>  For background, the following appeared in yesterday's FAN'S SPEAK UP
> section of the local newspaper (I hope I am not violating too many
> copyright restrictions)
>
>      This is in regard to the comment made about Winston Cup race
>    tracks displaying the C-confederate flag.  The last time I checked,
>    the Confederate flag was a part of southern heritage to honor the
>    hundreds of thousands of southerners who fought for their country.
>    I do not think that people up north who don't understand things
>    like sacrifice and respect for your ancestry should be making
>    comments like that.
>

        I was born in Tennessee and, for the most part, have lived in the Deep
South (of the US) most of my life. When I was 5, I remember buying
Confederate flags and other "old South" memorabilia, in part because I
watched the _Dukes_of_Hazard_ and liked the "General Lee" {car) with its
prominent Confederate flag emblem. I never thought about the symbols
then, but later, through reading the articles, essays, poetry, and books
of African-American authors, as well as of other minorities in the US, I
began to see a different view, began to empathize and realize that there
was not one proper perspective on history and its sociopolitical
offspring, but that there were varied and often contradictory views and
stories.
        The confederate flag issue points to the potency of symbols, which is
odd, because in the "Similarity of Languages" thread I discuss Jung's
placing of import on the effect symbols can have on people. The flag
itself never killed anyone or enslaved them, but for an entire
population of people it represents genocide and forced, unrewarded
labor. Of course, the North were not the pristine "good guys" in the US
Civil War-era, as they overlooked and condoned policies of indentured
servitude that affected many Northern immigrants. To me, the Confederate
flag, like the US flag, just represents a hollow Statist symbol supposed
to rouse patriotic fervor for the elite minority that dominate and
control us through coercion (the government and the MNCs). The
Confederate flag in particular, though, represents a government that,
had it had triumphed, would have instituted slavery as the norm, and
would have prolonged or cancelled emancipation or respect for the values
of human dignity, freedom, and justice. Given that that is the case, how
could one proudly display it anywhere? (The same case could be made for
the US flag, which flew as the masthead as villages of Native Americans
were decimated, raped, and herded into concentration
camps/reservations).

>
>  My first question, then, is: what do I say to people who think like that?  I do
> not travel in the acedemic or professional ranks and meet
> people like this almost every day.  They are not "bad people'.

        I know what you mean -- ordinary, seemingly-decent folk can suddenly
spring a sexist or racist joke on you that throws you off kilter for a
second. You can say, "Well, I don't mean to sound holier than thou, I
just try to empathize with what people think. There are a lot of things
I take for granted about history that I later find out are really
sensitive subjects for some." I dunno -- this is a tough one...I usually
try to talk as if *I* were the one I was critiquing, and not the other
person. There are probably some hardliners that would say "Confront
those racist f*$%ers every chance you get!" But when seemingly
non-racist people suddenly do something that seems ethnocentric or
xenophobic, it can be hard to confront them. A few times I have tried
direct confrontation at work, but some people take it extremely hard and
feel the need to begin an irrational argument. Anyone else have any
other ideas???


>  My second question concerns a mostly 'white' suburban - rural high
> school I have a small involvement with.  I would like suggestion of
> 'progressive' books to recomend or donate to the library that kids
> would read.

Ray Bradbury -- _Fahrenheit_451_
George Orwell -- _1984_
Peter Kroptokin -- _Mutual_Aid_
Michael Bakunin -- _God_&_the_State_
Jean-Jacques Rousseau -- _Confessions_
Henry David Thoreau -- _Civil_Disobedience_
Herman Hesse -- _Siddhartha_
anything by Jallaluddin Rumi
anything by Mohandas Gandhi
I'd recommend biographies of people like Che Guevara, Nelson Mandela,
Thomas Jefferson, Simon Bolivar, Malcolm X [El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz],
Fred Hampton, Marcus Garvey, WEB DuBois, Nat Turner, etc.
I'm not holding any of these people up as exemplars of what a "good
person" should be; I'm merely suggesting that it is the thoughts of
people such as these that contribute to what I believe to be a
well-balanced ideological diet.
Oh yeah, Marquis de Sade's _120_Days_of_Sodom_...haha just kidding.

> Just because you can win an argument with me only proves that
> you are smarter than I am, not that you are right.

Damn good quote.
Liberty and peace.

                                        --B. Oliver Sheppard
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--
"If it is correct, as I believe it is, that a fundamental element of
human nature is the need for creative work or creative inquiry, for free
creation without the arbitrary limiting effects of coercive
institutions, then of course it will follow that a decent society should
maximize the possibilities for this fundamental human characteristic to
be realized. Now, a federated, decentralized system of free associations
incorporating economic as well as social institutions would be what I
refer to as anarcho-syndicalism. And it seems to me that it is the
appropriate form of social organization for an advanced technological
society, in which human beings do not have to be forced into the
position of tools, of cogs in a machine. " -- Prof. Noam Chomsky, MIT