Why Confederate Flags Should Go
Yes, some say they're symbol of southern pride. But they're also symbol of something much uglier, so I think they're awful to display.
From a 2015 ArtsJournal post by Terry Teachout, consider, in his words, "what it means to a black person to see that flag flying over a government building one hundred and fifty years after Appomattox."
Teachout writes:
To be sure, there are serious-minded people who believe that its symbolic value can under certain circumstances be benign, and others who simply don't know enough about American history to understand what it means to a black person to see that flag flying over a government building one hundred and fifty years after Appomattox. Still, I think we all know in our hearts what at least some of those who continue to fly it today really have in mind. Certainly Dylann Roof was in no doubt about it.In any case, such debates are academic. Whether or not it was at one time wise for the federal government to turn a blind eye to southern racism in the hope of serving a greater good--and hindsight, as they say, is always 20/20--the moral statute of limitations for that policy has long since run out. That's why I believe that the Confederate battle flag and all its prideful variants should now be lowered forevermore.
Will that put an end to racism? Of course not. Nor will it stem the rising tide of self-righteousness that is increasingly driving this debate. (I wrote this at the peak of the controversy.) No conversion, after all, is complete enough to suit an ideologue. Even if you kill yourself out of self-loathing, he'll spit on your grave. But that's no reason not to do the right thing, and those who still believe in the possibility of good will should be no less willing to trust the sincerity of Nikki Haley, the Republican governor of South Carolina, who tweeted yesterday:
July 4th is just around the corner. It will be fitting that our state Capitol will soon fly the flags of our country & state, and no others.
If the SJW's are successful at getting the Confederate flag banned and statues of Confederate leaders removed from public places, how long until they fix their sights on statues of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Andrew Jackson and other slaveowners? How long until they focus on the Gadsden Flag (Don't Tread On Me!) as a symbol of the Tea Party? There's a classic slippery slope here that you really don't want to start down. And no one believes that SJW's will be content to stop with Confederate flags.
Robert Evans at May 18, 2017 10:45 PM
Confederate Flag?
Oh you mean the Confederate Swastika
Graham Palmer at May 18, 2017 11:01 PM
I really think this is a case of selective outrage. Not all blacks were slaves, and not all slaves were black.
You would think if the psychological wounds were really that severe that black people today would be traumatized by the democratic party. The party that has historically stood for racism and slavery.
The party of Woodrow Wilson who resegregated the military.
But instead they have chosen to focus their ire on the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia ( one of many flags used by various parts of the Confederacy) because some white working class guys with pickup trucks like it and use it as an expression of Southern pride.
My mother comes from a military family, and a lot of her close friends and family were killed by the Japanese during World War II. My father fought for four bloody years in the South Pacific, barely escaping with his life and not a lot left of his health.
Every day I see the Rising Sun flying above the American AFB where we live and and I hear the Japanese national anthem played before the Star Spangled banner, Somehow after all the bad things the Japanese military did to my immediate family members ( and not my distant ancestors) I can see and hear these things without becoming catatonic with worry about threats to my emotional safe space. I like the Japanese people.
They are not responsible for the sins of their ancestors and neither am I. They are not required to erase all vestigues of their culture and national Identiy to please my sensitivities and neither am I . This is how adult humans deal with the world. They don't turn themselves into victims.
Isab at May 18, 2017 11:20 PM
Which flag? There were dozens, not one of them the one most people associate with the so called 'confederate flag'
Te state flag of Georgia I believe is literally nothing more than one of the official flags of the Confederacy with a building added between the wreaths.
The problem with this line of thought is that is is no different and no better than prissy little snowflakes tweeting #BringBackOurGilrs as though men willing to rape children give a fuck what americans say on Twitter.
To top it all off when anyone dares to point out the flag they want banned was never actually flown by the confederacy, one is told the facts dont matter and that it is simply the 'right thing to do' because (no reasonable argument ever given) and anyone who disagrees must be racist.
One may as well ban the sell of green beans to insure no one with a peanut allergy gets sick
(Yes that sentence is what I meant to write)
Should we also ban the sale of old Lynyrd Skynyrd CDs that had that flag on them?
Should we likewise change the name of Oklahoma give what that word means and its connotation at the time of its naming?
Should we burn all images of Grover Cleveland for his role in disenfranchising women in 1887?
What about Lincoln? He didnt give a shit about slavery except for the fact it wound up producing halfbreeds as whites became acclimated enough to the 'lessor races' and would sink so far as to find them attractive.
And lets not forget his plan to ship everyone of african decent out of america
lujlp at May 18, 2017 11:28 PM
Point of Order, Isab
That flag was square, the flag they want to ban is rectangular.
