Rocky Mount resident Edward Lee West has had Confederate battle flags surround his Arrington Avenue property for years, but after the killings of nine people during Bible study inside a historic black Charleston, S.C. church…neighbors said West added more flags. One flag, planted on top of his home, can be seen a block away, said neighbor Charles Little. He believes the flags emphasize a certain message…. “It means I don’t like you people in my neighborhood,” said Little, who is black. “To me, those flags represent that I owned you people.”
I understand the importance of honoring and preserving one’s heritage, of understanding the history of how you got to where you are. There are times, though, when pride of pedigree and legacy can present a significant burden. When heritage represents racism, oppression, and/or genocide, not every one is going to be favorably impressed by overt displays of pride. For the same reasons you don’t see displays of the Nazi flag greeted with enthusiasm, the Confederate flag is finally being recognized as the symbol of hatred and racism.
Displaying pride in one’s heritage is one thing. Doing so through the use of symbols overwhelmingly viewed as highly offensive- in this case, to African-Americans whose forebears suffered under slavery- is something else altogether. That’s not proudly displaying your pride in your heritage; that’s proudly being an asshole and an attention whore who cares not a whit for the feelings of others. I suspect the multiple Confederate flags Edward Lee West displays on his prime piece of HGTV-(not so very) ready real estate were installed with the express interest of thumbing his nose at the world and the African-Americans he despises. One doesn’t engage in that sort of passive-aggressive behavior without harboring a good deal of hostility toward those who object to displays of pride in a heritage steeped in racism and devaluing human beings.
A Rebuttal of Every Confederate Talking Point http://t.co/t2SyCidY4S #tcot #ccot #UniteBlue #TakeDownTheFlag pic.twitter.com/ZfbKBtJBAm
— The Vicious Babushka (@viciousbabushka) June 29, 2015
I find it interesting that West has no problem with flying the flag of his ancestors who committed treason in a futile effort to maintain a system predicated on treating human beings of color as commodities. Even as he honors his heritage, he’d deny the descendants of those who were commoditized and dehumanized the right to believe their forebears were wronged. Worse, Southern states fly Confederate flags and lionize the “heroes” representative of the regime responsible for the forcible enslavement and oppression of millions guilty only of possessing dark skin. Fortunately, 150 years after Appomattox, that’s beginning to change as states begin pulling down their Confederate flags and retailers are removing them from their shelves. It took Dylann Roof massacring nine innocent African-Americans in Charleston church in a failed effort to start a race war for society to recognize that racism and its symbols have no place in a modern and just society. The good news is that we’re now (finally) recognizing and addressing the problem. The wheels of social justice may turn slowly, but at least they haven’t fused together from rust and misuse.
It will be likely be quite some before that message makes it’s way into Edward Lee West’s blackened and dessicated heart- if in fact it ever does. Living as he does in a predominant black neighborhood, he probably sees himself as a martyr- the persecuted remnant of a dying South which no longer recognizes and honors the supremacy of the White man. The world will be a better place when he sheds his mortal coil, but for now it’s best served by holding him up as a symbol of hatred and racism deserving of little but pity and opprobrium. He’s a sad, angry symbol of the past who will never fully be part of a world in which people judge one another on the content of their character and not the color of their skin. We’re not yet there, but the rush to marginalize and eliminate displays of the Confederate flag en masse is a step in the right direction…as is holding West up for the angry, hateful relic he appears to be.
Sometimes it’s not about heritage. Sometimes it’s about recognizing that your history isn’t something to celebrate, that it’s an abject lesson in what can happen when one class forcibly elevates themselves over another. There’s nothing about the Confederacy worthy of celebration. There’s no heritage to be proud of, because the history so many claim to cherish is about racism and oppression. Those who still fly the Stars and Bars continue to participate in the exaltation of a system based on the worst of human values. It’s why wider society doesn’t condone the open display of the Nazi flag; sometimes it’s necessary face the fact that the South lost- decisively and utterly. The values that represented the Confederate ideal were repudiated and crushed. It’s time for those who cling to the Stars and Bars to stop romanticizing history, admit to the truth, and stop living in a past that never was.
