The flag we're discussing, the "Battle Flag" with the big X across it, became the overwhelming symbol not in the 1860s, but in the 1950s. It's about revolt and rejection, heavily on race, but not entirely so. It includes a heavy helping of "Don't tread on me." It also has a loud, rambunctious, beer-and-pickup truck style. It's Lester Maddox and George Wallace and the Dukes of Hazzard.
I'm told my grandfather's comment on the Klan was "When they go marching in their sheets, just look at their shoes." He meant that they were poor men, with few options and a large helping of desperation. And he also meant that he, a man with a college education, a law practice, and inherited land, was too good for that.
My grandfather was raised in home that displayed a flag with two red bars with a white one in between, and a blue field at upper left with thirteen stars in a circle. That's the "Stars and Bars." It goes with verandas and juleps and cavalry officers and gentility. It's Ashley and Melanie Wilkes. It's a different symbol than the one we're puzzling here.
Seeing that divide may help untangle what's up with the heritage v. hate argument about the Battle Flag.
When we ask someone to let the Battle Flag go, I think they hear a request to let go of those other loyalties too, to say they wish they'd grown up in a bigger house, with a newer car and more educated parents and a life style Martha Stewart would approve. They think we're asking them to say they look down on what their parents were able to provide, and on their parents. They think we're asking them to sign up not just for my grandfather's relatively decent views on race, but his smug, witty, indecent view of social class. And, of course, they're not entirely wrong.
The heritage thing isn't the whole truth. It isn't even half the truth. But it is a part of the truth, and very few people who fly the Battle Flag will take it down if they have to let that family pride element go to do it.
(My current take on the issue in small Kentucky towns is to say "I'm a one-flag Southerner" and "When I say the Pledge of Allegiance, I mean it all." I've gotten at least a few Battle-Flag fans to chuckle and nod in response.)
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I found this note from frequent commenter Sporcupine to be revealing:
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And as in most wars, the "Battle Flag" class did most of the dying, while the "Stars and Bars" class made speeches about the "Southern Way of Life."
Lord have mercy: this is what I found trying to Google the differences between the Battle Flag and the Stars and Bars.
“But it is a part of the truth, and very few people who fly the Battle Flag will take it down if they have to let that family pride element go to do it.”
I really think that gets to the crux of it. The rejection isn’t of a symbol of a failed army or nation. It’s not about regional or cultural pride. For a lot of people, it’s much more personal than that. It’s an unwillingness to accept this idea that they come from bad stock. Which is, in the end, what we’re telling them. History doesn’t work in nuance. Their ancestors fought on the wrong side, and they will not be redeemed in the eyes of history. On the contrary, once their defenders are gone, they will be remembered (for a lot of good reasons, mind you) as representative of nothing more or less than darkest side of the American spirit. And everyone knows this. It’s a truth that’s been passed down for generations. So we get flag wavers.
This is sheer brilliance. Excellent insight.
Brilliant point, and it's one I've been trying to articulate to people ever since I've started really doing the knowledge on the Civil War and Reconstruction. However, I'd go one further and mention that the bad stock isn't about the Civil War, but much deeper than that. Simply put, poor White America is the invisible category in this country, and a lot of foolishness has been aimed at raising their standing and self-esteem. Any effort to put this stuff to bed that doesn't try to think of a way for this class to make something of themselves is ultimately doomed to failure. I don't know of a single group of people anywhere that wants to think of themselves as losers. That said, since the dawn of the Republic, that's what a lot of poor Whites have heard, and it's one of the Original Sins (though not the worst one) of this country.
Very cool stuff. It reminds me of a few old Walker Percy quotes, if you will permit me to share them.
"Two significant changes have occurred in the past generation [writing about Mississippi in 1965]. The most spectacular is the total defeat of the old-style white moderate and the consequent collapse of the alliance between the 'good' white man and the Negro, which has figured more or less prominently in MIssissippi politics since Reconstruction days. Except for an oasis or two like Greenville, the influential white moderate is gone. To use Faulkner's personae, the Gain Stevenses have disappeared and the Snopeses have won. What is more, the Snopeses' victory has surpassed even the gloomiest expectation of their creator. What happened to men like Gavin Steven? With a few exceptions, they have shut up or been exiled or they are running the local White Citizens' Council. Not even Faulker foresaw the ironic denouement of the tragedy: that the Compsons and Sartorises not only should be defeated by the Snopeses but in the end should join them."
