Is the confederate flag considered offensive by the majority of America?
So... know your audience, (and in today's world if their is a cell phone around your audience is the world.) Don't piss off people you didn't intend to offend, and you won't spend a bunch of time apologizing for offense you did not intend to offer.
It isn't a matter of capitulation. If someone asks me my opinion, I'm going to give it, no matter how much it offends. But I am situationally aware. In certain parts of Italy, the hand symbol we Americans use for "OK" is a way to tell someone they are an asshole. When in Italy, or around Italians from Italy, I don't flash them the "OK" hand sign. I don't do it because I don't want them to think I'm telling them they are an asshole. If I think they are an asshole, I just tell them.
If some variant of the Confederate Flag makes someone feel that I'm communicating some sort of racial animosity, I don't display a Confederate Flag, because when I dislike someone, it isn't because of their race, ethnicity, religion, etc.
It has nothing to do with allowing someone else to define who I am or what I believe. I consider gentlemanly conduct, along the same lines that if I need to spit while I'm in your house, I'll excuse myself and spit in your toilet or the sink, instead of on the floor or the wall. It isn't capitulation. I still need to spit, but I'll spit in a way that does the least offense.
The first Amendment absolutely guarantees our right to say things that may offend. I just prefer to offend with focus, intent, and purpose. And even if someone's speech is offensive to me personally, I'll defend their right to offend me.
In what’s now known as the “Cornerstone Speech,” Stephens told a Savannah, Ga., crowd in 1861 that “our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas [as those of slavery foes]; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
He went further: the battle over slavery “was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.”
It’s my opinion Confederate flags should only be displayed in museums and pictured in history books. They deserve no place of honor and should be considered symbols of hate. Alexander Stephens made it abundantly clear the Confederacy was established to support white supremacy and the subjugation of people of color. The same sentiments are expressed in the Articles if Secession of many of the Confederate States.
Too bad you can’t handle American History.
Feel free to resort to elementary level name calling as you hide from the truth.
https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/cornerstone-speech/
"Cornerstone" Speech - Teaching American History
Henry Cleveland, Alexander H. Stephens, in Public and Private: With Letters and Speeches, Before, During, and Since the War (Philadelphia, 1886), pp. 717-729.. . . I was remarking that we are passing through one of the greatest revolutions in the annals of the world. Seven States have within the last three months thrown off an old government and formed a new. This revolution has been signally marked, up to this time, by the fact of its having...
I am not a Southerner but I have been stationed in the South enough to understand all the GOOD things that the Stars and Bars symbolize. Like most symbols (i.e., American flag flew over our "Relocation Camps" for Japanese while others stole their left behind property) the message is not 100% wonderful. Recognize that and allow Southerners to retain the best of their heritage. If has been 150 years you know.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/02/politics/confederate-flag-poll-racism-southern-pride/index.html
Poll: Majority sees Confederate flag as Southern pride - CNNPolitics.com
Public opinion on the Confederate flag remains about where it was 15 years ago, with most describing the flag as a symbol of Southern pride.