Intimidation by Confederate Flag

Update: Blog has been taken down.

Word comes today that fellow blogger, Corey Meyer, has decided to shut down his blog after experiencing what can only be described as an act of intimidation at his workplace, which happens to be a school. Apparently, a Confederate flag was hoisted up a flag pole and tied to a bag of coal along with a note near the school.

Although, on occasion Corey commented on this site, I never included a link to his on my blogroll. From his farewell message:

Needless to say this was an inappropriate act…however the flag will serve as a nice welcome mat for my students to wipe their feet as they enter my classroom for the next week.  Then it will be burnt.

Let’s just say that I was not a fan of The Blood of My Kindred and leave it at that.

Regardless of my lack of enthusiasm I join others in condemning the act. While I suspect that the targets of Corey’s posts will rejoice over his decision to shut down his blog, I wonder how they will react to the use of a Confederate flag.

What I would like to know from Corey’s detractors and others in the Southern heritage community is whether they believe that this represented an appropriate use of the flag. We are constantly being lectured by this crowd that the meaning of the flag has been hijacked over the years by various individuals and groups. Well, where does this little act stand?

If you ask me, the very attempt to intimidate someone with a Confederate flag who has been labelled a threat to and enemy of Southern/Confederate heritage does little more than reinforce a growing belief among Americans across the country that the public display of this flag ought to be limited to private property.

These folks are their own worst enemies.

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24 comments… add one
  • JW Phillips Jan 10, 2014 @ 8:22

    There are many who are descended from families with relatives who fought and sacrificed their lives under the German government of 1933-44. Would any seriously argue that they have a ‘historically justified right’ to ‘honor’ their ‘historic memory,’ by displays and public memorials to the Swastika? To those of us who find slavery and the Confederacy that sought to institutionalize it permanently in the world as a state right repugnant to our cores, the various vainglorious and specious arguments attempting to ‘justify’ the public display of the Confederate flag is in deep disrespect of the true Americans who laid down their lives defeating the Confederacy and its evil institutions centered around the moral tumor of slavery.

  • Steve Jan 9, 2014 @ 21:41

    I have never heard of this guy Corey. Get intimidated flying the Confederate Flag? Really? I have to ask what lesson this guy is teaching his students! Spread the hate, so much for that diversity thing. Some folks may not like the Southern cross, due to ignorance &/or prejudice against Southern people. Don’t care, their opinion on how I honor my Confederate Ancestor does not mean squat to me. I can say this, 99% of the “Southern Heritage” crowd will be the first to defend the Stars and Stripes. So the teacher is teaching a very bad lesson to the students, he should take the flag down, fold it and give it to some one that will respect it. Take the high road, that will teach the students a better lesson!

    • Kevin Levin Jan 10, 2014 @ 2:00

      I believe it would make for a bad lesson as well. That said, I tend to think that Corey was just blowing off steam with that comment.

    • JW Phillips Jan 10, 2014 @ 9:34

      “Some folks may not like the Southern cross, due to ignorance &/or prejudice against the Southern people.” – I would dispute that there is a homogenous entity that can be described by the appellation “Southern people,” without a great deal of qualification. Are you suggesting that the African American blacks who exceed the white population throughout much of the southern states to this day are part of that “Southern people.” Or am I being a ‘hater’ by suggesting that as black former slaves of that Confederacy that any who take issue with that Confederate flag, or “Southern cross,” if you prefer, are by your definition, “not Southern people.” Please clarify.

      • Kevin Levin Jan 10, 2014 @ 10:15

        Are you suggesting that the African American blacks who exceed the white population throughout much of the southern states to this day are part of that “Southern people.”

        This is a point that I’ve made over and over. Yes, most people who reference Southern heritage assume a set of shared values and assumptions about the past.

