LogFAQs > #941317984

nativengine posted...

But here we go again, what about the American flag itself? Literally a symbol of genocide. Youre focusing on one point but ignoring another.

I'm not ignoring it. That's a 100% valid and accurate view if you're a Native American. That's what the whole talk about the Boomers was about. That view is an absolute non-starter for people now, but in the future it may not be. Just like thinking we should get rid of a statue of Columbus would have made you a radical even 15 years ago, but now it's flipped. Symbols have no inherent meaning, it's a battle of history and rhetoric. People consider the flag sacred now, but if it comes to be mainly identified with all of the unjustifiable things done in it's name, that will be very different.

What that will lead to, I don't know. We aren't at the end of history, and a lot of the things we're doing now or that we did in the recent past will come to be viewed as too shameful to be prideful in. For example, the Japanese Imperial flag was just "the flag" during the WW2 era and before, and now it's a symbol of right wing nationalism and imperialism that means something very different and very negative. That could happen here with the US flag or any number of symbols or monuments. And when they changed their flag, that didn't erase WW2. It was their education system and culture that erased it if it has been erased. Same here.

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I gotta be righteous, I gotta be me, I gotta be conscious, I gotta be free, I gotta be able, I gotta attack, I gotta be stable, I gotta be black.