Heraldry is dying art but all the symbols, colors, shape of the flag, even the materials and accouterments have individual meanings
The closest analogue to the "Confederate Flag" was their 1863 Navy Jack, and even then the colors are different
lujlp at May 18, 2017 11:39 PM
Apparently very few people in the US have any idea of the history of slavery. I read a survey a while back, in which most people thought that the Southern US basically invented slavery. They had no idea that:
(a) Slavery was a worldwide phenomenon, affecting all races, on all continents, throughout human history. Everybody enslaved the other guys.
(b) Slavery wasn't banned by the League of Nations (UN predecessor) until 1926.
(c) The main source of black slaves in the US were other blacks in Africa, who enslaved and sold members of enemy tribes.
(d) There were also slaves in the Northern States. Lincoln's famous proclamation explicitly did not free slaves in the North, only in the South.
(e) Slavery still exists today, even though it is illegal; best estimates place the current number of slaves around 30 million.
The fact that your ancestors, many generations ago, were slaves? You are not special. A huge part of the world's population can claim the same thing.
See Snopes on slavery for more non-PC facts.
a_random_guy at May 19, 2017 1:14 AM
Funny that you quoted Nikki Haley.
The flag of northern Virginia, which is the one everyone is offended about, was removed sometime ago from the Statehouse in Columbia, South Carolina - but the remaining flag, the flag of the state of South Carolina, ALSO flew over Confederate troops during the war.
Totally ignorant people do not care about that. They thrill to the idea of Abraham Lincoln creating a world of peace and justice, when he did no such thing.
Nobody cares. SLAVERY! SLAVERY! SLAVERY!
Radwaste at May 19, 2017 4:32 AM
AFA the flag and flying it. I've not seen a really good reason to acknowledge it or fly it.
Men (mostly WHITE) died for ___________ reasons (some sense of honor, against Northern efforts to stop Southern States economic success, the ability to own other men, etc.).
This flag was not part of that to any significant degree AFAIK so it's a ___________ symbol for some. Personally I've not thought a lot of those that seemed to value this particular symbol so ...
I also do not think a lot of those that want to focus on this symbol and give it some sort of POWER. Most of those that do are insignificant non-thinkers very similar to those that value this symbol.
BUT, I am very interested in those that fund/promote the removal/non-removal of this symbol. Who are these money/policy men? What other purposes are they funding? To what end?
A game is afoot but its not the one in the "news" headlines. Hope someone is paying attention but Carter, Clinton, and Obama did some serious damage to our human intelligence system.
Bob in Texas at May 19, 2017 5:33 AM
@Bob: Definitely, there is a game afoot. And most of the people who get upset about the flags and monuments are just useful idiots.
The game itself, though, is quite simple: money and power. Organizations like SPLC or BLM need outrage, in order to drive funding and political power. You could give them everything they (claim) to want, and they would have to find some new cause, because without controversy they have no reason to exist.
a_random_guy at May 19, 2017 5:48 AM
The square flag was the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia. The rectangular flag was a variant of the battle flag of the Army of Tennessee. The KKK was founded in Memphis, Tennessee by veterans of the Army of Tennessee, so it is logical that they would adopt their old battle flag as their symbol.
The Flags of the Confederacy
The Confederacy did not adopt an official national flag until 1863. Their first unofficial national flag, the Stars and Bars, looked so much like the Stars and Strips in the haze and smoke of a battlefield that friendly fire incidents became common. As a result, the armies of the Confederacy adopted numerous and varied battle flags.
Such a glib comment.
The swastika dates back to antiquity. They were used as symbols of luck in the West. The swastika was a symbol of the ancient Jainist religion and can even be found in prehistoric carvings. In the US, it was often used by and to represent Native American tribes. The Chilocco Indian Agricultural School used the symbol, as did the US Army's 45th infantry division. Until the hooked cross became strongly associated with Nazism, it was regarded as a positive symbol.
Conan the Grammarian at May 19, 2017 6:02 AM
"Oh you mean the Confederate Swastika"
Godwin's Law - so popular with the lazy.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at May 19, 2017 6:19 AM
there are serious-minded people who believe that its symbolic [historical] value can under certain circumstances be benign, or perhaps not benign so much as significant.
I am one of those people, but, like Amy, I think it's time that it come down from government buildings and offices. It invokes a visceral and understandable reaction that is unconnected to the little history lectures laid out in previous comments.
Use of the Stars and Bars (in any form) is not analogous to WWII veterans seeing the Rising Sun (which is no longer the same flag, either); as a historian, that one gives me the willies, too, but it represents a short period in the long national history of Japan. It is not the symbol of a nation which existed only for the purpose of protecting the existence and extension of chattel slavery in America, a nation which embodies a 300-year history of racial oppression.
Yes, we know that black people owned slaves too. That is remarkable for its rarity. Yes, we know that the original slave traders were other African blacks. There is no connection between that fact and the creation of the CSA or use of its flag today. Yes, we know that Lincoln didn't free all the slaves and was not a paragon of 21st-century racial equality, which has nothing to do with the use of the Confederate flags as symbols of unrepentant racism from Appomattox to the present day.