With the book open, I ran across this one which seems relevant, regarding the argument that the rejection of segregation and racism requires the rejection of a pride in Southern heritage and tradition:
"If the rite of initiation into liberalism requires one to swear a blood oath against his native land, then the proposed initiate is going to take another look at the club. ... the least effective way to fight segregation is to attack not only it but the society that practices it."
And, of course, his remarks on the Civil War and the Flag:
"A little more than one hundred years ago, a Mississippi regiment dressed its ranks and started across a meadow toward Cemetery Ridge, a minor elevation near Gettysburg ... These were good men. It was an honorable fight and there were honorable men on both sides of it. The issue was settled once and for all, perhaps by this very charge. The honorable men on the losing side, men like General Lee, accepted the verdict.
One hundred years later, Mississippians were making history of a different sort. If their record in Lee's army is unsurpassed for valor and devotion to duty, present-day Mississippi is mainly renowned for murder, church burning, dynamiting, assassination, night-riding, not to mention the lesser forms of terrorism. The students of the university celebrated the Centennial [of the Civil War] by a different sort of warfare and in the company of a different sort of general. ... the major claim to fame of the present-day university is the Old Miss football teama dn the assault of the student body upon the person of one man, an assault of bullying, spitting, and obscenities. The bravest Mississippians in recent years have not been Confederates or the sons of Confederates but rather two Negroes, James Meredith and Medgar Evers.
As for the Confederate flag, once the battle ensign of brave men, it has come to stand for raw racism and hoodlum defiance of the law. An art professor at Ole Miss was bitterly attacked for 'desecrating' the Stars and Bars when he depicted the flag as it was used in the 1962 riot--with curses and obscenities. The truth was that it had been desecrated long before.
....
"It is true that a lot of Confederate flags are being waved in the South. But if it weren't the flag, it would be something else. Racism has no sectional monopoly. Nor was the Confederate flag a racist symbol. But it is apt to be now. The symbol is the same, but the referent has changed. Now when the Stars and Bars flies over a convertible or a speedboat or a citizens' meeting, what it signifies is not a theory of government but a certain attitude towards the Negro.
A peculiarity of civil war is the destruction not only of armies and nations but of ideologies. The words and slogans may remain the same, but they no longer mean the same thing."
FYI: Percy was a language and semiotics philosopher, so his thoughts on symbolism and language, here and elsewhere, are quite perceptive in a discussion such as this. As well, he was clearly writing in the 1960's when even quite liberal people used terms to describe Black people which would be considered unacceptable today - I trust that nobody was offended, but I thought it worth noting.
While I understand Sporcupine's argument, and it is one that I've heard many times by apologists for flag wavers, it just doesn't fit with my experiences living my first twenty-two years in the Deep South.
Well, let me correct that: It resonates somewhat with my experiences. You don't have to spend more than a few minutes at a southern dive bar or truck stop to see that what Sporc is saying is partially true. But it ignores the fact that there are many, many Confederate Battle Flag wavers who are firmly ensconced in the white, southern middle class.
Just travel around the South and you'll see what I mean. When I travel through the vast (white and segregated) Atlanta suburbs and exurbs, I see more Confederate Battle Flags hung outside of houses and stores than I see in rural Appalachia. When I hear repulsively racist things being said when I go home, the speaker is just as likely to be an upper-middle class white as they are to be white working class (which is becoming increasingly integrated in the South).
Even in my own family, Sporc's understanding of who flies the flag doesn't hold true. My staid upper-middle class grandfather does, while my other working-class grandfather who lives in rural Mississippi does not.
This all goes to say that the proud display of the flag is socially sanctioned in every way by white Southern elites, and a good segment of the white middle class in the South proudly supports it. The notion that its somehow symbolic of white Southern heritage is bullshit. I've seen zero (0) Confederate flag wavers ever participating in a celebration or investigation of the South's rich history and culture OUTSIDE of Civil War fetishism.
