Check history for the answer! It may not be complete, but there is enough examples that we can all draw a fair conclusion.

In other words, you won't actually answer the question with a straightforward yes or no answer. However, history does indeed show us many things...

In Africa, long before the "white man" ever met them, tribes were engaging in slavery, conquering other tribes, and making their prisoners slaves. Long before the "white man" had a chance to do it, African tribes were busy trying to ethnically cleanse their lands. Once the "white man" discovered them, the dominant African tribes had little ethical qualms about selling those they conquered, as well. History shows us that while there was slavery in America for a while, with black slaves working for white owners, that those black slaves themselves came from a history of slavery, of tribal racism. If white Americans are stained by the sins of their ancestors, then by all means, black Americans share in that stain, as they are just as guilty.

So what you are saying in that first sentence is that Racism against another is justified. That we should just accept it because, "It was done to me first."
That is in no way justifiable reason to continue hate for one another. Hate begets hate. It was done, I will sadly agree, but to return it in favor only gives others then their right to claim the same as you have.

Hate needs to stop, and to use the tried old excuse that "It was done to me first" will never allow hate to end. It will only allow it to continue.

Will be glad to play this game with you! Under the skin there is no different be it white men, black men, white women, black women and all the different flavors in the middle. I don’t see this as a skin color thing, I see it as a spiritual thing and what that spirit manifest is what it is. By their fruit you shall know them! I always wash my fruit before I eat it.

If Racism needed someone to justify it, we would have gotten rid of it a long time ago. Hate has more to do with who that person is and it would be more helpful to care enough for the person to help in their healing if they would allow it.

Oh please uris...

People have since the beginning of time been trying to justify why they are racist against another. Using what ever means they can. Be it because they are godless heathens, to they have an undesirable life style.

And Hate has more to do with fear then who the person is. Fear of what is different. You believe in a different god, or your skin is a different color then mine. You are a woman, so you are inferior, to blonds are just dumb.

And yes, I will agree with you that if some one would just step beyound that fear of difference and welcome it, then healing could then take place.

Yes, fear is the one that is in control with most of the things we do that do not honor who we really are. I think that men (human beings) learn a long time ago that fear is the only emotion that can empower one over the other as for some reason no one want to be the same or equal. Everyone like the one up advantage even to their own hurt. I say to their own hurt because they have to become what they are not.

No it is correct. If Lincoln had made a proclamation that the Southern states could keep slavery if they stayed in the Union there would have been no war. There would have been nothing for the South to fight about. The other issues were largely trade issues that would have been settled without all the people from both sides dying. To deny that is either stupidity, naivete , or both

Alright, I think a little history lesson may be in store for every one. Get ready for a long read post.





And finally, Jefferson Davis's speech to Congress;

http://www.knowsouthernhistory.net/...s_farewell.html

Or merely historically accurate. The division between the North and South had been developing for decades prior to Lincoln ever getting elected. Further, Lincoln got elected without a single electoral vote from of ANY Southern state. It was Lincoln's election that caused the secession of the States that would become the Confederacy, but that was because they had no choice. An American President could not be elected being pro-slavery, because of the dominant anti-slavery populations in the North. The South's path had already been determined by the fact that Lincoln didn't receive a single electoral college vote from the South. The South was already uniformly against the North. This means that the South split from the North ideologically well BEFORE they officially seceded, before shots were ever fired at Fort Sumter to start the war. The civil war was inevitable.

Further, considering Lincoln was opposed to slavery, as President, why should he have caved in to the South's demands? To claim that the war never would have occurred if only Lincoln had done this or that is a red-herring argument, and meaningless. No President in his right mind would have caved into the demands of the South. To suggest that Lincoln could have realistically given the South what it wanted to keep the Union together is just ludicrous.

Why?

Because the division between North and South was already clearly established by the time Lincoln ran for President. You had the North, which was developing into an industrialized country, with no need for slavery when factories and machines can do the job, and the South, whose economy was almost exclusively agricultural. Next, you have to consider that the population was growing in the North by a much larger percentage than it was in the South. IE, national politics favored the North, as there were more voters there. Any President would have had to carry the North, not the South, to get elected. This is proved true by the fact Lincoln got elected without ever carrying a single electoral vote from a Southern state.

