to be bipartisan safe havens for the preservation and display of Confederate material, and other such cornerstones of the Southern identity are now being debated about as to whether they should be demolished, and purged from the public consciousness in an effort to eradicate anything even remotely alluding to the Confederacy in culture.
In 1969, a Canadian songwriter named Robbie Robertson wrote, recorded, and released a song called “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” for the second, self-titled album from The Band. The song remained fairly obscure until the New York City-born progressive folk singer and well-known activist Joan Baez recorded a version and made it a Top 5 hit in 1971. The song has since been covered dozens of times by bands and artists from all around the country and world, and it’s seen as a stalwart of the American songbook. Why? Because the song embodies the sorrow and loss the South suffered at the defeat from Northern forces in The Civil War. It embodies the romance The Civil War encapsulated in its bloody and historic conflict.
But the song commiserates with the Southern identity in the the Civil War context. It mentions Robert E. Lee. The Band at one point even posed in Civil War uniforms. Would any of this be acceptable today, or would it be seen as garnering sympathies towards racist institutions?
And of course the examples of Confederate history embedded in country, folk, and Southern rock songs only just starts there. They are too numerous to list. And how about the traditional songs associated with The Confederacy like “Dixie”? As the cradle of American music, the South has always used song to preserve and honor its heritage, good and bad.
The Civil War happened, and the South lost. Atrocities occurred on both sides of the battlefield. Atlanta was burned to the ground, and simply from an economic standpoint, one can make the case the South has still yet to recover from the defeat. But it happened, and how are we to learn from the lessons of The Civil War, especially the South’s misnomers on equality, if we eradicate any notions of the Confederacy’s existence?
This guy that walked into a black church in Charleston and killed nine people? Fuck that guy. And proponents of the Confederate flag should be angry at him for using it as a symbol of racism more than anyone else. But let’s not over-react to this atrocity by completely purging elements important to the Southern culture out of society. The South, and especially people who identify with Confederate culture have been lampooned more than any other segment in American society since the Civil War, and if you question that, just go watch a promo for the new Joe Dirt 2 movie.
And when people have their culture ripped from them, lampooned, stomped on, and admonished, they lose their identity as people, use drugs and violence and foreign cultures to fill that void, and the homogenization of culture prevails. And among other ill’s, the result is the really really bad music that prevails in popular Southern culture today. Yes, the racist elements should be purged, but we also shouldn’t throw the Southern baby out with the Confederate bath water.
On April 10th, 1865—the day after Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S.Grant at Appomattox—President Lincoln came out on the streets of Washington DC to address a throng of roughly 3,000 people who had assembled to celebrate the news. Lincoln had no prepared statement, but saw that there was a band that had joined the throng and requested they play “Dixie” before they played “Yankee Doodle.” “I have always thought `Dixie’ one of the best tunes I have ever heard,” Lincoln said.
June 25, 2015 @ 9:56 am
And seriously, please don’t bring your preformulated arguments about the Confederate battle flag here. That issue will not be solved here, nor do I have any desire to try. I understand it may come up, but let’s please try to keep the discussion about the music, and the affects on Southern culture and country music this all could have. Please and thank you.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:17 am
Man Trigger,
I’ve been dreading the moment that you decided to write about this. I knew it would bring the elitist buttholes out in full force.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:38 am
It’s true. People who have actually studied the Civil War in an academic setting and read contemporaneous primary documents from the time of secession always put a damper on arguments about whether the Civil War was about anything other than slavery.
It’s almost as bad as when people who have listened to music that doesn’t get played on the radio drop in on arguments about whether Taylor Swift is the greatest country singer of all time.
June 25, 2015 @ 12:00 pm
Continually using sarcasm to get your points across doesn’t make you sound intelligent; it just makes you sound like an obnoxious peckerhead.
That’s wonderful that you went to college, and enjoy bragging about it; although it doesn’t cause me to respect you any more, or anything you have to say.
For a lot of people, the war was not about slavery?
Is that simple enough for you to avoid accosting me any further with your pretentious pseudo-intellectualism?
I’m not sure what your point is with the Swift comment.
June 25, 2015 @ 12:08 pm
I thought the point of the Swift comment was pretty clear, but I’m happy to explain!
People who think there’s an argument that secession was about anything other than slavery are exactly the same as people who think that there’s an argument that Taylor Swift is the greatest country singer of all time:
One can only hope that they are under the age of 14, because anyone with a basic knowledge of either subject knows that the answer to both questions is “Absolutely not, don’t be an idiot.”
June 25, 2015 @ 3:29 pm
I think the Civil War was the end result of several decades of dissent concerning “States Rights” and Slavery was just the last straw. States Rights is a huge issue now concerning marriage and whether the federal or states governments should make the decision, and a lot of that same dissent was at the heart of the secession. States Rights to do what? Own slaves, mostly.
June 25, 2015 @ 12:18 pm
I’m saying, that there absolutely were people, fighting for the South, who never had, or encountered slaves.
It’s also worth noting, that the wealthy, slave-owning Deep South was Democrat controlled… something else the regressive left-wing media conveniently ignores.
I’ve never heard anybody say Swift is the greatest ever, even tongue-in-cheek.
June 25, 2015 @ 12:32 pm
But that doesn’t change the fact that, according to the people who formed the Confederacy, the sole reason for its existence was to preserve the institution of slavery.
The Unionist Southerners framed their arguments as “No, no, no! Don’t secede to protect slavery! It’s a much better bet to maintain slavery if we stay within the Union!”
Every Southerner knew that they were fighting to preserve the institution of slavery. It was the reason given in the papers. It was the reason given in the speeches.
It’s why the North was so fractured at the beginning of the War, since people didn’t care enough about black people to fight a war over slavery.
It’s even why the Confederacy splintered towards the end of the war, since the working class decided that they didn’t care enough about slavery to keep dying for it.
There are even documents from the 1890s talking about the decision to pretend the War was about “states’ rights,” so that both sides could celebrate their ancestors’ service, because the North didn’t care enough about black people to keep dealing with Reconstruction.
June 25, 2015 @ 2:21 pm
The political parties in the mid-19th-century bore pretty much no resemblance to the parties today. When Lincoln was elected in 1860, the Republican Party was only 6 years old.
June 26, 2015 @ 8:22 am
That’s becase the parties essentially flopped some time ago. Democrats and Republicans were essentially the total opposite of what they are now.
June 25, 2015 @ 1:28 pm
CLS, out of curiosity, tell me, in what setting did you study it?
June 25, 2015 @ 1:50 pm
Emory University, in Atlanta. My professor was born in the 30s and grew up in Texas.
Pretty much the first day he said something to the effect of “I’m a Southerner and I’m proud of it. And anyone who tells you that the Civil War was about anything other than slavery is either ignorant or a liar.” It was much more polite, but that was the general gist.
We also have a massive archive of primary documents from the Civil War era (it’s pretty much that and Irish poetry, haha), and I’ve read my fair share of them myself (which was incredibly cool). So, it’s really not a case of “my 11th grade history teacher told me this was true, so there!” haha.
June 26, 2015 @ 5:41 am
Cool Lester, I appreciate your arguments on why the war was fought and agree with some points. And I assume you’ve read first hand accounts of soldiers in books like Company Aytch and Testament. To the every day soldier the war was fought over much more than just slavery and absolutely had to do with southern succession and states rights. Both of those first hand accounts certainly do not paint the picture that regiments were fighting only for destroying or preserving slavery.
The war was more complex than has been painted by many historians. The South fought with pride for their states to make their own decisions about how to govern. Yes slavery was apart of that but it was NOT the main reason they went to war.
Oh darn, gotta get back to my latest dvr recording of Ole Boss Hog with the The Hoss narrating…
June 26, 2015 @ 5:56 am
Slavery was the only reason there was a war for those men to “go to” for their own personal reasons. The sole purpose of secession was to protect the states’ rights to maintain the institution of slavery in perpetuity.
The vice president of the Confederacy gave a speech, that was celebrated at the time, about how the cornerstone of the Confederacy, the essential reason why it was necessary to split from the union, was the fact that the Union believed in Thomas Jefferson’s words from the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, while:
“Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.”
That is the country they were fighting for. People can have pride in their ancestors for their legendary bravery (seriously, the fact that the Confederacy held out for so long is one of the most impressive feats in modern military history. They lost any hope of winning the war on July 4th, 1863, and still hung on for two more years), but they should do so by flying their state flag from 1865, because that’s what the ones who didn’t believe in slavery were fighting for.
The Confederate battle flag, though, is a symbol of a government whose explicitly stated raison d’etre was that black people are essentially inferior to white people, and therefore deserve to be slaves. That’s why it has no place among reasonable people, outside of a historical discussion.
June 29, 2015 @ 11:26 am
Abraham Lincoln’s letter to Horace Greeley:
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.” If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery.
CLS, just as you have been educated, as have I. Beyond the college history courses I have taken, I have also read dozens upon dozens of books about secession, slavery, the Confederate States and the totality of the Civil War (aka The War of Northern Aggression). Slavery was not the paramount reason for secession. The heavy tariffs that were choking the southern land owners and producers were the main reason for secession. Sure, slavery most definitely played a role, but to most Southerners, slavery was not the most important issue. Being able to have the means to feed their families was the paramount issue.
Many may argue that Texas isn’t the true South. Being a Texan, the Confederate flag isn’t something that we were raised on. Through my personal study, I believe that the Confederate flag was a big middle finger to the government. It took a lot of balls to secede from the Union. It is much the same as the Gadsden Flag to me. The South was less populated and it could not gather the numbers the North could gather for the war. Just as the colonies stood up to the oppressive British rule, the South did the same to the North.
The crazy thing about history is that it represents the winning side more often than not. If the Axis powers would have won WWII, then our history would be shaped drastically different. The winners live to tell the tales of victory, while the losers either die or have been shamed in defeat. Their stories are not well passed on.
Lastly, I come back to President Lincoln. I view him as one of the biggest violators of the Constitution until modern times. The suspension of habeas corpus was unprecedented, unlawful, and treasonous. When the Supreme Court found that Lincoln did not have the power to suspend a writ of habeas corpus, he turned up his nose at the court and pretended that the decision didn’t happen. His illegal act led to other illegal acts in our history, such as the unlawful imprisonment of Japanese Americans during WWII, and the now dead Patriot Act.
June 29, 2015 @ 3:23 pm
That Lincoln quote doesn’t mean what you think it means.
Lincoln didn’t start the war because he was against slavery. That is 100% correct.
The South started the war because they were “those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery.”
Read any primary document from a Confederate leader at the time of secession explaining his rationale. Whether slavery was the cause of secession simply isn’t a question that’s up for debate anymore, unless the only thing you’ve ever read on the subject are secondary sources written by Southerners with the sole intention of claiming that secession was about anything other than slavery.
June 30, 2015 @ 7:15 am
Perhaps all you have read is Northern diatribe stating that the “free” North was anti-slavery and would fight to the death to protect the freedoms of all men. That, sir, is a bunch of bullshit. The North cared about the revenues generated by the South. When the South cut the umbilical cord, the North prepared their hands for war.
Please don’t tell me that something doesn’t mean exactly what it states. Lincoln would have preserved the Union and kept slavery intact if it would have staved off secession or The War. A vast majority of Southerner’s did not own slaves. They weren’t so ignorant that they were tricked into fighting the deadliest war in our history. They had been affected by the tariffs and the overreach of the populous and industrious North. You want to re-write history based on your college experience, and it is just not true. For you to even state a war of this magnitude was due to ONE issue is an egregious lie. For you to continually reinforce the lie is to try to take advantage of the uneducated who read your bloviating harangue.
Make no mistake about it, slavery was WRONG WRONG WRONG. However, this country was founded by men, by American heroes who owned slaves. It won’t be long before their legacies are smeared with the hatred of the ignorant. There had been over 100 years of slave ownership from the colonial days until the first shot at Ft. Sumter. To further the point, industrialists like Commodore Vanderbilt and Andrew Carnegie paid workers a slum wage and often worked workers to death during 12 hour days and 7 day work weeks. You may not call this slavery because the men were paid, but they often held harder jobs that were much more dangerous and rewarded much less. Indentured servitude has a more PC ring to it. Some companies paid their employees in company money that could only be used in company stores. How this is not slavery baffles me. Maybe it is because most of these men where white immigrants. Just like the Chinese slaves who formed our first railroads, they are not recognized in history.
If you don’t want to discuss secession, which led to the war, but the war itself…then the war was started by the South, who declared their independence from the U.S. Lincoln poked the bear (which was inevitable) and the South attacked Ft. Sumter. All of this goes back to the Confederate Flag. The flag, like the Gadsden Flag, like the Colonial Flag was a sign of independence. It was a big FU to Lincoln and the federal government. The flag didn’t stand for slavery. It never has. Over the years, it has been twisted, contorted, and perverted to symbolize racism and hatred. The flag never stood for hatred. Pride? Yes. Independence? Yes. Slave Ownership? No. What the government of the South said and did is much different than what the Southern man was fighting for.
I went to war twice in Iraq, and although I was patriotic, I was fighting for the man on the left and the right. The Americans who died on 9/11. I wasn’t fighting for President Bush. Next time, in your hubristic omniscience, please refrain from telling me what it is that I do and don’t understand.
June 30, 2015 @ 10:21 am
Actually, the issue is that I’ve actually read speeches by Southern politicians, and editorials in Southern newspapers, explaining why the South should secede.
