"African"-American female “flagger” says Confederate flag isn’t about race:“Slavery was a choice”
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http://www.salon.com/2015/06/30/african_american_flagger_says_confederate_flag_isnt_about_race_slavery_was_a_choice/
African-American “flagger” says Confederate flag isn’t about race: “Slavery was a choice”
A member of the group known as “The Virginia Flaggers” — who claim as their “weapon…the Confederate Battle Flag” and their “enemies…those who worship ignorance, historical revisionism and Political Correctness” — declared in a recent interview that despite being black herself, she believes the Confederate battle flag “represents freedom.”
In the interview — which is part of an ongoing documentary project about the meaning of the Confederate battle flag — Karen Cooper claimed that she was raised in the North as a member of the Nation of Islam, but “felt more welcome in the South” where, she said, “the races are more together.”
She said that she was introduced to the “flagger” movement by friends of hers in the Tea Party on Facebook. “Most of the people in the Tea Party had Confederate ancestors,” she added as if most people would be surprised to learn that.
“I know what people think about when they see the battle flag — the KKK, racism, bringing slavery back — so I knew it would be something for people to see a black woman with the battle flag.”
Cooper insisted that she’s not “advocating slavery,” because she isn’t. Moreover, slavery “wasn’t just something that happened in the South, it happened worldwide.”
She added that she believes “slavery was a choice, because of what Patrick Henry said, ‘Give me liberty, or give me death.’” Slaves, she argued — in a serious manner, unlike Eddie Izzard’s famous “Cake or Death?” routine — should have opted for “death.”
Given that she just declared “death” the only viable response to slavery, it is somewhat odd that she then referred to herself as a “slave of the federal government,” saying that “I can’t smoke what I want to smoke, I can’t drink what I want to drink. If I want to put something into my body, it’s my body — not theirs. That’s tyranny!”
And yet, for reasons that Cooper can’t seem to understand, “it’s only Southerners and the battle flag that has all the weight and guilt on it,” and “it’s not right — [the flag] represents freedom, it represents a people that stood up to tyranny, and by me being out there I hope you can see this is not racist.”
Cooper said she wanted to convince people that the Confederate battle flag isn’t about race — and that foregrounding her status as a black flagger is the most effective way to do that.
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? this Graham cracka ? and her opinion
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Your a ? traitor who deserves a cell n Guantanamo. ? you, ? the culture and people who fought and died for that flag.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/30/why-some-black-defenders-of-the-confederate-flag-believe-slavery-was-a-choice/Why this black defender of the Confederate flag says slavery was ‘a choice’
Karen Cooper defends the Confederate flag in the documentary, "Battle Flag." (Battle Flag)
For many Americans, the Confederate battle flag is an unmistakable symbol of slavery and oppression.
But for Karen Cooper, a black woman who was born in New York but later settled in Virginia, the flag embodies something else entirely.
“I actually think that it represents freedom,” the ardent tea party supporter says in a video interview that’s been making the rounds online. “It represents a people who stood up to tyranny.”
Cooper is a member of the Virginia Flaggers, an activist group that rejects the idea that the Confederate flag is a symbol of racism and hate.
The group was formed in response to a decision to remove Confederate flags from public view in several locations, including a Confederate memorial chapel on the grounds of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond and city light poles in Lexington, The Washington Post’s Susan Svrluga reported last year.
Like the rest of the Flaggers’ 40 or so members, Cooper feels pride and reverence each time she displays the flag in public.
If the flag was a racist symbol, Cooper argues in the video, she wouldn’t be an accepted member of a group composed primarily of white Southerners.
“I’m not advocating slavery or think that, you know, it was right,” she says. “It wasn’t, and none of my friends think it was. It was just something that happened. It didn’t just happen in the South, it happened worldwide.”
Besides, she adds, slavery is “a choice.”
“I say that because of what Patrick Henry said: ‘Give me liberty or give me death.’ To me, if we had went back to that kind of slavery, no I couldn’t do it. Give me death.”
The video is part of “Battle Flag,” which is billed as “an ongoing documentary about the place and meaning of the Confederate battle flag, 150 years after the Civil War.”
Confederate memorials and the flags that often accompany them have faced renewed scrutiny following the racially motivated shooting in Charleston, S.C., that left nine parishioners dead in a historic African American church this month. Across the country, statues memorializing Confederate dead have been mocked and defaced as pressure mounts to remove what many view as enduring symbols of white supremacy.
While black Americans are assumed to be uniformly opposed to the Confederate flag flying over government buildings, polls of Southern blacks suggest opinions about the flag are more complicated.
A 2014 Winthrop University poll found that 61 percent of black South Carolina residents said the flag should no longer fly on the state house grounds, The Post’s Aaron Blake reported last week. And yet, 27 percent of black South Carolinians said it should stay — suggesting that the flag’s meaning remains a source of some debate.
