[blind-democracy] Re: A View From the South: Let the Confederate Flag Go

  • From: "Roger Loran Bailey" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
  • To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 07 Jul 2015 21:14:26 -0400


Yes, rose colored glasses and here is the sentence where you are caught in the act of putting them on: "You certainly make points that would lead any reasonable person to conclude
that we have, if anything, barely next to nothing to recommend us."
I especially point to the last word. They are not us. By using the word us you are identifying with your own enemy. Give it some thought and consider if you really want to include yourself by using the word us or we when you talk about who commit these crimes.
On 7/7/2015 3:03 PM, Charles Crawford wrote:

Hi Miriam and all,

You certainly make points that would lead any reasonable person to conclude
that we have, if anything, barely next to nothing to recommend us. Now
comes the bottom line as I see it. I would argue that there are many people
in this nation who have experienced kindness, hope, accomplishments,
family, liberty, and a sense of security and wellbeing which in no way
relate to all the ills you have mentioned. Yes, there are real problems and
activities which none of us would condone, but we also have rights of
redress, checks and balances to help us seek and achieve justice, law and
courts to protect our interests, and a political system which while very
much flawed by " Citizens United, " can still be made to respond to the
needs of our people.

Are these and other features of our Democracy sufficient to, on balance,
call our nation a great place in which to live? I believe the answer is a
qualified yes. We do have to speak out or the silence would only add to the
corrosion created by our problems and apathy of folks who would have given
up. As long as there are forums like Blind-Democracy, and groups like Move
On; there will be hope and satisfaction. Rose colored glasses? Maybe, but
I think not so much that as I know we all know that there is another way of
being and hence our disapproval of what is going on. This potential for
another way of life and the periodic manifestations of goodness such as
Doctors without Borders, Oxfam, Save the Children, and relief efforts to
ease the pain of disasters in various places, along with everyday good
people around us, all point to a direction we all believe is achievable.

Lastly, I will say that perhaps the downside of hearing about these constant
examples of things not going right, is that we are tempted to become very
cynical and cast an almost nihilistic eye on everything. These things are
upsetting, but they are not nearly the sum and substance of everyday life.
Otherwise, we would all just conclude it is not worth it an either do
ourselves in, or decide to grab what we can for ourselves and the heck with
everyone else.

Charlie.


-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Miriam Vieni
Sent: 07 July 2015 13:55
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: A View From the South: Let the Confederate
Flag Go

Charlie,

You know, I'm not sure at all about that, not after all the history I've
been reading about our country. I think that we certainly have a mythology
about justice and freedom for all. I think that some people have lived
useful and satisfying lives here. But I just finished reading a history of
what this country did to Puerto Rico and is still doing, which is an example
of how it acquired and treated territories. And even within the US, aside
from what it does to its poor and its people of color, there is a history of
inhuman exploitation such as its experimentation on 20,000 people with
radiation. Right now, I don't see evidence that we're moving toward the
fulfillment of those ideals that you mention. I see a corporate state which
is beginning to treat its citizens as disposable, in the same way that it
treated its conquered people like the Puerto Ricans. Towns are dying or dead
because industry has fled and there is nothing to take its place to employ
people except low paying service jobs and the military. It's a very sstrange
time with same sex marriage and a black President on one side, and
increasing police killings of unarmed black people, enslaved workers in our
prisons and disappearance of women's health on the other. And a silence
regarding our drone murders of civilians and military support of a slow
genocide in Palestine on the other.

Miriam

-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Charles Crawford
Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2015 11:15 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: A View From the South: Let the Confederate
Flag Go

Hi Miriam and all,

Your points are well taken. Still I have to ask if it is not true that the
American revolution may have been a rebellion of business folks, but did it
not ultimately turn into a nation dedicated to the increasingly freedom,
liberty, and dignity of all? Sure we have lots of problems and I don't know
if we will ever become perfect, yet I know that the idealism that at least
our leaders preach have in them the seeds of a great nation. Not there yet,
but still traveling in that direction, despite the best efforts of some to
turn us into some kind of oligarchy.

