Buffalo News South Shall Rise Again
Rod Watson: The South shall rise once again ... on a corner in Tonawanda
The Amalgamated flag flying at a Boondocks of Tonawanda home is a reminder that it is non just the Due south that needs to come up to grips with what the flag really stands for. (Marker Mullville/Buffalo News)
From Mississippi to S Carolina and across much of the South, the Amalgamated flag is being taken down and stashed out of sight.
State flags were even taken from the tunnel at the U.Southward. Capitol terminal year as a means of getting rid of the controversial Mississippi flag that featured the Amalgamated battle emblem.
Across the country, such symbols of the Confederacy are being removed every bit a nation comes to grips with the meaning behind the imagery.
But not on a corner lot in the Town of Tonawanda, where the homeowner proudly flies the flag that draws and so much enmity.
At that place was hope when the Confederate banner temporarily disappeared from the Parker Boulevard home a few weeks ago. Given what's happening effectually the land, the idea was that perchance Floyd East. Bimber Iii had a change of heart, an awakening of sorts. Perhaps he realized that the flag inextricably linked with the racist degradation of other man beings and treason confronting the United States was non something he wanted to proudly fly anymore.
Unfortunately, that wasn't it.
Instead, he said, someone ripped his flag pole out of the ground in the middle of the night. Police said they'd had no complaints of vandalism at the address. In whatever case, the flag is back up over again.
Why would someone rip it down?
"Because they're ignorant," Bimber said. "The flag itself is not racist."
Earlier he could explicate farther, he terminated the brief phone conversation, proverb he had to become dorsum to work. He never called back, nor did he respond to a follow-upward voicemail.
That leaves the residue of u.s. to fill in the blanks on what the Confederate flag flying in the Town of Tonawanda really means.
"I hate it. I despise it," town Supervisor Joseph H. Emminger said.
But Emminger said police tell him there is zero the town tin do because – dissimilar cases in which the flag is on public property – this one is on individual property, and the right to fly information technology is protected past the U.South. Constitution.
Nor has he gotten many complaints – maybe two in the two years he has been supervisor, he said.
"The Boondocks Board is more than upset virtually it than anyone else," Emminger said.
Evidently, he's right,
Some of Bimber'due south neighbors don't see annihilation wrong with flight the symbol of the Confederacy – in fact, they claimed not to even run into the flag itself.
One human being who lives down the street said he usually travels in the opposite direction from Bimber's house and had never even noticed the Amalgamated flag. He mused that if he had grown up in the South, he could see how it could represent the sacrifices of ancestors, not racism.
A guy who lives nearly directly across the street likewise said he had never noticed the Insubordinate flag flapping in the breeze, with its eye-communicable ruby-red background, blue "x" and white stars. Later information technology was pointed out, he had no strong feelings 1 way or the other, chalking up its display to "liberty of voice communication."
And a neighbor a few doors down said the flag is "about history" not racism, and complained that "people accept gotten soft."
That "history" includes fighting to preserve a way of life and an economic system predicated on human bondage, as well as the flag's adoption decades later on past Dixiecrats intent on maintaining segregation. That'southward the "heritage" the Amalgamated flag represents.
And we oasis't even gotten to the treason. The Southward, subsequently all, fought the U.s.a. of America to preserve its "way of life." Perhaps Bimber is confused about that, seeing as how he flies the Confederate flag correct below the U.S. flag – every bit if the Civil War's more than than 620,000 deaths never happened.
Emminger said town police try to keep an center on the belongings whenever national events put symbols of the Confederacy back in the spotlight. That'southward wise. Vandalism tin can't be tolerated.
But one time you lot strip away all the rationalizations, you have to wonder about attitudes that get in so comfy for someone to wing the Rebel flag in Tonawanda without even a murmur of protestation about what it really stands for.
Anyone looking down their nose at efforts to preserve such symbols downward S may exist looking way too far away.
Source: https://buffalonews.com/opinion/columnists/rod-watson-the-south-shall-rise-again-on-a-corner-in-tonawanda/article_fdc86de0-aa02-57d6-ada3-22bb9dc9fa1d.html
0 Response to "Buffalo News South Shall Rise Again"
Post a Comment