Hell, Lee tried to recruit black soldiers as a last ditch effort, the Charleston Mercury freaked the fuck out and wrote an editorial explaining that the entire point of secession, and the Confederacy, was to maintain the institution of slavery in the South, and that they had no desire for independence if it meant sacrificing slavery.
Lincoln absolutely would have maintained slavery to maintain peace. He didn’t care enough about black people to start a war over them. No one in the North did. The Republicans wanted to slowly choke slavery to death by prohibiting it in the territories until such a time as it either ceased to exist naturally, or they had a majority of free states that would be able to legally pass an amendment banning slavery.
The South, though, viewed slavery as a positive good, and the natural state of black people, as ordained by God. They were anti-states’ rights and anti-self-determination, unless it protected slavery.
According to the Vice President of the Confederate States of America, the cornerstone of the need for Confederate independence, the one irreconcilable difference that they had with the Union, was that the Union believed in the Declaration of Independence, while the Confederacy recognized “the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.”
According to the Confederacy, from its leaders to its newspapers to the diaries of its soldiers, the sole reason for secession was slavery.
The Confederate battle flag is a symbol of an army whose sole purpose for existence was to protect a country founded to protect the institution of slavery.
The Confederate battle flag only saw modern use starting in the 1960s, when black men and women had the temerity to believe they should be allowed to vote and use the same bathrooms as white people.
If you believe your ancestors were fighting for their state or their comrades, fly their state flag or their regiment flag to honor them.
If you believe they were fighting because they believed in the Confederate States of America, don’t honor them.
Thank you for your service, by the way.
June 25, 2015 @ 12:33 pm
Really good essay.
June 25, 2015 @ 12:56 pm
So Trigger when you write “And when people have their culture ripped from them, lampooned, stomped on, and admonished, they lose their identity as people, use drugs and violence and foreign cultures to fill that void…” were you referring to the enslaved African people who later were freed only to be denied basic human rights and dignity for another 100 plus years?
June 25, 2015 @ 1:12 pm
Hahahaha, be careful, man. That’s just asking for some good Samaritan (not Trigger) to try to “explain” why it’s totally different, because “those people” are thugs/leeches/lazy, and they should quit bitching and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.
June 25, 2015 @ 1:40 pm
Mr. Foot – yours is the best point made thus far.
June 25, 2015 @ 8:24 pm
Sure, I don’t see why that wouldn’t apply to imported slaves as well, if not even more.
June 25, 2015 @ 10:07 am
For better or for worse this whole thing was set into motion because of the tweet that Mitt Romney put out. The Democrat party as a whole have been against the flag for a long time but what was different was the Republican leaders led the charge this time. With both parties seemingly united in the removal of the flag it created a domino effect that I don’t see ending anytime soon. Also, to keep it about music, I’d like to point out that Lynyrd Skynyrd has done away with the Confederate flag for some time now. The times they are a changin’.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:29 pm
Lynyrd Skynyrd died in a plane crash in the 1977, so you’re right on that point for sure.
September 4, 2015 @ 3:01 pm
He’s talking about the post-crash Skynyrd
You know the one that reunited with Johnny Van Zant on vocals
June 25, 2015 @ 10:09 am
“Wave That Flag” by the Bottle Rockets pretty much sums it up for me.
Wave that flag hoss, wave it high
Do you know what it means?
Do you know why?
Maybe being a Rebel ain’t no big deal
But if somebody owned your ass
How would you feel?
Both songs 20+ years old so this is nowhere near a new issue.
How about Hootie and the Blowfish “Drowning”?
Trouble with the world is we’re too busy to think about it, all right
Why is there a rebel flag hanging from the state house walls?
Tired of hearin’ this shit about heritage not hate
Time to make the world a better place
June 25, 2015 @ 10:13 am
Have you ever heard of the white mansion album? It’s one of the best concept albums ever released in the country music genre in my opinion, but I have a hard time saying that it’s hateful, resentful, racist or anything else even though it’s about the confederacy . The music was written by a British guy, and although it’s told from a southern perspective, you can tell he did his homework and tried his best to accurately reflect the thoughts and sentiments of the times in the various characters (which are supposed to represent the various classes of ppl in the south at the time). I have to wonder if that album would even be cut today in the politically correct environment in the media. Sometimes I feel we go too far. Not acknowledging that history is dangerous because it serves as a vivid reminder of the awful things we can do to each other. We don’t need to celebrate it, but we can’t pretend it didn’t happen.
June 25, 2015 @ 12:43 pm
That is a great album. The songwriting is so/so, but the musicianship, and performances, especially by Waylon and Jessi are fantastic. My personal favorite is Last Dance and Kentucky Racehorse. On occasion, I’ve been known to pour myself a tall glass of bourbon, crank that album up as loud as it will go, and lament….
The Legend of Jesse James is pretty good, too.
June 25, 2015 @ 6:11 pm
I thought Paul Kennerley’s writing and concept for the whole album was brilliant.
June 29, 2015 @ 6:12 am
As I said, I like the album, I just thought that a lot more could have been done with it. The stories could have been more complex and interesting, and its clear in some of the songs, that the writer is not an American.
June 26, 2015 @ 4:47 pm
RD,
I was really hoping you were going to chime in on flag discussion. I always enjoy your political analysis.
June 29, 2015 @ 6:38 am
Clint,
Thank you. I like to read your comments, as well, and I respect you for your intransigence. In a time where the masses change their mind on a whim, with the slightest beckon of their masters, it is refreshing to know that not everyone has been brainwashed yet. I lack the energy to get involved in a debate like this, but, of course, I pray for the revolutionaries and quislings to be smited.
June 29, 2015 @ 3:26 pm
Amen! In this world, the only thing worse than a quisling is one who retroactively attempts to justify the actions of the disgusting regime that once ran their country!
June 30, 2015 @ 7:23 am
I find you obnoxious and fanatical. Before I even asked you, I knew you were from Boston, or some other miserable place in the Deep North.
June 30, 2015 @ 10:31 am
That’s nice.
It’s only being a fanatic if there’s something up for discussion, though, or if reasonable people can disagree.
The issue is, that the question of “Why did the South secede” isn’t a question to anyone who’s actually read the speeches and newspaper editorials of the people advocating for secession.
There are only two explanations for someone who claims that secession was about anything else:
1) They’re simply ignorant, perhaps because their schools lied to them when they were children and they never bothered to study the matter independently.
2) They’re lying and attempting to mislead others on the subject, so that they can fly their racist symbols in peace and accuse anyone who objects of being “The PC Police.”
Of course, the second category of people are almost as ignorant as the first one, because they somehow think that anyone who isn’t in the first category will believe them at this point.
I don’t like people who lie about history in order to defend symbols of hatred.
June 25, 2015 @ 4:03 pm
I have that album~ (vinyl, of course) ~ Jessi Coulter, Waylon Jennings, Bernie Leadon, to name a few (Eric Clapton, too)~ Came out in ’78~ They don’t make concept albums like they used to…
June 25, 2015 @ 10:14 am
Are we still gonna be able to listen t lynyrd skynyrd?
June 26, 2015 @ 5:49 am
Unfortunately, probably not my friend. Soon political correctness will destroy everything us Southerners care and take pride in. Heck PC has pretty already destroyed everything.
June 25, 2015 @ 10:15 am
I noticed a glaring typo, I think that’s supposed to be 1865 instead of 1965 lol.
Great article! I really like your journalistic style and how you are always honest about stuff.
June 25, 2015 @ 10:20 am
Yea I agree, this whole thing is getting out of hand. Now here in Austin they’re trying to change the names of schools such as Robert E. Lee and others. Apple is apparently getting rid of civil war games that have the confederate battle flag? Taking down the flag from a government building is one thing, but let’s not wipe the whole confederate history from the earth.
June 25, 2015 @ 10:36 am
Yeah, you can’t learn from history if you destroy it, and pretending that the cancer of the Confederacy never existed is far worse than allowing people to let us know to avoid them by putting it the traitor flag on their bumper stickers, shirts and belts.
August 2, 2015 @ 8:05 pm
Than allowing people to put it on belt buckles or bumper sticks….really? I say your readers need to suceed from you .we all may not agree on a lot of stuff. But who are you or anyone else to tell Ipeople what they can believe or wear or put on the bumper…..we do leave in a free nation. Just as we believe .what you do doesn’t mean everyone else does…why can’t we all live and let live…. If a flag means something Then it means something to me but omg if it means something to you then it does. But no one should tell me I can’t have one if I am one nor a belt Buckel or flag on car dump: keep it real. Too many people telling others how to feel and that’s just wrong. I think guys wearing 10 sizes of pants to wrong and when I look at their under being show I have to suck it up……cause it’s their thing.! The sky is blue but others well so no it’s not …..they this is so silly and kids are hungery and need that dad’s to step up to plate…can’t we fight over things that really mean the same things……
July 25, 2021 @ 6:15 am
Ma’am move your pinky away from the period key and think about going to get your GED
June 25, 2015 @ 4:11 pm
Some of that’s happened already here in Atlanta ~ Gordon Road was renamed MLK, Jr. (just saying, not ranting), and the memorial at Stone Mountain has been downplayed to everything BUT removing the carving (and there’s been talk)…
What happens to all the southern cities and counties named after Lee, Jeff Davis, Jackson (okay, maybe it’s after Prez. Andrew, but still), Sumpter, etc. How far is far enough?
Not sayin’, just askin’…
June 26, 2015 @ 6:25 am
I’m an Atlantan myself and agree the changes we’ve seen over the past few years have been sudden and I think it’s only going to ramp up even more.
It’s sad that our city, which has preserved so much of this history(right or wrong), is going to buckle to PC and erase any mention of the confederacy.
I know it’s hard for non-southerners to understand sometimes, but alot of us here in the Deep South take pride in the spirit and bravery that embodied the Southern Soldier. Those characteristics were passed along in many of the small town folk I grew up around. And we all agree that slavery and what it stood for was abhorrent and a stain on our history! But that doesn’t mean we need to wipe out all references in public places to a flag on a pole.
June 26, 2015 @ 6:44 am
Oh, the Southern Soldier is absolutely worth celebrating. They fought with honor and an extraordinary amount of personal bravery to defend their homes against overwhelming odds.
However, the flag they fought under represents a country whose sole reason for existence was to defend the most disgusting crime in our nation’s history.
Celebrate the State of Georgia, or of Alabama, or of Arkansas, because that’s what your ancestors were fighting for. The battle flag of the Confederate States of America, though, is only a symbol of the country it represented, a country that was created on the cornerstone of the inferiority of black people, according to its Vice President.
June 26, 2015 @ 9:42 am
Now don’t get me wrong… but the same thing applies to “losing side” of any war, don’t you think? The German Luftwaffe was flying to defend the “Father-land”, but everybody knows the Nazi flag with its swastika is a symbol of evil incarnate… (and I’m NOT equating the Battle Flag to that… like I’ve said before, “I’m just sayin’…”)
The ancestor for whom I am named lost an arm at Gettysburg and a brother in Atlanta, and like infantry grunts throughout history, didn’t have the whole story – because if they had, they’d’ve told those advocating for the fight to fight (and die), themselves…
Just sayin’…
June 26, 2015 @ 9:59 am
Hah, I’m just happy you went there before I did! I kept typing something to that effect up, and then not posting it because I don’t want to get yelled at for Godwinning the argument.
However, in this case I do believe that there is a distinction between people who were fighting to support their state, and would have fought just as hard for the Union if their state hadn’t voted to secede, and people fighting for the Confederacy itself.
June 25, 2015 @ 10:26 am
Pretty astounded that this discussion is even happening in 2015. What’s next, a spirited debate about prohibition?
June 25, 2015 @ 10:27 am
Sure, it was about states’ rights. Of course, the entire doctrine of states’ rights was constructed to protect slavery from the rising majority of non-slave states.
They seceded because they feared that Lincoln was going to violate their rights as states’ to maintain the legality of holding human beings as chattel.
When Lee tried to draft black soldiers at the end of the war, the Charleston Mercury was furious and insisted in an editorial that the entire point of seceding was to protect the institution of slavery from the Black Republicans up North, and that if they were going to abandon the principle that black people were subhuman chattel, then the entire War had been for naught.
The fact that white Northerners agreed with Southerners to pretend that the War wasn’t about slavery in the interest of promoting “reconciliation” and “national healing” after the Republicans sold their black supporters up the river so that Rutherford B. Hayes could become president doesn’t change the fact that we have ample evidence, in the form of written testimonials from the time of the War, that South Carolina seceded for no other reason other than to protect their “right” to wring fruit from the sweat of other men’s brows.
So, yeah. Fuck the Traitor Flag and any suggestion that the legacy of the Confederacy is anything other than one of rich men driving their entire society into treason in order to protect their ability to hold other human beings as property.
(ETA: Sorry, Trigger. Didn’t see the first post). The Confederate battle flag shouldn’t be scrubbed out of our history, or out of our music, but it should absolutely be removed from any government buildings.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:06 am
There were people who fought in the Civil War who never owned, and likely never even encountered slaves. They were fighting for their states, their homes, and their families. People who lived in the highland areas of the South, like the Ozarks and Appalachia, had NOTHING to do with slavery, and were simply fighting for their homelands.
That war was about so much more than slavery, and there’s been a lot of revision done to history in order to make it seem like it was simply a war to own slaves.