What the Confederate Battle Flag - the flag chosen by Nathan Bedford Forrest to be the flag of the Ku Klu Klan - IS about to middle-class whites is being proud of being white in a deeply racist political and economic system. While I'm sure there's exceptions to the rule here and there, that's the way it has been for the last century, and I fear that's the way it will be for a long time to come.
And thats my Angry White Southerner rant.
In what suburbs of Atlanta do you see a lot of Confederate Battle Flags flying outside of middle class homes? Because I never saw that as a kid (and I grew up five miles from STONE MOUNTAIN). And right now, I'm again living in an overly white, conservative suburb north of the city and I still don't think I can ever recall seeing it. Not saying it doesn't happen. Just saying I've never seen it. What county? Cobb?
I know for a fact it occurs in Fulton County. I went to high school in Alpharetta, and I would see the confederate flag every day. I'd see it on my classmates t-shirts and on bumper stickers, too.
I'll never forget a t-shirt I saw in Northlake Mall...on the front, a confederate flag with lightning bolts running down the bars that accompanied the stars.
On the back?
"You got your X, and I got mine."
Hilarious and troubling at once.
we had this debate in my history class. i'll never forget having a class full of my white peers (i was the only black kid) tell me why the flag isn't racist and why i shouldn't be offended.
Hell. T-shirts. Yeah. I remember a kid in high school (this was actually in NC, not GA) who once wore a shirt. It was a cartoon shirt in the style of those hick "Big Johnson" shirts people used to get at Myrtle Beach or Panama City or wherever, and it had a dude with the Confederate Battle flag on it that said "You wear your X, I'll wear mine." Or some such shit. It was in the mid-1990s, during the period when Malcolm X was being resurrected as a marketable brand, and it was obviously in reference to all of the X hats and shirts that were everywhere back then.
I don't think the shirt had a Klan feel to it, but it was all I could think of when I saw it. I just remember being totally shocked by the audacity of this dude wearing it. I couldn't imagine how he could get away with wearing it in school.
But yeah, I totally remember shirts and bumper stickers. I even went to a guys house once, by accident, who had one tacked to the wall of the living room. But he wasn't really middle class, as it were. All I was really saying is that I don't remember ever driving through a neighborhood and seeing the flag off anybody's porch.
In which middle class Atlanta suburbs do you regularly see Confederate Battle Flags hanging outside homes? I grew up just outside of Stone Mountain (the world's largest monument to the Confederacy) and I can't say that I've ever seen a middle class home in the Atlanta area with a Confederate Battle Flag hanging out front. What county? Cobb? Cherokee?
Apolgies for the double post. I got an error message on my end. TNC, feel free to delete one.
I can't speak to your experiences, but in rural Virginia, if you see a flag flying outside someone's house, that house is generally a trailer. However, you do see the battle flag in more discreet ways on upper class people, including college kids (key chains and the like). I'd be inclined to say that the latter are probably thinking of it as more of an "I love virginia" trinket than a "kiss my ass I'm racist" advertisement, whereas I'm not so sure about the former.
Lest we forget this little mind bender:
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2008/10/30/1225381689264/tmpphpH007C9.jpg
I do hope no one thinks I was apologizing for either Confederate flag. They're both horrible in multiple ways. My ancestors were wrong from beginning to end, with only occasional flickers of being marginally better than some of their appalling neighbors.
I don't think anybody really took you as an apologist. I think it's a topic that people have difficulty (for obvious reasons) recognizing nuance without feeling the need to reject it. This is just one of those issues where it's too tempting for either side to be cynical about the motives of those with differing opinions. It doesn't help that a lot of those guys are, in fact, racists.
"When they go marching in their sheets, just look at their shoes."
I hope you don't mind if this line shows up in a story or play I write. Because it's just too damned nice to not steal.
It gets hot in your kitchen Coates, but I'm going to sip my lemonade and politely disagree with Sporcupine's entire comment....
