The Confederate Flag: My Story

Lately there have been a lot of rumblings on the news and in social media around the Confederate Battle Flag. Essentially, these hinge on whether this is a symbol of hatred or bigotry and whether it ought to be removed from public spaces or even banned outright. I thought I would add my voice as a (mostly) white, Southern man.

As most of you know, I went to a school whose mascot was the "Rebels". Confederate imagery was everywhere. People brought Confederate flags to the games; the fight song was Dixie; and the school colors were red and grey. You can see a Confederate flag depicted on the sign in front of the school and, in my time at least, it hung proudly in the gymnasium.

That flag basically meant different things for different people in the community. For some of the more history-conscious folks, it represented Southern heritage and pride in our former status as a sovereign nation. It had a lot the same connotation as IRA symbols in Ireland: complicated, but still something that represented regional identity. For others, it was a symbol of rebellion against the "cultured" people up North. It was a statement that we were backwoods, gun-totin' rednecks and we were here to stay--and, perhaps, when we sobered up, "rise again".

For the vast majority of people in my community, neither of those things were the case. It was generally just intended as a symbol of our school, and the people from outside of our area who misappropriated it for nationalistic, racist, or even redneck imagery were seen as strangers who just didn't get it and who were likely to get us all in trouble.

As a young, (mostly) white man in the South, and as someone who had plenty of friends both north and south of the Mason-Dixon line, I was keenly aware of the cultural difference between Southern and Northern states. This difference cannot be reduced, or even characterized, by an increase in racism as you journey to Dixie. In fact, I never heard such racist comments as what I heard out of middle-class white people once I moved to Michigan and then Massachusetts. Where I had come from racism was a--to use a term I wholly disapprove of--"white trash" thing. I openly adopted the Southern banner as something that symbolized my country and my people. I owned one myself and hung it in my dorm room, much to the annoyance of some of my friends at Hope College.

After many highways and byways, I come to the present day. Not too long ago I dated a young African-American lady, and, in sensitivity to her feelings on the matter, removed my Confederate flag from my room. For her, the flag symbolized institutional racism and a history of slavery to others on the basis of her skin, and I felt (and still feel) that I needed to respect that. So, down it went, to be replaced proudly by my Arkansas state flag. (I know some are raising a fuss about that now, but really, it's a DIAMOND. We have diamonds in Arkansas.)

With all that in mind, let's take a look the main issue at stake here. Is the flag a symbol of racism, of states rights, or of Southern heritage? If my story tells you anything, it ought to be that the flag has many different meanings to many different people. Stating that one meaning (because it is negative) ought to preclude all other possible meanings seems simplistic to me.

Certainly, the flag can be used in a hateful, racist way, and it is, in fact, justifiably a complicated symbol due to its history. Yes, the Civil War was fought over slavery, despite what so many people argue. Just compare, side by side, the United States constitution with the Confederate States constitution. There are no additional provisions to maintain state sovereignty. There are only two substantial differences: the Confederate constitution provided for a President elected for one term of seven years instead of a repeatable four-year term (not that big of a deal), and the Bill of Rights therein included a provision that protects slavery as an institution for all time. If the states indeed fought for states' rights, they certainly didn't decide to state it in a legally binding document. Instead, they enshrined the right of people to deny other people their rights.

Again, we can look at the history of the Confederate flag as a symbol in places like South Carolina, where the flag was never flown on state grounds until the Civil Rights movement began in earnest. Here, the flag was definitely being used to intimidate the African-American community, to solidify the unjust system of segregation, and to ally the state with the Dixiecrat movement. It must come down.

All that being said, it seems to me that we also have to believe people when they tell us that the flag is not being used in a racist way. If we are to respect people's freedom of expression, if we are going to accept that individuals have enough sense to vote, to drive cars, to fly planes, and to pay taxes, we ought to at least take them at their word, until their actions prove them false. If a person displays the Confederate flag in a hostile or racist manner, sure, make them take it down; but if, on the other hand, the descendants (black and white) of Confederate veterans, the rednecks, the cultured Southern gentry, want to display it (peacefully) as a symbol of regional unity, then by all means let them, and leave your judgments at the door.

Let's not be naïve, though. In many (if not most) instances, the use of the Confederate flag is inappropriate in a civil context. The South needs to find new symbols, perhaps even ones based on their predominately Christian beliefs, to symbolize regional unity. We need a banner that all of us, black, white, Latino, or other, can unite around, because Washington bureaucrats are waging a war on our key cultural values, and we are going to need every person, regardless of color, creed, orientation, language, etc. to work together to stop them.