Bizarre Sight of the Day

[forsyth]

Since I've moved to the South, there's occasional guys selling confederate battle flags out of RVs by the side of the road. Georgia only took the Confederate Battle Flag off their state flag a few years ago, after all.

The other week, I noticed one of them had a bunch of Confederate flags, and a flag of the Obama HOPE image. Which made me laugh, since I doubt there's much overlap between the audience for Confederate flags and Obama voters. Maybe they're trying to get into a wider audience. They do have the Confederate flag/pot leaf flags, after all.

Then yesterday, I saw one that took it a step farther. A flag, first half Obama, second half Confederate flag. I almost went back and bought one, just for the sheer bizarreness of it. But I didn't, 'cause I'm broke. I'm trying to figure out the audience for that, besides post-post-post-post ironic hipsters.

Comments

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

Yes, I've heard the argument about the Confederate flag being a symbol of "Southern Heritage!" And the people who honestly believe that have certainly had it VERY whitewashed. It's the flag of states that committed treason and rebelled in defence of an economic system based around slavery.

As I recall about the swastika thing, the good luck swastika had the arms backwards from the Nazi one.

The Iraqi dead matter quite a lot. And it's not something we can fix right away, but at least it's something we're hopefully on the path to fixing now, since Bush is FINALLY gone.

[truwest.livejournal.com]

Actually there are some non-nazi swastikas that have arms going either way -- the arms in a certain direction aren't a guaranteed nazi signal (example here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika)

The exact same visual symbol can mean very different things to different audiences. That's what's so tricky.

The KKK wears white hoods, but so do people in certain traditionalist Christian rites. In some parts of the US, guns are a symbol of rural pride, self-sufficiency and the frontier tradition; in other areas, guns are a symbol of violence, urban gangs, and "ignorant hicks."

Yeah, I do believe that some symbols become so widely and publicly associated w/ horrible things that they should probably be abandoned -- the confederate flag and the swastika among them. It would be hard to find more negative associations than slavery, or the nazis/final solution etc. If you want something to show your regional pride, find another symbol.

but I've heard people make the opposite argument -- why should somebody have to give up something that's positive in meaning for them, just because some other people don't like it.

Yeah, most of us don't like confederate flags. But a lot of other people don't like goth clothes (I've had people tell me that goth clothes remind them of Columbine, and why would anybody dress that way). Some people think tattoos/piercings are "bad" symbols and they don't like/won't hire people who have them. In some places, wearing a christian cross is seen positively; in other places, negatively (ditto w/ other overt religious symbols) etc.

(and this doesn't even get into the power issues in the larger society -- symbols used by minority groups vs majority groups, economic power imbalances, ethnic differences, class differences etc. around symbols)

So imo it gets tricky when it comes to saying what symbols are unacceptable and to whom and should they be banned.

Anyhoo -- thanks for hosting this discussion on your journal! cool topic