My brief post about Confederate Heritage Month has certainly stirred up quite a hornet’s nest if the comment thread is any indication.
Along the same lines that we’ve been discussing there, Jon Henke, who is guest blogging this week for Megan McArdle, makes this point:
In the South, the Confederate flag symbol is somewhat akin to the Washington Redskins name and logo, which also has offensive racial connotations. Owning/supporting a Confederate flag is generally understood to be no more intrinsically racist than, e.g., supporting, or owning the logo of, the Washington Redskins. The understood symbolism simply isn’t racial.
On the other hand, there is no getting around the history of the Confederate flag, and no excuse for that history. Whatever people may intend by it now, it was, as Matt Yglesias writes, “a banner of violent white supremacist ideology.” Many people, correctly, are deeply disturbed by the thing; they have no obligation to pretend it is anything but a banner of the ugliest, most inexcusable policy in American history.
So, we have one group of people who intend no offense, and another group who perceive great offense. Where do we go from there?
For starters, I’m reminded of a lesson I learned as a child: don’t take offense where none is intended. It would be helpful if we stopped assuming that racism is at the root of every disagreement and misunderstanding. For instance, it’s probably not helpful to reflexively assume that because somebody voted against a federal holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr, the motivation must have been racist. There are many great Americans without federal holidays, and - while racism was undoubtedly the case for some - one need not be bigoted against their ethnicity or race to disagree with creating a federal holiday in their honor. In Martin Luther King, Jr’s case, however, they were wrong. Martin Luther King, Jr. ought to be considered the Last Founding Father for the work he did to finally hold those truths to be self-evident.
(…)
But I’m also reminded of another lesson I learned in childhood: don’t do things you know will offend others. Even if you mean no offense, courtesy and a decent respect for your fellow man demands you take their opinions and perceptions into account. Confederate History Month should be ended, and the Confederate flag should be discarded, replaced, as Yglesias suggests, with “some less provocative emblem of Southern folkways”. The Confederacy and the Confederate flag are not worth celebrating. Their revolting history is too inescapable.
There is a fundamental difference between celebrating the memories of fallen relatives and revering the cause for which they fought for while ignoring just how vile and immoral that cause was.
April 5th, 2008 at 10:51 am
This is pure Northern ignorance. Period. You’ve posted that, “On the other hand, there is no getting around the history of the Confederate flag, and no excuse for that history. Whatever people may intend by it now, it was, as Matt Yglesias writes, ‘a banner of violent white supremacist ideology.’ ”
I have over 20 documented ancestors that fought for the Southern Confederacy. One was Jackson himself, through my mother’s side. They all fought under the Battle Flag of Northern Virginia (which was, as all battle flags of the time were–nothing more than a standard carried into the fight that denoted troop placement and movement on a field of battle already bogged down with musket smoke and fire). They owned no slaves and did not support slavery at all. Their hired hands–if, on the rare occasion these tobacco farmers could afford them–were white. Is my family that fought a bunch of white supremacists who believe in their ideology?
April 5th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
As I’ve said, the appropriate way to remember those soldiers is as honorable men who were duped into fighting for a dishonorable cause.
April 5th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
There is a plaque in the Mathews County courthouse with a Confederate battle flag emblem. It is dedicated to “the deathless memory of our Confederate women.” The women weren’t duped when they demanded that their men fight.
Southern history and heritage includes the whole ride from 1607 to today. New chapters will be carved into the future history books, because Southern culture is still alive. Moreover, it is ascending because it is tied to the precise ascendant ideas of the Founding Fathers (minus that slavery sin, post the segregation sin and overcoming the racism sin) and Evangelical Christianity.
Generations from now, Southerners will have flags with the Cross of St Andrew on a blood red field and pass them on to their children as a reminder of penultimate cultural experience of courage, fidelity and honor.
Perhaps, someday there will another terrible experience where Southerners will surpass their ancestors - and for new Southerners their cultural and ideological icons - in a time of trials. Let’s hope not.
Until that day, if it comes, when a new symbol stands for Southern courage, fidelity and honor, persons who take offense, think it all vile, or dishonorable will just have to deal with the fact that those who inherited standards of sacrifice and duty from birth and those who absorb it as adopted Southerners will take pride in precisely what you don’t like. Furthermore, they (we) reject your opinion as false, foolish or just ignorant.
And, what I think galls the critics the most, they (we) really could care less that you don’t like about our history, our heritage or our symbols. It’s fun to respond to the folk who complain when they move to the South to criticize the people who live here. It’s fun to mock the self-hating Southerners who complain. If either fuss-mongers had the polite decency to keep their complaints to themselves, there wouldn’t be an issue. It would be live and let live.