As for a pompous mouth like you calling Southerners traitors, the Constitution says nothing about secession. In fact, one could argue that Lincoln and the North were actually the traitors when you view things through the inconvenient lens of the Constitution. Not that a regressive Fascist blowhard like you cares about traitors and treason anyway. You’ll back a treasonous traitor 100 percent, if it helps to advance your worldview.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:10 am
See this exactly what I was wanting to avoid. Let’s keep this discussion on point please. And yes, I know Cool Lester started it.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:19 am
I was really hoping to avoid it too Trig. Seriously.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:21 am
Sorry about that. Like I said above, I didn’t see the first comment, and as someone with a degree in American history from a southern university, I basically have a trigger (heh) whenever I see “states’ rights” listed as a cause of the Civil War without the clarification that the entire purpose of states’ rights, according to the very people who used the term, was to protect slavery.
I’ll pipe down and stop being a dick.
June 25, 2015 @ 3:32 pm
I think, and I typed this up in another comment, that “States Rights” was a large issue, at the heart of it was whether the federal government or the individual states should decide on slavery. I’d never say slavery wasn’t the root cause of it, but we see the same thing with “marriage equality” today, whether the states or the federal government should make the decision.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:18 am
Oh, there were absolutely southerners fighting for their homelands. There was an entire section of Virginia, in the Appalachians, that didn’t care about slavery at all! It was called “West Virginia,” and they literally seceded from the Commonwealth of Virginia because they had no interest in dying for the right of rich men to own slaves.
The people fighting for the Confederacy, though? It was entirely about slavery, and they knew it. Their government whipped them up into a frenzy with the exact same words that Dylann Roof used when talking to the woman he let live. A large component of the yeoman’s self-worth rested upon the fact that he was the master of his household, and owned his land, as opposed to being a slave.
Also, if by “revision” you mean “actually looking at what the people who started the war and the ones who fought in the war said it was about,” then you’re 100% right that a lot of revision was done! That’s why we know that it was entirely about slavery, because literally everyone involved in secession says that it’s unambiguously about slavery, in their own words.
June 25, 2015 @ 3:42 pm
Sort of true. The whole formation of West Virginia in itself was a scandal. Fewer than 10% of those counties’ population had a clue what was happening
June 26, 2015 @ 2:52 am
Definitely. But, of course, the secession vote in Georgia was almost certainly rigged as well.
June 25, 2015 @ 6:13 pm
I agree with you somewhat Clint, but if secession were allowed there wouldn’t be even 2 states that would be united. And with that none of the states would still be free.
June 26, 2015 @ 5:20 am
Yeah, and I think Lincoln put it well when he explained that any democracy in which a member state could leave because they lost an election is destined to fail.
June 25, 2015 @ 5:28 pm
At the time before the Civil War the abolitionist movement became very strong. The South became nervous and therefore wanted their independence from the north. Lincoln’s motivation for going to war was to keep the Union together.. The south went to war because they wanted to hold on to their slaves. Lincoln was willing to tolerate slavery for the sake of peace. However once his hands was tied, he had no choice but to go to war. He and the party he belongs to was generally uncomfortable with slavery, so freeing the slaves became his spoils of war.
June 26, 2015 @ 2:53 am
Yup, although I’d argue that it was more anti-slavery than Abolition. Only “crazy people” like Garrison and the Grimkes believed in abolition, haha.
June 25, 2015 @ 10:31 am
Quote from Gary Rossington in 2012 (the lone surviving original member of Lynyrd Skynyrd) on why they stopped using the flag at their shows. “Through the years, people like the KKK and skinheads kinda kidnapped the Dixie or Southern flag from its tradition and the heritage of the soldiers, that’s what it was about. We didn’t want that to go to our fans or show the image like we agreed with any of the race stuff or any of the bad things.”
June 25, 2015 @ 10:42 am
Yes, but then they reversed that decision and brought it back. Haven’t seen if they’ve made any decision tied to the Charleston shooting. Here’s an article posted just a couple of hours ago.
http://www.nola.com/music/index.ssf/2015/06/even_lynyrd_skynyrd_wanted_to.html
June 25, 2015 @ 10:57 am
To be fair, I don’t think the band has ever really cared either way. They just want to play music for a living. If waving the flag achieves that, then that’s what they’ll do. If putting it away achieves that, then they’ll put it away. I would imagine they are more concerned with house payments and sending their kids to college then the social issues of the day.
June 25, 2015 @ 10:37 am
I am deeply concerned that this will cause a serious backlash against people that harmlessly display the Confederate flag or merchandise emblazoned with it. Oh, you have a Confederate flag license plate on the front of your pickup? You must be a virulent, hate-filled racist psychopath just waiting to blow some people away. What about artists that use this in their merchandise? Is Hank 3 going to change the titles of his albums “Damn Right, Rebel Proud” and “Rebel Within”? Revise that cover on “Rebel Within” since it brandishes a version of the Confederate flag? That’s just scratching the surface. Ultimately, we are stepping into restricting free speech. I’m still confused how we can cheer on for the right to stomp all over and burn the American flag but now we are going to label everybody outlaw racist scumbags that own some form of the Confederate flag. I’m just worried about what is happening to America today.
June 25, 2015 @ 10:43 am
How is celebrating committing treason in order to defend slavery by flying the Stars and Bars any different from burning and pissing on the Stars and Stripes?
Obviously, both should be permitted, as should songs that show the perspective of each side. There’s a reason freedom of expression is the first thing the Founding Fathers added to the constitution.
June 25, 2015 @ 10:56 am
Obviously Lester from your previous post you are very passionate about this topic. I don’t know if you took my sentiment wrongly. What I am saying and what you are saying are pretty much the same I believe. If people can burn the old Stars and Stripes as an expression of free speech, then why can’t they wear the Rebel Flag or fly it as free speech? And hey, if they want to burn it too, go for it. I think, as you expressed, the 1st Amendment is the FIRST for a reason.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:08 am
Ah, no worries. I haven’t seen anything talking about how private citizens shouldn’t be able to fly whatever flag they choose (beyond the Supreme Court saying that Texas isn’t obligated to print whatever license plates a constituent requests), just that the battle flag shouldn’t be flown by the government.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:10 am
It seems pretty logical to me that the only flags that should fly over a state capital are Old Glory and the state flag.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:24 am
Yup. The only place former state flags of all types have on public ground is in museum display cases.
June 25, 2015 @ 2:56 pm
“I haven”™t seen anything talking about how private citizens shouldn”™t be able to fly whatever flag they choose. . .”
Hold on there, hoss. Do you mean on this comments section or just generally? (If you mean just on this site’s comments section, then ignore the below and carry on). If you mean generally, then either you’re not paying attention or you’re being disingenuous. There’s been a very clear knee jerk reaction over the last 48 hours by our society as a whole to eradicate the flag from existence, along with other historical reminders of the Confederacy. Removing it from government grounds is only a small part of the discussion, albeit maybe the most public part.
And what academia says about a subject is not gospel truth as they’d like us to believe. Contemporary academia write from a certain (liberal) perspective and agenda. And because I get the feeling you like to flaunt your education, I also have degrees in American History and Philosophy from a southern university and a law degree. And that doesn’t make me a damn bit better than anybody else. I only bring it up so you can’t accuse me of being an uneducated redneck.
I don’t have a problem with the flag being removed from state capitols and the like. But everyone who can’t seem to understand that people like myself like and appreciate the flag for a myriad of reasons other than supporting slavery and oppression are just as ignorant as they accuse us of being.
I guess I’m just a Dinosaur, as Jr. would say. I figure I need a country music reference here, this being a country music site and all.
June 26, 2015 @ 2:56 am
I’m really not “flaunting my education,” and I don’t think it makes me better than anyone else.
I’m just explaining why I have a knee-jerk reaction to anyone pretending that secession was about anything other than the right to hold human beings as chattel. It wasn’t. That’s not up for debate, any more than the Earth being round is.
June 25, 2015 @ 3:53 pm
If I may~ and this is something that sticks in my craw with so-called professional journalists as well as the general public ~ this Confederate battle flag is NOT the Stars and Bars~ the latter is so similar to the Old Glory (blue field with white stars I’m the upper left, two horizontal red bars either side of a white bar), that the battle glflag, a red square (originally) with a blue St. Andrew’s (“X”), cross adorned by white stars, was created to help tell who was who during the smoke and confusion of battle.
I hope this clarifies and edifies~ without adding fuel to whatever fire y’all may be stoking (on either side of the debate).
g
June 26, 2015 @ 2:57 am
Yeah, sorry. Colloquial habit, I guess.
June 25, 2015 @ 10:58 am
This is not meant as a provocative question, so I apologize in advance if it comes out as one, but are you as deeply concerned about the prejudice toward people who harmlessly display their muslim faith? I am genuinely interested.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:07 am
Hey Matt, I don’t take it that way at all. I honestly think we have forgotten that in America, freedom of speech means we are obligated to tolerate people that hold views opposing ours. This may involve. religion, music, abortion, marriage and the list goes on and on. The major problem now is that anybody who opposes something is instantly labeled a hater or a bigot. So, yes I am concerned about people reacting harshly towards an American citizen of Islamic faith and assuming that they are a terrorist as much as I am somebody reacting harshly towards the good ole’ boy with a Rebel Flag license plate and assuming he is a racist. To me it seems we are more divisive than ever. I am a Christian and I am most disgusted with the way my fellow Christians have handled issues relating to Islam and same sex marriage just for starters. In America which is the land of the free why can’t people just worship who/what they want, fly what flag they want, marry who they want, listen to what they want, drive what they want, carry whatever caliber handgun they want, etc. We should adopt that words of that famous philosopher Kacey Musgraves – “Follow your own arrow”.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:15 am
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I think the most difficult thing about America is how big and diverse it is, yet how hard it seems to be for everyone to stop for a minute and try to bridge a cultural divide with someone. As horribly stupid as “Accidental Racist” was as a song, there’s a truth in there that I think too many Northerners ignore. Of course, freedom of a speech also allows me to scream “racist” at someone with a confederate flag on their car, but there’s fortunately a much better likelihood that they grew up being taught about that flag in a way that is a whole lot different than I was, and it would probably move the conversation on in a more constructive way if we did less screaming and more understanding.
June 25, 2015 @ 8:31 pm
Randy,
Hank3 has some very interesting points about the Confederate flag. Many of the Confederate flag emblems he uses are in black and white (or black and light grey, like on “Rebel Within”). The reason he does that if I understand correctly is to remove any potential race quotient from the flag. As he says, it’s a black man that taught Hank Williams how to play guitar. It’s a really interesting perspective on the flag debate.
June 25, 2015 @ 10:44 am
Haven’t checked–has the band Confederate Railroad weighed in? (I was under the impression that the band is still active, albeit having passed their peak.)
I wonder what will happen to Civil War re-enactments?
June 25, 2015 @ 10:55 am
I was wondering the same thing. I have an uncle who is in an artillery group of Civil War re-enactors. Sometimes he’s Union, sometimes he’s Confederate.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:06 am
The north will let the south win every other time to make it more fair.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:25 am
Hahaha, McClellan reenactors will replace Grant ones across the nation!
June 25, 2015 @ 10:53 am
I have a bunch of rambling points I want to make on this issue, so hopefully I can put them together succinctly.
– When the Charleston tragedy happened and the initial reaction was a push to ban the Confederate flag – I immediately felt that this was a distracting argument at best, disingenuous at worst. Not because I think the Confederate flag should be flown at statehouses or I support the Confederacy, but because it turned the debate from one that we needed to have about racism, violence & guns on a national scale into one that was inevitably going to write this tragedy off as a “Southern thing” and attempt blame it on Southern culture, as if racism doesn’t exist in other parts of the country (and I’d argue is often even more prevalent in the North).
– In the 60s and 70s, Confederate flags were often used as a signifier of rebellion by many aligned with the left and even some African Americans were promoting it ( http://reason.com/blog/2015/06/24/when-anti-racists-adopted-the-confederat ) – by the late 70s it was so ubiquitous that no one really batted an eyelash when it appeared on “Dukes of Hazard” and an entire generation of kids (myself included) were displaying a CBF on our clothes, toys, sheets, etc. Surely many of these children did this while listening to Michael Jackson & Prince & idolizing Michael Jordan, Reggie Jackson, etc. and didn’t grow up to be racists. At the same time, the racist implications hadn’t exactly disappeared either, MCA Records coerced Lynyrd Skynyrd into flying the flag as a marketing gimmick over Ronnie Van Zant’s objections.
– Today, when you see a Confederate flag flying in the North however, it usually means only one thing: the person flying it is a racist. Times change and so does the resonance of certain symbols & for a significant enough portion of the population, it’s offensive and its time to let it go.
– “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” came up on shuffle for me yesterday and many of the same thoughts that Trigger outlines above came to me as well (“where does this end?”). Heck, as it was pointed out Joan Baez made the song popular and no one would accuse her of being a Confederate sympathizer. Taking this flag down or making broad-based attacks on Southern culture will not do one thing to prevent tragedies like Charleston from happening, but it will reinforce negative stereotypes that are already prevalent in this country against a region that has contributed more to American culture than anywhere else.
June 25, 2015 @ 10:55 am
Just to be clear, the KKK and other groups did not co-opt the flag for their own racist goals, people in the South co-opted the flag for its own non-racist goals. The idea of state rights divorced from slavery is a concept developed after it was no longer acceptable to approve of white supremacy. People who display the flag without ill intention toward black people are not racist, they are ignorant of history.
I certainly don’t always agree with the politics in country music, but I respect the hell out of it and I would fight to keep it just as strong as I would fight to remove the confederate flag from all government property (except museums, of course).
One huge disagreement with this post, though: the South’s lack of economic recovery after the Civil War is not because of the Civil War, it’s because slavery was abolished. Eliminating the slave economy in one fell swoop destroyed more capital than 10 civil wars ever could.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:27 am
Yup. All of this.
