Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

The Red State - Slave State Connection is All Too Real
Blackamericaweb.com ^ | 11-16-04 | Unknown

Posted on 08/13/2007 10:27:22 PM PDT by BnBlFlag

Commentary: The Red State-Slave State Connection is all too Real Commentary: The Red State-Slave State Connection is all too Real Date: Tuesday, November 16, 2004 By:

Last week while I was up at Harvard University meeting with black columnists from around the country, including several of my BlackAmericaWeb.com colleagues, Michael Dawson took me to school with his map that shows the overlap between Republican red states and the old Confederacy and slave-friendly territories. Dawson is a professor of government and Afro-American studies who specializes in the ways that race and politics intersect.

I was sold. His map spoke to the things you can’t help but notice when you live in a red state like Alabama – especially if you’re black.

Things like pickup trucks with gun racks and Confederate flag bumper stickers. White teens wearing the Confederate flag on their T-shirts. Statues memorializing old Confederate leaders like Nathan Bedford Forrest. Commemorations of the Confederate dead by state officials, especially speeches in which they maintain that the Civil War – or, as some of them might say, the War Between the States or the War of Northern Aggression – was fought over state’s rights, not slavery. And predominantly, the people who espouse these things in the red states are white Republicans.

Because Dawson’s map rings so true to me, I expected to hear Alabama’s lone black congressman, Artur Davis of Birmingham, echo his sentiments. “I’m not persuaded by that analysis,” said Davis, a Democrat, during our phone interview last week.

My jaw dropped. Davis is a sharp brother, himself a Harvard grad, who has been dedicated to addressing issues affecting poor blacks in our state. I just knew he’d agree with the map analysis.

Sure, race still influences our politics, Davis explained. However, he believes that cultural conservatism, not race, is the pivotal issue in red states.

“We’ve got to find a way to talk to fiscally and culturally conservative values,” he said. “We have to find a way to move to the center.”

And for Davis, that means that his fellow Democrats and their progressive supporters should move away from advocating for gay marriage, for example. “Americans are opposed to discrimination against homosexuals,” he said. “Where people part company is on the very specific institution of marriage.”

Davis would rather see his party advocate for tolerance of gays. Thurgood Marshall didn’t go to court to argue for lifting the ban on interracial marriage but against separate and unequal schools.

With states erecting gay marriage bans like Christmas trees and a U.S. Supreme Court that is bound to get more conservative in the next four years, Davis wants Democrats and progressives to be pragmatic.

“The black community had to pick and choose its battles,” Davis said. “The gay community will have to do the same.”

Davis’ point of view has merit, though it sounds like the “slow down” argument Dr. King and other civil rights leaders used to hear from black and white leaders advocating caution on civil rights. Still, his analysis of the red state mentality is very accurate and deserves consideration, even though it’s incomplete.

Alabamans just elected a candidate to our state Supreme Court who openly cavorts with rebel flag-waving neo-Confederates. And in 2000, the final vote to remove a ban on interracial marriage from our state constitution – a ban which had been rendered null and void by the U.S. Supreme Court 33 years before – broke down to a shamefully close 60 percent to 40 percent. That’s barely passing in my book, especially since removing it was supposed to be our opportunity to showcase a new Alabama. Maybe we could, if we could ever get rid of the old Alabama.

One of my neighbors, who had barely spoken to me, one day knocked on my door and asked me to help him unload a new couch and love seat from his truck. He’s a young white guy with an ex-military look: close-cut hair, muscular and all tattooed up.

We got the couch off first and struggled to get it through his narrow front door. I could see a giant U.S. flag and an Alabama state flag tacked up on his wall.

That’s nice, I thought. Then I looked to my left and saw his Confederate flag, also on the wall.

What the hell?

Due respect to Congressman Davis, but my neighbor and I are separated by more than cultural conservatism. After seeing that flag on his wall, I didn’t have to ask him about his politics or for whom he was voting. It told me all I needed to know.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: civilwar; democrats; dixie; elections; kkk; klan; klancultists; moralsuperiority; nappyhead; neoconfederate; nword; race; racerelations; races; racial; racism; racist; racists; redstates; slavery; slaves; slavestates; southernheritage; southernhistory
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 281-293 next last
This screed was taken from a post on Southern Heritage News and Views and is a little dated but it shows the extremes some Leftists and some Blacks go when looking at anything Southern. He compares a map of the 2004 Presidential Election and a map of the Pre-WBTS U.S divided up by Slave States, Free States and Teritories and tries to make something out of it.
1 posted on 08/13/2007 10:27:25 PM PDT by BnBlFlag
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: stainlessbanner

Dixie Ping!


2 posted on 08/13/2007 10:29:06 PM PDT by BnBlFlag (Deo Vindice/Semper Fidelis "Ya gotta saddle up your boys; Ya gotta draw a hard line")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BnBlFlag
Ah yes, those confederate states like Ohio, Indiana, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and the Dakotas!

Yeah, I sure see alot of sh-t kickers flying confederate battle flags in Somerset, Hunterdon, Morris, Warren, Sussex, and Monmouth Counties here in New Jersey (all of which voted for Bush in 2004). You could make an argument about Cape May County, which is south of the Mason-Dixon line, but so is Cumberland, which voted for Kerry, and had legally segregated schools into the 1950s.

