In Which I Recall the CSA

I like being from a country that led the way in banning the slave trade without finding the need to have a war about it. In fact, here's a little thing you might not know (and shamelessly ripped off of Wikipedia). Great Britain established a Royal Naval squadron to patrol off the west coast of Africa purely to intercept slave ships and emancipate slaves. At one point, the West Africa squadron used a sixth of the Royal Navy fleet and Marines. Considering the British Empire had the largest navy in the world then, that's a hell of a commitment to getting rid of slavery, and for no financial gain (a massive financial loss, actually). The humanitarian gains were huge, however- between 1808 and 1860 the West Africa Squadron captured 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans.

I'm going somewhere with this. Anyway, the Confederacy was a doomed movement of 11 states that decided to break away from the United States and form their own country. A certain trend amongst these states is that the white folks in charge liked (still might like, but there's some legislation that's put a stop to this) making people with a darker skin tone form the base of their economy. They weren't so keen on doing things like giving them rights or paying them, however. This lot didn't exactly have the moral high ground. Regardless, three of the states which rebelled and are now somewhat sulkily in the Union still have flags that are based on Confederacy flags. This is not exactly friendly looking to anyone who has African origins. The European equivalent of this would be how a Jew felt if  Bavaria or Rheinland-Pfalz had swastikas on their state flags.

Imagine my displeasure, then, as I have seen in my locality a Confederate battle flag being constantly flown from a flagpole. Now I know that they do this a lot in America in the southern states, but you'd expect that of some of them on account of not having so much going on in the cerebral department, but over here? That's depressing. I don't know if they simply don't know what it means and think they're being rock and roll (flown from outside a bungalow, so probably not) or they're a white supremacist. Either way, I feel like setting fire to the damn thing. No, strike that. I feel like paying someone to do it. No, strike that. I feel like kidnapping someone from their native land, forcing them into a life of servitude and having them do it for free.

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