Although it is worth noting that cotton production actually spiked after the initial recovery period, because black people worked far harder as sharecroppers than they ever did as slaves.
The key to success has always been to trick people into thinking that they’re working for themselves, haha.
June 25, 2015 @ 8:35 pm
Matt,
As far as the economic point, I agree, and the only difference between what I said and what you said are degrees of separation. The Civil War ended with the South in very bad economic shape.
Also, this was not a post about the Confederate flag (believe it or not), it was asking the question on how far our concern for Confederate references in culture will go. The flag debate is very divisive, and I appreciate that there are many different perspectives on it.
June 26, 2015 @ 7:48 am
Fair enough, but I think in your effort to remain neutral about the flag debate there was a lot of history that was muddled. There’s a whole lot of complexity to the issue, for sure, but one place where the facts need to be stressed is that the Civil War was about slavery and the Confederate flag was conceived as a symbol of white supremacy. There are far too many people who choose to think otherwise because they want their own feelings about the south to remain oversimplified rather than confront that history. I’m sure this was a tough post to write and I agree with the overarching point (as I usually do here). I just think it’s important to avoid “both sides have their opinion” arguments when things like this are so vital to understanding where America is today.
June 26, 2015 @ 7:59 am
Yeah, exactly.
If you want to celebrate your soldiers’ history, celebrate your state flag, because that’s what the people who didn’t care about slavery were fighting for. The Confederate battle flag is a symbol of a country whose expressed cornerstone was the superiority of the white race.
June 25, 2015 @ 10:56 am
There’s a core dissonance rising up from defenses of the Battle Flag; you say it’s “also” about states’ rights, but what, exactly were those rights? The Civil War was about states’ rights to keep slavery; the resurgence in the flag occurred during another round of “states’ rights” arguments, this time about extending the full protections of the Constitution to black folks. This is like walking into a bar and punching people in the face, then insisting you’re just asserting your right to vigorously stretch your body and saying that the bloody noses you engender are non sequitur. When you talk about States’ Rights, notice *which* rights motivate people to take to the streets. It’s not pretty.
As well, there’s more than a bit of chin-quavering victimhood, here–a look that doesn’t work for whinging liberals that looks especially silly when worn by folks claiming traditional self-reliant philosophies. What exactly are the aspects of Southern culture that have been “ripped out”? Have Yankees outlawed Cheerwine and okra? Banjos and mint juleps? The only thing that’s been curtailed is the ability of Southerners to enslave and discriminate against blacks. While I hail from the midwest (which is really kinda South-lite in a lot of ways) I live in the South, now, and Southern culture is alive and kickin’. Has it changed since 100 years ago? Sure, but so has Northern culture–we’ve all changed! It’s kinda silly to think that Southern culture would have had a ‘pause’ button on it while everything else is affected by the march of time, if only they were left alone.
And while I won’t deny that poking fun of Southerners is basically a free-fire zone, there are a couple of things that mitigate this. For one, I can tell you that South-effacing stuff like Joe Dirt is not aimed at Northern snobs intent on kicking the li’l guy; I never saw the movie until my Deep Run, NC-born girlfriend subjected me to it, and I cringe when she gets excited about the next one. Similarly, comics like Li’l Abner and TV shows like Hooterville Junction, Green Acres, and Beverly Hillbillies were buoyed by Southern fans. Much like the massive black audience Amos & Andy enjoyed, it’s more complex than just simple exploitation.
Then there’s the fact that Southern culture is second only to Black culture for its impact on the US, and thus the world! Two of the most dominant institutions in American culture, like ’em or lump ’em, are Coca Cola and Rock and Roll–both Southern born and bred.
And really, when we talk about Black culture, we’re talking about Southern culture, right? Black slaves made up almost half of the population of the Deep South before the civil war, and Black culture is inextricably bound up with the South. So how can you claim that the rebel flag is a symbol of Southern culture, when it leaves out half of the people it claims to represent?
No, the flag represents only one segment of Southerners, and it’s explicitly tied to support for institutionalized discrimination. To hear some folks tell it, the South wouldn’t really be the South without it, but that portrays a Southern culture that’s a lot less robust than it really is.
Hospitality, courtesy, good food, great music, laid-back paces, Spanish moss and boiled peanuts–ain’t none of that under attack, and that’s a Southern culture to celebrate and preserve.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:30 am
Yeah, I’d even say that the post-bellum mixing of black and Southern culture is what led to rock and roll (because, let’s be real, Elvis was standing on the shoulders of giants, and black ones at that, when he broke into the mainstream), jazz, and even country.
June 25, 2015 @ 2:46 pm
I know I’m being nitpicky here, but I would re-phrase your first sentence as “black and *white* Southern culture”.
Southern blacks are every bit as Southern as whites from the region.
June 26, 2015 @ 2:58 am
Ah, you’re totally right.
June 25, 2015 @ 4:28 pm
Holmes – the best post I’ve read today or this week – anywhere – on this subject. Right on and my hat’s off to you!
June 25, 2015 @ 12:35 pm
Holmes, your post was thoughtful, honest, and well written. Thanks for setting things straight. And Cool Lester Smooth you are 100% right.
June 25, 2015 @ 8:40 pm
Holmes,
I agree that most of Southern lampooning is targeted, if not even manufactured by Southerners themselves. Look at CMT and shows like “Party Down South” (though the producers of that are from New Jersey). But none of that still makes it right.
As for the States rights thing, I didn’t broach that subject as a whole, I simply made a point that if you are going to lobby for states rights, then you should let specific localities and states decide what to do with their Confederate emblems.
I really had no desire to get in a Confederate flag debate here, and stated as much. My concern is how the debate may interface with music, and unfortunately that was lost to most. I would have really enjoyed more salient points on that.
Otherwise, I do appreciate your points and perspective.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:03 am
This is one of my favorite songs by the Band. I always did think it sort of odd that it was written by a Canadian (although sung with admirable passion by Arkansas born Helm). I like it because it’s sentimental, and relate to the lyrics because it presents the war from the perspective of a common Confederate soldier. He was fighting for friends and family – oblivious to the social and economic injustice around him (and that he was on the wrong side of a moral question) – as evidenced by his chopping wood and working the land as a poor farmer. The song, to me, is about the tragic consequences of the war–he lost his brother. The war took his family, and their defeat would forever change them. Virgil is a man who probably never profited one lick from slavery. I can’t wait to hear what other readers think the lyrics meant by the South losing “the very best”. Great post Trigger!
June 25, 2015 @ 12:44 pm
excellent.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:07 am
Whiskey Myers ” I still fly that Southern flag” I love Whiskey Myers, just my 2 cents.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:08 am
PS I read somewhere that Baez recorded her version without the benefit of having the written lyrics, so she attributes the destruction of the rail line to “so much calvary” versus “Stoneman’s calvary”.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:20 am
She also messed up singing Stonewall’s’ instead of Stoneman’s.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:31 am
Yeah, Stonewall was an infantry officer.
Of course, he moved his men so damn quick that he may as well have been a cavalry man, haha.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:47 am
Interesting – I haven’t heard that version where she sings Stonewall’s calvary! Not faulting her, I just think it’s interesting how the music industry has evolved. Sometimes you got the lyrics with liner notes and sometimes, well, you just had to listen to the music and try to guess what they were singing about. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, Blinded by the Light, Rocket Man…
June 25, 2015 @ 12:55 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrsbJZc-qMI
June 25, 2015 @ 1:33 pm
There are a few other deviations that she makes in this version. The muppets? Really? Thanks for sharing.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:24 am
Just because it’s somewhat misleading – the Confederate flag is not flying over the capitol or over some significant government entity – it’s flying over A CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL on state grounds! It just seems absolutely silly to take it off an actual memorial where it would be the one place I’d argue it belongs.
I don’t own and probably never would fly the stars n bars, but I honestly feel people fly it 95% of the time as an expression of southern pride or lifestyle or just plain anti-federal gov’t. We’re letting a few cooks (the racists AND the PC police) dictate this conversation. It’s insane.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:29 am
I don’t want to start a shit storm, but in my heart of hearts I sincerely believe that Levon Helm wrote that song. Robbie Robertson is Canadian. It would be like if Isbell wrote a bad ass song about hockey.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:49 am
I’m sympathetic to that view, myself! Levon Helm is really what drew me to the Band. Nothing against the other fellas.
June 25, 2015 @ 6:57 pm
Robbie says that Levon helped him through the stories he told of his ancestors and what they went through. So yes, Levon was definitely the inspiration, and there’s no question no one else could ever sing it like him. The version from the Last Waltz is the best one I’ve ever heard.
June 25, 2015 @ 8:42 pm
Yes, a subject almost as contentious as the Confederate flag! Robertson vs. Helm.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:35 am
Isn’t that what liberals do….re-write history. I am southern born and bred, thanking God for it, proudly southern and I hate that that kid did what he did. But I’m going to pray this passes over, and people that can speak more eloquently and calmer than me will talk some good common sense and save us southerners from this 2nd civil war. Too bad for us we have transplants in our states that don’t have roots 5 plus generation deep. God bless Dixie.
June 25, 2015 @ 11:52 am
I’m a humble transplant who asks that you be kind to those of us who choose Dixie. Some of us hope to learn and emulate the best traditions of the South. Buy land and pass it to our kids so we someday can claim to be “5 plus generations deep.”
July 18, 2015 @ 1:43 pm
Hi Zach, I do like those that have chosen to come to the South because they see the value of it! I have several friends and also my husband, who are from “up North”. My husband was born in NY, raised in SC, and now farms! I don’t care for the bashers, or those that don’t have “a dog in the fight” so to speak, because they’ll cave in at anything. I’m glad you’re here!
June 25, 2015 @ 12:45 pm
As someone who has felt uncomfortable glimpsing the flag all life long, admittedly, I nonetheless have tried to listen to the viewpoints among proponents of its cultural preservation and heritage because I make a concerted effort to accept, because I wasn’t raised in any of the five states that still feature it in part of their state flags, that there’s a deeper context I’m overlooking.
But to try and avoid going off track, I gather……………….with virtually any symbol that has had longevity………….there is always going to be both a historical, as well as contemporary, context.
And on that note, I feel like we collectively need to take a deep breath and re-evaluate exactly WHY the flag is meaningful in a contemporary context. Has it become more of a de facto Southern pride symbol? Could it perhaps connote Southern superiority? Or does it have less to do with geographic scope and more to do with bloodline?
It does fascinate me when, on one end of the continuum, you have Charlie Daniels featuring that flag throughout his recording career. Then you have Bridget Fonda in “Shag” doing a dance routine with the flag fifteen years ago. Then, of course, you have “Accidental Racist” already hitting a raw nerve and resulting in its ability to chart the Billboard Hot 100 as a non-single.
But as common as the flag is in popular culture, I seldom ever hear WHY it is important or relevant in a contemporary context. I don’t want to be outright dismissive to where I think many just flaunt the flag; where I conclude much like many buy or listen to songs because Bobby Bones tells them too, many just buy and flaunt the flag because Southern rockers tell them too and they look so appeasing in fan-made YouTube videos of country hits. But I have seldom heard any thoughtful commentary as to the contemporary value of the flag and the purpose for sporting it. It’s mostly buzzwords like “freedom” and “The South will rise again!”
*
It just seems like a broader reflection of all this community is pointing out: that music is primarily an excuse to examine culture at large. And much like mainstream country music has been in an identity crisis for years, I can’t help but think Dixie heritage is too.
I read before that there was a time that Daniel Emmett’s “I Wish I Was in Dixie” was a cultural centerpiece of sorts. It emotionally resonated with both those in and out of the Southern states because of the longing reflected in the vocals and lyrics. But eventually the blackface minstrel show means of promoting the song caught up to it and, now, you scarcely hear that song. Which is a shame, because the song on its own has some pretty imagery.
When you listen to a lot of songs about Southern pride today, that emotional ache is still very much intact. It’s empty calories, but the longing still carries through. The problem is, the imagery usually smacks as canned much like a Dallas Davidson-esque laundry list song. The imagery doesn’t go about enriching and illustrating the emotional connection to the region but, rather, forcing a response. I completely get why fried chicken and biscuits will virtually always hit that soft spot, but if they’re merely a vehicle to boast about how the South is super-awesome……………then you might as well have pulled up to the drive-through window at Popeye’s.
It would be great to hear more songs like “Georgia On My Mind”, “Blue Moon of Kentucky” and “Coat Of Many Colors”. Sadly, I think it’s going to require an entire generational shift in popular music to elevate any of these type of songs to universal recognition.
June 25, 2015 @ 7:15 pm
In the tradition of The Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”, this one is the next best Post-Civil-War-song-sung-from-the-point-of-view-of-a-southerner-but-was-not-written-by-a-southerner, from Warren Zevon:
https://youtu.be/3Tj7TSlmL9w
June 26, 2015 @ 12:59 am
http://web.archive.org/web/20050901061019/http://members.aol.com/zevonfan1/private/index.htm
I think you’re going to love the archived article titled “Zevon Is A Rugby Player” that strongly hints at what inspired Zevon to write “Renegade”. =)
June 26, 2015 @ 4:44 am
Ha! Very interesting indeed, and typical of his approach and wit. The flip side of the content of “Renegade” of course, would be his “Play It All Night Long”, which is extremely funny considering Kid Rock’s later bastardization of Warren’s best know song along with Skynyrd’s anthem of Alabama. 🙂
June 25, 2015 @ 12:51 pm
Too late on that whole “let’s not overreact” thing.