3 posted on 08/13/2007 10:32:50 PM PDT by Clemenza (Rudy Giuliani, like Pesto and Seattle, belongs in the scrap heap of '90s Culture)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BnBlFlag

Because we know that the most pressing problem affecting the black community is guys displaying Confederate flags.

That inner-city murder rate? It just PALES in comparison to that supremely important Confederate flag issue.


4 posted on 08/13/2007 10:33:45 PM PDT by denydenydeny (Expel the priest and you don't inaugurate the age of reason, you get the witch doctor--Paul Johnson)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BnBlFlag

Red state/slavery == blue state/abortion.


5 posted on 08/13/2007 10:34:17 PM PDT by Lexinom (http://www.gohunter08.com Don't let the press pick our candidates)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Clemenza

Post of the day!


6 posted on 08/13/2007 10:36:44 PM PDT by ECM (Government is a make-work program for lawyers.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: BnBlFlag


7 posted on 08/13/2007 10:37:29 PM PDT by Doe Eyes
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BnBlFlag
Nice try, Lefty.

(What an idiot.)

8 posted on 08/13/2007 10:38:30 PM PDT by onedoug
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BnBlFlag

What a pant-load. Lincoln was a Republican. Byrd was a KKK Democrat. Jim-Crow? Democrats. Come on people. Can’t we just hire Mark Levin to go around and verbally vaporize these twits?


9 posted on 08/13/2007 10:39:25 PM PDT by Hoosier-Daddy ("It does no good to be a super power if you have to worry what the neighbors think." BuffaloJack)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BnBlFlag

The author failed to note (as did his Harvard-educated ‘sharp brother’, apparently) that those red states of the Old South were (D) from the Civil War up until ~20 years ago...


10 posted on 08/13/2007 10:41:22 PM PDT by Ready4Freddy ("Everyone knows there's a difference between Muslims and terrorists. No one knows what it is, tho...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BnBlFlag

The democrat party has been enslaving blacks since the 1820s. It has ALWAYS been the party of slavery, depending on “black field hands” (like Sharpton, Jesses Jackson and the despicable author of this nonsense) to keep the chattel in line.

In contrast the Republican Party, and its principles, have always been there to liberate not only blacks, but all Americans.


11 posted on 08/13/2007 10:42:42 PM PDT by FormerACLUmember (The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Hoosier-Daddy

Wasn’t the DNC the official political party of the Confederate States?

What that map really shows, is that where ever organized crime flourishes, there too is the DNC dominant.


12 posted on 08/13/2007 10:42:44 PM PDT by Grimmy (equivocation is but the first step along the road to capitulation)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: BnBlFlag
Hey, I went up to the black studies conference put on by Black Harvard to meet the brothers from BlackAmericaWeb and talk black politics and maybe do a little black fishing ...

Oops, rambled a little there. Just the way that article read to me. On the other hand, I did learn that Congressman Artur Davis actually has a brain and some sense.

He must be a lonely man in the Congressional Black Caucus.

13 posted on 08/13/2007 10:44:02 PM PDT by TheMole
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BnBlFlag

The reason Northern and Midwestern states eschewed slavery of blacks was that it didn’t work in their farm & factory economies. Had it been advantageous to them, they would have had as many slaves as the South.


14 posted on 08/13/2007 10:47:58 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet (Cuius testiculos habeas, habeas cardia et cerebellum)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Grimmy
The democrats are the party of: Sen. Robert Byrd (a KKK member & recruiter), the KKK itself, the Confederacy, the Copperheads, Japanese internment, welfare giveaways, the Federal Reserve, the Income Tax, losing China to communism, Jim Crow, etc., etc...
15 posted on 08/13/2007 10:51:56 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet (Cuius testiculos habeas, habeas cardia et cerebellum)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: 2ndDivisionVet

Dont forget the greatest and most potentially dangerous 5th column going, the State Department.


16 posted on 08/13/2007 10:57:00 PM PDT by Grimmy (equivocation is but the first step along the road to capitulation)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

This is a hit piece since there was originally slavery in the north as well.


17 posted on 08/13/2007 11:11:37 PM PDT by Republic_of_Secession.
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BnBlFlag

WHY DO BLACK AMERICANS VOTE DEMOCRAT BY 90% EVERY ELECTION? I grew up in the South (Texas) home of Lyndon Baines Johnson. It was the Blue Dog Democrats who kept Segregation alive in the South and fought against Civil Rights. My home county, in Texas, was 80% Democrats who used the “N” word as normal as breathing. It was totally segregated.

It was Republicans, the Party of Lincoln, who worked for Civil Rights for the American Blacks in the 40s, 50s and early 60s. LBJ just gets the credit for getting it passed. How? He collared the Democrat Senators & Congressmen and told them they had to pass it to keep the “nigra” vote. They were dragged, kicking and screaming, into session to vote for it.

As the old Campmeeting Song goes: “I was there when it happened and I guess I oughta know.”


18 posted on 08/13/2007 11:20:50 PM PDT by no dems (Dear God, how long are you going to let Ted Kennedy, Robert Byrd and John Conyers live?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BnBlFlag

The writer didn’t have the guts to sign his slander.


19 posted on 08/13/2007 11:28:42 PM PDT by ozzymandus
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BnBlFlag
60 percent to 40 percent. That’s barely passing in my book

He must be using Louie Farrakhan math - - that's a landslide in my book.

20 posted on 08/13/2007 11:36:31 PM PDT by Salvey (ancest)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 281-293 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson