Why is there even “debate” about the slavery flag?
The conflict over the banner of the Confederacy has been raging for decades between those who feel it is a symbol of free speech, and others who see it as a symbol of white supremacy.
What?
Who the hell sees that rag as a symbol of free speech? Of course it’s not – it’s no such thing. (The Confederacy outlawed lots of kinds of speech, because it had to, because it held people in slavery. It couldn’t afford free speech. It was a tyranny keeping a majority in chains – does that sound like a home of free speech to you?) If you see the Confederate flag you don’t think ah yes, free speech. It’s a symbol of the Confederacy, and slavery. That’s it.
Cornell William Brooks, national president of the N.A.A.C.P., said on Friday that those who said the flag was “merely a symbol of years gone by” had it all wrong. The flag, he said, is an “emblem of hate” that should be banished from public life.
People have been watching too much Gone With the Wind if they think that. If they want years gone by they can get some Shaker furniture, or read Dickens, or listen to Mozart. They don’t need a damn white supremacist flag.
Elsewhere, writers and academics found fault in the argument that the flag was meant to preserve a Southern way of life. In a post for The Atlantic titled “Take Down the Confederate Flag — Now,” Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote that the argument that the flag preserves a heritage of racist behavior was what motivated Mr. Roof to attack black people.
“More than any individual actor, in recent history, Roof honored his flag in exactly the manner it always demanded — with human sacrifice,” Mr. Coates wrote.
Edward E. Baptist, a professor at Cornell University who specializes in the history of slavery, said in a series of posts on Twitter that the flag had been used as justification for attacks on blacks since the Civil War.
Yes but days of yesteryear. Magnolia. Miss Scahlet.
A post published Friday on League of the South, a niche website defined as a “neo-Confederate” group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the flag should not be taken down. Calling it “the most recognizable historic flag of the South,” the league said the Confederate flag “stands for the heroic effort our people made 150 years ago to avoid the fate were are experiencing today.”
What fate is that? Climate change? The internet, on which League of the South has a website? Frequent flyer miles? Gluten-free orange juice?
At least the people at League of the South weren’t shot to death a couple of days ago. Lucky fate.
The designated hitter.
To add insult to injury, while the American and state flags flying on the South Carolina state capital were lowered to half-mast yesterday, the Confederate flag flying elsewhere on the capital grounds was not lowered.
I bought a book about the Reconstruction era called THE BLOODY SHIRT, by Stephen Budiansky. I’ve never been able to finish it.
Oooh, oooh, oooh! I know this one! People who want to say racist things without consequences.
Other “most recognisable symbols”: the Nazi swastika, the hammer and sickle, the Scarlet Letter. Let’s bring them all back.
Don’t be silly. There’s a black man in the White House!!! Haven’t you ever seen Birth of a Nation?
(3:04)
(/sarcasm)
I’ve had personal experience of the-Confederate-battle-flag-as-beloved-whatnot. It was interesting. And weird.
When I lived in New Orleans I took park in an astronomy club that held a star observing camp-out in a dark sky site deep in the woods of Mississippi. Their logo had stars and telescopes and various relevant things with the Confederate flag as the background. There weren’t any blacks participating, but there were plenty of non-Southerners and none of us liked the flag bit. Once I suggested they really didn’t need that there.
I was surprised at the level of emotional attachment some people had. The magnolias and mint juleps and Miss Scahlett is a real thing. I wouldn’t say any of them saw it as an emblem of free speech. More of Home in some hugely grand and mythic way. And that’s a very hard thing to get people to be rational about. Sort of like telling the US’ers generally to change their flag because it was emblematic of torture and dictators in Central and South America and the Middle East and Africa and Southeast Asia. The fact that it’s true doesn’t change people’s attitude.
Us non-Southerners never did figure out how to get the educated, pleasant, and not obviously bigoted astronomy geeks to see the problem. I’m guessing it’ll be even harder with others.
I’ve seen people display the flag on their vehicles here in Washington state, which makes utterly no sense to me. Washington wasn’t even a state during the Civil War and is as far from the south geographically, as one can get in the lower 48 (excepting Maine). When I had the opportunity, I asked the owner of one such display why he had it, the explanation I got was that it represented his freedom and the right to in general be a contrarian, something supposedly hip and cool. I informed him that he was basically marking himself as a racist and a believer in a country that doesn’t exist any more, the founders of which stole the lives of others for personal gain. I also informed him that he was essentially marking himself as an outcast in a state where the vast majority of people held values the opposite of what his flag represented and perhaps, he would be better off south of his beloved and now irrelevant Mason-Dixon line. This occurred in the parking lot of a grocery store that was on my commute route and I did see his vehicle again at a later date. It no longer had the stars and bars in the rear window. I wonder if I wasn’t the only one to comment to him with a negative opinion.
The ‘St Anthony’s Cross’ confederate flag is not even the flag of that treasonous conspiracy. As noted, it is the ‘battle flag’ of the Confederate ARMY. An army that made war upon the United States and its Constitution.
As an affectation in the non-confederate states, it is even more offensive. On the order of Polish, or Ukrainian far-right nuts displaying swastikas.
I wonder what’d happen if people denounced that flag as un-American and those flying it as hating America …