Finally, the moral outrage is directed at a battle flag carried by Confederate soldiers, right? What will happen if dumYankees and Liberals ever find out what other flag accompanied every Virginia regiment into those same battles in the same Army? Will it become a vile, dishonorable, etc symbol?
April 6th, 2008 at 7:14 am
I wonder what those people that get so upset about the Confederate would think when seeing a Welsh man in pick-up with the flag on the back. I saw quite a few in my visits to Wales a few years ago. Most amusing.
April 6th, 2008 at 10:23 am
SO now you’re calling my and probably JAB’s ancestors being capable of being duped. I don’t think so, Doug. My great-grandparents knew exactly what they were fighting for and why they were doing it. They were not going to risk their lives, family, and fortunes for slaves they couldn’t afford, didn’t want, and didn’t believe in having. They were fighting for their rights. For Virginia. And that idea wasn’t founded on the old, warn out politics of race and slavery. Those, like you, who see no more than that, care not for history.
April 6th, 2008 at 10:26 am
Just as millions of Americans were duped by patriotism into going to Europe in 1916 and fighting a war we didn’t belong in.
April 6th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Also, there is a difference between memorializing the fallen soldiers and glorifying the cause for which they fought.
No one doubts the bravery, for example, of the Wermacht soldiers in World War II, but the regime they fought for was objectively evil and must be recognized as such.
April 6th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Doug: How many Jewish German soldiers attended SS unit reunions after WW II? Quite a few Blacks attended Confederate soldier reunions after the War of Northern Aggression. Would you like to see their pictures? The difference should be illuminating. Discernment counts. All ‘evil’ isn’t equal. My Holland family ancestors thought slavery was a sin, thus evil, but they didn’t think they were fighting for objective evil when they defended their state - at the price of one dead at Seven Pines, one wounded in The Valley, one fought at age 15 and one went the whole way to surrender in Greensboro.
As devoutly Christian men they showed a discernment persons who create a moral equivalency between the Nazis and the Confederates lack. As profoundly courageous men they faced the killing fire for their beliefs that persons who throw out such banalities never have or will. They earned my respect and the deep, abiding respect of the real men who fought against them. I’ve never known a modern professional soldier who held Confederate soldiers in anything but high regard. The quality of their service was untainted by presentism’s PC BS.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
JAB is right. Even Booker T. Washington can attest:
“Think about it. We went into slavery pagans, we came out Christians. We went into slavery pieces of property; we came out American citizens. We went into slavery with chains clanking on our wrists; we came out with American ballots in our hands. When we rid ourselves of prejudice, or racial feeling, and look the facts in the face, we must acknowledge, notwithstanding the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, we are in a stronger and more hopeful position, materially, intellectually, morally, religiously than is true for an equal number of black people on any other portion of the globe.”
And do you need further example and proof of what JAB is getting at? I submit to you the occurrence involving John F. Harris, legislator from Washington County, Mississippi (originally from and educated in Virginia). He voted for SB No. 25 which was “an act for the benefit of the Confederate Monument, now in process of erection on the Capital Square, Jackson, Miss.” When discussion was open for the bill on the floor, he defended it passionately-
“Mr. Speaker! I have arisen here in my place to offer a few words on the bill. I have come from a sick bed. Perhaps it was not prudent for me to come. But sir, I could not rest quietly in my room without contributing a few remarks of my own. I was sorry to hear the speech of the young gentlemen from Marshall County. I am sorry that any son of a soldier should go on record as opposed to the erection of a monument in honor of the brave dead. And, Sir, I am convinced that had he seen what I saw at Seven Pines, and in the Seven Day’s fighting around Richmond, the battlefield covered with the mangled forms of those who fought for their country and for their country’s honor, he would not have made the speech.
When the news came that the South had been invaded, those men went forth to fight for what they believed, and they made no requests for monuments. But they died, and their virtues should be remembered. Sir, I went with them. I, too, wore the gray, the same color my master wore. We stayed four long years, and if that war had gone on till now I would have been there yet. I want to honor those brave men who died for their convictions. When my mother died I was a boy. Who, Sir, then acted the part of a mother to the orphaned slave boy, but my ‘old missus’! Were she living now, or could speak to me from those high realms where are gathered the sainted dead, she would tell me to vote for this bill. And, Sir, I shall vote for it. I want it known to all the world that my vote is given in favor of the bill to erect a monument in honor of the Confederate dead.”
He, along with every other black representative voted in the majority–and that vote was for immediate passage. And pass it did.