Hi. I’m Dan Kappus.
I live in Nashville, Tennessee. Pull up a chair. Take off your coat and stay a little longer, why don’t you?
I have expertise on a variety of subjects, including country music, tourism in Nashville, sociology, immigration, federal minimum wage and overtime laws, family and medical leave (FMLA), Soto Zen Buddhism, immigration and new Americans from Latin America, researching Federal regulations, the history of computing, and how to spend entire days doing nothing but arguing on Reddit. I live in North Nashville in a house I own, which I share with houseplants, frequent AirBnB guests, and my creativity. (I swear, creativity makes lots of messes, and takes up a lot of space. Just sayin’.)
As of May 2015, I’m looking for paying work to supplement my blogging habit. Check out my resume.
Jason
I saw a dreamcatcher today hanging from a mirror in a young black man’s pickup truck in Athens, Alabama.
As has been said many times, I think some Southerners see it as little more than regional pride. Didn’t get to ask him, as he was outside a restaurant and I was inside.
As for the mammies, you are not reading the South correctly if you think those were only collected by condescending white people. I grew up in Arkansas and black women did own their ancestry and collect those.
dan.kappus@gmail.com
When I was growing up, I thought of the Confederate flag as just a symbol of regional pride. What changed my mind was understanding just how offensive it was to some people from the region. I think also understanding how much of the Civil War really came down to slavery, and how the flag was used in the fight against desegregation years later, really flipped my way of looking at it.
People can use contested symbols in a lot of ways. I’ve come to believe that the connotations of these particular symbols are so horrible that they just shouldn’t be sold.