This Confederate Flag debate is not a science of nuance but a study of emotional immaturity. Both flags that he references are rooted in a history of enslaving an entire race of people. Period. I have seen Gone With the Wind more times than I can count and Ashley Wilkes is fighting for the Confederacy under that Stars and Bars flag. Let's not romanticize this, it is not genteel and it is not "mysterious." It is, to put it delicately, bullshit. Painting it pink and calling it a lollilop is not going to convince me that its candy.
When we ask someone to let the Battle Flag go, we are asking them to grow up. To honor their ancestors by living in a decent manner and not repeating ancestral mistakes and regurgitating ancestral ignorance. To understand that as adults and parents themselves, you want your children to do better than you did and that your child is not thumbing their nose at you when they graduate college or avoid jail or try to go light on the pork for holiday meals. That you yourself are the current and accurate symbol of your ancestry, not a flag with origins of hate.
We are asking them for the maturity to grasp that while to you that Flag represents your freedom to guzzle beer and go to Nascar, history tells me that my ancestors were enslaved, raped, lynched, and murdered under it. I am able to guzzle beer and liquor without a Battle Flag nearby. I enjoy Nascar without having to channel Bars and Stars. What's the deal? Marijuana is a family enterprise, never smoked a day in my life and surprisingly I am still welcomed with open arms during Thanksgiving. Implying that class has anything to do with the need to cling to a flag is an insult to the working poor. When I worked in a museum in Augusta, GA one of the Musuem employees, marketing or accounting, had a Battle Flag bumper sticker. We worked at an art gallery for pete's sake.
That flag is a "fuck you" to African Americans and to this Country. And those who fly it may spout their party/family line about it being a symbol of family pride or southern heritage. But they know exactly what that flag represents and they do not care. Which is as rebellious and immature as it gets....which, now that I think about it, is completely appropriate.
The thing is, you're not asking. Nothing about what you write suggests the civility needed to make progress on this issue. Call them immature. That's fine. Many of them are. But how many arguments are won by demanding that somebody just grow up?
Obviously Americans, African Americans especially, have every right to feel offended by the branding of the flag in question. But as I stated in another thread, I think progress can only be attained with empathy to the other sides perspective. Not by belittling them.
When you belittle them, all you do is confirm their worst suspicions about you. You prolong the fight. In short, your frustrations are well-founded; your style... not so much.
I have offended you with my frank speech. Along with waving the Confederate Flag, we tend to be pretty blunt down here.
Empathy for which side? I don't know that Civil Rights activists were empathetic to Segregationists and Klansmen, so much as they did not want their church's burned down, people killed, and to be treated as second class citizens. Progress was made because in the face of unspeakable hatred and gleeful ignorance right won the day.
I see the logic and reasoning, I find it faulty, at the very least insensitive. Would you ask a rape victim to empathize with her rapists' own abusive past? Would you ask a child who is a victim of molestation to break bread with the uncle who violated her or him? Are you of the opinion that the Civil Rights movement and Feminist movement could have been shortened had blacks and women empathized more with their oppressors? So Stockholm Syndrome is your solution?
Fine, forget everything I just wrote. I understand your point, it is one that my boyfriend preaches to me, tolerance, go over to their side first, get them comfortable, get them talking, see where "their head is," and then change their mind. I am able to hold two opposing ideas in my mind at the same time. You're asking me to do the same thing my boyfriend asks me, "Be the bigger person." Which itself is a statement that the opposing side is wrong. Being right is a coldbedfellow, but sometimes principle is all we have left.
GaPeach7,
The flag bullshit is indeed complete bullshit. Understanding the bull is a way of figuring out how to get it to stop leaving piles of the stuff in front of all our houses.
I can't resist asking, though, how you assess the newest version of the Georgia flag?
Lmao!! You're a shit stirrer :-) I'm in a relationship with a devil's advocate and it is a true test of patience, which has never been one of my virtues. He is determined to make me a saint even if it is the death of me.
