I'm not trying to come at you wild but I get angry when I hear people try to dissemble about the confederacy. Any symbol of the confederacy is and will always be a symbol of slavery. True the confederacy was fighting for states rights, the states rights to own slaves. If there was no slavery issue there would never have been a confederacy, slavery was the one and only issue that the north and south had to continuosly comprimise on. Maybe the confederacy would have ended slavery eventually but the fact of the matter is that slavery was still on the books when the confederacy went down, slavery was the reason for its creation, so therefore the confederacy will always till the end of the U.S. represent slavery.

>the US goverment has supported slavery
>since its inception and de facto slavery
>through segregation and Jim Crow Laws.

This argument conveniently glides over the fact that the US government only supported slavery at its inception because the damn slave states that made up the confederacy would not have formed a union without it. Thomas Jefferson, regardless of himself owning slaves, wanted to abolish slavery in the constitution but was overruled by the south. And the segregation and jim crow laws were overwhelmingly more manifest in the former confederate states than in the north. The north was always leaps and bounds ahead of the southern (confederate) states in terms of progressive legislation in race relations from many states allowing blacks to vote decades before the 14 and 15 amendments to pioneering integrated schools. The U.S. flag symbolized slavery as long as the confederate states were apart of it and pretty much ceased to be once they departed (the border states slavery days were already numbered ). It definitely ceased to be after the Gettysburgh address which redefined the war as a fight against slavery.

>Less than 10% of southerners owned slaves.
>Of that 10%, at least 2% of the slaveowners
>were African.

Those 10% slaveowners were the ones who controlled the state governments and made them secede. It is irrelevant if most of the confederate soldiers were poor and didn't own slaves. The majority of the Wermacht (German army) officers and soldiers were not nazis, but since the nazis controlled Germany, the Wermacht fought for the nazis. By the same token, those poor non-slaveholders were fighting for slavery whether they liked it or not. And why do people always seem to feel the need to point out that some blacks owned slaves? As if to say that validates it.

>It was a poor man's war, and thats what
>that battle flag truly represents.

No it was an oppressors' war and that is what the battle flag and all things confederate represent and will always represent. The U.S. might have represented slavery and oppression at one time, but it has moved and continues to move beyond that stigma. The confederacy can never remove itself of it.
Peace to Okayplayers