Charlie Crawford.


-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Miriam Vieni
Sent: 05 July 2015 22:19
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: A View From the South: Let the Confederate
Flag Go

Charlie,

The issue of states' rights is used as a rationalization by people who are
opposed to civil rights. It was used to rationalize the right to own slaves.
It is used as a rationalization for resisting women's right to choose,
people's right to marry whomever they love, the right of everyone to receive
medical care, the right of people to vote on the basis of national standards
that are fair to everyone, et cetera. It has nothing to do with southern
traditions which benefit people like southern hospitality or southern
cooking or a slow, leisurely pace of life. States' rights is always used as
an excuse to withhold certain rights from certain people. Roger reminds us
that the confederate flag about which we're talking is a battle flag. Well
obviously, that flag has been used by Southerners who do not wish to comply
with federal laws with which they disagree. It symbolizes rebellion. I see
nothing to respect about that. And if we're going to go back to the
rebellion of the colonies against England, well, it was certainly not a
rebellion for freedom and equality for everyone who lived in the colonies.
It was a rebellion of businessmen who didn't wish to pay taxes to the Crown
because they felt that their business interests weren't being properly
represented. Our propagandists have turned that into a glorious revolution
for freedom and justice for all. But that isn't what it was.

Miriam

-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Charles Crawford
Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2015 5:37 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: A View From the South: Let the Confederate
Flag Go

Hi Miriam and all,

I do not dispute the fact that owning slaves was at the heart of why the
southern states formed their confederation and left the Union. Yet the
classic protestation offered by those who favored the confederacy was not
ownership of slaves, but rather the imposition of too much national
government over the rights of states to govern themselves in union with, but
not controlled by other states. When viewing the difficulty through this
lense rather than the slavery issue, it became more justifiable in the minds
of many to support the confederacy.

From the above scenario, two features can be identified. First, there was a
South with a community identity greater than simple ownership of slaves, and
secondly that irrespective of the slavery issue, didn't the states have
rights which could not be violated by the federal government? This latter
question still flares up even in our modern times and is not likely to ever
go away completely.

So, yes, the ownership of slaves was clearly a major problem and had to be
addressed, however the idea that states have rights not given to the
Congress which Congress cannot violate is still a living question. I would
submit the two recent issues of the Affordable Care Act and the lack of
state created exchanges as well as the issue of same sex marriages are two
very current and potentially contentious matters. While I agree with the
Supreme Court on their decisions in these matters, I am concerned that some
folks will attempt to exploit these decisions as violations of states'
rights. So what is my point?

The act of rebellion is a basic American value. We did it to form the
Union. The lesson we must take from the Civil War is that all of us have
civil rights and denying one is denying all. We fought a major war to
guarantee the right of liberty to all people irrespective of race, creed, or
national origin. That same civil right to liberty implies respect for the
dignity of all people. In as much as I agree that the confederate flag
needs to be retired to museums since it unfortunately is associated with the
tyranny of slavery; we do need to be sensitive to the broader issues that
distinguish Southerners which have nothing to do with slavery. I admit it
sounds a bit over the top to me as well, however, I do feel that blanket
condemnation of the south and all southerners as confederates who simply
wanted to own slaves as somehow really not fair.

I know that some will find my logic to be tortured. All this is to say that
the confederate flag is a symbol of rebellion which albeit for the wrong
reasons, did and does occur in our nation. We must find ways to accommodate
the opinions of others which may be even annoying, but do have a place in
the marketplace of ideas, while not allowing the kind of evil that is
represented by slavery and like activities to exist.

Charlie Crawford.

-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Miriam Vieni
Sent: 05 July 2015 14:47
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: A View From the South: Let the Confederate
Flag Go

Charlie,

I guess that's where we differ. I don't see that any good was ever attached
to it. The southern pride you speak of, was the pride of southern landowners
to have the right to own slaves. That's why they seceded from the union.
That's what they were fighting for. What Barbara Kingsolver is saying in
the article is that there were poor white southerners who fought because
they were forced to and that to some of them, the flag symbolizes valor. But
my feeling is that most of them were brainwashed into believing in the
southern cause and that cause was the right to own slaves. There may be
other fine southern traditions, but they're not what the flag was created
for. It was created as a symbol of a new country formed on the basis of
slave ownership.