June 25, 2015 @ 12:56 pm
I don’t want to discuss the politics of any of this but I thought of something interesting.
While in Hootie and the Blowfish, Darius Rucker wrote the song “Drowning” and it was released as the final single off the 16X-platinum album “Cracked Rear View.” The songs deals with racism and openly questions why South Carolina flies the rebel flag from the Court House walls. Rucker received death threats for writing that song.
Now, 20 years later, Rucker as a country artist has never spoken of the Confederate flag and I’ve not heard him discuss the song “Drowning” publicly. I find it interesting that a man from Charleston who seemed to have an opinion about this is completely silent now and has been silent since going country. Rucker addressed racism on several tracks while in Hootie. Isn’t it odd that he no longer feels the need to share his opinion?
June 25, 2015 @ 1:07 pm
I don’t think it’s odd at all.
He probably remembered what happened to the Dixie Chicks when Natalie Maines got “mouthy,” and decided he doesn’t want to find out what happens to a country singer who gets “uppity.”
June 25, 2015 @ 1:30 pm
I’ve noticed that too.
What I have also noticed is that Darius Rucker generally sets aside one song that’s vaguely about crying for peace on each of his solo albums but avoiding the sort of direct broaching of issues. With “Learn to Live”, it was “If I Had Wings”. With “Charleston, SC 1966” it was “We All Fall Down”. With “True Believers”, it was admittedly a lot more vague, but “Shine” somewhat continues the trend with references to the Civil Rights Movement.
But with “Southern Style”, that has changed too.
*
“Drowning” is one of my favorite Hootie & the Blowfish songs because it has teeth not just to its composition, but to its sound, that you rarely hear in Hootie from a musical standpoint. “Be the One” is the only other song where I’ve felt the band just lets loose entirely and goes on a rampage of sorts with Rucker’s wild delivery and all. But while I’ve always liked the band and don’t think they get nearly as much credit and respect as they deserve (listen to “The Earth Stopped Cold At Dawn”, “Desert Mountain Showdown” and “Bluesy Revolution” and you’ll encounter some true overlooked gems)…………..I do lament they didn’t go for more aggression in their delivery more often. Rucker’s brawny baritone more than holds its own there.
Finally, I’ll note that on Hootie & the Blowfish’s most recent album, “Looking For Lucky”, they do have some songs that address social issues; especially foreign policy. “The Killing Stone” especially stood out.
June 26, 2015 @ 10:01 am
I’m not sure why, but I always interpreted the song “Look Away” from “Cracked Rear View” to be about a black boy dating a white girl and her dad finding out and disapproving. I don’t know if there are any specific lyrics that prove my interpretation, but the song is vague and can be interpreted different ways. Could you see the song interpreted as such or do you find a different meaning in it?
June 25, 2015 @ 12:57 pm
I really can’t imagine we will forget the bloodiest, most horrible chapter in our nation’s history because some states take a flag down. All the cemeteries will still be there. That should be reminder enough.
June 25, 2015 @ 1:15 pm
Exactly. That’s why there’s no justification at all for any state government to be flying that flag on public ground.
June 25, 2015 @ 1:27 pm
The concern is not just with the flag. That is where it began, but at this point nothing is off limits, including some statues in cemeteries and elsewhere which have been specifically targeted for removal. I agree it won’t ever go completely away, but it is part of who we are, and there shouldn’t be an effort to hide it.
June 25, 2015 @ 1:33 pm
A CNN anchor actually brought up the possibility of taking down the Jefferson Memorial in DC because he was a slave holder. This will never end unless reasonable people stand up say ENOUGH.
June 25, 2015 @ 2:05 pm
That’s just silly. Jefferson’s personal history is deeply fucked up, but the man wrote the Declaration of Independence.
I can understand the sentiment of removing memorials to people whose only contribution to our history was committing treason in the name of slavery, even if I disagree with it, but every major country in the “civilized” world had legal slavery during Jefferson’s (and Washinton’s) lifetime, and he tried to free his slaves in his will (he was in too much debt, though, so the wasn’t permitted to do so).
June 25, 2015 @ 2:13 pm
And Apple pulled all apps for Civil War games in which the confederate flag is shown. This is seriously disturbing territory we are entering into here and people really need to think about what is going on here. These things should not be glorified nor should the truth of there meanings be portrayed incorrectly but too often well meaning people are led by another group who are simply interested in control and power.
The speed that these ‘outrage cycles’ work at continues to get quicker and quicker and I would caution people that one of these days they may come for something that you hold dear.
June 25, 2015 @ 2:15 pm
The Martin Niemoller ‘First They Came For…’ quote has never been more timely.
June 25, 2015 @ 2:16 pm
Yeah, that Apple thing is really fucked up. People shouldn’t care about accurate portrayals of stuff. Do they have WW2 games that feature the swastika?
And, yeah
“First they came for the racist assholes, and because I wasn’t a racist asshole, I said nothing.
Then they came for the regular assholes, and they took me.”
June 25, 2015 @ 3:34 pm
The man did release some of his slaves, and honestly he and Dr. Franklin were among the more vocal anti-slavery campaigners, but in order to secede from England, the 13 colonies needed to be unanimous, and the Carolinas refused to sign to Declaration unless they took out the part about abolishing slavery. I think the monument needs to stay, I think the civil war games on Apple need to stay, and I think the flag has a right to be displayed outside of museums; I think this backlash is madness.
June 26, 2015 @ 5:25 am
I agree with you, Fuzzy, but I would say that it isn’t appropriate for a government to display the flag outside of museums.
I firmly believe in a person’s right to fly a bright red flag emblazoned with a swastika on their private property, but the only place it has on governmental property is a museum setting.
June 26, 2015 @ 9:53 am
Does that mean the Washington Monument goes, too?
Do they change the name of DC to just “DC” (or is Columbia too reminiscent of that genocidal maniac Columbus?).
What about cities and counties all across the south? Lee, Davis, Sumpter, Calhoun. Jackson, Gordon… AND Jefferson, Washington…
Then there’re the cities and counties out west named after Reno and Custer and we all know what they did to the Native Americans (and I am Native American myself, though of European descent…)
Like you said, “This will never end unless reasonable people stand up say ENOUGH…”
June 26, 2015 @ 10:05 am
Hell, we have the man responsible for the Trail of Tears (which he allowed in direct violation of a Supreme Court decision) on our $20 bill.
June 25, 2015 @ 6:07 pm
Trigger,
Are you seriously going to allow Sonas’ comment that “all white southerners are racist”, stay up?
Come on man. You know that’s not right. And I see you deleted my response to him.
June 25, 2015 @ 8:45 pm
I’ve deleted numerous comments on this thread, including from Sonas. Problem with deleting some comments is it causes all the comments below to go haywire and makes the matter worse.
June 25, 2015 @ 1:04 pm
How-do? Usually I lurk, but cannot avoid commenting on this for it’s at the very marrow of my reality. I am Kandia Crazy Horse, former longtime southern rock critic for pubs such as the Village Voice & Creative Loafing (ATL, CLT) where I delved for nigh 20 years into this subject from an African/Pamunkey/Scottish/southern belle perspective & spent years on the road that goes on Forever following/socializing with Black Crowes, Gov’t Mule, Derek, Skynyrd & my most beloved Allmans; I even had a column in NC called “Redneck Negress” (so named by Voice critic Greg Tate) & amongst my work was interviewed at length for the recent BBC doc on southern rock “Sweet Home Alabama” — it’s been oft-yanked from youtube, but if you can it’s good insight from the other side of the American Divide about the visions of Duane Allman & Ronnie’n all who I discuss much. It was often isolating & strange (occasionally menacing) to travel so far into the complex heart of southern rock & affiliated jazz and country satellites, but I was early inured to the presence of the Confederate battle flag — to the horror of my Jim Crow-raised parents (mum from Upper South & father from SW Georgia) across the Civil Rights era generation gap. I mostly loved a great deal of it, from getting to hang out with Chank & Red Dog in Macon, to doing the same w/ Charlie Louvin and Levon in Woodstock at this barn. Speaking of Jaime R. Robertson; quiet as it’s kept, many of my Afrohippie gen love all that music/culture — Skyman & Levon were/are the Voice of the South for me & very brave early crossers of racial lines and champions of the African Presence in the Beautiful South, my homeland above all since my Algonquin Ancestors were there long before anybody of the deplorable supremacist ilk cleaving so hard to flags, guns & guilt. & yes, I get mad @ Robbie, but he is a First Nations cousin after all & paved the way for younger artists like me to find a subjective Voice in country/folk & Native Americana, which I perform now as a country & WESTERN singer (tonight @ Hank’s Saloon in Brooklyn). I delve into the “Duality of the Southern Thing” that my ole friends from North Alabama articulated well, on my debut Stampede (’14) & on my forthcoming sequel Canyons for which actually penned a tune called “Stars & Bars”…reckon it must now be rushed out as a single? I’m just saying I doubt brotha & sistah Hootie and Mickey Guyton will address this from within the conditional embrace of Nashville. I have worn much Skynyrd merch gifted me by the band & mgmt and had my own People excoriate me for it, but the Music uplifts us all. I do hope Skynyrd frees themselves from the weight of the Confederate battle flag since it was Al Kooper & MCA brass’ bigoted foist; despite the wages, I’ve always been very proud to be Southern & look forward to seeing (from this most segregated of cities NYC) this dialogue help usher in a new flowering of intelligent but fonky sounds from Music Row, Macon, Muscle Shoals & the mid’lantic. Raising a Cheerwine (found a place in Harlem that ‘ports ’em) to y’all, KCH*
PS: my parents who were the same age as Emmett Till & majority of blackfolk I know of that era actually loathed Amos ‘N Andy but they were so starved for images of themselves onscreen in a segregated society that they made compromises within to still partake
June 26, 2015 @ 4:47 am
Thank you for your insight and sharing your experience with us. I’m dying with envy over here!
June 25, 2015 @ 1:38 pm
When it comes to racism, it’s time to give up on white southerners. They’re a bunch of racist and that’s all they will ever be.
June 25, 2015 @ 2:09 pm
Eh. People are a lot less racist than they used to be. It’s a process, though, and whitewashing our history, whether that’s pretending that secession wasn’t about slavery, or pretending that the South never seceded at all, is destructive to that process.
June 25, 2015 @ 2:22 pm
Pretending that racism is strictly a Southern phenomenon is also destructive and delusional.
Now, isn’t this a cool song?!?
June 25, 2015 @ 2:28 pm
Exactly. The intensity of racism varies much more with time than with region.
The average Northerner in the 1950s was likely more racist than the average small-town white Deep Southerner today. Opinion polls at that time showed that over 90% of white Americans disapproved of interracial marriage.
June 25, 2015 @ 2:31 pm
I still love that Chris Rock interview where he talks about the fallacy of applauding “how far black people have come.”
“White people used to be crazy. Now they’re slightly less crazy. That’s not us ‘progressing,’ it’s white people.”
June 25, 2015 @ 7:25 pm
“The average white northherners in the fifties was likely more racist than the average small town White in the south today”
Meaning what? What r u saying? White southerners racial tolerance today can be compared to those of whites over 60 years ago?
June 25, 2015 @ 10:19 pm
No, I am saying that the country has come so far on racial issues that small-town whites from the Cotton Belt are now less racist than Northern whites were 60 years ago.
June 25, 2015 @ 7:31 pm
The Northerner raised in the 60s and 70s is probably living in the South right now. The death of the cities of the upper Midwest has led to a boon for the South which is currently home to something like 9 out of the top ten fasting growing cities. And it’s not just whites that are heading south it’s also blacks as we are seeing a reversal of the northern migration we saw in the last century.
June 25, 2015 @ 2:25 pm
You do realize what forum you are on, right?
June 25, 2015 @ 2:30 pm
Yes, but fortunately for me I am sitting in the security of my own house, not in a church in the south
June 25, 2015 @ 2:41 pm
As you should know, country music is rooted in the very group of people that you are want to “give up” on. If you really hate white Southerners so deeply, then perhaps SCM is not the right place for you.
June 25, 2015 @ 2:48 pm
PLEEEEEEESE!
June 25, 2015 @ 2:53 pm
I personally agree with you, Eric. Then again, there are white racist blues fans out there, too. They don’t give too much thought about where the music comes from.
June 25, 2015 @ 3:36 pm
Dude, Trigger lives in Texas, Clint lives in Arkansas, I think. I doubt Trig has a remote controlled lock that operates wirelessly across multiple states, just so Clint can come out of a box and say “Trooolll, me troooolll.” Also, you’re disrespectful and immature.
July 22, 2015 @ 4:34 am
If you are want to see what racism is, put a go pro camera on a white kid and send him into a housing project, or on a train, Orin the schoolyard anywhere in NYC or the North East and boy will you see racism.
June 25, 2015 @ 1:44 pm
Can’t we get off of the flag topic and get back to celebrating the awesomeness of this song?!? Or just how kick ass Levon Helm was as a drummer/vocalist?
I miss the days when artists would create albums with themes. I think this song appeared on their second album and was among a collection of songs about people or places of the past. It’s one of the reasons I’m trying to revive my vinyl collection – not because the sound is better – but because I sort of miss the album artwork and listening to a collection of songs together on an album as an experience vs. a playlist.
June 25, 2015 @ 8:50 pm
I really wanted this to be about the music quotient of this topic. I knew it would veer towards the flag, but it really sucks that people are not taking the crux of my commentary seriously. If anything Confederate is eradicated from culture, we’re going to lose some great music, and I’m not sure anyone wants to see that happen, regardless of how they feel about the Confederate flag.
