If Confederate Flag Is Racist Symbol So Are Blacks
In June of 2015, I wrote a syndicated op-ed column titled: “The ‘Confederate Flag’ Never Called me A Nigger: But Blacks and Liberals Have.” Predictably, uneducated mindless imbeciles and the historically illiterate were incensed not only because I wrote the article but alas, because I had the audacity to write the word “nigger” rather than using the politically correct “N-word” rendition.
These same intellectual giants (sarcasm intended) displayed no such aggrievement when the late Richard Pryor titled his comedy album “That Nigger’s Crazy” nor were they upset when Pryor titled a follow-up album “That Nigger Is Still Crazy.”
The same people who were upset by my article to the point that one would have expected them to cause a run on the “Depends,” undergarment, were silent when the Obamas showcased the rapper appropriately called “Common” at a state dinner for Nordic leaders. Common’s use of the word “nigga’s” has made his uber-wealthy.
These same people worship Samuel L. Jackson who has made a career of using the word “nigger.” And let’s certainly not overlook screenwriter and director Quentin Tarantino who is famous for his liberal over-the-top use of the word “nigger.” The A-list of celebrities who are admired for their prolific and graphic use of the word “nigger” is staggering. Yet the same people claim my contextual usage of the word is offensive.How many deaths of blacks in Chicago the past year is the result of the Confederate Flag?
Mychal Massie
Even if the falsity of these people were not so demonstrably transpicuous they would still be offensive.
How many deaths of blacks in Chicago the past year is the result of the Confederate Flag? How many black babies who were murdered by their mothers before they were born were killed because of the Confederate Flag? How many blacks trafficking drugs on the corners in every city in America are doing so because of the Confederate Flag?
What these people either do not know, fail to realize, or simply ignore is that the Civil War was not fought over slavery. It was fought over state’s rights, which is a debate we should be having today, seeing how the federal government is usurping the rights of the states on every quantifiable level. The issue of slavery as such was tangential to the War, not the causal effect.
While I have written extensively regarding the factuality of slavery, I direct those who value truth and facts juxtaposed to the “Kunta Kinte” fiction to Robert M. Grooms. Grooms wrote: “The fact is large numbers of free Negroes owned black slaves; in fact, in numbers disproportionate to their representation in society at large. In 1860 only a small minority of whites owned slaves. According to the U.S. census report for that last year before the Civil War, there were nearly 27 million whites in the country. Some eight million of them lived in the slaveholding states. (Dixie’s Censored Subject: Black SlaveOwners; The Barnes Review; 1997)
The census also determined that there were fewer than 385,000 individuals who owned slaves (1). Even if all slaveholders had been white, that would amount to only 1.4 percent of whites in the country (or 4.8 percent of southern whites owning one or more slaves).
In the rare instances when the ownership of slaves by free Negroes is acknowledged in the history books, justification centers on the claim that black slave masters were simply individuals who purchased the freedom of a spouse or child from a white slaveholder and had been unable to legally manumit them. Although this did indeed happen at times, it is a misrepresentation of the majority of instances, one which is debunked by records of the period on blacks who owned slaves. These include individuals such as Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry, of Colleton District, South Carolina, who each owned 84 slaves in 1830. In fact, in 1830 a fourth of the free Negro slave masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more slaves; eight owning 30 or more (2).
The problem with truth and facts is that they get in the way of lies. As Grooms also notes: According to federal census reports, on June 1, 1860 there were nearly 4.5 million Negroes in the United States, with fewer than four million of them living in the southern slaveholding states. Of the blacks residing in the South, 261,988 were not slaves. Of this number, 10,689 lived in New Orleans. The country’s leading African American historian, Duke University professor John Hope Franklin, records that in New Orleans over 3,000 free Negroes owned slaves, or 28 percent of the free Negroes in that city.
The people who claim that I have offended them and/or that by telling the truth I have committed some grievous wrong have been brainwashed to the point of giving new meaning to the word stenotopic.
Some will ask what Grooms’ article has to do with the Confederate Flag, which I accept as a fair question. My answer is that the Confederate Flag cannot be singled out as a so-called racist symbol pernicious calumniators claim, unless they are willing to concede that blacks themselves participated massively in said racism and human abuse.
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About the Author
Mychal Massie
Mychal S. Massie is an ordained minister who spent 13 years in full-time Christian Ministry. Today he serves as founder and Chairman of the Racial Policy Center (RPC), a think tank he officially founded in September 2015. RPC advocates for a colorblind society. He was founder and president of the non-profit “In His Name Ministries.” He is the former National Chairman of a conservative Capitol Hill think tank; and a former member of the think tank National Center for Public Policy Research. Read entire bio here