Julian Chambliss, a college History Chair is planning a flag burning (and burial) across the South to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the end of the Civil War. The flag is the “Confederate Flag”, which historically is actually a variant of the Battle Flag. To him and many African-Americans, it stands for slavery and racism. Hate groups agree, and wave it liberally. Chambliss even made a version of the flag in the colors of the “Black Liberation Flag”.
Black-Coloured Glasses
I respect his sentiment. I almost applaud his “art project” on it’s intention to give closure and healing to some on a still-decisive past. Almost. If he could see past his ethnocentrism, he realize not everyone (of any Colour) shares his interpretation of that symbol. Or history — the flag in question was flown not for the government or institutions of the South but for their physical fight for self-determination, including freed slaves who were treated better than their counter-parts in the North. Like they say, “If this [flag] offends you, you need a history lesson”.
The ignorance of a much-oversimplified history too long to go into here. But clearly, what is offensive to some is dear to others, and often does not represent anything close to what is assumed, either at the time of its inception or today. Burning the “Rebel Flag” just because some have used it for hate and to protest historical racism is akin to drawing Muhammad (pbuh) to protest terrorists. You may be free to, but intentionally or not, you’re a jerk. It’s a broad shot at a limited target and others get hurt. You cannot help but disrespect all those who do NOT use the symbol for what you decide it must mean.
However, there is a difference worth noting. With depicting the Prophet, it is non-Muslims testing the ire of Muslims on the (purported) grounds they are countering the unknown numbers who will protest to the point of violence and silencing free speech. With the Flag, it is a battle for meaning between people who live under it (as it is widely flown in America). It’s not about other people, but ourselves.
A Nation Still Divided
And so we are still a nation divided. There are “these people” who are accused of not “getting over” losing a war of secession, and “those people” who won’t “get over it” with regards to slavery. Waving it may not help, but burning it certainly doesn’t. Hopefully this will at least cause a dialogue rather than more hate, but if the talk over at the [[Coffee Party]] and across social media is any indication, we prefer ignorance and actually learning anything for this is, sadly, unlikely.
I for one know that Black History is American History. So is Confederate History. Racial or regional pride doesn’t have to be divisive. We CAN “get over it” if we stop speaking for others as to what THEY mean and value. Wars have always been fought for good and bad reasons. Some saw it as a “rich man’s war” to defend a plantation economy. Most saw it as defending their homes and way of life from outside influence, regardless of the abolition question. And some see it as an unpurgable defiance against the powers of the North — and today, not unlike then, the Federal Government’s overarching authority. To have such sentiments doesn’t make people traitors or terrorists, or any of the other appellations still heaped upon the “Rebs” among us. Some would even argue — as back then — that it stands for the ideals of our Founding Fathers in a country that’s too big for its britches.
I’m not Southern or have descendants from the War Between the States (although most who do have them from but sides), but I know enough from those who are and do. I’ve prayed over the graves of POWs in Elmira, NY. I myself sometimes wear a “Bonnie Blue” flag pin for the reasons above, and in a Memorial Day parade wore my SCV hat (I was an honorary member as a post chaplain at one time). I figure those educated enough to recognize it won’t be ignorant enough to be offended. I hope someday we can say the same for the Battle Flag of the Confederacy.
{Some comments on a local flag-burning I posted on Facebook}
Who gets to decide what a symbol means? If racists appropriate a flag, and it vaguely reminds people of injustice from watered-down history lessons, is it any less dear to those who do NOT use it for such purposes?
I know plenty of people who see the “Rebel Flag” as a symbol of a part of American culture, one that is not inherently intertwined with slavery or racism.
The above is like people burning the Quran because of terrorists claiming to be following a holy cause, and people recalling medieval wars of Europe’s eastern front under siege.
This isn’t some US versus THEM. Black history and Confederate history is American history. Black culture and Southern culture is American culture.
