Slashdot Mirror
Google, Apple, and Others Remove Content Related To the Confederate Flag
davek writes with news that Google is removing results related to the Confederate Flag from Google Shopping, the company's online marketplace. They're also blocking advertisements involving the flag. They say, "We have determined that the Confederate flag violates our Ads policies, which don't allow content that's generally perceived as expressing hate toward a particular group." At the same time, Apple is removing from the App Store any games or other software featuring the Confederate Flag. This, of course, follows the recent shooting in South Carolina, which triggered a nationwide debate over whether the flag should be flown at government buildings (or anywhere). Major online merchant websites like eBay and Amazon have already taken the step of banning merchandise relating to the flag.
Who fought to just leave. What is the definition of oppression?
But that is not sufficient reason to stop selling it to civilians. This is a country founded on the idea of Free Speech.
We believe that the best way to fight evil is to let evil speak so we can hear who is evil. Much better than outlawing their vile ideas and having to guess who secretly harbors them.
In other words, I want to be able to see what shmucks wear/use the flag so I know whom to avoid.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
You know, from a British perspective, the US flag is a rebel flag as well. Just sayin.
Great to see everyone jumping on the bandwagon. Focusing on the flag once again ignores the real problems since it's easier to find a "magic pill" to fix everything. This is like Obama's first election where, once the flag is down, everyone will declare an "end to racism" and happily ignore the real work involved with tackling endemic bias.
Shall we remove all confederate items from museums? Shall we rewrite the history books so the civil war never happened? If we remove the confederate flag from everywhere, will that mean slavery never happened? The civil war happened. Slavery happened. Racism happened, and it is still happening. Removing some flags will not advance the goal of eliminating racism.
Instead of quibbling about a flag that some people find offensive, why don't we work to fight actual racism. Lets stop looking the other way when whites are treated differently than other races. Fighting so hard over symbols while we are mostly ignoring the reality of racism in the US seems counterproductive.
OK, I do see the point of removing the flag from statehouses, but historical displays and museums...give me a break. And, yes this is happening, as crazy as this seems.
Ironic that about the only place left to buy a Confederate Flag is the Black Market
Enemy oppressor?
Every slave ship sailing from Africa to the USA sailed under the US flag.
For over 100 years of slavery, it was all done under the US flag.
Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election, His name was not even on the ballot in 10 states. There were only 33 states at the time so close to 1/3 of the states did not have him on the ballot and he still won. That was the key that started the whole civil war! An election that even today would cause riots, to have a candidate win when he was not even on the ballot in 1/3 of the states!
Yes racial tensions were high and yes the south decided to make slavery a key point of there cause, but when the Civil war broke out it was not all about slavery. Abraham Lincoln himself was "Anti-Slavery" meaning against slavery's expansion, however he was not calling for immediate emancipation.
"I say that we must not interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists, because the constitution forbids it, and the general welfare does not require us to do so." -- Abraham Lincoln September 17, 1859: Speech at Cincinnati, Ohio
The flag is historic.
If you want to erase history, you're a fool.
I find Google finding censorship acceptable in its search results alarming now. They are now the overlords telling you what is acceptable to view and what isn't, not yourself.
There's a difference between letting a flag fly and yanking a historical wargame featuring the Confederates because of their flag. What's next? History books and textbooks with pictures of the Confederate flag will be pulled too?
At least I can still get a copy of Axis and Allies from the Play Store though, so Nazis are still cool apparently.
why oh why do we still let an enemy oppressor flag still fly in this country? What are we celebrating by doing so?
Free speech. I firmly stand against any local, state, or federal government entities flying the Confederate flag, for exactly the reasons you provided, but I will defend an individual's right to do so, even if I vehemently disagree with their reasons for doing so.
That said, we're starting to take things into the realm of ridiculousness here. Apple is removing apps with the Confederate flag. Great. Except that they're removing a number of Civil War games that correctly used the Confederate flag to represent the Confederacy. What next? Force HBO to stop offering Band of Brothers through HBO Now on the Apple TV because it features a swastika? Remove the Dukes of Hazzard from iTunes because they have a Confederate flag painted on the roof of the car?
