On Wednesday evening’s edition of “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart turned his attention to defenders of the Confederate flag, what he referred to as an “archaic symbol of racist insurrection.” The logic that the battle flag honors only the bravery of those who fought for the Confederacy, Stewart argued, is totally banana brains…. “It’d be like saying you support flying the Nazi flag because you’re proud of their robust anti-smoking agenda,” Stewart said. “That wasn’t really their thing.”…. He then turned his attention to those who say that removing the flag would lead to a “slippery slope.”…. “Usually when you do the ‘slippery slope’ argument, you like to end it in something bad,” he said. “You don’t go like, ‘The next thing, black children don’t have to go to schools named after men who wouldn’t have allowed them to learn how to read.”
It’s taken 150 years and the horrific massacre of nine African-Americans by a White racist in a Charleston church, but we’re finally having a conversation about getting rid of racist symbols. It’s long overdue, but at least we’re here. For 150 years, racists in the South (and, let’s face it, the rest of the country) have clung to the Confederate flag as a symbol of White “heritage”…if by “heritage” you mean “racism, inhumanity, and oppression.” The Civil War wasn’t about states’ rights or anything else apologists for the Confederacy have claimed for the past 150 years. It wasn’t about people standing up against the tyranny of Northern aggression. It was about clinging to a culture and an economy predicated on the forced exploitation of human beings solely on the basis of their skin color. There’s nothing anyone can do or say to paper over that reality. The South didn’t rise because of Northern Aggression or any other artificial justification one might attempt to conjure. It rose because of slavery- the idea that White human beings had the God-given right to own Black human beings and exploit them for their labor. The Confederate flag represents racism and oppression in the same way the Nazi flag represents the mass extermination of Jews…yet for some reason you never see a Nazi flag sticker on the rear bumper of an F-150.
The interesting thing about the collective devotion to the Confederate flag is that it represents a collective attempt to whitewash the short and ignominious history of a “country” whose army was decisively defeated by the Union Army. One normally doesn’t celebrate something that revolves around getting your ass kicked; who celebrates a runner-up? The only corollary that comes to mind is the collective Serb devotion to 1389’s Battle of Kosovo, in which a Serbian Army got its posterior waxed by the Ottoman Turks at Kosovo Polje. Serbs and Southern Whites share an irrational devotion to a version of history that never actually existed and the symbols that perpetuate that mythology, something that doesn’t make sense in either case. Why anyone would consciously choose to commemorate a resounding and embarrassing defeat would seem to defy rational understanding, but perhaps that’s what an virulent nationalist does when that’s all they have to hang onto….
Irrationality and senselessness aside, Southern racists, as well as others around the country, cling to the Stars and Bars as if it actually symbolized something of value. Drive down virtually any road in this country, and you’ll likely see a Confederate flag at some point, whether on a vehicle or flying from a building or home. You certainly don’t have to go far in the Pacific Northwest to find one. Most people probably don’t even stop to consider the history of racism and oppression the Stars and Bars represents, but after Dylann Roof’s murderous rampage in Charleston, that’s thankfully and finally changing.
My hope is that the demonization and mass removal of the Confederate flags will at least spark a conversation. Racist Whites will probably continue to believe as they historically have- that they’re the Chosen Ones, the Master Race God intended to exercise dominion over human affairs. Over time, discussion and awareness may work to change that, but ingrained attitudes don’t change overnight. If we see this as a teachable moment and use it to educate children on the evils of racism, perhaps in time they’ll come to understand the deleterious effect that devotion to the symbols of racism and oppression can have. Perhaps they’ll learn to value for people for the content of their character instead of seeing only the color of their skin.
It took 150 years, but at least we’re here. Better late than not at all.
