Richmond isn't my name. It's where I live. This is Confederate central, the capital of the failed CSA.

I'm also a southerner (family here since 1641, although neither rich nor illustrious, just long-term).

PWT. Poor white trash. Not the descendents of the founders of the Confederacy. Not the descendents of the land- and slave-owning class.

Descendents of those whose political and cultural difference from the slaves was miniscule. Poor whites and blacks alike were serfs in the Old South, and they were until 1965.

And you know who you are.

You can't hide behind talk about "heritage". Your heritage isn't heroic. It's phony. Your people didn't start the war. They didn't come up with the justification for it.

They merely died in it. And for what? So you could be 1 step above the slaves? Pathetic.

The South was a one party, white supremacist police state from the 1600s-1965 (thank you, Lyndon Johnson). And the white people who fly that damned flag today were victims of this state as much as the black folks were.

No one in the south whose family may have benefitted from the Confederacy flies that damned flag. Certainly not any newcomers (a/k/a "Yankees" to say nothing of immigrants)who have re-vitalized the South.

When I see that flag on a car or shirt, I think: you've got some nerve. Where do you think you'd be if the South had won the war?

Sipping tea and getting yourself fanned by Ole Joe? Afraid not. You'd be working the damned fields getting a penny a day for your labor with no chance of a happier life.

Under the heel of OTHER white people!

There is NO defense of the open display, let alone the defense, of Confederate symbols. Least of all by the people who make such a fuss about it today.

It's not a sign of honor. It's a sign of deep shame: our people tried to destroy the union in order to keep their big houses and slaves.

Period.

You're proud of that?

Pretty awesome, Richmond.

1. Richmond, VA represent
2. wow -- i wish i could say all of that was on the tip of my tongue and was just waiting to say it, but it wasn't.
   

It has always amazed me how xenophobic and racist poor whites will be to fancy themselves more like their oppressors than the blacks/latinos/natives who actually share a rung on the ladder with them.

I'm pretty sure that Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson disagreed with what most of what you say, and that if you bad mouthed Virginia like that to your face, you wouldn't have a face left to bad mouth it anymore.

Ah. San rears his or her ugly head. Gens. Lee and Jackson would not be waving that flag now, and you know it.

We're beyond the point of asking "What would Gen. Lee do?" partly because we know the answer ("Surrender and tell the troops to go home.") and partly because he's dead.

In the interest of full disclosure, my people have been here almost 400 years. In the same 2 counties the whole time. All of them white, all of the Protestants. None of them owned slaves. None of them owned major property.

All they had to show for their support of the Confederacy were dead husbands, sons, and brothers. They were as poor at the end of the war as they were at the start.

All my immediate relatives are tobacco farmers. The men drive trucks and hunt. The women sew and bake pies. They all vote Republican (at least since 1968). They don't like Hillary Clinton, gay people, or foreigners.

None of them use the N word.

And none of them fly that damned flag.

And you know why? Because they were betrayed not by Yankees but by their own.

That flag stands for one thing: betrayal. Of the union by the slave-owning class and of other whites by the slave-owning class. Slave owners enslaved whites as well as blacks in service to their aristocratic fantasies.

Slave owners started the war, slave owners lost the war, slave owners--not Lincoln, Gen. Grant, not LBJ--destroyed the south.

You got a problem with how the war went down, take it to Gen. Lee and Jeff Davis.

"Gens. Lee and Jackson would not be waving that flag now, and you know it."

You mean they wouldn't support the very flag that guided them into battle?

Wow.

You are a psychopath.

You may be poor white trash, but you have no right to describe the rest as it. Just because you are an ignorant loser does not mean you have the right to condemn the rest of Virginia.

You sir, are disgusting and a disgrace.

next time i'm in Richmond visiting my folks, drinks are on me -- well, for the first hour.

Richmond wrote:

"It's not a sign of honor. It's a sign of deep shame: our people tried to destroy the union in order to keep their big houses and slaves."

Amen.