I think this new version is aesthetically more pleasant than the previous. The 13 stars is interesting. I want to appreciate that we are "looking forward" and want to celebrate a more decent version of our history - being one of the original 13 colonies to found the nation. However, the cynic in me can't help but be critical of that same point. I will not look a gift horse in the mouth, this version is a 100% better than previous and hopefully a sign of progress for us.
I think the meaning of sporc's question was directed at the fact that the current flag of the State of Georgia is a replica of the less polarizing, but nonetheless official flag of the Confederacy--generally known as the 'Stars and Bars.' I mean, save for the seal of Georgia being placed in the center of the circle of stars, the thing is a genuine replica of the Confederate Flag.
I think Sporc is wondering whether you're offended or appeased by the symbolic choice to lose the Battle Flag but continue to embrace the Confederacy by adopting the flag's more gentile, less polarizing brother.
"That flag is a "fuck you" to African Americans..."
That's really the core issue, is it not? I'm not from the south, so although I am white, I don't see what gives with giving the whole flag thing over, seeing that it is so viscerally insulting, intimidating even, in a way that can have no justification.
But nonetheless, it does no good to overlook the possibility for complexity. When listening to all this, I can't help hearing in my head the song written and performed by The Band in the 1960s, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," which without speaking to the issue of race, speaks about defeat in war, the sorrows of a working class soldier, his family, and the love of the place he comes from. Le Von Helm, who wrote the song, would I imagine not be considered racist by the people who know him.
As a Jew, when growing up I heard stories about the holocaust endlessly, so much so that I had a visceral response to someone even speaking in a German accent. Then in college, I had a history professor who had been part of the German army in WW2--not SS or anything, just a foot soldier. He was the best, most compassionate teacher I had during my five years at UC Berkeley, albeit he never apologized for the Nazi regime, and expressed when questioned complete remorse.
People of good will can be persuaded, educated out of ignorance; the rest, well, why stand for them.
I think there is only one proper place to display the Confederate Flag in a home.
Any takers on a bumper sticker that says "What part of APPOMATOX don't you understand?"
hilarious, I can always count on you IrishPirate. I still giggle over the "standing on the shoulders of giants" from inauguration season or was it the roland burris debacle?
I think you've managed to singlehandedly destroy their bandwidth.
Well since I destroyed the bandwidth for that site I found a similar photo and posted it to Flickr.
Do an internet search and there are a number of sites that sell it.
I personally like to do the "rebel yell" as I prepare to utilize it.
The shoulders of giants comment.
I'm really glad you picked that post out, TNC. It seemed impotant but kinda got ignored in the other thread.
The only unique thing it reps is treason and hate.
I don't have much to add regarding the substance of the very thoughtful comment that is featured here. I only want to note that it is mildly disappointing, if understandable, that many of my liberal brethren seem unable or unwilling to extend the same sensitive approach to understanding the complex interplay of race, culture, class, and human experience when considering white southerners with reactionary political views as they do when considering, say, Arab Muslims with reactionary political views. In some of the posts I read in the previous thread on this topic, I noticed the same moralistic black-and-whitism (no pun intended) that I often see from conservatives in their attitudes towards "Islamic fascists."
It shouldn't surprise us that group cultural ties are strong and enduring, both in conscious and subconscious ways. And that, as a result, people will often embrace, apologize for, rationalize, or otherwise spin the sad realities of their communal history. They will do this especially where they see members from outside the group criticizing that history relentlessly and without qualification, even if - and perhaps especially if - those criticisms are objectively sound. Born into a Hindu family, I see this sometimes from otherwise progressive Hindus attempting to rationalize, at least on some level, the caste system. Sometimes this owes itself to a genuinely more nuanced understanding that comes with greater physical and psychological proximity to the group. And sometimes it's just raw defensiveness. But in either case, it's understandably human, and we ought to make room for that in our discussion of these issues. Fortunately, it is nice to see, in this comment thread at least, a lot of people thinking in that vein.
I should also add that this same sense of empathy leads us to understand why some folks, on account of their own group affiliations, are not as likely to offer a particularly sensitive response to reactionary views or conduct. It's not hard to understand why our Jewish friends are prone to taking a harder line on Islamist militancy, why our African-American friends are prone to taking a harder line on the flag-wavers in question, and why I, as the son of immigrants, am prone to taking a harder line on anti-immigrant xenophobia.