Miriam

-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Charles Crawford
Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2015 1:56 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: A View From the South: Let the Confederate
Flag Go

Hi Carl and Miriam and all,

OK, I will admit it. I like the confederate flag! Why, well it has
a better look to it as far as I am concerned and I was also a fan of Colonel
Molsby on TV back in the 50's. I am saddened to see what has been done to
that flag and all the hate, evil, and downright racism that has been
attached to it. So whatever good was once associated with-it has been
overwhelmed with the horror that has become its legacy. I agree that
putting it in museums and maybe fly it over confederate graveyards is a good
thing to do, but let's now come together in our celebration of freedom and
humanity and say goodbye to a flag that was not just a symbol of slave
ownership, but one that also represented the much broader pride of southern
people for the people they were.

Charlie Crawford.


-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: 04 July 2015 16:46
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: A View From the South: Let the Confederate
Flag Go

What is the function of a flag?
In my disinterested opinion, a flag is a symbol of a Belief or a Place. A
flag or banner containing a cross indicates a belief in Jesus Christ. A
flag with 13 alternating red and white stripes, with a blue field filled
with 50 stars, tells me that it represents the United States of America. A
light blue flag with orange and gold zigzag stripes and dueling Humming
Birds, means absolutely nothing to me.
National flags, such as the Stars and Stripes, not only represent a
geographical territory, but to the citizens that flag represents the history
and traditions of that nation.
So what can we say regarding the confederate flag. There is no Confederacy
for it to represent. Does it represent the history and traditions that were
of the short-lived confederacy? If not, then what does it represent. To
say it represents the pride of the South is to suggest that this includes
the Southern Traditions. That tradition of the short-lived confederacy
included slavery. Wouldn't it seem better to design a new flag, proclaiming
the goodness and love of the New South toward all people of all color and
ffaith?

Carl Jarvis



On 7/4/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
If the author of this hadn't been who it is, I would have skipped it
because so much has been written about the subject.
Miriam
Kingsolver writes: "My little town is proud to have reared citizens
like Carolee, an honour student and star athlete who offers a helping
hand to anyone she meets. She wears her blonde hair in a ponytail and
a delicate tattoo on her wrist. It's the Confederate battle flag."

Kingsolver: 'Around here we see it on license plates and T-shirts. A
ragged one has hung for years on the side of a barn in my neighborhood.'
(photo:
Stephen Morton/Getty)


A View From the South: Let the Confederate Flag Go By Barbara
Kingsolver, Guardian UK
04 July 15

The Confederate emblem was about pride as well as hatred, but racists
have twisted its meaning

