BREAKING: New Mississippi Flag Design Leaked
Both houses of the Mississippi legislature yesterday voted to remove the Confederate battle jack from the state’s flag. Gov. Tate Reeves has said he will sign the bill.
In anticipation of this move a team of artists and historians have spent the past week working on a new flag design. An anonymous source shared the proposed new flag with Lullaby Pit early this morning. The source emphasized that while the design was “fresh and contemporary,” it remained “consistent with the state’s historical legacy.”
Stay tuned to Lullaby Pit for further details as they become available.
lullaby pit 
That is kind of amazing. It’s more than a century and a half since the Southern states lost the Civil War it started in attacking the Federal government when they committed terrorism in having shot at Fort Sumter.
The current flag has been used for 126 years, in commemoration of insurrection against the government in the defense of an authoritarian system of slavery and racist oppression. Finally, now the Mississippi government finally decides their loyalty is to democracy for all, not only for white people.
It’s good they finally came around on this point, even if it is only a symbolic issue. Still, it’s a powerful symbol. I guess the tide really is turning. It simply required enough of the older generation to die off and a new younger generation to force change through direct action of protest.
I knew a young couple from the south, he was from north Florida and she was from Alabama. They were grad students here in southeast Kansas and commented about how this was the whitest place they had ever lived. (my co-worker Jorge from Miami said the same thing just a few months before) They wanted to get back south. What made me think about them was BDS’s comment about generations. They said that their grandparents were racists, their parents biased, and they are comfortable with the idea of all people being equal. They think as the older generations pass, the south will be a lot more equitable.
I did spend some pivotal years of my life in the Deep South, specifically South Carolina. My family moved down there when I was in middle school and I stayed there through some college. After high school, I also spent several summers in North Carolina, which is a bit different culturally, but with much crossover with the Deep South. I’m not sure I can offer much insight about the South, what it has been and where it might be going. I do have centuries of ancestors on multiple lines throughout the Upper and Deep South, but I was born in the Midwest and identify as a Midwesterner.
Still, some of my own Southern experience does stand out. I remember the mother, a white woman, of my best friend in high school would call blacks the ‘N’ word. But she didn’t seem to mean anything bad about it, as this friend would bring home a black friend without any problems. Most of the racism was subtle and in the background. Few people were openly racist. Symbols of racism were around, such as the Confederate flag flying on the SC state capital when I lived in Columbia. The worse racism was how the entire society was ordered.
Symbols are extremely important, though. I’m a GenXer and so have been part of a transitional phase of our society, as the Cold War ended. GenX was born a small generation, in being a highly aborted generation, but because of a large influx of immigrants GenX grew about as large as the preceding and following generation. That is why the children of GenXers are the first generation to be minority-majority. A higher percentage of GenX marriages were also biracial or bi-ethnic. Many places outside of the South, specifically rural farm states, can be overwhelmingly white, but that is changing in some places.
I’ve lived most of my life in the Midwest, primarily Iowa. The town I live in is Iowa City, home of the University of Iowa. Back when I lived here as a kid in the 1980s, minorities were rare. Since then, diversity has grown quite significantly. I’m not sure that decreases racism in most ways, though. About a decade ago, this county rated as having the second highest racial disparities in drug arrests as compared to all counties in the entire country. And consider that this is a liberal college town. Still, I think it might be slowly improving on racial issues.
We had a protest movement here recently, even a clash with the police and some minor property damage. Not that it turned into riots, as it is a fairly small town. This was the first time tear gas had been used here since the riots of the early 1970s. The recent protesters made a list of demands for the city government, including to drop all criminal charges of protesters and to give around a million dollars for minority programs or whatever. The city government agreed to every single demand.
I haven’t been back to the Deep South in a long time. Nor have I talked much to old friends from that part of the country. But in a news report, I did notice a protest in Columbia, SC and it appeared to have been entirely peaceful. That might be because the coach and football players from USC joined it. That alone might indicate some kind of change going on. They had already taken the Confederate flag off the capital building many years back.