Angela Martin (anggmart@mars.utm.edu) from student-d89.at.utm.edu at 10/27/97 09:26PM
comment
    About the confederate flag... I definitely feel that it is a symbol of Southern pride, and NOT a racist symbol. I would like to remind everybody that the Civil War was fought over states' rights vs national rights, NOT white vs black. Therefore, the flag cannot be called a symbol of racism... I feel like a lot of the racism occurred after the civil war, when the North took away our voting priviledges and gave them to the African-American population. Now, if they had given voting priviledges to all the ppl of the South, I think there would have been less racism. Not to mention the fact that the North took advantage of the South the first few years after the Civil war. There was just a lot of tension and grudges between so many ppl, but all that is in the past. We just can't point fingers and say, "She did that and he did that, so I am going to wage war against them and all of their relatives forever." That would be pointless!! We have to learn from our mistakes. It wasn't just the South that did wrong... EVERYBODY did. So now, everybody is learning and forgiving. From what I have observed in my short lifetime so far, it looks like we are doing a pretty darn good job of moving on. Enough said. I hope you don't want to shoot me now!