\u201cIdentity\u201d \u2014 that\u2019s the word of the day, isn\u2019t it? \u00a0Jenner identifying as a woman. \u00a0Dolezal as black. \u00a0Lots of people yammering on about their identities, in some manner or another.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, the consensus has very quickly formed that the Confederate flag should be removed from, well, its official spot in South Carolina, for one. \u00a0Did Amazon, ebay, Walmart, etc., likewise make the right call in their announcements that they\u2019d cease selling items with the flag on them, or did they just fear backlash?<\/p>\n
Now, look, I don\u2019t have a dog in this fight. \u00a0I\u2019m not from the South, nor do I have any connection to the South except for having loved Gone With the Wind as a middle-schooler, and a great-great-grandmother who died young and without any more than a mention in the census records, so she\u2019s a dead end in our ancestry research. \u00a0And, of course, I\u2019m not the descendant of slaves, unless you go back a millennium or two. \u00a0It\u2019s also the case that no one has yet invented an offense-o-meter to judge just how honest people are being when they say that the Stars and Bars causes them pain, vs. seeing a good opportunity to further a political cause. \u00a0 From what I can tell, it is appropriate\u00a0to eliminate official recognition of the Stars & Bars, but I don\u2019t\u00a0really have a strong opinion on whether any existence of the flag image should be made wholly taboo.<\/p>\n
But it strikes me that this is as much about Southern identity as anything. \u00a0Yes, the Charleston shooter draped himself in the Confederate flag, and, yes, it\u2019s long been the symbol of segregationists, both in the era of Jim Crow when they were quite open about rejecting integration, and now, when they\u2019re much fewer in number and more hidden. \u00a0And yes, one could say the entire history of the South is similarly tainted by its history of slavery, discrimination, and segregation.<\/p>\n
But \u2014 heck, I grew up watching the Dukes of Hazard; the General Lee was the name of the Duke cousins\u2019 car before I had any idea of the historical significance if its namesake. \u00a0And I know that Southerners, at least many of them, think of themselves as having a special culture, a Southern Identity, and I imagine that, most of the time, they use the flag with the intent of symbolizing not racism but Southernness, not that different from Bavarians flying the Bavarian flag with more enthusiasm than the German flag, and wearing lederhosen and dirndls at Oktoberfest.<\/p>\n
Now maybe the follow-up statement is then \u201cwell, Southernness, in general<\/em>, is tainted by racism.\u201d \u00a0But then what? \u00a0Are Southerners to be forbidden from thinking of there being such a thing as \u201cSouthern culture\u201d with \u201cy\u2019all\u201d and sweet tea and whatever else it is that constitutes it, because of this legacy?<\/p>\n Where I\u2019m going with this I don\u2019t really know, except that everyone\u2019s now so busy talking about how important it is to everyone to Have an Identity, but \u2014 well, anyway, that\u2019s as far as I\u2019m going to take this, lest I get myself into trouble by not really knowing what I\u2019m talking about.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cIdentity\u201d \u2014 that\u2019s the word of the day, isn\u2019t it? \u00a0Jenner identifying as a woman. \u00a0Dolezal as black. \u00a0Lots of people yammering on about their identities, in some manner or another. In the meantime, the consensus has very quickly formed that the Confederate flag should be removed from, well, its official spot in South Carolina, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n