June 25, 2015 @ 1:56 pm
I noticed the last time that I went to a Hank 3 show (in Indiana) that there were a lot of skinheads there. I wondered then, as I do now, if it has to do with Hank’s use of the rebel flag. I don’t believe that 3 is a racist, but it bothers me that he attracts that crowd. It really put me off wanting to go to another of his shows.
June 25, 2015 @ 2:38 pm
As a black man who listens to country music I get a lot of shit about that fact. But one memory stands out for me. My first country album, purchased with an allowance I worked my ass off for, was an Alabama with the flag on the cover. My mother nearly fainted. All month long I had been talking about this album. The woman at the record shop- remember those places- asked if it was a joke gift. But I stood my ground and played that record everyday for two months. That flag means only one thing to be me: it is another aspect of Southern culture that has lots of meaning. The South, for all the disrespect it gets, deserves to be seen as a culture. It has many flaws. I grew up knowing the Emmett Till story in detail, and knowing every word to ” King Of The Road”. My parents always taught me to know when something was racist and when something wasn’t. I have never seen country music embrace that flag or the history behind it, although I know the history behind has influenced every great country singers. Which means in the end that I have been influenced by that a history. And no matter what I am better man for it. And I love ” The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”. I am going to play that song for two months. If a liberal like Joan Baez can sing than it is good enough for everyone!
p.s. This flag controversy is a distraction from the two real problems in this country: how we decide who is dangerous and mentally ill ( and how to deal with those people), and why and how we use guns in this country. Those two issue effect all the shootings we have witnessed this past decade.
June 25, 2015 @ 3:39 pm
The part that really irks me the most, in all of this claptrap, is that there’s a lot of talking…………………..but not a lot of working.
And by work, I’m talking about playing an active part in making this world more livable and humane.
Regardless of one’s ideological leanings, most everyone is completely silent when it comes to the reality that, in parts of the world that are most instrumental to supply chains, our consumer habits tragically feed right into these labor practices. We go on and on about particular symbols apologizing for slavery and social prejudice, yet there are still an estimated 168 million child laborers worldwide: from coal miners in Congo to commercial fishers in Mali to charcoal excavators in Brazil, and so on. And that’s of course not overlooking the still-growing child sex trafficking pandemic. ; __ ;
So one wants to abolish slavery for good? Develop a broader world view, and work! And it begins with making more informed choices as consumers as well as finding ways to involve ourselves in our own communities.
June 25, 2015 @ 3:39 pm
I think the flag, as an integral piece of southern culture, belongs out and in display. I live in cold-enough-to-make-a-snowman-shiver Michigan, and I’d wear a confederate flag belt buckle around if it wasn’t such a hot button issue right now. I also think the backlash is just absurd. What next? Someone smacks a child with a puppet and we backlash against Kermit the Frog? but that’s none of my business.
June 25, 2015 @ 3:41 pm
I almost hate to post this but guess it falls under keeping the discussion about the music. I feel like the continued use of the n word in (mostly rap) songs and conversation may contribute to racism as much as or maybe more than the Confederate flag. Many people think it’s fine to say it but maybe people hearing it every day for years contributes to racism and they don’t realize it.
http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Jay-Z-on-the-N-word-Video
http://www.vibe.com/2015/06/opinion-n-word-confederate-flag/
June 25, 2015 @ 6:37 pm
I think that rapping about dealing drugs as justifiable means to support yourself and/or your family leads to racism more than any words ever could.
June 26, 2015 @ 6:14 am
The point of drug dealing references in hip hop culture isn’t that dealing drugs is morally right.
It’s that if a black man from the inner-city embraces the American dream of pulling oneself up by your own bootstraps and becoming a self-made man, the only path afforded him by the white power structure is through the drug trade.
Hip Hop culture is, in many ways, an attempt to reclaim the masculinity that was robbed from black men during slavery. Just like the blues were, and just like rock and roll was. By the 1980s, financial success had become the measure of manhood, and the drug trade was the only avenue to financial success that many young men perceived in a world where most legal paths were blocked by systemic racism on an institutional level.
Obviously every genre has its FGL’s who make everyone else look bad, but the point of crime stories in hip hop isn’t to glorify it, but to point out how fucked up it is that the toxic culture created by the American power structure drives young black men to believe that dealing drugs is the only way they can provide financial stability for their families, and achieve a sense of self-worth in the American capitalist system.
2Pac, Biggie, Jay and Nas aren’t any more pro-drug trade than Cash and Waylon are pro-murder, or Steve Earle is pro-stalking or arson.
June 26, 2015 @ 7:29 am
It’s a vicious circle. People with no other options revert to crime, people who revert to crime aren’t afforded a chance to reform in our society and they go back to crime… I would consider myself opposed to some of the messages in rap; I can’t stand behind some of the content, but to paint all rap with the same brush is insane, there’s socially responsible rap too.
June 26, 2015 @ 7:47 am
Yeah, children get locked up for non-violent crimes, and then the black community at large is blamed when they come out hardened thugs. It’s insane.
I listen to some ignant-ass hip hop because I enjoy the art of rap, Eazy-E’s flow is insane whether he’s talking about the plight of the urban youth or calling Dr. Dre f-g, and Eminem’s characters say some deeply fucked up shit, but do so beautifully over amazing backing music. But there’s just so much out there that it’s insane to accuse rap of being responsible for social ills and the destruction of morality in the youth.
It’s not all that surprising, though. It happened with jazz; it happened with rock and roll; and it will happen when the next genre of music that arises from Black American culture achieves mainstream success.
June 26, 2015 @ 10:53 am
You’re probably right… I would say that a lot of modern country is just as “bad for our children” as a lot of rap. I mean, I’m all for punishing lawbreakers and instilling a respect for the law into our children, but there’s gotta be a better way to do it.
June 26, 2015 @ 11:21 am
I think the main thing is to fix our insane current prison system, where murderers and rapists share cell blocks with drug addicts. Violent and non-violent offenders need to be held separately.
June 26, 2015 @ 5:31 pm
Your second paragraph is complete horseshit.
June 26, 2015 @ 6:04 pm
What an incisive and insightful response!
I’m not saying that the point they’re making is correct, or that it’s incorrect. I don’t know from personal experience, and seeing as how you apparently think rap music is the root cause of modern American racial issues, you certainly don’t know.
I’m was just explaining to you what the point they’re making is, because you clearly didn’t understand it.
June 26, 2015 @ 6:15 pm
No, I understand that too many people have shit for brains, you condescending prick.
June 27, 2015 @ 5:21 am
So you acknowledge that my second paragraph is entirely accurate, but the beliefs it describes are complete horseshit?
Because that’s not what you said. Words mean what they mean, not what you want them to mean.
For example, saying that hip hop is more responsible for racism than hate speech means “I am either deeply ignorant, or a racist trying to divert the blame for my feelings from my society’s 400 years of institutionalized discrimination onto the victims of that discrimination,” whether that’s what you wanted it to mean or not.
I was just trying to give you the benefit of the doubt 🙂
June 27, 2015 @ 6:25 am
Your second paragraph was complete chickenshit. Excusing criminal behavior for any reason is gonna cause working people to think less of you much more than calling one another “niggas”. Act like your explaining this in a condescending fashion isn’t horse hit all you want… I don’t claim this to be the root cause of racism. The root cause is ignorance. But until blacks and people like yourself stop trying to act like a flag or a word are their biggest obstacles they will not succeed on the whole. 50 years of voting for the most liberal politicians on local and federal levels hasn’t helped. So yeah, I do believe the excuses offered in rap music echoes the sentiments in black neighborhoods and this perpetuates modern day racism. I think voting for a president in record numbers entirely because he was half black also encourages racism. And yes, I am speaking for myself. I have never judged an individual man but the community on the whole is lost. The Rebel Within album cover isn’t the problem.
June 27, 2015 @ 6:50 am
I think voting for a president in record numbers entirely because he was half black also encourages racism.
Al Gore and John Kerry got about 90% of the black vote. Obama did a little better percentage wise. I wonder if that was mainly due to increased black voter turn out. There was a time when a Republican presidential candidate could get up to a third or so of the black vote. Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy put an end to that.
June 27, 2015 @ 7:08 am
Actually, voting for liberal politicians 50 years ago did help.
You know, since that liberal politician and his liberal Congress then proceeded to enforce their right to do things like vote and eat in public places.
It’s one of those crazy things, where they decided to keep voting for people who promised to continue to fight for their civil and economic rights, and not vote for people who did things like eliminate their safety net, while giving speeches about states rights in a place where Civil Rights workers were murdered.
In fact, hip hop, and especially the gangster genre, is in large measure a response towards Reagan’s destruction of the social safety net in the 80s, which removed a metric fuckton of options for poor people from the inner city besides “sell rocks so you can feed your family.”
But yeah, keep bitching about how they should pull themselves up by their bootstraps while doing your best to make sure they don’t have boots.
Lastly, the Traitor Flags flying on state grounds across the South have only been up since the 1960s. They were specifically raised for the purpose of intimidation and inciting racial hatred.
Seriously, spend a couple months educating yourself, and then come back and we can talk.
June 25, 2015 @ 9:04 pm
In music, there is an issue with using it. Often times it’s used as naturally as “Hello” would be if you were greeting somebody, and I think that does contribute to racism, and also making the word have less meaning because people become desensitized to it. Nobody should be called that.
However, I think in the context of the podcast from the second link, it was being used to make a point. If used in context, the word can be used effectively. Yes, it will shock and offend, but if there’s a context behind it, and it’s meant to prove a point instead of being a racist term, then I can see its use. It was used in context to get a point across, not to insult a group.
That’s a problem with rap for me; that word is tossed around so naturally without any context behind it. It’s rarely being used to prove a point. It’s always used as a term to call a friend of the speaker, or the speaker himself or herself. When it’s used like that, we become desensitized and the word loses its meaning. When it’s used with context, it holds more weight to prove a point. If he said “the word” like I am, or something along those lines, it wouldn’t hold as much weight and the point would be less effective.
I’m not intending to say using that word is good; it’s really offensive, and I agree that rap does diminish the meaning of the word. I hope nobody’s getting that I’m saying using the word is ok, because it’s not, it’s offensive if you call someone that. I think that no harm or offense was meant in the second link, and there’s a difference between how its used in the podcast and the way it’s used in rap.
On a separate note, The flag should be moved to a museum, but there’s no need to censor anything and everything confederate. That’s intruding on free speech.
June 26, 2015 @ 5:44 am
The entire point of using it affectionately is to rob the word of its meaning. I have gay friends who call each other the f-word for the same reason.
The use of the n-word in the black community, and especially within hip hop culture after Straight Outta Compton, is a conscious attempt to reclaim the word and destroy its power as an epithet. People, including Public Enemy’s front man Chuck D, are certainly entitled to disagree, with the effort, but the natural use of the word in rap is the point.
June 25, 2015 @ 4:37 pm
found this quote from Robbie Robertson, in wiki
“When I first went down South, I remember that a quite common expression would be, “Well don’t worry, the South’s gonna rise again.” At one point when I heard it I thought it was kind of a funny statement and then I heard it another time and I was really touched by it. I thought, “God, because I keep hearing this, there’s pain here, there is a sadness here.” In Americana land, it’s a kind of a beautiful sadness.”
Performed by The Band, It’s one of the greatest, saddest tunes of the last sixty years.
June 25, 2015 @ 4:38 pm
I’m a 35 year old guy that is from and lives in Atlantic Canada, I have a Confederate Flag, why do I have it? Well growing up in the 80’s in the country, the Confederate Flag was pretty well known mostly from the Dukes Of Hazzard and the General Lee as well as the flag at that time was used by Alabama, I remember receiving a vinyl record of the Alabama album “Roll On”. I’ve always preferred the look of the Confederate Flag over others.
I’ve never considered the flag racist, I’ve always admired the South and relate more to Southerners than anyone else.
Sunday In The South by Shenandoah is one of my favorite songs.
June 25, 2015 @ 4:55 pm
Thankfully although it will be hard to buy a Confederate flag, you can still find lots of Nazi flags and paraphernalia on Google!.
June 25, 2015 @ 5:34 pm
“Fuck that guy. And proponents of the Confederate flag should be angry at him for using it as a symbol of racism more than anyone else.”
This. So much this. Mine is not coming down; I see it as my duty and obligation to serve as an ‘ambassador’ for Southern culture- to get it into folks’ heads that the vast majority of us have nothing in common with that psychopath. If they want to talk to me about it, ask questions, I’ll be happy to entertain- and explain the past and present rationale behind it.
If Confederate flags of different varieties are offensive, surely American flags are just as much so. Note that no slave ship ever flew the Stars and Bars, Stainless Banner, or Blood-Stained Banner. The same cannot be said for the Stars and Stripes. The Confederacy had nothing to do with Indian removal, internment of Japanese, or most any other sin one wishes to pin on the US.
Honestly, with how close this country is seeming to the precipice lately, Southern culture is needed more than ever. It follows closest to the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian principles the states were founded on.
June 25, 2015 @ 10:33 pm
Explain to me how Southern culture follows closest to the Constitution.
June 26, 2015 @ 5:57 am
Eric: The Constitution, as drafted by the founding fathers, existed to guarantee personal freedoms and prevent huge controlling governments. At the time of the Civil War, there were states that cared more about being able to make their own decisions about slavery than about slavery itself. The same thing is mirrored with “Marriage Equality” because states want to make their own decision not have the federal government do it for them, that’s a huge chunk of southern culture and the original basis for the constitution.