        • JW Phillips Jan 10, 2014 @ 10:26

          @Kevin – I would take this a step further, and posit that most of those who choose to reference “Southern heritage” as a singular entity, are endeavoring to and inclined to present a limited view and false set of assumptions with a political agenda the is imbued with prejudices against the North, black people, and progressive white southerners who put their lives on the line to promote equal rights and freedom to marry any adult of one’s choosing.

        • Rhett Tucker Jan 11, 2014 @ 10:11

          Then I presume you do not refer to to yourself as an “American” when you travel to Europe or Asia because YOU would otherwise be presuming that the United States is the only country in the Americas of the Western Hemisphere.

          In truth most people who insist upon the distinction between black, or white, Southerner are superciliously unaware of the hypocrisy of calling themselves American.

          • Kevin Levin Jan 11, 2014 @ 10:50

            Ummmm…. what?

          • Brooks D. Simpson Jan 11, 2014 @ 20:51

            Neither the Canadians or Mexicans I know call themselves Americans.

            • JW Phillips Jan 12, 2014 @ 7:10

              Nor have many Texans I’ve known, at least not as a primary identification. Ditto, New Yorkers. Who have a tendency to one another to specify neighborhood. So parochial identification tends to assert itself, especially as the world’s horizons broaden out, and the odd of someone from China or Budapest being sufficiently familiar with Brooklyn as distinct from Soho, Chelsea or Tribeca becomes a distinct possibility.

              Teddy Roosevelt was into the American brand and heavily into concepts of homogenization of an idealized “American” who was less regional in their loyalties and dialect. The dark flip side of this idealized ‘nationalized American citizen’ was Pax Americana. Teddy established his ‘creds’ during the Hearstian concocted Spanish-American War. He honed it in the Navy and Pacific, and he saw it enter the United States (with his urging) into the Great War, where he sacrificed his son. Nationalism comes to us as a double edged sword. But, as the embrace of the false premises of the Confederacy reconstituted as promoted by the Tea Party FAUX states’ rights movement makes clear, so does overwrought regionalism. They both are predicated on glossing over very material and relevant inequities to be resolved on a local and national political level substituting a false image of a unified consensus to the outside world.

              • Brooks D. Simpson Jan 21, 2014 @ 9:34

                I was responding specifically to this statement:

                “Then I presume you do not refer to to yourself as an “American” when you travel to Europe or Asia because YOU would otherwise be presuming that the United States is the only country in the Americas of the Western Hemisphere.”

                People within the United States may identify themselves by state.region, but outside of the United States they define themselves as Americans. Canadians and Mexicans do not.

                • JW Phillips Jan 21, 2014 @ 9:53

                  Actually I was referring to the fact that as the rest of the world is more sophisticated and as America engages in foreign policies its citizens do not feel obliged to defend from criticism, the cognition of regional difference abroad is much more pronounced than it once was, even if culturally we are arguably more homogenous via mass media and nomadic employment patterns exerted over the past two or three generations.

  • Ben Allen Jan 9, 2014 @ 14:49

    “These folks are their own worst enemies.” Isn’t that the truth!? They preach about being respectful towards that flag, yet they disrespect it with their hilarious rebel flag bikinis, towels, stickers, and having it fly from their trucks. The funny thing is they don’t even know they’re being disrespectful (Jim’s advice to Bart from Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles comes to mind). If you want to wear a rebel flag bikini while drying your body off with a rebel flag towel, by all means, be my guest. You might as well be using rebel flag toilet paper.

    • Robert Jan 9, 2014 @ 15:05

      Ben, your point falls flat when the United States flag is used the same way. Drive down any street in America and look at the condition of flags flying. I can guarantee you will find some shredded and faded . Heck, go check on government buildings and the same can be found. You can find the flag on just about every product imaginable, including bikinis and towels. Are those folks being disrespectful?

      • Ben Allen Jan 9, 2014 @ 15:14

        Why yes, yes they are. That is why I don’t treat the Star and Stripes like that.