My little town is proud to have reared citizens like Carolee, an
honour student and star athlete who offers a helping hand to anyone
she meets. She wears her blonde hair in a ponytail and a delicate
tattoo
on her wrist.
It’s
the Confederate battle flag.
That flag has come crashing into the global conversation after an
avowed white supremacist massacred nine parishioners in an African
Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina. He tore up
hearts and families, left a state without its senator and a nation
bereft. A crime so senseless leaves us grappling for something we can
blame, or fix. We’re sickened by Dylann Roof’s self-portrait with a
semi-automatic pistol and Confederate flag. In the wider world where
it’s seldom seen, people must wonder how that emblem waved by a racist
vigilante could ever have held appeal for local historians or
thoughtful
honour students.
No story is ever simple here in the south, least of all the American
civil war. It’s easily reduced to a morality play – a conflict between
northerners who wished to abolish slavery (the Union) and southern
whites who refused (the Confederate rebels). In that version, any
invocation of the lost Confederacy looks like nostalgia for slavery’s
return.
But history is nuanced. Economics divided an industrialising north
from an agrarian south, where cotton plantations exploited enslaved
labour for their solvency. Most white southerners, of course, didn’t
own plantations or other humans. Poor farmers and sharecroppers were
brutally conscripted to fight for the interests of wealthier men. The
region where I live – southern Appalachia, was occupied to enforce
compliance.
Bullets, illness and starvation killed hundreds of thousands during
that brief Confederacy, and some six generations later, families still
decorate the graves. Some feel their ancestors are as nobly and
tragically dead as any soldiers under any flag, and would honour them
independently of the worth of the war that consumed them – a
distinction we’ve accepted since the moral quandary of Vietnam. If the
Confederate flag only flew over cemeteries, the discussion would be
over.
But it doesn’t. Around here we see it on licence plates and T-shirts.
A ragged one has hung for years on the side of a barn in my
neighbourhood, making me wince daily. My neighbour is a decent person,
so far as I’ve seen.
I can only guess he nailed it up in a spirit of defiance, maybe akin
to the way some rappers use the N-word: as a belligerent gesture of
identity politics. Southerners, especially Appalachians, live in a
shadow of condescension. Popular culture wages a steady war on our
dignity, decking us out as ignorant, vaguely incestuous hayseeds.
Reality TV digs deep to find trashy families to reinforce the
stereotype. In a nation with a hair-trigger sensitivity to disparaging
labels, the word “hillbilly” still flies with impunity.
Attaching banality or meanness to every element of our culture is
unfair, but defining southern pride is an endless navigation. In our
town, high-school football games are community entertainment. Our team
is the Rebels. My daughter played in the marching band known as the
Rebel Regiment.
We decided to embrace the title: rebels, in my opinion, are the pilots
of most human progress. The school cafeteria once bore a mural of
Confederate soldiers and their flag, but it was painted over decades
ago when the school’s first African-American principal arrived.
Our Rebels’ only remaining civil war tie is the school’s fight song,
Dixie.
It’s a simple song about a southerner far from home who wishes he were
back on his native soil, south of the Mason-Dixon line. Countless
soldiers surely identified with the sentiment, back in the day, but
Abraham Lincoln also used it at campaign rallies – it was never the
official anthem of the Confederacy. I’d vote to retire it anyway,
knowing it’s tainted for those who hear it as such. Alternatives get
proposed, without success, because most people here identify it as the
anthem of a touchdown.

‘Dylann Roof tore up hearts and families, left a state without its
senator and a nation bereft … we’re sickened by his self-portrait with
a semi-automatic ¬pistol and Confederate flag.’
(photo: AP)
Who gets to draw the line between tradition and callous intransigence?
Where
does sensitivity become censorship? Tarring whole communities with the
brush of racism doesn’t bring us grace. I could have whisked my
daughter from the home of the Rebels to a private school where she
wouldn’t have to play Dixie. But this is our home, and I believe
public schools function best when we all support our kids together. I
think they’re better citizens for having grown up with many kinds of
people, to be judged by the contents of their characters, not their
tattoos.
When I claim my Appalachian identity I’m embracing some things that
are often mocked: the poetry of our dipthong-rich language; a
fine-tuned interest in crops, the weather, and everybody’s business.
The fact that when I throw a party there will be spontaneous music,
and someone will bring homemade whiskey. The fact that we never say
the words “hostess gift” but would never show up without one. Loving
your neighbour is a commandment we take seriously.
But I don’t have to love his barn art, or the symbolic anti-freedom
fighters frozen beneath a coat of paint in the school cafeteria.
Southern pride doesn’t mean loving the lynchings, segregation and
lingering racial inequality that have bled into this place, any more
than wearing cotton implies complicity with that crop’s awful history.
The modern south, home to our nation’s most racially diverse cities,
now has organic farms between tobacco fields, and yoga studios beside
churches. My favourite bumper sticker this year says “Namaste, y’all”.
We don’t want outsiders telling us what we are. So the duty is ours,
and ours alone, to distinguish our past from our future. The
Confederate flag is anathema to that project. Whatever it meant in the
1860s, since then it has been deliberately attached to a racist
agenda, beginning in 1948 when the new, segregationist Dixiecrat party
dug it out of mothballs. (Dixie, alas, was their fight song too.) The
flag’s presence has grown steadily more menacing. It turned up
wherever white mobs opposed civil rights marchers. It showed up at
Klan rallies. I’m sure it still does. Swastika was the ancient
Sanskrit word for good fortune, its symbol representing the movement
of the sun across the sky. But it was appropriated by vile people, and
now virtually everyone sees racial hatred in that one too. Regardless
of intent or origin, a symbol achieves its meaning in the eye of the
beholder.
For some folks who incorporate the battle flag into their wardrobe or
body art, familiarity may have made it seem innocuous. But it isn’t. A
flag is a potent symbol, purporting to be the standard of a concordant
nation. By carrying one into hate crimes, racists try to elevate their
evil by suggesting a nation of racists stands behind them.
My southern home is not that nation. This month the Confederate flag
finally came down from several southern state houses, and my
neighbour’s barn. Our governor banned it from licence plates. The
stock car drivers of Nascar, that bastion of good-ol-boys, expelled it
from the racetracks. We’re honouring heritage by tapping our well of
kindness, knowing that for too many people those colours evoke terror
and despair. No more. Now is the moment in history when we send that
flag to the graveyard.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
valid.