June 26, 2015 @ 6:12 am
At the time of the Civil War, there were states that cared more about being able to make their own decisions about slavery than about slavery itself.
I think that is a very specious claim. Here is a fairly exhaustive piece by Ta Nahisi Coates that I think does an excellent job of rebutting like minded arguments.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/what-this-cruel-war-was-over/396482/
June 26, 2015 @ 6:21 am
They only invented the concept of states’ rights in order to protect their right to hold humans as chattel.
They didn’t secede because they thought Lincoln would abolish slavery by fiat. Lincoln wasn’t an abolitionist.
They seceded because he was going to make sure that all future territories would be free, which would hem in the slave states and prevent them from expanding to new territories once they had destroyed their soil, and eventually drive slavery to natural extinction.
Also, secessionists fixed the election in Georgia, and Southern states didn’t allow Lincoln to appear on ballots in the general election. Any suggestion that they were advocating a purer form of democracy is incorrect.
The Confederacy was created because the people in charge liked owning human beings as chattel, and didn’t want anything to come between them and their ability to continue to do so. Or their children’s ability to continue to do so. Or their grandchildren’s ability to continue to do so.
June 26, 2015 @ 6:40 am
The only thing that I would add is that the southern elites were for “their” states rights and less so for the rights of all states. When it suited their purposes, they did not hesitate in using the power of the federal government.
June 26, 2015 @ 6:47 am
Yup. The Dred Scott decision, applauded by the states that would form the Confederacy, is a direct violation of every principle of the state sovereignty they espoused.
Also, like I said below, the reason the Southern half of the Democratic Party split off was because the Northern half wanted to let territories decide for themselves whether or not to permit slavery, while the Southern half demanded that it be imposed by federal fiat.
June 26, 2015 @ 7:30 am
Fair enough.
June 26, 2015 @ 7:55 am
The difference is that the American flag was not conceived for the purpose of committing those atrocities, whereas the sole purpose of the Confederate flag was to declare the superiority of the white race. Note the core point of the famous “Corner Stone” speech:
“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
June 25, 2015 @ 6:32 pm
I really like that idea Trigger. It’s a lot better than listen to country music nowdays. Country music is very popular talking about the south.
June 25, 2015 @ 9:26 pm
It’s so unfortunate, that this comments section devolved into the cyber version of a bunch of snot-nosed, millennial social-warriors, sitting at a $6 per cup coffee shop, talking crap about southerners and giving each other “attaboys” for every bigoted statement they make.
To make the situation even more silly: in between running Southerners down and trying to out lecture each other, they love to talk about how great The South’s music and food are.
“That cornbread is decadent, and it goes great with black-eyed peas.”
“I’ve always considered Hank Williams to be America’s greatest poet.”
“Ah yes, but nobody conveyed the feelings of America’s underbelly quite like Johnny Cash.”
“I’m still amazed that those 2 brilliant men came from a region sooo destitute, and full of ignorance and savagery.”
Despite all of the speculative foolishness and bomb throwing that has been on display here, there ARE a few things we can all agree on.
Racism is evil.
Slavery is evil.
Murdering 9 people is evil.
As long as young leftists continue to obtain their worldview primarily from heavily-skewed academia, there’s not much else we can agree on, as it pertains to this issue….or most issues for that matter. There are just a few things that need to be pointed out here.
For some, the war was about slavery. For others, it was about home and family. There were people in places so remote, that they would’ve had no way of knowing all the grim details of what was going on. This thing was so much more complicated than just slavery. To argue otherwise is just willful ignorance.
The 10th amendment was not written to protect slavery. It was written to prevent tyranny.
To refer to The South as traitors, or to secession as treasonous, is also either willful ignorance, or an attempt to create a false narrative by glossing over the Constitution. States had, and still have a right to secede should they choose to do so; there is no law against it. Lincoln, by choosing to fight the Civil War, was the one breaking the law. Granted, freeing the slaves was a good cause to break the law, but once the southern states seceded, they were no longer under his authority. He was, in fact, invading another country. It’s the same as how we invade other countries now. It may be for a good cause, but it’s illegal.
The Democrat party was the party of slavery. The Democrat party was the party of secession. And the Democrat party was the party of segregation. The Democrat party was also the KKK party. Once the racist, leftist control freaks could no longer control people by force, they began to change their methods for controlling people. They began to employ things like eugenics(abortion), progressive taxation, and welfare, to keep people under control.
The evil racist that murdered those 9 black people, should’ve already been tried, and executed, but instead, the focus is on a flag. The left-wing media finally found the white, racist “gun-nut” that they’ve been searching for, and they’ve used him to make the entire South a scapegoat.
It’s the perfect storm. They can now start trying to erase history, the history they created. It’s the Confederate flag and Southern culture now, but pretty soon it’ll be the American flag.
June 25, 2015 @ 10:27 pm
You love to divert threads off topic, don’t you? Do you realize how ridiculous it is to equate progressive taxation and welfare with slavery? Also, it is useful to note that the Democratic Party has never been a monolith. Certain segments of the party supported segregation, but it was also a Democratic president with a Democratic Congress that passed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
The one region of the country that Barry Goldwater won (and massively so) in 1964 despite Johnson’s national landslide was the Deep South. Why do you think that was the case?
June 25, 2015 @ 10:39 pm
Come on this thread was driven so far off topic hours ago so to accuse Clint of that is really unfair. Plus all of us who comment here have done that including you so to get all bent out of shape now is a little ridiculous.
Also if I remember correctly more Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act than Dems who were still loaded with racists like Fulbright and Al Gore Sr. Plus Eisenhower spent much political capital trying to pass his own Civil Rights Act in the 1950s so don’t pretend that it was only the Democrats on the side of the angels.
June 25, 2015 @ 10:46 pm
Of course the Republicans were overall more pro-civil-rights. However, the point is that the Democratic Party was very diverse on the civil rights issue, containing disproportionate numbers of both the strongest civil rights supporters in the country (most of whom were economic liberals, since banning discrimination by private companies was an important aspect of the Civil Rights Act) and the strongest opponents (namely the Dixiecrats).
June 26, 2015 @ 6:26 am
Who’s pretending that? The issue is that after Johnson alienated the South by forcing the CRA and VRA down their throats, they refused to vote for the Democratic Party anymore, so Nixon saw a perfect opportunity to swoop in and secure their votes for the Republicans, by using their racism to convince them to vote against their intelligent self-interest, so the parties flipped on social issues.
Republicans have always been pro-big business, and Democrats have always been pro-little guy. The demographics of those groups have just changed over the past 150 years or so.
June 26, 2015 @ 6:36 am
Not to mention that the Democrats actually split in the election of 1861 and nominated two candidates, because the secessionist states viewed Stephen Douglas’s compromise position of allowing territories to decide whether or not to have slavery as unacceptable, and wanted a federal mandate declaring slavery legal in every territory, whether the citizens of that territory wanted it or not.
But, uh…secessionists totally cared more about the right for everyone to decide for themselves than about protecting the institution of slavery at all costs!
June 26, 2015 @ 5:54 am
Clint:just some thoughts.
I would like to begin with a quote from Benjamin Franklin: “Rebellion in the first person, OUR rebellion, is always legal. rebellion in the third person, THEIR rebellion, is always illegal.” So the perception on who broke the law is maybe a bit subjective.
Lincoln actually wrote the emancipation proclamation as a political ploy to MAKE the war about slavery so powerful countries, like England and France, who had outlawed the practice, wouldn’t get involved. After all,. he couldn’t very well pass a law on people who thought themselves another country.
June 26, 2015 @ 6:27 am
It was also a military ploy, designed to destroy the South’s labor force while supplementing their own.
All in all, it was a brilliant move.
June 26, 2015 @ 7:33 am
President Lincoln was one of our most brilliant and capable presidents. The man had an excellent record during his lawyer days, and picked up the pieces after several inept presidents failed to prevent the Civil War. Pierce, Buchanan, those guys were clueless, and Lincoln got stuck cleaning up. Lincoln was also quite the wrestler; truly a larger than life figure.
June 26, 2015 @ 7:50 am
It’s between him and Washington, as far as I’m concerned. FDR was more of a product of happy circumstance, and Teddy never had to face a crucible.
June 26, 2015 @ 10:56 am
Teddy Roosevelt was a great man in many ways. One of my favorite sayings of his was “The best thing to do is the right thing, the second best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing to do is nothing.” I don’t believe Teddy would ever sit back and leave something for the next president, he was a “buck stops here” kind of leader. FDR did his best with what he was given, and for all he had on his plate he did commendably, but I would say JFK and Truman rank higher on the list of great presidents that he does.
June 26, 2015 @ 11:18 am
Yeah, Teddy Roosevelt the human being is one of my personal heroes. I just can’t say he’s in the “GOAT” category, if only because he never had to face any truly monumental tests at home or abroad.
Also, T-Jeff is very underrated. His going against every one of his core principles on government in making the Louisiana Purchase, because it was the best thing for the country, is one of my favorite leadership moments in history. A leader doesn’t have the luxury of holding true to his beliefs, because his job is to serve his people, not his conscience.
June 26, 2015 @ 11:18 am
JFK is by far one of the most overrated presidents for a couple of reasons. One, he was only in office for a little under three years for obviously tragic reasons but it is still a fact and secondly the romanticism of the whole Camelot thing has elevated him culturally above the actual results. Just like Lincoln his status is elevated because their tragic deaths allowed them to avoid dealing with the serious issues of the time that may have greatly diminished their stature. In Lincoln’s case it was Reconstruction and for Kennedy it was Vietnam and all the other problems of the sixties which were in there infancies when he was killed.
June 26, 2015 @ 11:32 am
Lincoln’s murder is the only reason Reconstruction was anywhere near as harsh as it was. It basically gave the radical wing of the Republican Party, people like Thaddeus Stevens who had crazy ideas like “black men should be allowed to actually vote” and “former slaves should be compensated for the decades of labor that were stolen from them,” free license to treat the South as they saw fit, without Lincoln’s strong hand on the reigns, because the entire North wanted to punish the South for Lincoln’s murder.
I agree with you on Kennedy, though. I’d even say that LBJ was superior, because as shitty as Vietnam was, at least he didn’t come close to ending the world over a dick waving contest with the Soviets, and he shoved the CRA and VRA through Congress.
June 26, 2015 @ 11:47 am
You may be right about Reconstruction but the thing is we will never know for sure how Lincoln would have adjusted and compromised as his second term went on. I think a pretty good argument can be made that Reconstruction was the single toughest purely domestic issue in this country’s history (excepting the Civil War which is definitionally tougher). Would Lincoln have handled it better than Johnson? Of course but it also might have dirtied his legacy in the process.
June 26, 2015 @ 11:26 am
My main problem with TR is he started the rise of the executive branch as all powerful and it was then used by the truly vile racist Wilson and then FDR to do irreparable harm to the republican form of government we are supposed to be. We’ve now gotten to the point where the actual wording of laws doesn’t matter if the executive doesn’t like them or finds them inconvenient and that process started with TR. An amazingly interesting man though.
June 26, 2015 @ 1:05 pm
Lester: Thomas Jefferson was an incredible money-handler/manager. The dude cleaned up the debt that he inherited; although at the cost of cutting so much of the military that the British sailed up the Chesapeake and razed the Capitol, if it wasn’t for Andrew Jackson the war of 1812 might have been a massacre.
I feel like JFK saved the world by having a bigger dick than the Soviets, in his handling of the missile crisis. WWIII was looming and he stared it down, it really was a moment to be remembered as far as great moments go.
June 26, 2015 @ 6:16 am
Right. And the Republican Party WAS the anti-slavery party. Today, the “party of Lincoln” is strongest among Southern whites. Parties change.
June 26, 2015 @ 6:30 am
So your argument is that the Democrats are using this as an opportunity to destroy their own history of racism, as represented by the flag of the disgusting country, whose sole reason for existence was the perpetuation of the institution of slavery, that the Southern Democratic Party created?
June 26, 2015 @ 8:46 am
Oh, it’s the leftists promoting heavily skewed academia? I suggest you look into how Texas tried to change history books to fit a conservative ideology. They literally attempted to change history.
The Democrat party was the party of slavery, but that can be explained becuase some time ago the parties essentially flopped, specifically with Nixon. In Civil War times, the parties were the opposites of what they are now. Essentially, if Lincoln identified as Republican back then he’d more then likely identify as Democrat now. It’s a gross oversimplification but that’s the core of the issue with that. The left was today’s right.
That said, history shouldn’t be erased, and I don’t agree with the mass censorship of the flag. But if it’s your history that’s being changed, it should be, because you’re misunderstanding how the parties were ideologically compared to now.
June 26, 2015 @ 10:02 am
Eh, I would say that the Republican party has always been on the side of big business.
They’ve just changed their methods of tricking people into voting against their intelligent self-interest, haha.
June 26, 2015 @ 10:13 am
Yeah, I really oversimplified it.
June 26, 2015 @ 7:20 pm
“the parties essentially flopped, specifically with Nixon”
I have read this analysis before, but it completely ignores what I consider as the most special period in American politics, the 1930s to the 1960s, what I like to call the Era of Class Politics.
