In the South you see them everywhere.
(Confederate Battle Flag)
Confederate flags come in all shapes and sizes. From bumper stickers to elaborate tattoos to the several I've seen flying in a single yard. How many does one really need to hang from their front porch? Is there a contest? Are these people afraid I might not be able to see it when I drive by? Rest easy, people, because I can see them plain as day. I used to wonder if people even understood what the flag meant. They say that it stands for Southern heritage and pride. Confederate States flew it during the Civil War as a symbol of their beliefs. Well, actually they flew this one here until the one above was adopted from the Army of Northern Virginia. The flag you see below was thought to look too similar to the Union Flag (basically the American Flag).
("Stars and Bars" Flag)
It's a large part of the Southern bias you tend to hear in regards to the Civil War - the "War of Northern Aggression". You realize when living in a Southern state there is an overwhelming number of people who purposefully poison history with Neo-Confederate ideas of what happened more than 150 years ago. Then you also realize that there are people who genuinely don't understand the entire significance of the Civil War because those ideas have leaked into their formal education. I've personally heard both sides in school. In recent years the topic of racial inequality has become common place on the news. With the surge in race-related violence and hate speech (affectionately labeled "speaking your mind") it's no wonder the subject of the use of the Confederate Flag has been placed in the spotlight. To fully understand the meaning behind the Confederate flag it's important we understand its historical significance.
(Confederate Soldiers)
(Union Soldiers)
In the mid 1800s the country was expanding west. The nation was growing and there was a heavy question hanging in the air: Should slavery be able to continue in this country? Vermont was the first state to abolish slavery having done it nearly 90 years before the war. The rest of the Northern states abolished it at the start of the next century in 1804. Pressure from these states began to weigh on the South, though, whose economy was almost entirely dependent on slave labor. It's true that this was a war on how large a part the national government should play in individual state affairs. It's true that the war was about state's rights. However, the part that Neo-Confederates conveniently leave out is that it was about a state's rights to own slaves.
At this time the country was quickly approaching the Industrial Age. The North flourished with the establishment of factories and the new technologies geared towards more efficient agricultural work. The South didn't want to change. According to Synonym, the South (by which I mostly mean wealthy plantation owners that controlled the Confederacy like Medieval Lords) had become largely focused on flaunting their wealth. And if you haven't already guessed, an important status symbol of the time was "I own more people than you"! So regardless of the outdated practices of the South being replaced by Northern industrial progression they weren't giving up their "laborers" without a fight. They didn't want anything to do with the rest of the nation which was where the Rebel flag came into play. The South, otherwise known as 11 angry states that didn't want the government messing with their savage business practices, seceded from the Union. The States of the Confederacy wanted to be their own separate entity. The "Stars and Bars" didn't last, however, as it caused major confusion on the battlefield. In the months that followed the public expressed outrage at the similarities it shared with the "Yankee" flag. The design went through several stages before finally becoming the St. Andrew's Cross and stars that make people cringe today.
(Harvard Prof. John Stauffer who teaches English, American Studies, and African American Studies)
I personally find the flag outrageously offensive. But what I find even more offensive is the amount of Southerners who try to erase the role that slavery played in American history. In a poll cited by Professor John Stauffer in his opening lecture for the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute's Fall Colloquium Series, 70 percent of white Southerners do not accredit slavery as the cause for the Civil War. That's really bad! That number is embarrassingly high. Though I want to clarify that doesn't necessarily make these people racist. You can only know what you learn, after all, and what a lot of people are being taught in the South is problematic at best.
Stauffer is also one of the few Academics to not outright dismiss the idea of black Confederates. That's important because he helps to douse the fire behind the idea that Rebel sympathizers use to silence people who find the battle flag disturbing. There are those who use very sparse bits of evidence to suggest that Freedmen and Slaves alike fought for the South's independence. They use this as a tool to suggest there was no way that they'd have done this if the Confederacy stood for slavery. The Professor asserts that of the one percent who would've been of military age wouldn't have been fighting out of any sense of duty or patriotism. It's likely these men were hoping for a way out of subjugation or feared losing any freedom they'd already acquired. In a sense, any servitude to the Rebel army was given with a gun to the head. Holding on to the half-baked logic of slaves and Freedmen as having gladly given their lives for the Rebel cause is exactly the Neo-Confederate bias I'm talking about. No pun intended, but it should raise some serious red flags to people when the KKK and Neo-Nazis are counter-protesting the censure of an item with the kind of history the Rebel flag has.
(The Ku Klux Klan and their use of the Rebel Flag)
After the shooting last year at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, protesters came to blows over the use of the flag by the local government. People wanted to see the controversial symbol gone as they felt it served as a continuing message of intolerance and hate. The KKK and a group of Neo-Nazi protesters defended the use of the flag. On July 10, 2015 the flag was removed from flying outside the state building which was what prompted the two groups to take action. Though their numbers have dwindled in recent years, the presence of both groups is still frighteningly commonplace today. When they hold the flag it is a symbol of white power and supremacy. In that flag their heritage resides, too. When they fly it they're showing their pride as well. The KKK was founded after the end of the Civil War as a means of bitterly disrupting the reconstruction of the south. Confederate veterans, angry over the loss of the war, came together feeling like the South was losing its identity in favor of African-Americans. Throughout history they've been described as a militant terrorist organization - America's first.
The point is, people either don't know or don't care that the Confederate flag is offensive. I'm not saying you can't fly the flag, it's a free country and it's your right to do so. I want to emphasize that I'm not saying that a person who supports the flag is inherently racist or prejudice. I'm also not advocating the idea that Southerners are inherently racist or prejudice. No one group of people should ever be reduced to their stereotype. But it's important to educate yourself on matters of race and historical context. Especially if it isn't going to be taught to you in school or at home. Do your own research and understand what the symbols you display mean before either defending or condemning them. There are a great number of things for the South to be proud of. But the Confederate Flag and its history are certainly not one of them.
