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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
Foreigner here. Why is this automatically offensive?
Isn't there a historical angle to this, and not a racist one?
[/quote]

Some make that argument. I don't buy it. While it might be that some do not intend to use it as a racist/hostile symbol, just imagine how you would feel if you were a descendant of slaves and had to see, in your workplace, the symbol of the secessionists who went to war to maintain slavery. Heck, I am not a descendant of slaves and the Confederate flag makes me uncomfortable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War[/quote]

Wasn't the confederate flag not offensive in the 80s?  I remember it on the car in Dukes of Hazard and it wasn't an issue.  When did it become a symbol of slavery?  (I'm just curious, I'm also a foreigner,moved here as a child)[/quote]
There are two groups who use the confederate flag: those who use it as a symbol of southern pride, and those who use it as a symbol of white supremacy. Back in the '80s, it was a symbol of southern pride. The meanings have blurred considerably since then. This came to a head last year when Dylann Roof posted pictures of himself draped in a confederate flag and then walked into a church and shot nine African Americans during a prayer service. Now, it is very difficult to display that flag and declare that it's only southern pride. Now, it's racist. [/quote]

Can confirm, from the south. There was always some racism associated with the confederate flag in the 80s and before, but not everyone who displayed it was racist and it wasn't such as big a deal. (For instance,[b] incorporating the confederate flag into the state flag of Georgia in the 50s in reaction to desegregation, definitely racist.[/b]) Slowly, the "preservation" and display of the flag has been appropriated completely by racists and become a completely racist symbol to most. A lot of older southern people don't really understand or want to.

Not sure what HR can do about it, unless there are already rules on the books. Also depends on what everyone else in his are also has displayed in their cubicals. [/quote]

Not only is it the flag of treason in defense of slavery, but it's resurgence in the 50's was specifically in protest of school desegregation.

If you look at what actual Confederates said about their flag, there is no question that it is a symbol of racism.

People disliked the original confederal flag because it was too similar to the American flag: "In addition, William T. Thompson, the editor of the Savannah-based Daily Morning News also objected to the flag, due to its aesthetic similarity to the U.S. flag, which some Confederates negatively associated with emancipation and abolitionism. Thompson stated in April 1863 that he disliked the adopted flag "on account of its resemblance to that of the [b]abolition despotism against which we are fighting[/b]."  "It embodied "the destiny of the Southern master and his African slave."  "As a national emblem, it is significant of our higher cause, the cause of a superior race, and a higher civilization contending against ignorance, infidelity, and barbarism."  "[b]As a people, we are fighting to maintain the heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored races.[/b] A White Flag would be thus emblematical of our cause."

From the [url=http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources/declarationofcauses.html?referrer=https://en.wikipedia.org/]Declaration of Causes of Seceding States[/url]:

[b]Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery[/b]-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin. That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.

In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their [b]beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law.[/b]

From the Confederate Constitution:

Article I Section 9(4)
No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.

[b]We have dissolved the late Union chiefly because of the negro quarrel.[/b] Now, is there any man who wished to reproduce that strife among ourselves? And yet does not he, who wished the slave trade left for the action of Congress, see that he proposed to open a Pandora's box among us and to cause our political arena again to resound with this discussion. Had we left the question unsettled, we should, in my opinion, have sown broadcast the seeds of discord and death in our Constitution. I congratulate the country that the strife has been put to rest forever, and that American slavery is to stand before the world as it is, and on its own merits. We have now placed our domestic institution, and secured its rights unmistakably, in the Constitution. We have sought by no euphony to hide its name. We have called our negroes 'slaves', and we have recognized and protected them as persons and our rights to them as property.

—?Robert Hardy Smith, An Address to the Citizens of Alabama on the Constitution and Laws of the Confederate States of America, 1861

Georgian Democrat Alexander H. Stephens, who would become the Confederacy's vice president, also stated that the Confederate constitution was "decidedly better than" the American one, as it "put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution. African slavery as it exists amongst us; the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. [b]This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.[/b] Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the 'rock upon which the old Union would split.' He was right."[/quote]

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