Kirk D. Lyons, Chief Trial Counsel of the Southern Legal Resource Center, wants you go to Question #9 and under “other race” claim “Confed. Southern Am.” After all, the Confederacy did exist for four short years (150 years ago). More here.
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{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
@2:50 he he claims that if you were a “citizen” or “subject” of the Confederate States of America, then you can rightfully claim your national origin as “Confed-Southern-Am.” Somehow, I don’t think he was using “subject” to refer to slaves.
I also enjoyed his attempt to present his cause as that of an embattled minority – even going as far as to refer to the Civil Rights Act and utilizing the “back of the bus” metaphor. Priceless. I would try to connect this somehow to the old “racial” debate of Saxons vs. Normans and Puritans vs. Cavaliers, but I don’t know that it warrants that deep of an analysis.
PS – where do you find this stuff??
I thought the same thing re: the reference to “subjects.” The whole video is priceless. As to where I find this stuff? Ahh…the beauty of RSS feeds.
I had to stop at 22 secs when he said “the important issues facing the Confederate community in our nation today.” I couldn’t listen long enough to find out what the “Confederate community” is. I know what it was.
If I am a bad person for watching only 22 seconds of this video and then commenting, well, then I guess I’m a bad person.
Tom,
No, you are not a bad person just weak.
Try again tomorrow. Let’s shoot for 1 minute at a time.
Umm, he wonders why his people are targets?
It is disturbing that he is so well versed in the Civil Rights tribulations that he raises that rhetoric and those issues and claims them as Confederate Southern Americans.
I listened to the whole thing, sad to say.
Chris,
I think he mentions white southerners such as yourself who have lost your identity. You are a Confederate Southern American. Come home, Chris.
In the immortal words of that great lost Southern American Thomas Wolfe: You can’t go home again — not ever.
On the other hand, I never left home. Those Lost Cause apologist find it convenient to forget the folks like my ancestor Pvt. William B. Liverman, Company F, 2nd North Carolina Union Volunteers (white). Its our south too and we fought to defend our homes too.
I would suggest that you take this issue up with Mr. Lyons.
You have a stronger stomach than I do, Kevin. I made it no more than 2 minutes in. Thanks for the summary. Funny and crazy at the same time. Maybe a touch scary too. Sam Tanehaus talked about the Texas Board and school book controversy being rightwing identity politics. That’s what this guy is serving up to, albeit in a different flavor.
I was referring to a piece Tanehaus wrote in yesterday’s New York Times in the Week in Review section.
I was actually about to fill out my census mailing when I came across this video.
My census form is right here in front of me but what do I fill in?! I had an ancestor who fought for the Confederacy, but one who fought for the Union as well. My family stayed south of the Mason & Dixon Line until my mother moved out, and I was born in Kansas and mostly raised in Illinois, with visits to Kentucky, a border state, to see my relatives, although now I live in Virginia.
Can I fill in a multi-ethnic identity as a Confederate-Unionist Northern-Southern American?
I’m so *confused*
Andrea,
I think you should contact Mr. Lyons for further instruction. Sorry.
My personal favorite was Dean Rusk’s response, when JFK nominated him to be his Secretary of State, to the infamous question of whether he or any member of his family had ever advocated the overthrow the government of the United States by force of violence. He answered “Yes.” When asked to explain, he informed them that both of his grandfathers had been in the Confederate army.
BTW, when was any “Confederate-American” ever shot down in his driveway, lynched, shot & buried like roadkill in a dam?
You should be aware that when Kirk Lyons was married, the ceremony was held in the Aryan Nations compound and it was conducted by Aryan Nations leader and Christian Identity “preacher” Richard Butler. http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/profiles/kirk-lyons.
“The important issues facing the Confederate community in our nation today.” I confess I didn’t watch this all the way through — I couldn’t.
OK, fess up. That was really from The Onion wasn’t it??
Kevin, I didn’t get all the way through this, though I swear I tried. But my first impression has stayed with me – did this guy just out himself as an illegal immigrant?
You said: “…did this guy just out himself as an illegal immigrant?”
Very sharp Marianne, very sharp.
I killed the video at 2:21. All my life, I’ve known such jerks and loudmouths that I’m tired of hearing their crap. Right or wrong, I tune out the noise. I wonder who he thinks he’s talking to – but then when I think about it, I realize that those birds of a feather flock together.
I have to say that I am very disappointed in some of you. You guys are going to need a much thicker skin if you hope to survive in the world of Civil War Memory.
Well, I watched the whole thing, but it’s kind of a one-joke routine. I do like his tie, though.
Although it’s a decade old, this SPLC piece on Lyons is instructive: http://tinyurl.com/yjeymq8
Thanks Ken. It’s definitely worth reading.
Jawohl! And if anybody out there had some glue for my mustache, that would be greatly appreciated! That damn thing keeps falling off every time Junior and I make one of our Fatherland videos. A black Sharpie marker would do, too…
Wait… Southern Americans are the most discriminated against group in this country? They have their rights taken away? They have “zero representation”? His description sounds all-too familiar… where have I heard that before? (Perhaps from the rhetoric of men and women who refused to sit in the back of the bus and helped bring the issues leading to the pass of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 during the 20th century…)
I’d like to know more about the court cases he refers to about the issue of “Confederate Southern Americans.”
I get the impression that his claim that Confederate Southern Americans would represent the greatest minority in America only if it counted those African-Americans whose enslaved ancestors were sexually assaulted by their oppressive masters.
HA! I survived to the end of the video. I feel special. I like how he talks about “not having a lot of time” like he is worried about the Government finding him. It would seem that it would have been more appropirate to have shot it in his basement, with the bare concrete walls and a Confederate flag behind him, and have a disheveled look.
Congratulations! I should have offered some kind of prize for that kind of endurance.