Hugo Chavez And The Confederate Flag
02/10/2011
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Stanley Bermudez [Email him]is a native-born citizen of the United States, because his Venezuelan parents happened to be in Louisiana in 1965 when he was born. They moved back a year and a half later, but he came north in In 1983 to study—because he could.He has a US Birth Certificate.

But he's a product of South American education, and recently did some "controversial" artwork involving the Confederate Flag.(It's "controversial" because he put it in an art show, people complained, it was removed, censorship blah blah blah...)

As an artist, Bermudez often takes to canvas to express his feelings and thoughts. One of his most recent works, "Heritage?," illustrates what comes to his mind when he thinks of the Confederate flag.
"In school (in Venezuela) we learned about the United States' Civil War and slavery. I learned to have a negative view of the flag— I basically associated the image of the flag with slavery, racism and the KKK," said Bermudez. "In 1983, I was a college student in Texas and saw a group of KKK clansmen in their hooded robes, standing on a street corner yelling and waving the (Confederate) flag. My English was limited at the time, so I'm not sure what they were yelling, but I probably wouldn't want to know. "It only happened once in the 12 years that I lived there, but that image stuck with me."[GSC professor teaches the importance of art as his own work comes under fire, By Brandee A. Thomas Gainesville Times, February 1, 2011]

You see the problem—he's technically an American, but he got his education and prejudices in anti-American Venezuela—the country that produced Hugo Chavez.

Of course, if he'd been educated in the United States he might have received the same idea of the Confederacy.

I'm sorry if he was frightened by a bunch of guys in white robes standing on a street corner, but there can't have been very many of them, or they would have taken up more space than you get on a corner.

There's difference in scale of several orders of magnitude between the racist demonstration he thinks he saw in 1983, and the more recent racist demonstrations—funded by George Soros—we all saw in 2006:

Not exactly a street-corner, is it? Since many (not all) of those marchers were chanting in English, and I speak English, I can tell you what they were saying. Here's a Michelle Malkin column on the demonstrations:

"One of the largest, boldest banners visible from aerial shots of the rally read: "THIS IS STOLEN LAND." Others blared: "CHICANO POWER" and "BROWN IS BEAUTIFUL." (Can you imagine the uproar if someone had come to the rally holding up a sign reading "WHITE IS BEAUTIFUL"?) Thugs with masked faces flashed gang signs on the steps of L.A.'s City Hall. Students walked out of classrooms all across Southern California chanting, "Latinos, stand up!" Young people raised their fists in defiance, clothed in T-shirts bearing radical leftist guerrilla Che Guevara's face and Aztlan emblems."

None of these people were carrying Confederate Flags, they were carrying Mexican flags.

Mr. Bermudez should try doing some Mexican flag artwork, with criticisms of Mexican society, and see how far he gets.

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