The United States and Confederaflag are both symbols of slavery...

My opponent attempts to support his claim of the U.S. having been and continuing "in perpetuity mind you" to be a melting pot by skipping the founding and origins of the U.S and many of its hypocritical and dubious tactics. (i.e. slavery, chauvinism, selective immigration, etc.) I will attempt to present a more balanced portrayal of what my opponent calls the melting pot. As my opponent has chosen to ignore almost 120 years of U.S. history and jump to Ellis Island, let us tackle this red herring first. I will take my opponent's ommission of this time period as an admission that the U.S. was not a 'melting pot' during these years. The article "Ellis Island’s Doubled-Edged Legacy" by J.P. O’Malley delves into the history of Ellis Island. [1] In the piece, the author states, "The most effective weapon Anglo-Saxon elites have used to preserve power in American society has been the rule of law. And, as Bayor constantly reminds us, there has been a great deal of racial legislation in the history of the U.S.....The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act prevented Chinese immigrants from entering the U.S. The 1891 Immigration Act declared certain classes of individuals as unfit to become American citizens. And in 1917, Congress passed a law requiring all immigrants over the age of 16 to pass a literacy test to gain entry into the United States....But the most racially motivated law of all, Bayor points out, was passed in 1924. The National Origins Act set a limit of 150,000 immigrant visas per year. Seventy percent of these went to British, Irish, and Germans. Italians, Poles, and Russians received just 10 percent....These laws took their cue from western science, which at the time held sacred the views of social Darwinism and eugenics to be sacred. The message was clear: Western and Northern Europeans were superior to all other races and ethnicities. This warped ideology, Bayor argues, trickled down into all facets of American immigration policy."This passage clearly illustrates that even in my opponent's romanticized and diluted view of U.S. history, the U.S. is a racially selective melting pot - at best. Even if one feeblishly attempts to ignore the scores of people who were brought here against their will as slaves and not immigrants, racism is so infused in the fabric of the United States one can find evidence of this contagion in any time period. Needless to say, these slaves were not welcomed or treated as immigrants. As my opponent did not specify a time period, it is important for the reader to note that Ellis Island was not designated as an immigration station until 1890. Before 1890, individual states had their own immigration procedures. The racial quotas mentioned earlier were attempts to "preserve the ethnic flavor of the "old immigrants", those earlier settlers primarily from Northern and Western Europe." Laws and regulations such as the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Alien Contract Labor Law, the institution of a literacy test, Quota Laws, and the National Origins Act were created to keep certain groups of people from entering the U.S.. These restrictions were based upon a percentage system according to the number of ethnic groups already living in the United States as per the 1890 and 1910 Census.[2]My opponent then asks for proof of a connection between Jim Crow Laws and gerrymandering in their regard to slavery. As Jim Crow Laws specifically targeted melaninated people in the U.S. and attepted to limit them in particular, one would think the connection was clear. However, as quotedin the article "DOJ Attorney: Slavery, Jim Crow Is Why Black People Don’t Trust Police", Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta is quoted as saying, "Let’s start with the first question and consider the source of the mistrust...Mistrust can’t be explained away as the kneejerk reaction of the ill-informed or the hyperbolic. It’s in part the product of historical awareness about the role that police have played in enforcing and perpetuating slavery, the Black Codes, lynchings and Jim Crow segregation....‘At many points in American history, law enforcement enforced the by CinemaP-1.1c" href="http://dailycaller.com/2015/05/19/doj-attorney-slavery-jim-crow-is-why-black-people-dont-trust-police/#78935339"> status quo, a status quo that was often brutally unfair to disfavored groups." [3]Gerrymandering can be tied to slavery inasmuch as it is yet another attempt to curtail and marginalize the freedoms of melaninated peoples and maintain segregated districts.It can be linked to other disfranchising laws such as poll taxes, literacy tests, vouchers of "good character," and disqualification for "crimes of moral turpitude. [4] Interestingly, the disproportionately melaninated population in the prison industrial complex can be seen as the modern 3/5 compromise, as states are attempting to have their prison populations counted in their voting dstricts althought the prisoners will not be able to vote. This process has come to be known as prison gerrymandering.Next, my opponent asks for proof that race is a false social construct being used to further a class conscious agenda. The origin of modern racism can be linked to Bacon's rebellion when wealthy landowners who were taken aback by coalitions forged between melaninated and non-melaninated indentured servants and slaves against the wealthy landowners.In a segment entitled Race: the Power of an Illusion historian Ira Berlin stated in an interview, "Bacon's Rebellion is an event which begins to redefine notions of race on the North American continent, or at least in the Chesapeake region...Before Bacon's Rebellion we certainly have distinctions made between blacks and whites, and we certainly have attitudes on the part of whites and presumably on the part of blacks where they differentiate themselves and where they probably think each is superior to the other...Nonetheless, we see them behaving pretty much the same way. Some numbers of people of African descent have moved into the land owning class, are sometimes owning the servants, are connected with churches, are by CinemaP-1.1c" href="http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-02-08.htm#79231658"> cognizant of the legal system and so on...And of course substantial numbers of people of European descent are caught in a system of coerced labor called indentured servitude. And indentured servants, whether they are black or white, are pretty much treated the same way as slaves. Very badly...Bacon's Rebellion changes that, and what seems to be crucial in changing that is the consolidation after Bacon's Rebellion of a planter class. The planters had not been able to control this rowdy labor force of servants and slaves. But soon after Bacon's Rebellion they increasingly distinguish between people of African descent and people of European descent. They enact laws which say that people of African descent are hereditary slaves. And they increasingly give some power to white independent white farmers and land holders...That increased power is not equality. Dirt farmers are not elected to the House of Burgess in Virginia; the planters monopolize those offices. But they do participate in the political system. In other words we see slavery and freedom being invented at the same moment." [5]Race , in regard to skin tone or hue, is a false social construct that has no validity. Its parameters are subjective and changeable. For example, when Italians first arrived in America, they were classified as "non-white" and discriminated against because of their darker complexions and curlier hair. (as well as other reasons) By joining in with the general discrimination and harassment of those classified as "black", Italians gained acceptance into the illusive "white" group. If race were genetic, (as it cannot be because it isn't real) this change could not have occurred. The recent Rachel Dolezal story also highlights the fluidity of the social construct defined as race. I believe my opponent's revisionist view of history will be glaringly obvious to the reader by the end of this debate."..the confederacy, which flew a different flag than the Union, yet still asserts that the Union's flag supports slavery."The Union or U.S had its own slavery and allowed in the border states that did not seceed. The war began as a struggle to preserve the Union, not a struggle to free the slaves, but many in the North and South felt that the conflict would ultimately decide both issues. [6] I will now address a few of my opponent's other distortions:-Lincoln was an acknowledged separatist and it would have been more effective for him to change his mind in the oval office rather than on his death bed.-In short, The U.S. flag symbolizes slavery because the U.S. was founded on the principle of slavery that it has yet to repair. It's refusal to acknowledge its past and current racial abuses provides more fuel than ideology from a dead Confederacy. -The topic being discussed is not the Confederate flag but rather the shared lineage of slavery between the U.S. and the confederacy. Also, I said the flying of the Confederate flag was a distraction not the flag itself or Confederate ideology. If the flag were taken down in SC, would that put an end to the racism or address the effects of slavery in the U.S.? http://www.thedailybeast.com... [1]http://www.libertyellisfoundation.org... [2]http://dailycaller.com... [3]http://www.justice.gov... [4]http://www.pbs.org... [5]http://www.civilwar.org... [6]