Why the flag debate matters

Published June 29, 2015

by Thomas Mills, Politics NC, June 29, 2015.

Progressives claiming that the flag debate is a distraction have missed the point. As President Obama made so clear in his eulogy for Clementa Pinckney, a racist white guy tried to start a race war by killing nine African-Americans in a church. Instead, he forced white Southerners to re-examine their views on race. People who just two weeks ago would have defended flying the Confederate battle flag have now called for its removal.

White Southerners who are proud of their heritage but deeply conflicted about their history finally acknowledge that the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of white supremacy and of attitudes that we, as a country and region, need to denounce. The flag debate is not about changing laws or ending racism. It’s about making attitudes that demean African-Americans unacceptable. 

The flag is not so much a symbol of hate as a symbol of white supremacy. Most of the people who defend it don’t hate black people, but many consider African-Americans inferior in intelligence, morals, and work ethic. Flying the flag on the capitol grounds validates their world view, making it sanctioned by government and defended by political leaders. Taking it down sends a message that not only is their world view no longer acceptable, but that the number of people who agree with them is shrinking, especially among people with power.

The flag was never about heritage unless that heritage is celebrating segregation. There’s no history of the flag as a symbol of remembrance. As numerous people pointed out last week, segregationists who controlled state governments started flying it about 50 years ago to show disdain for and defiance of the Civil Rights Movement. They might not be able to resist the power of the federal government to end segregation and enforce voting rights for black Southerners, but state governments didn’t have to accept that African-Americans were equal. 

In the intervening 50 years, the flag became a symbol of pride, individualism, and rebellion against authority, government and otherwise, for many white Southerners. For African-Americans, though, it remained a symbol of repression. Slavery and Jim Crow were enforced through terror and intimidation and the flag is a reminder of a brutal past of racial violence. 

Southern apologists like to claim the Civil War was about much more than slavery. Even if that were true, the war was certainly about preserving a social system that treated African-Americans as inferior. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t have had Jim Crow. 

The symbols of Jim Crow might not be as relevant today, but they still create an environment in which overt white supremacy is tolerated, even if not fully accepted. As a friend of the Charleston shooter said, “…[H]e had that kind of Southern pride…He made a lot of racist jokes, but you don’t really take them seriously like that. You don’t really think of it like that.”

We can still celebrate Southern culture and Southern heritage without creating a comfort zone for hate. We gave the country blues and bluegrass, rock-n-roll and funk, Louie Armstrong and Elvis Presley, Big Mama Thornton and Loretta Lynn, NASCAR and ACC basketball, shrimp and grits and soul food, William Faulkner and Maya Angelou, and so much more. Much of the culture was borne of the hardship and division that shaped the South. 

We shouldn’t forget our history. We should preserve our battlefields and even many of our monuments because erasing history makes us more likely to repeat it. But we should also acknowledge and take responsibility for the pain and injustice of Jim Crow and white supremacy. Removing the flag might not end racism or stop the next mass shooting but it will send a signal that the government no longer tolerates or celebrates state-sanctioned discrimination. 

June 29, 2015 at 2:32 pm
Johnny Hiott says:

This article should get an award for fiction. I don't think I have ever read such nonsense before. The Confederate flag is not a symbol of white supremacy. If anything it is a symbol of a brave people who fought the tyranny of the north. Now the north is at it again but this time aided by liberals in all parties who are determined to have complete control over everyone's thoughts ! For all those who don't know it : had the south won we would still have a government that was mandated to abide by it's Constitution instead of the lawless bunch of criminals who infest all three branches of it today !