There's Stupid, and Then There's Stupid

Sometimes the sheer stupidity of people downright amazes me. Just when I get to the point that I think I've seen it all in my 53 trips around the sun on this blue ball we call home, somebody out there does something so inanely stupid as to defy all imagination, logic, and common sense.

And unfortunately, most of the time these people live in South Carolina.

Such was the case this morning. I'm sitting on the couch watching the local news and drinking my daily cup of coffee with my wife before she has to go to work when they air a story about "racial tensions" in a neighborhood not too far away from Columbia where the TV station is located. Seems that one of the occupants of the neighborhood has pretty much isolated herself from her neighbors because of her insistence on flying the Confederate Battle Flag from the front of her house, and the neighbors don't like that one little bit. So at this point one would imagine that there are some black folks in the neighborhood, since this seems to be the only part of our society that objects to the flying of that particular banner anywhere, anyplace, and anytime. And if you imagined that, then you'd be right.

Kinda. Sorta. Hang on to your hats, because this is where the "stupid" part comes in.

The neighborhood doesn't just have "some black folks" in it, it's a totally black neighborhood. The lady with the flag is not only white, she's the only white person in the entire neighborhood! She just moved into the neighborhood three months ago and immediately started flying the Battle Flag on the front of her house.

Like I said, there's stupid, and then there's stupid.

Several lines of thought cross my mind all at the same time concerning this, and here they are.

First and foremost, what in the bloody hell was this lady thinking?? Not only is it bad enough that she moves into a black neighborhood where she's automatically gonna be an outcast simply because of the color of her skin (and don't you DARE try to tell me that the black people already there didn't hate the idea of "whitey" moving into the neighborhood because you and I both know better!), she compounds the problem by doing the one thing next to hanging a KKK banner from the front of her house that's going to cause her the most problems. And in a sense, she did hang a KKK banner from her house, because that's exactly how the existing residents took it - and with good cause, I might add. While I'm a staunch supporter of and a believer in the right of a person to be proud of their heritage and fly such banners supporting their belief and heritage which includes the Confederate Battle Flag, I'll also say that there's a time to fly the banner and a time not to. Kinda like it's not a really good idea to hang a Japanese flag from your house on December 7th, ya know? And as a newcomer to the neighborhood, I feel it incumbent upon her to become a part of the neighborhood and adapt to it, rather than to expect the prior residents to adapt to her.

Kinda like we expect immigrants to adapt to US rather than the other way around. Any way you look at it, this lady pretty much shot herself in the foot in more ways than one, and I somehow don't think the neighborhood is gonna get over it as long as the Battle Flag is flying from her house.

Right behind that is the thought that the pre-existing neighbors are having a "knee-jerk" reaction towards the situation. They're already lining up voicing their protests at the display of the flag in THEIR neighborhood without even making any attempt at all to get to know the lady and how she feels about them. It should be obvious to anyone with any amount of common sense that this lady is anything but a racist - if she was, I hardly think she'd choose to move into a totally black neighborhood, do you? But the residents aren't seeing this - all they're seeing is the Confederate flag and are having the typical "knee jerk" reaction as they've been trained to have by the past 40 years of the Federal government, the NAACP, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson telling them how they're supposed to react. And that's not a guess, that's a fact - as stated by one of the black residents who spoke his piece on the news this morning.

They're also missing the vitally important fact that it's not only "their" neighborhood, it's now "her" neighborhood as well. But I don't think this lady can expect the Welcome Wagon to show up at her front door any time soon, do you?

The third thing about this story which catches my attention is what the black people in the neighborhood - and the TV camera crew, as well - either totally missed or totally ignored. You saw a picture of it when the footage showed the front of the lady's house, but nobody - and I mean NOBODY - mentioned it.

And that thing would be the American flag flying on the other side of the door on the front of the house.

When one of the residents was asked by the reporter what he thought when he saw the Confederate flag, his typical, "to be expected" answer in typical "knee jerk" reaction form was "slavery." Never mind the fact that the American flag flew over slavery in the United States from 1776 until 1863, a period of 87 years, while the Confederate Battle Flag flew for only 4 years, 2 of which were while slavery existed; never mind the fact that the only flag to ever fly over a slave ship was not the Stars and Bars but the Stars and Stripes; and never mind the fact that all of the slave-trading companies were all located in the North and not the South. Never mind all that...after all, why clutter up things with the truth?

I just don't think it's fair that the lady didn't get any credit at all for flying the American flag, but the residents of the neighborhood focused on the Confederate flag instead. But then again, that's the way they've been "trained," so why expect anything less?

So is one person "right" in this, and the other "wrong?" No, I don't think so.

While I support this lady's right to fly whatever flag she wants to from the front of her house, I also think it's very foolish, in bad taste, and just asking for trouble to move into a black neighborhood and promptly begin displaying the one flag in all of creation that you just know is gonna piss off the neighbors. This is one of those situations where simply saying, "If they don't like it, screw 'em!" won't work. (Does the name "CUSTER" mean anything to you?)

As for the neighbors, I understand their reactions and the reasons for them about as well as any white man can. I also understand that a lot of them have their thought processes firmly stuck in the 1960s and automatically think that anyone who displays a Confederate Battle Flag is a hood-wearing, cross-burning racist. And truth be told, nothing could be further from the truth. There's been a resurgence of displaying of the Confederate flag in the South in recent years, and that's because we Southerners are tired of taking the blame for a group of hood-wearing, inbred mongrel idiots and are working towards erasing the shame that has tarnished our "national symbol" for so long. We're taking the flag back, and that's all there is to it. So not only are the black residents of the neighborhood obviously selling their new white neighbor short, they're also selling themselves short. This lady could quite possibly be one of the nicest people in the neighborhood, but because they're letting their preconceived notions get in the way they'll never know this.

I can't wait to see how all this turns out. I have a feeling I know how it's gonna turn out, and I sure hope I'm wrong.

Time will tell. I'll keep you posted.

IHC