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Monday, March 29, 2010
Boomer with Attitude / News A new race: 'Confederate Southern American'
Posted By John Grooms on Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 11:54 AM
The South Carolina-based Southern Legal Resource Center is dedicated to “defending the rights of Southerners to honor their culture and heritage” (i.e., suing schools that prohibit Confederate battle flag gear). Now, the group wants all Americans of “Southern ancestry” to identify themselves as “Confederate Southern American” on their census forms.
“The SLRC suggests you check ‘Other Race’ and in the space below write ‘Confed Southern Am,’” says SLRC honcho Kirk Lyons. “This will tell the Census that your families (sic) National Origin was the Confederate States of America, for four years a nation independent of the United States,” he continues. Lyons says the census ploy is a way for any Southerner who has been “called a racist simply because you are proud of the Confederate Battle flag — the symbol of your ancestry and heritage,” to stand up and be counted.
Ah, yes, those poor, put-upon white racists. The world changed somewhat over the past, oh, 150 years, and left them all confused and feeling like outcasts. They’re suffering from what we call Angry Southern Martyr Complex, a remarkably tenacious disease that’s still hanging around despite most of the region having moved on.
It’s important to remember that people like Lyons & Co. are a minority among Southern whites. Many, many white Southerners had their eyes opened and their hearts won over by the civil rights struggle and the changes it brought to the region; you just don’t hear about those folks as frequently as you do the neo-Confederates, largely because tolerance and living with others in peace doesn’t create attention-grabbing headlines.
The sadder thing here is that Southern whites have historically been crapped on — by exploitive industries that moved here to avoid paying decent wages up North; and by cynical politicians like Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms and their predecessors, who used race-baiting as a method of getting elected while diverting whites’ attention from the big, white industrial boot on their collective neck.
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