Kingsolver: 'Around here we see it on license plates and T-shirts. A
ragged one has hung for years on the side of a barn in my neighborhood.'
(photo:
Stephen Morton/Getty)
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/03/south-flag-confed
erate-
pride-hatred-racistshttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/
03/sou th-flag-confederate-pride-hatred-racists
A View From the South: Let the Confederate Flag Go By Barbara
Kingsolver, Guardian UK
04 July 15
The Confederate emblem was about pride as well as hatred, but racists
have twisted its meaning y little town is proud to have reared
citizens like Carolee, an honour student and star athlete who offers a
helping hand to anyone she meets. She wears her blonde hair in a
ponytail and a delicate tattoo on her wrist.
It’s
the Confederate battle flag.
That flag has come crashing into the global conversation after an
avowed white supremacist massacred nine parishioners in an African
Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina. He tore up
hearts and families, left a state without its senator and a nation
bereft. A crime so senseless leaves us grappling for something we can
blame, or fix. We’re sickened by Dylann Roof’s self-portrait with a
semi-automatic pistol and Confederate flag. In the wider world where
it’s seldom seen, people must wonder how that emblem waved by a racist
vigilante could ever have held appeal for local historians or
thoughtful
honour students.
No story is ever simple here in the south, least of all the American
civil war. It’s easily reduced to a morality play – a conflict between
northerners who wished to abolish slavery (the Union) and southern
whites who refused (the Confederate rebels). In that version, any
invocation of the lost Confederacy looks like nostalgia for slavery’s
return.
But history is nuanced. Economics divided an industrialising north
from an agrarian south, where cotton plantations exploited enslaved
labour for their solvency. Most white southerners, of course, didn’t
own plantations or other humans. Poor farmers and sharecroppers were
brutally conscripted to fight for the interests of wealthier men. The
region where I live – southern Appalachia, was occupied to enforce
compliance.
Bullets, illness and starvation killed hundreds of thousands during
that brief Confederacy, and some six generations later, families still
decorate the graves. Some feel their ancestors are as nobly and
tragically dead as any soldiers under any flag, and would honour them
independently of the worth of the war that consumed them – a
distinction we’ve accepted since the moral quandary of Vietnam. If the
Confederate flag only flew over cemeteries, the discussion would be
over.
But it doesn’t. Around here we see it on licence plates and T-shirts.
A ragged one has hung for years on the side of a barn in my
neighbourhood, making me wince daily. My neighbour is a decent person,
so far as I’ve seen.
I can only guess he nailed it up in a spirit of defiance, maybe akin
to the way some rappers use the N-word: as a belligerent gesture of
identity politics. Southerners, especially Appalachians, live in a
shadow of condescension. Popular culture wages a steady war on our
dignity, decking us out as ignorant, vaguely incestuous hayseeds.
Reality TV digs deep to find trashy families to reinforce the
stereotype. In a nation with a hair-trigger sensitivity to disparaging
labels, the word “hillbilly” still flies with impunity.
Attaching banality or meanness to every element of our culture is
unfair, but defining southern pride is an endless navigation. In our
town, high-school football games are community entertainment. Our team
is the Rebels. My daughter played in the marching band known as the
Rebel Regiment.
We decided to embrace the title: rebels, in my opinion, are the pilots
of most human progress. The school cafeteria once bore a mural of
Confederate soldiers and their flag, but it was painted over decades
ago when the school’s first African-American principal arrived.
Our Rebels’ only remaining civil war tie is the school’s fight song,
Dixie.
It’s a simple song about a southerner far from home who wishes he were
back on his native soil, south of the Mason-Dixon line. Countless
soldiers surely identified with the sentiment, back in the day, but
Abraham Lincoln also used it at campaign rallies – it was never the
official anthem of the Confederacy. I’d vote to retire it anyway,
knowing it’s tainted for those who hear it as such. Alternatives get
proposed, without success, because most people here identify it as the
anthem of a touchdown.

