Allen, 54, said he did not see racial overtones in the Confederate flag. He said he was a rebellious youth and viewed the banner as a “symbol against authority.” As a history major at the University of Virginia in the early 1970s, he said, he also began to see the flag as a proud heritage symbol for those with ancestors from the South who fought in the Civil War.
“What I appreciate, and wish I had sooner, is that that symbol, which for me was fit for simply rebelling against authority, and for others was fit for pride in heritage, was and is for black Americans an emblem of hate and terror, an emblem of intolerance and discrimination,” he said. ~The Virginian-Pilot
What a monumental fraud the man is. You can’t tell me he has honestly been unaware how black Americans viewed the Confederate battle flag. It is something that no one, no matter his own view of the flag, can fail to be aware of, and to act as if this were some recent discovery is to be not much better than a fraud.
It is one thing to fly the flag proudly or respect and defend it as the flag that your ancestors fought under or even to fly it in the conviction that it represented the better cause in the War, but to embrace it childishly as a symbol of “rebelling against authority” (as if the Confederates were spoiled teenagers or anarchists) and then pretend (and it is all pretense) that you didn’t know that black Americans would view the flag very differently is to be both frivolous and a liar. What is worse is that this is all clearly desperate, purely cynical pandering designed to prevent his defeat in the election in a little under two months. No one this gutless should be in the Senate (a standard which, I realise, also disqualifies a great many other Senators). Down with Allen.
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September 13th, 2006 at 9:55 pm
Vanishing American
I can’t say that I have followed Allen’s career, but he does seem to be another pandering, weaselly politician.
However when he was a college student, if that was back in the 70s, it is true that the Confederate battle flag was not considered to be a ‘racist’ symbol. I remember that era well enough to say that. I believe if you research it, the facts would indicate that the NAACP only began its denunciation of the flag in the 1980s. I lived in the South as a child and there was no talk of the flag being ‘racist’ back then. It’s only with the recent revisions of history that the flag became linked with ‘racism’ and likened to the swastika.
I will grant that Allen should certainly have been aware that in recent years, the flag has been decreed a ’symbol of hate’.
September 13th, 2006 at 11:04 pm
mesogrumpy
It could just be a prejudice of mine, but the guy went to UVa.
For how many days of his college career is he likely to have been sober? Especially if he was “rebelling against authority.” Did he go vegan and sleep on a futon? Somehow i doubt it.
September 13th, 2006 at 11:29 pm
Daniel Larison
Thanks for your comments. You’re right, of course, that the anti-flag activism is relatively new. It really only became a live issue once you could find a sufficient number of white politicians who would denounce it. Even so, enthusiasts for the battle flag and sympathisers with the Confederacy would be likely to be more aware of the controversy than the general public, for whom it may be less important. To claim that he didn’t know what it meant to other people means he is either extraordinarily ignorant (not much of a recommendation for him) or he is just lying to us now (even less of a recommendation).