What that means, of course, is that the President of the United States had to be anti-slavery, because if he wasn't, he wouldn't have the votes to get elected in the first place. Politically, Lincoln favoring the South would have been a death sentence on his administration, and the end to the short lived Republican party, which had only been created 6 years earlier. Giving in to the South's demands simply wasn't going to happen.

speaking of education

II Causes of the Civil War


The chief and immediate cause of the war was slavery. Southern states, including the 11 states that formed the Confederacy, depended on slavery to support their economy. Southerners used slave labor to produce crops, especially cotton. Although slavery was illegal in the Northern states, only a small proportion of Northerners actively opposed it. The main debate between the North and the South on the eve of the war was whether slavery should be permitted in the Western territories recently acquired during the Mexican War (1846-1848), including New Mexico, part of California, and Utah. Opponents of slavery were concerned about its expansion, in part because they did not want to compete against slave labor.

A Economic and Social Factors

By 1860, the North and the South had developed into two very different regions. Divergent social, economic, and political points of view, dating from colonial times, gradually drove the two sections farther and farther apart. Each tried to impose its point of view on the country as a whole. Although compromises had kept the Union together for many years, in 1860 the situation was explosive. The election of Abraham Lincoln as president was viewed by the South as a threat to slavery and ignited the war.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The North was by then firmly established as an industrial society. Labor was needed, but not slave labor. Immigration was encouraged. Immigrants from Europe worked in factories, built the railroads of the North, and settled the West. Very few settled in the South.

The South, resisting industrialization, manufactured little. Almost all manufactured goods had to be imported. Southerners therefore opposed high tariffs, or taxes that were placed on imported goods and increased the price of manufactured articles. The manufacturing economy of the North, on the other hand, demanded high tariffs to protect its own products from cheap foreign competition


As Northern and Southern patterns of living diverged, their political ideas also developed marked differences. The North needed a central government to build an infrastructure of roads and railways, protect its complex trading and financial interests, and control the national currency. The South depended much less on the federal government than did other regions, and Southerners therefore felt no need to strengthen it. In addition, Southern patriots feared that a strong central government might interfere with slavery

With the admission of Alabama in 1819, the Senate became perfectly balanced. However, vast territories in the West and Southwest, acquired through the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican War, would soon be petitioning for statehood. North and South began a long and bitter struggle over whether the territories would enter the Union as free or slave states.

In 1854 Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois introduced a bill to organize the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, thus opening these areas to white settlement. As finally passed, the Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise and provided that settlers in the territories should decide “all questions pertaining to slavery.” This doctrine was known as popular sovereignty. Since Kansas and Nebraska were north of the line established in the Missouri Compromise, the act made possible the extension of the slave system into territory previously considered free soil. Soon, settlers in Kansas were engaged in a bloody battle to decide the slavery issue

During the campaign many Southerners had threatened that their states would secede from the Union if Lincoln was elected because they feared that a Lincoln administration would threaten slavery

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia.../Civil_War.html

Right, but your premise that the war would have been avoided if Lincoln have given in to the South is absurd, because Lincoln would NEVER have done it. You might was well ask the sun to rise at night, or for men to understand women, because those are more likely than Lincoln ever giving in to the South.

The premise is a fact. whether or not Lincoln would have done it is irrelevant. I didn't say Lincoln would have done it. I said IF he had done it there would have been no war. The only thing unnegotiable between the North and South was SLAVERY

Just want to clarify a little bit of that history lesson. The slaves were not willing participants in that narrative and while they were forced to work like animals with no respect, they did not feel like it was okay, they were not happy with the arrangement. What I find so interesting is how they were perceived as work horses, but when it became against the law to abuse then, they became lazy in the eyes of those that were fearful of hard work.

Who would believe that they would be so ungrateful that even to this day they won't accept the confederate flag! Why won't they just forgive and forget and share our history with the great pride that "Mr. I want to educate the poor misguided people", feel so puffed up about. Tell that to the Jews!

The country is united only in theory when it comes to many things. You'll see flags from nearly every other country flying around here. That's saying a whole lot.....

I must say that I have to disagree with much of what has been said here today. First of all, the Confederate flag was not created for racism, it was created to unify the Confederate states who didn't rebel because they were racist but because they didn't like the North's system of government, didn't feel represented (see 1860 election), and because they wanted greater states rights (thats the basis of the Confederacy).

Before the war the North and the South were having a number of political and social conflicts regarding the status of new states and either they should be slave or free states. When Lincoln was elected in 1860 in a very close election he didn't carry one Southern state in a time of unimaginable political termoil. Lets add to the fact that President Buchanan saw this coming and was either hesitant, unwilling, or unable to act.

In fact, to the point of racism, the Union didn't even directly challenge slavery until Lincoln's famous Emancipation Proclamation which he gave in 1863 where he, perhaps unconstitutionally, freed slaves from Confederate states (if they didn't stop rebelling). I might add that this decision was very controversial even in the Northern states.