‘Dylann Roof tore up hearts and families, left a state without its
senator and a nation bereft … we’re sickened by his self-portrait with
a semi-automatic ­pistol and Confederate flag.’
(photo: AP)
Who gets to draw the line between tradition and callous intransigence?
Where
does sensitivity become censorship? Tarring whole communities with the
brush of racism doesn’t bring us grace. I could have whisked my
daughter from the home of the Rebels to a private school where she
wouldn’t have to play Dixie. But this is our home, and I believe
public schools function best when we all support our kids together. I
think they’re better citizens for having grown up with many kinds of
people, to be judged by the contents of their characters, not their
tattoos.
When I claim my Appalachian identity I’m embracing some things that
are often mocked: the poetry of our dipthong-rich language; a
fine-tuned interest in crops, the weather, and everybody’s business.
The fact that when I throw a party there will be spontaneous music,
and someone will bring homemade whiskey. The fact that we never say
the words “hostess gift” but would never show up without one. Loving
your neighbour is a commandment we take seriously.
But I don’t have to love his barn art, or the symbolic anti-freedom
fighters frozen beneath a coat of paint in the school cafeteria.
Southern pride doesn’t mean loving the lynchings, segregation and
lingering racial inequality that have bled into this place, any more
than wearing cotton implies complicity with that crop’s awful history.
The modern south, home to our nation’s most racially diverse cities,
now has organic farms between tobacco fields, and yoga studios beside
churches. My favourite bumper sticker this year says “Namaste, y’all”.
We don’t want outsiders telling us what we are. So the duty is ours,
and ours alone, to distinguish our past from our future. The
Confederate flag is anathema to that project. Whatever it meant in the
1860s, since then it has been deliberately attached to a racist
agenda, beginning in 1948 when the new, segregationist Dixiecrat party
dug it out of mothballs. (Dixie, alas, was their fight song too.) The
flag’s presence has grown steadily more menacing. It turned up
wherever white mobs opposed civil rights marchers. It showed up at
Klan rallies. I’m sure it still does. Swastika was the ancient
Sanskrit word for good fortune, its symbol representing the movement
of the sun across the sky. But it was appropriated by vile people, and
now virtually everyone sees racial hatred in that one too. Regardless
of intent or origin, a symbol achieves its meaning in the eye of the
beholder.
For some folks who incorporate the battle flag into their wardrobe or
body art, familiarity may have made it seem innocuous. But it isn’t. A
flag is a potent symbol, purporting to be the standard of a concordant
nation. By carrying one into hate crimes, racists try to elevate their
evil by suggesting a nation of racists stands behind them.
My southern home is not that nation. This month the Confederate flag
finally came down from several southern state houses, and my
neighbour’s barn. Our governor banned it from licence plates. The
stock car drivers of Nascar, that bastion of good-ol-boys, expelled it
from the racetracks. We’re honouring heritage by tapping our well of
kindness, knowing that for too many people those colours evoke terror
and despair. No more. Now is the moment in history when we send that
flag to the graveyard.
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