If nothing else, careful historians are forced to admit that history didn't end when Lee and Johnston surrendered, and that any benign value that flag had has long been co-opted by the likes of the Klan and their ignorant fellow travelers. Even as a descendant of Confederates, I will not fly it. I don't want to see my government fly it. And all of the specious and irrelevant arguments laid out in comments above don't change simple facts.
Grey Ghost at May 19, 2017 6:23 AM
I was unaware that any state was still flying that flag -- the "Confederate battle flag" -- over any state buildings. If so, it's a battle I don't feel like fighting. I have no emotional or intellectual investment in it. If it offends a lot of other people, take it down and let that be that.
But Robert Evans is correct in that, for the SJWs, this is merely a foot-in-the-door action. Start off by banning something that is only favored by an out-group. Everybody gets comfortable with the idea that that sort of thing is the right thing to do. Now, with that support, take on bigger targets. The SJWs will be happy to tell you that the flag of the United States is every bit as offensive, as are the Jefferson Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the National Air and Space Museum (seriously).
And SJW reaction is ignorant of history or what things actually represent. Some idiots think that the state flag of Alabama is a Confederate battle flag. I can't say for sure that it was never used for that purpose, but the flag is a St. Andrew's Cross; it and its symbolism predate the United States by centuries.
Cousin Dave at May 19, 2017 6:35 AM
And regarding Southern white shame that the SJWs would like to impose: A lot of World War II was fought by Southern and Midwestern white boys -- Steve Earle's line about "they draft the white trash first" was very true. I think that whatever shame was carried, that more than absolved it.
Cousin Dave at May 19, 2017 6:40 AM
And lets not forget his [Lincoln] plan to ship everyone of african decent out of america
A pity he wasn't more successful in that effort. It would have spared an unknown number of blacks from having to live in racist America.
Or is it AmeriKKKa?
I R A Darth Aggie at May 19, 2017 7:00 AM
And regarding Southern white shame that the SJWs would like to impose: A lot of World War II was fought by Southern and Midwestern white boys -- Steve Earle's line about "they draft the white trash first" was very true. I think that whatever shame was carried, that more than absolved it.
Cousin Dave at May 19, 2017 6:40 AM
I think Rudyard Kipling had a poem about this, or at least an oblique reference.
Anytime you are looking for someone who can actually *do something* like fight or fix your car, or plumb your house, chances are good it is going to be some Scotts Irish white boy.
The elites tolerate them when they need them, for as long as it takes to get the job done, but take a lot of satifaction in looking down on them. This is especially tough when they find out their plumber makes more than they do.
Isab at May 19, 2017 7:06 AM
While I don't fly or encourage the display of the confederate battle flag, I'll admit I care less every day about being labled "racist."
ahw at May 19, 2017 8:36 AM
So will the democrat party be banned? Party supported slavery, KKK, Jim Crow.
Stinky the Clown at May 19, 2017 9:06 AM
I think it comes down to letting the people of a community decide what's worth memorializing on public ground. If New Orleans wants to remove Confederate monuments, it's up to the people there. If South Carolina wants to stop flying the Confederate flag, that's South Carolina's business. If another city or state is comfortable with it, that's their business as well.
Though I will admit laughing at one sign I saw: "Take Down All Confederate Participation Trophies."
Kevin at May 19, 2017 9:23 AM
"Though I will admit laughing at one sign I saw: 'Take Down All Confederate Participation Trophies.'"
It sounds funny at first, but what they are talking about is memorials. Where I live, there is a memorial on the courthouse square to local men who died in the Civil War. There are local SJWs demanding that it be removed, and threatening to vandalize the courthouse if it isn't. Are we, then, to get rid of all of our memorials to all who died in war, nationwide? Or does being on the winning side make it OK? If that's so, then what about Vietnam memorials?
On the New Orleans statues, what they ought to do is put them in a local history museum somewhere. You know, those who forget the past, etc. New Orleans was captured in 1862, and for most of the rest of the war was under the rule of MG Benjaman Butler, who seemed to take delight at provoking the populace. Under his rule, soldiers routinely looted homes and businesses. Butler ordered the defacing of the statue of Andrew Jackson in Jackson Square, and at one point had most of the women in town rounded up and charged with prostitution. More seriously, he ordered the hanging of several of his critics. He was eventually replaced, but Union commanders and troops kept the city under martial law for a decade after the war ended. The hatred of Notherners that all this caused persisted in the city well into the 20th century.
Cousin Dave at May 19, 2017 10:54 AM
On the New Orleans statues, what they ought to do is put them in a local history museum somewhere.
That's what they are doing, apparently. The mayor's big mistake was not having that plan locked down and announced before the statues came down.