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The problem is that being offended is a symptom of both prejudice and ignorance — and not by people flying the flag. You can’t heal national wounds by hijacking the debate with assumptions about “those people”, be White, Black, Southern, whatever label.
You can’t possibly claim the moral high road by banning or burning a flag, no matter what you insist it must mean and refuse to be educated otherwise.
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Ironically, I recall an article in the Challenger back in the 90s — I used to read it regularly –and one writer argued that the Revolutionary War was about slavery.
You read that right — the British Empire was planning to outlaw slavery and were going to abolish it in the colonies. (They did a few years later.) He suggested that we wanted independence in part to keep our slaves. I do not subscribe to his point of view, but it’s interesting to think about.
Slavery was not addressed by the Articles or the Constitution, and in fact reinforced the institution by compromise. Does that make the Betsy Ross Flag one that represents a country founded in part and complicit in ongoing slavery? Yes, if you look at it that way.
That is why a historian friend of mine likes to say that the American Flag itself is just as racist. If you think the North’s intention was to free the slaves instead of make the states fall back under the federal government, you have to be intentionally ignorant. And yet many people think the North gave a damn, forgetting that the Underground Railroad went to CANADA, not New York, and for good reason.
The facts don’t line up with the historical kindergarten-version and outrage that gives both bigots and race-advocates their power. It just outrages people more, and prevents healing.
But even today, the Klan and some other hate groups wave the Confederate Flag. But you know what else they wave? The American Flag. That is what America means to them, as sick as that is. And there are Civil Rights activists throughout the last century who definitely did associate the American Flag with institutionalized oppression by “The Man”.
Attitudes change, and we forget a lot. What doesn’t change is that people use symbols to mean whatever they want. They use it for racism, and they use it for reverse racism by preferring outrage to knowledge.
And it seems we’re all slaves to that sort of thinking.
{from another Facebook discussion}
So what is the “understood and excepted definition” [of the meaning of the Rebel Flag]?
Even if there wasn’t such a vast difference of opinion, it’s a free speech issue. And hate speech — something I abhor — depends almost entirely on intention.
So when you turn the tables and assume intention based on how people represent their culture, and refuse to accept THEIR beliefs and use of a symbol, THAT is bigotry.
As for your “fact” not up for debate, you are mistaking opinion for fact simply because it is an interpretation of a fact. Judging that a whole volume people “beloved that Black’s were inferior and did not deserve the same rights” cannot be rationally equated with a flag standing for those particular values. It’s a bigoted generalization, and such a thing is not because of it is a lie, but not the whole truth. And you forget the same was true of the UNION and the reason the Underground railroad was truly underground in the North and went to Canada. Those are facts that don’t succumb to your narrative.
That’s all this is — a narrative adding a whole lot of dressing on a crudely correlated “fact”.
Consider this: The American flag is a symbol of a country that didn’t allow women to vote until a century ago. Was it inexorably identified with that until that point? What about the internment camps in WWII? Americans denied their rights, every morning pledging to the Flag of the nation that put them there. Consider that many Black people today (and especially in the Civil Rights movement) associate the current flag with institutionalized racism — and it most often accompanies the same bigoted rallies that fly the “Rebel Flag”.
So what does the AMERICAN FLAG mean? There are already schools in the Southwest who don’t let people wear the colors because of what it “represents” to immigrant children and Mex-Americans who remember that their ancestor’s land was invaded and annexed, only to have their ancestors told to “go home.” It’s a legitimate sentiment, and perhaps some tact is due, but because of their ignorance and prejudice against those who are harmlessly patriotic rather than nationalistic and xenophobic.
However, I cannot disagree that racism can take the form of ” intimidation, which is exactly what many who raise the Confederate flag, wish to do.” I’m sure it DOES mean that to many — just like the American Flag, the Cross and Bible, and myriad other symbols.
But when you marry symbols to facts to whole groups of people, it’s just another excuse for a most ironic form of bigotry.