At the end of the day, the flag is merely a symbol, and symbols are only as powerful as we let them be. The meaning behind that flag has changed over the years, and has meant different things to different people. We need to recognize that fact, otherwise we'll swing the pendulum too far in the other direction and end up cutting in on civil liberties.
If you want to fly the nazi flag, I will fight for your right to do so. Probably while calling you ugly names in the process, but in this country we have the right to exercise our own judgement, no matter how benightedly poor.
While Google, Apple, et. al. can certainly choose to remove these things from their store, in their own exercise of discretion, the whole discussion has gone off the rails. It makes a convenient distraction while the TPP gets pushed through.
I think this story is a little more nuanced than that to be honest.
Apple, eBay, et al, obviously have the right to sell whatever they want, and if they don't want to sell a flag representing treason and racism, then that's fine and their right, of course.
But...
1. Apple is going a tad overboard here. For example, they're banning Civil War games, because those games have Confederate Flags in them. I'm confused as to what Apple thinks its doing by banning those games.
2. There's a difference between, say, a State, like South Carolina, flying a flag that essentially says "Fuck Black people" either over its State House, or more recently, in front of it, and someone, that is, a person, not a government, be they... a little ill-informed, or an outright racist, buying it to express their own views, for some aesthetic reason, ironically, or whatever.
I would rather the companies currently rushing to ban it step back for a moment and think their policies through. What are they trying to achieve? What products do they have that actually portray the flag and in what context are those flags portrayed? Is banning all of them the right way forward?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Every slave ship sailing from Africa to the USA sailed under the US flag.
For over 100 years of slavery, it was all done under the US flag.
Do you have a citation on this? The USA had been in existence as a country for less than 100 years by the time slavery was abolished. So it would be tough on the 'over 100 years', and I doubt every single slave ship was sailing under the US flag during that.
I don't read AC A human right
You guys are screwed. Good luck recovering and creating a reasonable culture.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
It also allows us to identify bigots who don't realize it when they talk negatively about "rednecks".
Remember, you can't look dignified when your having fun! Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out of it alive
The American Civil War most certainly was fought over slavery.
Indeed it was. Here are the official words of the southerners themselves, expressed at the time of secession:
From the Mississippi declaration of secession:Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery.
From the Texas declaration of the Causes of Secession: ... maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery--the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits
From the South Carolina Declaration of Secession: ... an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery
From the Georgia Declaration of Secession:The South with great unanimity declared her purpose to resist the principle of prohibition [of slavery] to the last extremity.
In every declaration of secession, slavery was given as the first and most prominent reason for secession. Secession was popular in flat states, where large plantations were viable. It was less popular in mountainous areas, where slaves were less common, including what is now West Virginia, and the mountain state of Tennessee which was the last to secede and the first to rejoin the union. There was a rebellion within the rebellion in the hilly areas of northern Alabama. By the end of the war, every state but South Carolina (the flattest state, most dependent on plantation agriculture) raised volunteer regiments to fight in the Union Army, mostly from mountain areas.
Wow, saying the confederate flag means slavery, hatred, bigotry and treason and it gets a +5 Insightful? The second part may be insightful but somehow this isn't marked flamebait.
Some people say the flag means that, some people say it means states rights, who knows. But do people actually believe someone who flies the flag is saying bring back slavery or a succession from the Union? Maybe they just want to stand for a weaker Federal government, something many people support today.
Maybe the reason they fly the flag is to respect their ancestors who fought and died for what they believe in. Would you ask someone to take down the original U.S. flag that so heavily fought for their rights and owned slaves?
My point is, people are afraid of a flag that is being flown for many reasons. But the fact remains, that those spreading all of this fear of the flag are just as guilty of perpetrating hatred as those they accuse of flying the flag...and in most cases more so.
I think I'll buy a confederate flag, just to support the right to own a confederate flag. Does that make me a racist? Will America ever stop generalizing everything with labels just to make complicated issues easier? Stay tuned...
Note: Captcha was encroach
First; you make some excellent points.
All right; you've got some salient details wrong.
The American flag did not exist until 1776, and that was only the continental colors, or 1777 for a recognizable version of the stars and stripes. And no slave ships sailed to the US after the abolition of slavery in 1865 by the thirteenth amendment - that's right, the END of the civil war, not the beginning. So the longest that "slave ships" could possibly have sailed under the "US flag" is 91 years, not "over 100 years".
