[pm90]

I moved when Obama was president. I sincerely believed that we were in a post racial world. Imagine my surprise in seeing people proudly flying confederate flags in Austin!

I am still hopeful. While that flag was considered “ok” then, it no longer is anymore, and I rarely see it in the urban areas.

[rayiner]

> I sincerely believed that we were in a post racial world.

I grew up in a post-racial world as a "brown" immigrant in a deep red Virginia county in the 1990s. My daughter, meanwhile, developed a strong "brown" identity from her teachers in our deep blue state. I don't blame Obama for it. But there was a definite shift in thinking during his administration where the distinct politics of black democrats--which is highly focused on racial identity for obvious reasons--became generalized to the hispanics and Asians that democrats sought to court. It was a couple of years into the Obama administration that someone called me a “person of color” for the first time, as if you can properly group people together based on skin color.

[benterix]

> highly focused on racial identity for obvious reasons

This is something I get but it always buffles me. Shouldn't it be the opposite? Shouldn't they, in their own interests, and the interest of groups they aspire to represent, attempt to unite people above skin-color differences and emphasize our human aspect?

[lern_too_spel]

Texas celebrates Confederate Heroes Day as a state holiday on January 19 each year. This occasionally coincides with the third Monday of January on which MLK Jr. Day is celebrated as a national holiday. Democrats in the Texas legislature have repeatedly tried to remove or rename the holiday, but these attempts have so far failed to get out of committee.

Some people take umbrage at being lumped into a large heterogenous group called People of Color. I can assure you that the people who celebrate Confederate "Heroes" have no issue with lumping all of those people into a group of Colored People. That is where the grouping originated.

[zappb]

I thought we might have finally reached enlightenment after WWII, but the world only stopped hating Jews for a few years before reverting to the norm. This long arc of justice is on the order of centuries, not years.

[SlightlyLeftPad]

Flying confederate flags while Obama was president was considered “ok?”

[rayiner]

According to polling, yes: https://www.cnn.com/2015/07/02/politics/confederate-flag-pol.... For people who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s in the south, it was a generic symbol of rebellion or regional rivalry. Remember, Dukes of Hazzard, which aired in the 1980s, was a liberal show about southern boys fighting corrupt politicians and greedy businessmen.

Now you can say “hey, maybe you shouldn’t have picked that particular flag as a symbol to mean ‘fuck the Patriots.’” That was the result of propaganda by Lost Causers in the early 1990s. But that doesn’t change the fact that the symbol was repurposed over a long time period and generations grew up associating it with ideas that were quite different from what it originally represented.

[ProllyInfamous]

It still is in Trenton, Georgia (whose city flag is the former Georgia Confederate flag). Weird driving through that part of the world...