Amazon and eBay ban confederate merchandise

Careful there on that slippery slope! So many different patches of ice on it.

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There is a failure in your logic right there. It probably leads to a lot of misunderstandings. Good luck with it!

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I don’t believe there’s any law that says bakers must make cakes with pro-gay decorations. You might raise the ire of some gay rights activists, but that goes part and parcel with how free speech works.

There ARE laws saying they can’t refuse to do business with certain protected classes but that’s not the same thing. For example, if you sell wedding cakes to white people you can’t refuse to sell them to black people. That’s not what Amazon and eBay are doing. Fans of the Confederacy are still welcome to buy any item for sale on those web sites.

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You’re free to disagree with my enlightened opinion. You’re also free to buy that flag from any of the thousands of other retailers who will happily sell you one.

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Presumably it’s a reference to this case.

Which is in Northern Ireland, not the USA, and the line is drawn in a different place for discrimination. I’m not sure that the result would have been the same in the US.

Flagged. Reason: Jesus Christ this is so stupid it made my IQ fall permanently by five points. Not cool. The false equivalences and illogical conclusion have done serious harm to my psyche and the English language.

Sorry for the ad hominem, but I am a little dumber now.

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When I first heard the story I realised that there would have been huge problems had the court not found the shop guilt of discrimination.

The right to refuse service to someone based on the vendors religion. In Northern Ireland.

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[quote=“Thebarton_Gamer, post:127, topic:60314, full:true”]And, isn’t this the “invisible hand of the market” at work anyhow? >.<

Captialists should be rejoicing![/quote]

Lassez-faire capitalists, yes. Not fans of well-regulated capitalism, no, but then again we are very few on the ground these days.

I quite often wear a soviet army belt, with hammer and sickle buckle. It’s a real one, and antique. I know people who wear confederate army belt buckles; the ones I know aren’t racists, they are historians (although there are reflexive bigots here who will never believe that.)

I also often use a soviet army pump flashlight, and a reproduction soviet army titanium crowbar. (Because they are awesome tools, not for historical or ideological reasons.)

The Union flag has flown over many atrocities, including several committed against African-Americans, and plenty committed against the indigenous people. I do not fly it; I always preferred the Gadsden Flag, but now the damn teabaggers have expropriated it, so it sits in the closet.

And that’s the truth - and it’s exactly why we should not eradicate its memory, no more than we should cover up Camp Douglas, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the Mountain Meadows Massacre or the Japanese Internment. These things are our nation’s shame, and should be known to every citizen just as well as our glories.

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People become racist from hearing and accepting racist ideas or generalizing based on negative experiences with black people. I doubt that the presence or absence of the Confederate flag has any effect one way or another.

The Confederate flag represents racism for some but not all people and it is overly simplistic to see it only as a racist symbol. For some it represents pride in their southern heritage and honoring Civil War veterans who fought on the Confederate side.

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Exactly! At the individual level, it’s a categorization error.

Yep, categorization errors are everywhere, aren’t they? But if you’re looking for anything other than an overly simplistic view of “white” people, you’re probably in the wrong forum.

We do get nuanced discussions of issues impacting Native Americans, though. And women’s issues, too. There are some very smart people here.

Play enough Buzz Aldrin’s Race into Space, and you’ll realize that people can still die after the skyrocketing stage.

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Oh please do share your more complex view of “white” people. /sarcasm, eyeroll, etc.

This from a commenter who refuses to admit that white privilege even exists, let alone that it has real effects in white people’s lives.

You write as if the people who reject the flag don’t already know that “For some it represents pride in their southern heritage and honoring Civil War veterans who fought on the Confederate side.” Thing is, those conceptions of that flag are also racist (the former) and treasonous (the latter). That’s not being overly simplistic; that’s seeing a complex reality beneath a simplistic surface. It’s, you know, a “nuanced” understanding.

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A year or so ago I mentioned Japanese Internment to some soon to be highschool grads. They said, “what’s that?”. A few hours later, and this blew my mind, I mentioned, " that asshole Dick Cheney" and they said, “who is that?”.

If it is challenging to even remember atrocities and presidents/veeps in your families lifetime, no wonder it is difficult to have conversations about privilege, race, and the implication of symbols.

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The effect is on how they view the place of their racism in society, and with it how easily people slide into it.

Neo-nazis may hate Jewish people, but they are also not likely to make the mistake that they are just vocalizing what everyone thinks. They know their position is held by most in contempt, and part of that is when their banner is shown, it is mocked and reviled for the disgusting idiocy it represents.

Whereas someone who hates black people is supported in supposing other people are united behind their cause, or at least indifferent to its victims. And part of that is that they can look around and see a flag taken from a rebellion dedicated to the supremacy of whites, brought up again by groups like the KKK and opponents of civil rights, and with a long history as a racist dogwhistle, waving over the damn capitol building.

Sure, some people imagine it stands for “southern pride” with no connection to racism, just as some people imagine “state’s rights” never had anything to do with it either. But then how does it just so happen the symbol of that pride was specifically taken from the most shameful thing in the South’s history?

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The notion that rebelling against the United States government for the right to own slaves was something to take pride in seems like a pretty racist idea to me.

That’s my problem with viewing the flag as something to take pride in. However decent any of those veterans may have been on an individual level, the cause they were fighting for was inherently racist.

The 20th Century revival of that flag as a symbol of “Southern Pride” also coincided with Southern opposition to the Civil Rights movement. There has never been a time in American history when that flag was not strongly associated with racist ideals.

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is that any way to respond to a compliment? You both are longtime, positive, contributing members of this community. If this community of enlightened individual cant tolerate even mild differences of viewpoint, what does that say about society at large?

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Overnight? Oh you poor slob. Here in San Francisco, we get free same day shipping.

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Please refer back to the rest of my comment. If I had time to look them up, I would also direct you to previous discussions between myself, Medievalist and others which made it clear to whom his (?) comment above about an over simplistic view of “white” people is referring (that is, unless I’m mistaken, to me, perhaps among others). IOW, any compliment was likely not directed towards me, the implication apparently aimed in my direction being, instead, the opposite of a compliment. I may be a bit touchy today, but I don’t think it’s made me paranoid.