Far from every slave ship sailed under the US flag, anyway. Not only did that flag not exist before 1776, but many/most slavers were from other nationalities anyway. "The Atlantic slave traders, ordered by trade volume, were: the Portuguese, the British, the French, the Spanish, and the Dutch Empire."
By far the greatest number of slaves sent to the Americas were not sent to the US or the area which would become the US, anyway. Breakdown by destination of distribution of slaves, 1519-1867:
Portuguese America, 38.5%
British America MINUS North America, 18.4%
Spanish Empire, 17.5%
French Americas, 13.6%
British North America, 6.45%
English Americas, 3.25%
Dutch West Indies, 2.0%
Danish West Indies, 1.3%
Reference: Stephen D. Behrendt, David Richardson, and David Eltis, W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research, Harvard University. Based on "records for 27,233 voyages that set out to obtain slaves for the Americas". Stephen Behrendt (1999). "Transatlantic Slave Trade". Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. New York: Basic Civitas Books. ISBN 0-465-00071-1.
[Note: I'm not sure what the separate categories are for, "British America MINUS North America" and "English Americas"; I don't have a copy of the reference to hand to see if/how it explains]
[BTW: re "Danish West Indies", I had to look that one up myself]
A bit of detail of which many people are unaware: the US was far from the last area to abolish slavery. Just some which held out til later were:
Portuguese territories (4 years later)
then-Spanish colony of Puerto Rico (8 years later)
then-British colony of the Gold Coast (9 years later)
Egypt (12 years later)
Ottoman Empire (17 years later)
then-French protectorate of Cambodia (19 years later)
then-Spanish colony of Cuba (21 years later)
Brazil (23 years later)
Korea (29 years later) (but not fully implemented until 65 years later)
then_French colony of Madagascar (31 years later)
then-British protectorate of Zanzibar (32 years later)
Ethiopean Empire (37-77 years later)
China (41 years later)
Siam (47 years later)
Morocco (57 years later)
Afghanistan (58 years later)
Iraq (59 years later)
Iran (63 years later)
Tibet (94 years later)
Saudi Arabia (97 years later)
No. It was absolutely about slavery. The documents and statements written at the time of secession were all about slavery. The statements made after the war had all the other reasons, revisionist history was being written by the confederates once the defeat was imminent.
The north would absolutely have made a pre-war deal to let slavery continue in the existing slave states. The long vicious debate in congress had been about the expansion of slavery. The south wanted to maintain the equilibrium and wanted half the new states added to the union to be slave states. The south feared that in the future a non-slave majority could abolish slavery and destroy the base of their wealth and economy. The north wanted slavery confined to existing slave states, maybe they would go for self-determination of a territory knowing that most would go non-slavery. In negotiation terms confinement was their aspirational point but self-determination was their resistance point.
This is revisionist history. The North won so obviously they twisted the truth in the history books to make the Southern states out to be demons. Of course they would. MOST southerners DID NOT own slaves during that time. Yet we all went to war. Congress made a series of aggressive moves that pushed the southern states into a war.
No, the revisionist history is from the south. At the time of secession, one secession declaration after another repeatedly cited slavery. The "aggression" was the north wanting to confine slavery to existing slave states with the goal of adding non-slave states to the union and eventually voting in abolition. That was the confederate nightmare, well the nightmare of the confederate 1%. Its this confederate 1% whose wealth and power was slave based that made the decision to go to war, who wrote those declarations.
The confederate 99% didn't make the decision to go to war, you are partially correct that they were generally not economically vested in slavery and most likely not willing to risk their lives to defend slavery. So the 1% had to sell the war to the 99% using different arguments. Imagine that, a war waged for one reason but sold to the public for other reasons. So while some confederate soldiers may not have been willing to fight for slavery itself, they in fact did so because that was the absolute cause behind the war, why the 1% voted for war.
The confederate soldiers were the pawns of the confederate politicians. Pawns that defended their "betters" economic interests, slavery. Yes, this truth hurts. Hence the revisionism, hence the focus on great-great-great-grandpappy's love for his state to rebrand a symbol of the defense of slavery as a symbol of heritage.