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Confederate Articles

by Kevin Levin on July 13, 2012 · 5 comments · Follow me on

in Civil War Culture


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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }

Bryan Cheeseboro July 13, 2012 at 5:39 am 1

How do you find this stuff?

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Eric Swanger July 13, 2012 at 7:16 am 2

I really like this. Maybe it’s her upbeat and spunky wink and nod to being apolitical, but it’s a wonderful idea. Proper use of the flag? Probably not, but a better use then I’ve seen in many other circumstances.

Back in the 90s, there was an African American designer who put the negative color image of the Confederate flag on tshirts, etc. I remember it causing quite a stir across the board.

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Chris L. Robinson July 13, 2012 at 12:08 pm 3

Eric,

The designers at Cross Colours definitely did it. They changed all of the colors but the design was the same. I think it was on a t-shirt or jacket. I personally loved it, seeing it as a way to co-opt and neutralize it as a negative symbol. My fellow African-American friends–not so much.

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Chris L. Robinson July 13, 2012 at 9:42 am 4

Okay, this was great. Very cool. And, once again, someone said something that I’ve been saying for years: it’s an offensive symbol, but you can dull folks sense to it simply through overexposure. A while back, Kevin had up a great picture of a black college student wearing a confederate bikini. And maybe she was oblivious to the meaning of it. But the cognitive dissonance of such a sight will destroy the flag’s power as surely as men long after the war usurped it.

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James Harrigan July 17, 2012 at 12:17 pm 5

What a smart, hip, clever artist, and a cool little video. Thanks for putting it up, Kevin.

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