      • JW Phillips Jan 10, 2014 @ 9:47

        I would say from years of observation reeling through and tracking such tropes, that most hullabaloo about treatment of certain symbols, especially flags, is a pretense for engagement on deeper prejudices and philosophical issues. The flag is a symbol, therefore it is subject to and vulnerable to fetishes and kitsch merchandizing of the crassest ilk. Like a “line in the sand” it is the imbecile’s throw down who’s aching for a fight. As such, flags and flag issues tend to be used as a political tool of intimidation and false outrage by people who are usually by definition hypocrites or less than intellectually acute. Government uses such fetishes somewhat cynically to motivate soldiers to fight to the death over battles or strategies that their own commanders might disown as wrongheaded the very next day. However, those same symbols can be abused and used as justification for brutality, slavery and genocide and when that is the case, like the Nazi flag, such symbols assume the baggage of those lapses. I would say, that this is a reason to be quite vigilant about what acts and positions are taken in relation to such symbols, including our own American Flag.

    • Jefferson Moon Jan 10, 2014 @ 8:34

      I saw CBF toilet paper once, wipe out the confederacy…

  • Rob Baker Jan 9, 2014 @ 13:39

    Interesting. I teach in the middle of Georgia. I’ve never received the amount of Confederate attention that Corey gets at the workplace.

    • Kevin Levin Jan 9, 2014 @ 13:44

      This is not meant in any way to excuse what apparently took place, but I think it’s safe to say that Corey should have thought much more carefully about how he engaged certain individuals and groups.

      • Rob Baker Jan 9, 2014 @ 14:03

        Truth

      • JW Phillips Jan 10, 2014 @ 8:33

        Forgetting for a moment what is “safe to say,” and looking at the issue at hand, if this individual in fact was being subject to anonymous attack and intimidation in the form of having such a “message” delivered at the doorstep of his classroom, his first and most appropriate action should have been to report it to the police and school authorities. His second should have been to hand over the flag, bag of coal and any other vestiges of what may or may not be an indication of a serious vendetta to the police as well. The “lesson” to be learned by students should be to resist any attempt to silence freedom of expression and ideas, but to take seriously anonymous threats from an overwrought and somewhat demented sub-culture that has been associated historically with lynching, voter suppression, shootings, tar and feathering and similarly violent responses when their disinformation and delusion is answered with the facts of history and human rights. As for the disclaimers that “Corey likely did it himself for attention,” they are too similar to quotes I have read from Germany in the 30s discounting similar political acts against those who opposed the National Socialists and their “great respect for Aryan heritage’ to ignore.

  • David Tatum Jan 9, 2014 @ 12:30

    I’m no fan of Corey, but given his track record he won’t quit blogging long.
    Who ever pulled the stunt with the flag and coal “Does Not” represent The Southern Heritage Community ! I wouldn’t be surprised if Corey did it himself ! I’m not saying he did, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
    As for your statement – “the very attempt to intimidate someone with a Confederate flag who has been labelled a threat to and enemy of Southern/Confederate heritage”
    You give Corey more credit than he deserves, he was never a threat and never will be,
    he is an annoyance who was never taken seriously.
    Mark my words, “He will be blogging again soon” !

    • BorderRuffian Jan 9, 2014 @ 15:31

      “What I would like to know from Corey’s detractors and others in the Southern heritage community is whether they believe that this represented an appropriate use of the flag.”

      Absolutely not.
      But your reaction is as if everyone who supports Confederate heritage is somehow responsible for this act. That’s way over the top. Corey is known to visit several sites. This is probably the result of some personal confrontation.

      “…labelled a threat to and enemy of Southern/Confederate heritage…”

      Corey Meyer?….with blog traffic of 15-20 per day?
      Don’t think so.

      • Kevin Levin Jan 9, 2014 @ 15:36

        But your reaction is as if everyone who supports Confederate heritage is somehow responsible for this act.

        Not at all.

        Corey Meyer?….with blog traffic of 15-20 per day? Don’t think so.

        I am not privy to his traffic, but I’ve seen him mentioned in enough places to suggest that he was a popular person of interest.

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