Basically, American political history since the Civil War can be segmented into three grand eras:
1) 1860s through the 1920s
2) 1930s through the 1960s
3) 1970s through today
In the 1st era, the parties were essentially defined along identity lines. White Southerners and immigrants (especially Catholics) voted overwhelmingly Democrat, whereas native-born white Northern Protestants, along with the blacks who could vote, were overwhelmingly Republican. There were always signs of an emerging class politics, especially with William Jennings Bryan in 1896, but the parties remained primarily identitarian
The Depression and the New Deal permanently destroyed this pattern and ushered in a long period of class-based political lines. During the 1930s, working-class white Northern (and Appalachian coal country) Protestants shifted heavily toward Democrats. Blacks, who were overwhelmingly poor and working-class, shifted more than possibly any other group, going from almost unanimously Republican prior to the Depression to about 2/3 Democrat in the wake of the New Deal. On the other hand, wealthy white Southerners began to shift Republican, resulting in the rise of the GOP in wealthy Southern cities like Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta.
To date, the 2nd era remains the only period in history when blacks and Southern whites have regularly voted for the same party.
The combination of the civil rights movement and the rise of the culture wars led to the splintering of the New Deal coalition and the rise of the current era of politics. The culture wars drove communitarian (i.e. socially conservative, economically liberal) white Democrats toward the Republican side, whereas libertarian white Republicans began moving toward the Democrats. In the case of non-whites and Southern whites, an additional level of identity politics also began playing an important role, a trend that has accelerated drastically in the Obama era. As a result, many right-leaning non-whites are currently voting Democrat, and many left-leaning Southern whites are voting Republican.
The one similarity between the 1st era and the 3rd is that of Democrats as the party of ethnic minority immigrants, and Republicans as the party of the native-born ethnic majority.
June 27, 2015 @ 6:57 pm
Interestingly enough, only for the south, was the war about slavery. It is true that the democratic party supported slavery. So what? At one point in our history, the south was mostly democrats. Today it is quite the opposite. I tell you what has not changed, white southerners trivializing slavery and racism. Thir lack of remorse males me believe that the only thing keeping them in check is the iron fist of the government. Same fist that crushed them in the.civil war, same fist that sent the military to escort a ten year old girl to school. As I said, I think for the sake of our sanity, we should just give up on racist white southerners. Racism is in their blood.
June 26, 2015 @ 5:11 am
What about OCMS carry me back to va? It may be there best song and would hate to see it go. Its a big crowd favorite,
June 26, 2015 @ 7:00 am
Has anyone ever seen Tom Petty’s VHS tape ‘Pack Up The Plantation’/ The best concert footage ever of Petty’s music IMO. I have no doubt Petty would have updated it into DVD by now, except for one little thing. It’s too embarrassing to him. He displays his southern roots prominently on stage by embracing the Confederate flag. It will never see the light of laser disc. It was made at the time Petty recorded ‘Southern Accents’. An album that I still say was his crowning artistic achievement. But, the critics didn’t like it so much. I’ll always wonder if that business about him replacing his white drummer in that documentary and replacing him with the black drummer had to do more about distancing himself from racial critics and less about ‘artistic differences’. He still tries to revisit his past with projects like Mudcrutch every now and then to little success. Go ahead and try to hide your cultural background. Your artistic integrity will suffer for it.
June 26, 2015 @ 11:48 am
Trigger, wondering if you’ve seen this article that came out today. Some interesting history on when and why the Confederate flag became popular in our culture. A little different than what some might’ve expected. Also keeping it musical! Check it out!
http://radio.com/2015/06/26/lynyrd-skynryd-confederate-flag-drive-by-truckers/
June 26, 2015 @ 12:01 pm
Thanks.
June 26, 2015 @ 12:14 pm
That’s actually an awesome piece.
I love DBT.
June 26, 2015 @ 2:30 pm
This line is just wrong: “As many Southerners like to point out, the Civil War was not just about slavery, but about state”™s rights.” Nah. it was about slavery; the only States rights the Confederacy was interested in was the right of States to promote slavery.
This line is exactly right: “… proponents of the Confederate flag should be angry at him [Roof] for using it as a symbol of racism more than anyone else.” Exactly. Southerners have been complicit in this misuse of the Confederate battle flag by not protecting it from desecration by racists. Imagine the outrage if someone burned one in a public place in a southern city; why has there been no outrage BY southerners to the desecration of this flag by racists? Their silence gives us Yankees a sound reason to believe they don’t mind this use. Now their outrage seems a bit disingenuous.
If the association of the Confederate battle flag with racism is some kind of insult to the South, then the South failed to protect this symbol from desecration; they got no one to blame but themselves.
I sympathize with Southerners who see their Battle flag repudiated, but they failed to protect its reputation. If there is any confusion about what that flag ”˜means”™, it’s been caused by Southerners themselves.
sean s.
June 26, 2015 @ 2:54 pm
Sean, this article was not about the Confederate flag. This article was about the concern about Confederate references in country and roots music coming under attack. A few folks have pulled that line out about States Rights to make their prefabricated Confederate flag arguments. I’m not even saying the Civil War was only about States Rights. What I said was, “As many Southerners like to point out,” meaning I was iterating their views, not mine necessarily.
Frankly, I find the arguments about the Confederate flag in this comments section as boring and unhelpful. I was hoping for a more specific discussion about the music.
June 26, 2015 @ 6:20 pm
You are wrong there my friend. Southerners save there outrage for the burning of the American flag. That is the flag we live under now. There are no laws protecting the Confederate flag from fools who think we don’t know who we are. We are Americans just like you. The shame is that we will be put in jail for standing up to the burners of the American flag. Try it and see what happens. That is protected as freedom of speech. There are laws on the books, but they are totally ignored.
June 26, 2015 @ 7:53 pm
I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about here Beau Peep.
June 27, 2015 @ 1:49 pm
Trigger,
I understand your reply, and I understood that your principle concern was about Confederate references in music. However, you did make those two comments which I cited; so you included the Confederate battle flag (CBF) in your article, apparently unintentionally.
You did write “As many Southerners like to point out,”; you write now that you meant only to report their views. That”™s fair enough, but that was not clear in what you wrote. You offered no objection to their sentiment; you put no distance between their views and the point you were trying to make. So it was fair enough for me to infer you thought their arguments at least credible. Hence my objections.
Perhaps it was unintentional on your part to comment on the symbolic valence of the CBF; this would then be an example of a mistake I”™ve been guilty of many times myself: if there”™s something you don”™t want to make your article about, then don”™t say anything about that.
All that said, I doubt there will ever be any formal effort to “ban” Confederate references in music. However if an artist has a right to include such references, others in the music industry and the audience have as great a right to find those references offensive. How that”™s all going to shake out, I don”™t know.
But there is something I DO know: rescuing the reputation of the CBF or Confederate references in music is up to those who think they”™re not racist. This was the point of my comment, and it still applies. As long as Southerners don”™t object to the symbolic use of the CBF by racists, then the rest of us are fully entitled to declare it racist. If Confederate references in music don”™t acknowledge the painful history of the South and what the Confederacy actually stood for, then it is fair to find them objectionable.
sean s.
June 27, 2015 @ 2:44 pm
Yup!
And, of course, objecting to the symbolic use of the CBF by racists means objecting to its display on state grounds, as the flag was only erected there in the 1960s as a means of intimidation against those blacks with the temerity to believe that they deserved the right to vote and eat in the same restaurants as whites.
June 26, 2015 @ 6:32 pm
As far as Southern music is concerned, I often times think of the time that was related about Mickey Newbury performing “The American Trilogy’ live in a small club I believe it was Washington, D. C. The late great singer Odetta was in the audience. Everybody was wondering how she would react to his performance when he had finished. Mickey has been gone for some time now. That shows you how unnerving this lovely song was to the public back then. When he finished, she stood up and applauded vigorously. Times sure have changed.
June 26, 2015 @ 7:51 pm
Yes, I’d forgotten about that story. Another great example. I’m reading it right now in my American Trilogy liner notes again. It may be worth telling.
June 27, 2015 @ 6:24 am
I’ve been reading this thread with a sort of curious bemusement, hailing, as I do, from the other side of the pond. If any of you ever happen to venture over to Europe to a gig you’ll often see the Stars and Bars on show at the venues in Britain, Holland and Germany. It doesn’t carry any racial conotations over here it tends to represent roots music. It’s a hip design, instantly familiar. I can’t see it disappearing any time soon.
June 27, 2015 @ 6:45 am
For me, that flag stands for treason and slavery. It should not be flown above an public grounds. Privately, a person can do what they want, be it flying the thing at home or selling it at a business.. History should not be subverted. The Civil War era was an important part of American history and any attempt to sweep it under the rug will be fought tooth and nail, but that doesn’t mean we should honor traitors or a racist legacy.
June 27, 2015 @ 7:23 am
And what does that have to do with the concern of songs with Confederate references being banished from culture because of concerns of racism?
June 27, 2015 @ 2:56 pm
It has to do with the contradiction between the fact that we have to embrace the existence of the Confederacy while vociferously refuting any attempts to legitimize its cause.
Music that references the CSA, or even music that celebrates the valor of the Southern Soldier, must exist.
Music that celebrates the cause of the CSA, or music pretends that that cause was anything other than the perpetuation of the institution of slavery, must be universally decried for the lying garbage that it is.
It’s a complex issue, full of shades of grey. That differentiates it from any discussion of what the Civil War was about, or of whether the CBF should be displayed on public ground.
June 27, 2015 @ 9:21 pm
Let’s talk about music. Good Trigger!!1
Alabama “Dixieland Delight” and “song of the south” and My home in Alabama
Hank Jr. “If south would’ve won” If heaven a lot like Dixie” and Dixie on my mind
CDB the devile went down to Georgia
Lynard Skynard sweet home Alabama
and other southern songs and Dixie songs
June 29, 2015 @ 2:47 pm
Trigger, I know you wanted the conversation to remain in the orbit of music, but your beginning principle is People First. The conversation around the flag exists because today, in this year 2015, our black brothers and sisters are being murdered. Present tense. Please, everyone, take a moment to really think about that. As noted above, black men and women are not only being killed in the South; it’s happening right now in the liberal haven of NYC. But the cultural symbols of the South we’re talking about are indissociable from this country’s legacy of white supremacy (It was under the aegis of the flag that the Charleston shooter killed his victims.)
And to return to your question of music: if we were to eradicate (–hell, let’s go all hypothetical and say completely banish from public display–) racist symbols, would that really prevent the country artists you promote on this site from writing rich, textured songs about the way working class folk live their daily lives in the U.S. South?
Cool Lester, amen to everything you said.
Trigger, I’m a big fan of your site.
June 30, 2015 @ 6:46 am
The Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” will surely be the go-to song to use as an example on this subject… even if it shouldn’t be. Unfortunate. One of the things that makes this song so great is that it paints such a vivid WITHOUT sympathizing, romanticizing, or supporting (in any way) the Southern narrative for the Civil War. It is told from a Southern perspective without acknowledging, or even attempting open dialogue on, why that is the stance that the narrator took. Only reason is “like my brother before me, I took a rebel stand”. The storytelling uses a very matter-of-fact approach rather than being emotionally charged which helps it stay classy and avoid stepping on or taking sides with any strongly held beliefs. There are plenty of people that play this song like it’s a damn National Anthem of sorts and all of them are foolish for doing so. Those that think it is a song sympathizing with Southern politics of the time are missing the deep desperation within. Every verse touches upon a different desperation which builds and makes each chorus feel like somewhat of a relief, even perhaps joyous (bells are ringing and people are singing), despite knowingly being defeated. This song deserves an extra round of applause for staying classy and avoiding those emotionally charged aspects. I believe these are some of the things that would allow it to hold up in today’s atmosphere. Magnificent songwriting. Something more along the flag and, let’s be honest, a good majority of those that feel the need to have it on display at all times, would be those super racist David Allan Coe songs… those can go ahead and be eradicated and I when they are I will applaud.
Trigger… I see at least one message mentioning that you live in Texas. I know nothing about you or where you are from but, if this is true, how many people do you know that are closet racists? If not actually racist how many people have you been around that will openly throw that “N” word around like it is the punchline to every joke that has ever existed? In my 26 years of life living in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, briefly in Lubbock (a year… & it was even worse there), and Smalltown, Oklahoma I would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to not see the obvious relation between the Confederate flag and unapologetic racists. I’ve hung out with them, I’ve lived with them, they are unavoidable. And it’s not a reckless over-generalization either. That is my experience at least I can’t speak of yours or any other individuals. All I have to go off of is what I have seen, heard, & witnessed with my own two eyes. The only reason I will miss this flag is because it has, on so many occasions, without fail, branded the narrow-minded type of thinking I try to avoid. Without it, avoidance won’t be as simple.
June 30, 2015 @ 8:17 am
Austin,
I undoubtedly recognize that some, if not many use the Confederate flag as a racist symbol. And yes, I have witnessed it myself personally, and I am in no way defending that behavior. Frankly, as someone who doesn’t want to see any bit of anyone’s heritage eradicated, I find it repulsive. But that’s not really the discussion here.
As for “The Night They Dorve Old Dixie Down,” I would respectfully disagree that it does not look sympathetically on the Confederacy. I understand that it was the ideal example for my argument, and maybe that’s a little unfair. But as another commented pointed out. Mikey Newbury’s “American Trilogy” is another excellent example. I just don’t want to see hysteria overstep its bounds where we start calling unassuming music fans racist for liking certain songs, that’s all.
June 30, 2015 @ 10:42 am
I think it looks sympathetically on the people of the South, but not the Confederacy itself.
The men who didn’t particularly feel like fighting for their rich neighbor’s right to own slaves, but were bound by honor or vengeance to do so anyway,
It’s a beautiful encapsulation of the deep pathos that characterizes the Southern people (and is a huge influence on the tone of country music), while never falling into the trap of condoning the country they fought for.