Kevin at May 19, 2017 11:24 AM
We, in the West, have always loved outlaws. Robin Hood, Ned Kelley, Jesse James, no matter how violent.
Southerners' love of the flag of the rebellion is their love of their outlaw ancestors. That it was for a regime that promoted slavery is dismissed with a simple "who doesn't have an ancestor with questionable beliefs?" They love the outlaws, not the slavers.
And the fact that the Southern cause was a lost one only enhances the romantic nature of it.
At the moment, I'm sitting in a hotel room in Charleston, SC, hotbed of both the 1776 rebellion and the 1861 rebellion. Statuary and historical markers here honor both signers of the Declaration of Independence as well as the secession orders. Having spent the day wandering this antebellum city, exploring the alleyways and hidden parks, as well as the old slave markets where human beings were bought and sold, I can see both sides of this argument.
But, yes, flags of the Confederacy should be removed from the same flagpole as the national flag. Florida does it right: there is a park, at the capitol building in Tallahassee in which flags of all nations that once claimed sovereignty over Florida are flown - from the First Union Flag of England to the Capetian flag of France to the Burgundy Cross of Spain to the Blood Stained Banner of the Confederacy. Only the US and Florida flags are flown over the capitol building itself.
Conan the Grammarian at May 19, 2017 1:07 PM
I wonder what it must be like to see that horrible symbol of treason and murder flying every day, we should probably ask Her Royal Majesty how it feels to be reminded of the traitors who drove her great-great-great-grandfather mad and tore from her realms one of the Crown Jewels of the Empire. How horrible it must be for her to see that horrid American flag and the treason it represents.
Warhawke223 at May 19, 2017 9:02 PM
"Yes, some say they're symbol of southern pride. But they're also symbol of something much uglier, so I think they're awful to display."
There is no such thing as an ugly symbol. Especially one that is nothing more than a common arrangement of colored stripes crosses and stars.
The only thing ugly is people trying to ascribe a personal mening to it, acting offended and demanding that it be removed.
This wont end with the flags and the statues. It will just give the SJW's confidence that they can eventually eradicate anything they find offensive on the slightest pretext.
Isab at May 20, 2017 9:04 AM
Why would Elizabeth II see the American flag flying everyday? And why would the American flag arouse any stronger emotions in her than the Indian flag or the South African flag, two jewels of the crown that were torn from her realm within her own lifetime.
And, who cares what the distant relative of a long-ago monarch who once exercised sovereignty over the as-yet-unformed United States feels?
And while we're asking her how it feels to gaze upon that "horrid symbol of treason and murder," why don't we ask her about Lend-Lease and how it feels to know that US factories were supplying her father's Royal Air Force and Royal Navy with weapons, equipment, and supplies in some of the darkest days of his realm?
Conan the Grammarian at May 20, 2017 3:05 PM
"And while we're asking her how it feels to gaze upon that 'horrid symbol of treason and murder,' why don't we ask her about Lend-Lease and how it feels to know that US factories were supplying her father's Royal Air Force and Royal Navy with weapons, equipment, and supplies in some of the darkest days of his realm?"
Indeed. And along those same lines, go back to my Steve Earle quote.
Cousin Dave at May 22, 2017 7:51 AM
From a well-known senator (same debate, about 15 years ago):
"I was talking to a Southerner about this the other day, and he said, 'The Nazis were bad. But we drive around in Volkswagens.'
"I said, 'Yeah, but we don't put a Volkswagen on top of the state capitol.'"
lenona at May 22, 2017 1:55 PM
From a well-known senator (same debate, about 15 years ago):
"I was talking to a Southerner about this the other day, and he said, 'The Nazis were bad. But we drive around in Volkswagens.'
"I said, 'Yeah, but we don't put a Volkswagen on top of the state capitol.'"
lenona at May 22, 2017 1:55 PM
Make sure you vote to decide what goes on your state capital. meanwhile, I will do the same in my state capital. Your bitching should stop at the state line.
As others have pointed out, many Confederate battle flags are now part of the State flag of many southern states.
It is never going to end.
Isab at May 22, 2017 7:22 PM
The Nazis didn't actually put the Volkswagen into production. It was conceived by Hitler and designed by Ferdinand Porsche (from a stolen Czech design) to replicate the success of the American Ford Model T in providing an affordable car for the masses and helping to mechanize (and modernize) the US.
The Germans switched the VW factory to produce war vehicles prior to an actual production run of Volkswagens. It was only put into actual production after the war when the British general in charge of the British occupation zone needed a way to put out-of-work and homeless Germans back to work in war-torn Germany.
American servicemen in the occupation forces purchased the Volkswagen and were impressed with the car's reliability, affordability, and performance. Bringing them home, they created a US market for the spunky little German car.
Conan the Grammarian at May 23, 2017 4:54 PM
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