It was predictable that there would be a racist backlash against the agitation to remove the American swastika from the South Carolina capitol grounds and other places, through NTodd I learned about a convoy of those who obviously like its racist messaging backlashing against removing it.
I have always found the question of regional identity and pride to be extremely weird. What's there to be proud about about merely being born and living in some place? New England, the region where I was born and have always lived may have about the least sense of that pride, except for a few old fashioned Yankees, the kind whose families have lived here since they stole it and murdered the previous owners, even as they love to believe those people had high morals. But my people were Irish, who came here to escape the famine imposed on Ireland by its occupiers* and the oppression of those same occupiers. We live here as much as the English-Scot Yankees and have for centuries. And we are hardly the only ones who have a claim to having created any kind of New England identity. Certainly French Canadians, from both Quebec and Arcadia are here, Italians, Greeks, Portuguese, Latinos, people of African descent, many whose parents fled the South or just moved here and, as well, through the Caribbean and other islands people from myriad Asian cultures... the universities here have attracted people from around the world who settled here and have become cultural icons among us. If there were to be any kind of New England identity in which pride was taken, a realistic one would have to include all of the above and more. I wouldn't accept any defined identity for my region that didn't include all of the above. And, there can't be any mistake about it, there are still populations of the native residents who resisted the attempt to destroy them, they are here and anyone who isn't glad of that can go to hell, as far as I'm concerned. Anyone who wouldn't want to include all of the above are about the only people I'd exclude from any "New England Pride" campaign. They're all about nothing to be proud of. I'd certainly include those who moved here from other regions of the country. Several New England states, including mine,have had governors who were from the South, not to mention Senators and other politicians.
I have never understood how anyone could miss that same mix anywhere in the United States, certainly in the South, especially in states with large populations of black people who have been part of the South as long as any of the Scots-Irish and longer than many of them. They built a large part of the infrastructure associated with "Southern heritage" directly or indirectly as so much of it was the product of their ancestors' unpaid labor. And those are the people excluded by the "Southern Pride" effort as mounted by supporters of the Confederate flag want to define it. The present campaign to remove the flag and to promote it is inseparable from the racist murders in a black church, no matter how much that is swept under the rug. To support that flag, at this time can't escape that messaging.
Certainly, in 2015, any realistic effort to mount a real campaign of Southern pride must include everyone who is Southern. That two of those states have governors whose ancestry is from India proves how inadequate the association of Southern identity with white skin and a European heritage is. Southerners have to take over this "Southern Pride" thing and force it into reality. I'd say sew a new flag, one that says "Real Southern Pride" have it represent all of the shades of color of all of the people who comprise the South, including everyone except those who bring shame to it. I wouldn't include anything that related to previous flags. That would be a flag representing something to be proud of, I'd think.
And while we're at it, maybe we should be realistic about the real character of America, across the board. One of my old friends who was something of a world traveler once told me that there was one big difference between traveling in Europe and America, it was that in any one place most of the people in Europe tend to look far more similar than they do anywhere in America. Which may be changing but it is a reality here. TV is a large part of the problem, white producers, white network owners and managers have a racist notion that all of those diverse people in their audience want to see white good guys and people of color in lesser and negative roles. I think that's a lot of the problem as too much TV is watched. Hollywood is hopelessly stuck in an even worse color code. They're about the worst places to find out what America is but it's a good place to find out what it shouldn't be. Our media is, I suspect, a lot more racist than the population is, as a whole. The more of that poison that is taken in, the worse it will get, however. The role that media played in reviving the symbols of hate and promoting the paranoia and hate they represent is significant.
* The British exported food from Ireland during the 1840s famine, something they had not done in the one a century earlier. It is obvious that there was a policy to starve as many Irish people as possible under the Malthusian informed Victorian era. That so many of the Irish who came here forgot how they were treated as they adopted racism and other forms of bigotry is nothing to be proud of.
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