I'd also like to add that, as much as Lincoln wanted to free slaves, this act was purely political. It gave the Northern states a leg up in the South by taking the core manufacturing base from the South, their slaves. Additionally, the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation (enacted in 1962) allowed African Americans to serve in the Union Army which allowed the Union's ranks to gain something like 600,000 soldiers by the end of the war.

The Confederate flag gets a lot of difference in opinions now days because of it's relation to our civil war and to slavery, however, the core of this flag is not racism but is political (representation and states rights). The Northern states and the Southern states were light and day to one another and conflict was inevitable.

As for the Sons of the Confederate Veterans saying they will build a separate memorial for black Confederate soldiers, I don't think they really even had any. Correct me if I am wrong but the Confederacy, a week before Lee surrendered, did enact something to allow slaves to fight and gain their freedom but it was never really started because the war was over. I do believe that some slaves might have been with their masters but I really don't think too many of them actually fought as soldiers, if they did it was very minimal.

In conclusion, I believe there is much confusion on this whole issue and much of it is created by misinformation and stereotypes. I believe that the Confederate flag should be allowed to hang so long as it is used as a symbol of history and not as a basis for hate. Remember, Florida was a Confederate state, they should have a right to express this history.

It's a tough call... certainly, one has the right to honor one's heritage and fallen heroes. Every soldier, no matter whose "side" they're on, is a hero as far as I am concerned. So say we all? The Confederate flag, however, is also one of those things, like the swastika, that was turned into a symbol of something that stood for hatred and intolerance - something, like other people have mentioned, is largely offensive to the masses. Perhaps the first step should be to get rid of the misconception that the Civil War was fought over slavery...

No. No. No. NO! That type of logic demeans what a true hero/ine is supposed to be, which is a wo/man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his/her brave deeds and noble qualities.

Maybe the problem is that the rebels/radicals have been the ones that have been in power and running this country for most of America’s history. Look at the Bush administration, you can’t convince me that they are not rebels of the worst kind. :eviltongu They seem to be on a payback mission for what happened between the north and the south!:handbag:

I also think that racism was the master plan to keep the people busy while they did their dirt in poor countries around the world, as we the people bankrolled them, giving the rebals of the worst kind the tools to be power players on the world stage.

UrisStar, how can the people in charge be rebels? What is the Bush Administration rebelling against? They are the ones in charge! By definition, the ones in charge can't rebel against themselves...

They have done such a good job that nothing you say against the madness make any sense, making everyone look just as loony as they are. No wonder so many Americans are medicated!:confused:

James, you're right that the Confederate flag does not represent racism to many southerners (those who fly it and those who don't). And your history is correct. However, even if it was a minor issue compared to other states' rights, slavery was part of the Confederacy, and a reason all those states wanted to secede. Now, not all of the slave states seceded, but the states that seceded all allowed slavery, and they all wanted to keep it that way. The Emancipation Proclamation was a political wartime move, you're right, but one of the objectives of the Union was to end slavery. I can't be objective and fair to both sides in retrospect when one supported slavery and one didn't. No matter what else went on.

Back to the flag. It might not mean racism to you (and it might not've at the beginning, but I think that's arguable), but it represents it to someone else. I'm not advocating a nationwide ban on it, but shouldn't how it seems to someone else - that is, that it's very offensive - be reason enough not to fly it?

Well, I think something good came of it, even if it only happened here, on this one (comparatively small) forum: people are talking about the issues that have faced our country, and a -huge- misrepresentation of an extremely important American conflict. Ever since reading "Lies My Teacher Told Me" (sorry, forget the author), I've realized that a lot of things didn't exactly go the way they do in history textbooks. What kenny posted many posts above instantly read like so many grammar and high school texts books, which will differ greatly from the truth.

My whole problem with this isn't exactly with the flag itself. My question would be to the people who wanted to fly the flag: What's the -real- reason you're doing this? Is it just to ruffle feathers, inspire conversation, force people to re-evaluate American history? In the end, though, the history behind the symbol doesn't really matter. In the eyes of the general public who have gone through the American education system, the Confederate flag stands for slavery and the Civil War was about slavery and white supremacy. This is what was drilled into my head, the heads of my classmates, and the heads of countelss others who've gone through the school system.

Not to undermine what you said, but unless the author of that book was present during the time of or experienced first-hand what he/she wrote, then I wouldn't take that as 100% truth either. That's why when people copy and paste stuff they've read into these debates, I'm not usually impressed. I've always heard that "by the mouth of two or more witnesses is a fact established." But I guess I should probably at least try reading the book, huh?

Because there is no point unless it is to send one of those coded message that a certain sect of the population have been doing for generations.