Plus, we should never forget that thousands of the finest, bravest men of the south fought for the Union. They were mainly black men, but there were also many white patriots. The Civil War tore the south apart. Especially in South Georgia, the black sons of the south defeated the confederates again and again.

We should pay honor to the black loyalist union troops. Lincoln said the war would have been lost without them. They were as much southerners as the whites. Their contribution has been widely overlooked. Small towns in the south should erect statues of the local black union soldiers, alongside the confederates.

The other myth that deserves to be buried is the notion that the "majority" favored succession. That majority included only white men. If black men and women of all races had been allowed to vote -- as they should have been -- they would have voted to stay with the union and end slavery, and the war would have been avoided.

"Especially in South Georgia, the black sons of the south defeated the confederates again and again."

Yeah, they defeated all of those women and children that had those big nasty guns in those houses that were so easily burned to the ground!

Because those women and children definitely wanted to enslave black people even though the vast majority of them never had slaves nor cared about that!

You are a sick individual that needs help.

Sipping tea and getting yourself fanned by Ole Joe? Afraid not. You'd be working the damned fields getting a penny a day for your labor with no chance of a happier life.

Under the heel of OTHER white people!

You can't win an argument with an ignoramus, they drag you down to their level and beat you with experience... and there's your proof.

Born and reared South of the Mason-Dixon Line and a former resident of Richmond myself. Well said, Richmond, well said.

It's probably true that a lot of Confederate flag lovers are working class, but certainly not all. Former Virginia Senator George Allen was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and his racism was surpassed only by his stupidity.

San wrote:

"'Especially in South Georgia, the black sons of the south defeated the confederates again and again.'

Yeah, they defeated all of those women and children that had those big nasty guns in those houses that were so easily burned to the ground!"

You need to learn your history. The black loyalist troops defeated some of the finest white Confederate troops, even though were outnumbered. They did not "defeat" women and children -- they liberated them. They freed their own families in many cases, and brought them over the lines to the land held by by the union army. This helped destroy the southern economy.

As for the white women and children, I agree with Sherman: it was better to burn their houses and bring the war to a quick end than to have it drag on and kill more of their husbands and sons.

Anyway, do you think the Confederate white soldiers never harmed anyone? They killed 400,000 loyal Americans, including tens of thousands of their own southern black brothers. They massacred them at Ft. Pillow and elsewhere.

"Because those women and children definitely wanted to enslave black people even though the vast majority of them never had slaves nor cared about that!"

Most of those women and children survived the war, whereas tens of thousands of died for the Union. They suffered infinitely more than white women ever did, and their cause was just.

"You are a sick individual that needs help."

Why? Because I think we should celebrate the lives and sacrifices of black southern patriots? You seem to see only the suffering of the white southern women and children. What about the black southerners, and the white widows and orphans of the north? Doesn't their suffering count for anything?

I meant to write:

"Most of those women and children survived the war, whereas tens of thousands of BLACK AMERICANS died for the Union. They suffered infinitely more than white women ever did, and their cause was just."

Many black men died as soldiers, and many black women and children suffered in the south too, in many cases much more than the whites did. They liberated themselves, too. They fled across the lines by the hundreds of thousands as "contraband." They followed Sherman's armies at a terrible risk. Some risked their lives as were spies for the Union, at the highest levels of the Confederate government and military.

Black men were the finest and bravest sons of the south, because the country they were fighting for -- the United States -- had not even granted them their freedom when they first took up arms on its behalf.

Black people helped win the war and save the union. They deserve to be remembered just as much as the white southern women and children. They risked their lives just as much as the white people did. And yet when I bring this up, and praise their patriotism, people here say I have a "sick mind." I think this is caused by lingering racism, and by the sense that black people were passive, and played no role in southern history, or the sense that black people's lives and sacrifices didn't matter as much as the white women's troubles. Everyone in the south suffered, but the black southerners suffered for a good cause, and they freed themselves and triumphed. We should remember them, especially on MLK's birthday.

Great post - we don't see too many Confederate flags here in NY - they make me cringe, too.