Byron Thomas, an African American student at the University of South Carolina, understands why people hate the Confederate flag, but he told CNN that he doesn’t feel like the symbol is racially offensive to him, even after alleged Charleston shooter Dylann Roof was photographed posing with the flag.
“Dylann decided to use his Confederate flag for racism,” he said. “My Confederate flag that I own I do not use for racism.”
Thomas said he hung the flag in his dorm room at the University of South Carolina Beaufort to honor an ancestor who was a cook for a South Carolina regiment during the Civil War. When the university protested, Thomas fought back and eventually won.
Like other black defenders of the Confederate flag, Thomas argues that the symbol was stolen by hate groups, leading to its banishment from many public settings. Taking down the flag, he argues, is the same as letting the racists win.
“I’m entitled to my beliefs and how I choose to use a symbol,” he wrote last week in an opinion piece for The Post. My Confederate flag isn’t racist; after all, I am black. I’m also an American who strongly believes in the constitutional right to free speech.”
Courtney Daniels — a black Birmingham, Ala., native and Marine — argues that the Confederate flag and its “gorgeous colors” were hijacked by “a few cowards in bedsheets,” obscuring its rich history.
“I revere it as a son of the South in a way that would confuse those on the outside looking in, who by the way are not entitled to commentary on which flag waves in our humid Southern breeze,” he wrote in the Birmingham News opinion pages last week.
Daniels noted that he didn’t always support the flag. He grew up believing that the flag was a symbol a racism until he started researching Civil War history and eventually concluded that he had “foolishly labeled every white person sporting the flag as a racist.” It is not the South, but northern cities like Philadelphia and New York, he argues, in which black Americans are defined by their skin tone.
“In the South, we mingle,” he writes. “We play. We do like Willie Mays and ‘say hey’ no matter the color of the person sitting on the porch. I walk into my local grocery with my daughter and like the tick of the clock, I know I can count on an endearing ‘Hey baby doll, you need some help?’ from the attendant whose skin heavily contrasts mine.”
In Asheville, N.C., last week, hours after “Black Lives Matter” graffiti appeared on a monument commemorating the state’s Civil War governor Zebulon Vance, an African American man stood nearby with a Confederate flag, defending it to anybody who would listen, according to NBC affiliate WYFF.
It was H.K. Edgerton, described by the station as “one of few African-American members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.” Fox affiliate WGHP said Edgerton is a former NAACP chapter president who “is known for his love of the Confederate flag and protesting in favor of it.”
“Black folks earned a place of honor and dignity with this flag; black folks and white folks in southland America are family,” Edgerton told WYFF. “This is our flag. This was my message when I walked to Texas; that was my message when I walked to the White House. And it’s my message still.”
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She's from NY
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Just a confused black woman
Nothing to see here folks. -
Post a pictures of this ?
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? will do whatever they can do be accepted by Whites. ? ? after cave ? , feel like they have to hang around whites, change up their inflection in their voices to fit in, and still are ? in their eyes. I wish she wasn't black. We don't need anymore ? adding to the issues we already face
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? damn. These are the type of ? that make me hate more than whites
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Lol confedrate battle flag wasn;t even risen in most areas of the south until the civil rights movement took off and racist whites wanted to rebel good ol boys
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I don't agree with nothing she said
But that "give me liberty or give me death" ? is too real, I never understood the "go along to get along" slave mentality ? -
I she what she trying to say about the choice the but when she says she feels like a slave she's says she doesn't know how to get freedom from the government. Just let Africans couldn't leave because it was no where to go they were surrounded by white with guns and they had no support to fight back. They same problem we face yesteryear is the same problem we face today. I don't think black people are scare to got to war. We just not dumb to fight a battle that we're not prepared for.
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Billy_Poncho wrote: »She's from NY
NYNY
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she's black...
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This broad just wants acceptance. She was in the Nation of Islam before these shannagans !
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These them special negros Harriet Tubman spoke about when she said "I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves." I thought she was bullshitin but they really have no clue.
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why does ? keep making these ? ?
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No diss, but why even post this stupid ? thoughts on the IC?? We already know its an abundance of ? out here, no need to give them more attention.
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Ajackson17 wrote: »
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Why don't Confederate flaggers celebrate people like Nat Turner and John Brown? Surely their cause was noble and deserved praise
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Billy_Poncho wrote: »Why don't Confederate flaggers celebrate people like Nat Turner and John Brown? Surely their cause was noble and deserved praise
LOL, the racists will have a hard time answering this. -
She from NY, she tryna restore that feeling.
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And she used to be with the Nation Of Islam. SMH The Willie Lynch plan in full effect on her. Just wow.
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It probably speaks volumes of what NOI can do to people. They aren't exactly sweethearts.
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Fox news & other ? related ? should be banned here!!! I'm tired of these muthafuckas speaking on our culture & people like we nothin