I think you nailed it. We all have our hobby [whipping] horses and everyone is intolerant of certain things. And I'm quite sure that each person has their justifications that sounds good to them.
Of course I reserve the right to say they are absolutely wrong, but I think it never hurts to try to understand why someone thinks in one way or the other.
BTW the 2001-2003 Georgia Flag is as ugly as the 1956-2001 is reprehensible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Georgia_(U.S._state)
You are right - the original comment by Sporcupine on the Confederate battle flag is sympathetic, complex and insightful. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Wonderful, thoughtful article. Being from Kentucky by way of Tennessee the original article was especially resonant in regards to why people would willfully display something that is obviously offensive to many. I've read quite a few of the comments but admittedly not all so if this was mentioned previously forgive me for repeating. This is ressentiment. In fact, it's almost classic ressentiment.
"Ressentiment is a reassignment of the pain that accompanies a sense of one's own inferiority/failure onto an external scapegoat. The ego creates the illusion of an enemy, a cause that can be "blamed" for one's own inferiority/failure. Thus, one was thwarted not by a failure in oneself, but rather by an external "evil."
Ressentiment comes from reactiveness: the weaker a man is, the less his capability for adiaphoria, i.e. to suppress reaction."
I'm not suggesting anyone is weak here but it's the perception of weakness (at least in 2009) that is at issue, the siege mentality that some of my fellow Southerners and Appalachians display.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ressentiment
Again, wonderful open discussion.
I'm a white kid from Virginia, and I've had different views of the Battle Fla myself. When I was younger I was firmly in the 'heritage not hate' crowd, and for many of the reasons articulated above. I didn't want to see my ancestors and my native state tarred simply as the (unsuccessful) defenders of an indefensible institution. I wanted to be proud of my roots, and people telling me that they were based on white supremacy and chattel slavery offended my pride, so instead I chose to believe a rather selective reading of American history that at least partially exonerated the South (Beard's economic determinism, the supposed equivalence of slavery and northern capitalism, the racism of northerners, whatever). Defending the battle-flag was part of the worldview. Since then I've read things like WEB DuBois and Eric Foner and I think a bit differently.
That being said, my family never flew it or displayed it. My father was from Richmond, and like Sporcupine's grandfather my father's family (and their parents etc.) would never consider flying the battle flag--my grandfather was a lawyer, his wife's father a doctor, etc. But I still wanted to defend it, even if it wasn't part of -my- life it seemed to symbolize at least some of the anxiety mentioned in Sporcupine's post, though not the class element.
I went to high school in Fairfax County, one of the richest counties in the country, and nonetheless my school had a crowd of wanna-be rednecks that did things like try to display the battle flag in our class portrait. They weren't of the class that originally rallied around the flag, but they had adopted the culture--guns, loose living, off-roading, that kind of thing, and near as I can tell they identified with the militant lack of sophistication that the flag represented. The thing about the South and class is that the planter class's influence has disappeared, the rednecks have won. Now, both classes stood (almost, things are always more complicated) shoulder to shoulder for slavery, white supremacy and all the horrible accompaniments, so the decline of the planters (the stars and bars class, in Sporcupine's words) isn't a moral tragedy, but it is a social shift-mint juleps replaced by budweiser, the Byrd machine of Virginia replaced by politicians like Mike Huckabee etc. Where the south used to see itself as more aristocratic and hiarchical, it's now one of the most culturally populist portions of America.
But the redneck ethos, or at least the resentments against sophistication, urban life etc. that come with it, have really gone national--one finds the battle flag flying even in places like Vermont, if you go far out enough into the sticks. There I imagine it stands for a similar bundle of resentments and insecurities that it does in dixie--a disdain for one's supposed betters, for 'political correctness' (the interests of minorities in general), an assumption that one belongs to 'real America.' Thus it seems to me that the battle flag is a pretty potent symbol of the sort of class resentment that lies at the root of a lot of right-wing populism today.