One defense of the Confederate flag, made below, is that people who fly the flag and wear it on their tee-shirts aren't necessarily, themselves, racist. This is a rather low hurdle to clear. The harder test doesn't question your where your heart, but your sword.
From this perspective, the question isn't "Do you hate black people?" It isn't "Would you invite a black person to your barbecue?" It's "Are you more offended by black people who recoil in horror at the Confederate flag, than you are by the flag's history?"
It may well be true that Alabama's desire to fly the Confederate flag at the state capitol, or the desire of many Alabamans to use it themselves as they see fit, has nothing to do with the fact that the state was the last to drop its (unenforceable) prohibition against interracial marriage (in 2000!). It may be a mere coincidence that the only people to oppose the Alabama repeal were leaders of the states' "Confederate heritage group." But if the flag's defenders aren't racist (which I can accept) the necessary conclusion, while banal and common, isn't anymore comforting--a shocking ignorance of one's own history.
Well here's the thing: Historically racist often don't declare themselves. And when they do, they often claim to be acting in the interest of blacks and whites. Indeed the "not a racist" argument has been upheld, in varying forms, since the end of Reconstruction.
In terms of the confederate flag, the people claiming "not a racist" are the same people who name their parks, roads, and squares after generals who served in an army of white supremacy. Or they are the same people who remain willfully ignorant that this is being done in their name. One enduring fact of black life is that the willfully ignorant are as dangerous, or more, than the knowledged racist. Lynch mobs were led by the latter, but comprised of the former.
Perhaps this generation is different. Perhaps they are owed the benefit of the doubt. Indeed, perhaps this has always been so--maybe Fort Pillow really wasn't a massacre. But, were I them, I would not ask for that benefit, nor would I be shocked and appalled were I to see it withheld.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
TNC this is slightly OT, but I think it goes towards the underlying problem here. One of the big problems in discussing topics that harken back to slavery, segregation etc is the re-definition of the term "racist." I'm not sure when it happened, but I have a distinct feeling that the term "racist" has evolved into a monster. As you term it, not being a "racist" is now a VERY low bar to clear, and it shouldn't be that way. The term has been robbed of virtually all of its meaning. In order to be a racist today you have to do something pretty f'ing blatant, there's just no nuance to the term any more.
In reality, racism, as you've talked about on this blog before, is a lot more subtle than dropping some inflammatory language, blatantly calling for a certain racial group to "stop being so lazy" etc. Normally linguistic amelioration goes towards robbing words of their meaning, but I think we need to go the opposite way with the term racist. Thoughts?
I guess I'd like a clarification TN. While I am in complete agreement with your post here, although I do think the Confedrate flag has probably more than just racist signifiers, what is the distinction you are drawing with respect to those who found fault with the Post cartoon of the policeman blowing away the chimpanzee. That is, is there a line between when being tineared historically should be addressed at every instance and other instances in which it can be shrugged off?
Bah. You're giving the whole lot of them way too much credit. Defenders of Confederate flags and symbolism as a part of "southern heritage" that isn't inherently racist are about as credible as Holocaust revisionists, and for exactly the same reasons.
I'm a southern white girl, and I've never met anyone who was a confederate flag booster who wasn't also pretty actively racist. Not that all of them would classify *themselves* as racists -- you get comments like, "well, God just gave different gifts to the different races, and there's nothing wrong with sayings so ..."
& etc. & etc.
I would say I know of far fewer people my age and younger (Gen X/Y) who care about the flag issue one way or the other -- which is encouraging.
Excellent points, all. That said, I suppose it's a crucial element in understanding white Southerner's mentalities over the course of the past century and a half -- a comparatively huge proportion of the families in the South lost a father, son, or brother. As such, for those who survived, the Confederate flag became a symbol of a loved one's sacrifice.
No excuse, but simply an insight -- it's never an easy thing to understand why you had to bury your son, your brother, your father, or your lover. And that kind of emotion will be channeled somewhere: in the event, into the already tangled racial history of the South.
Add to that point the fact that immigration to the North sharply diluted Northern white memory, and you have a recipe for some extremely ripe myths.
Speaking of which, was Battle Hymn of the Republic a part of anybody else's grade school music curriculum?
I can understand the humanity in this arguement. Although the sight of the confederate flag sets my teeth on edge, Carrington's defense of it from the white southerner's pov does oddly make sense to me on an emotional level.
... thank you, I try to make sense on occasion. :-). I should make clear that I come to that understanding through historical imagination, not really lived experience.
Part of that imagination comes from having studied war... and having some sense of just how Godawful the Civil War actually was for the Americans at the time. To get a sense of the emotional devastation, you have to talk with elderly Europeans about the ancestors they lost in the Great War, with Russians about their family in WWII: everybody has a great uncle or grandparent who was lost... and very often, on their way to school, they walked past their ancestors' graves, or their names on a monument down the street.
I get the sense, and no disrespect to Europeans or Russians, that sort of searing experience shapes -- and probably, twists -- your imagination of history, leaving you grasping to find reasons for the tragedy and the sorrow... and probably, in the case of the Southerners, making the romance of the South all that much more attractive.
As to the other part of my imaginings: I should be clear, I'm from the other side of the WASP 'family.' I'd venture that part of the reason I can think my way into the Southern mentality is because I can trace my own heritage back to the Civil War and before -- my grandmother's in-laws still farm the land they farmed in 1865.
And for some reason, they still taught the Battle Hymn of the Republic at my school. When you read the lyrics, it's terrifying and bloodthirsty song.
Speaking of which, was Battle Hymn of the Republic a part of anybody else's grade school music curriculum?
Yes, but my school was religious.
Yes, and mine was an urban (85% black) public school district. In the north.
I'm not sure that this is the case. The generation of Southerners who fought in the Civil War or who had relatives who died during the conflict mostly tried to forget or suppress their past--in a way that most survivors of warfare do.
It wasn't until the 1950s and 1960s that the cult of the Confederacy came into full flower--and by that point it was quite clearly a shorthand for the defense of segregation. Georgia did not add the stars and bars to its state flag until 1956.
So I really don't think "southern heritage" is really a way of dealing with the trauma of the war--it's almost 150 years in the past, after all. People generally forget war deaths fairly quickly, unless they're used to underwrite some political cause.
Exactly so. The Confederate Battle Flag was virtually unknown for a hundred years. It has nothing to do with The War Between the States and everything to do with SEGREGATION.
This isn't about history, it's about mythology. It reminds me of the warped history that lives on in the minds of people in Northern Ireland; director Mike Leigh has recalled that while he was filming "Four Days in July", he interviewed small children whose "granddads fought alongside King Billy at the Battle of the Boyne" -- which took place in 1690!
The imaginary history is just a justification for unjustifiable behavior later on. Read Tony Horwitz's "Confederates in the Attic" for more on this unfortunate mental affliction, which has deepened, not lessened, as the Civil War recedes.
I'd be cautious about making such a sharp distinction between history and mythology... but maybe this is a debate for another time.
I appreciate the response, and I think you're right to suggest that things are more complicated, but there are a number of things I have to take issue with:
"It wasn't until the 1950s and 1960s that the cult of the Confederacy came into full flower..."
Birth of a Nation comes out when? 191? sometime, isn't it, and Gone with the Wind Comes out in the 1930s?
"People generally forget war deaths fairly quickly, unless they're used to underwrite some political cause."
I don't actually know that that's entirely the case. Certainly it's a tricky wicket for a politician to thread... but I think it is pretty clear that war's trauma has been twisted to political causes -- and sharpened national identity -- with distressing regularity.
And even absent the politicians, I don't know that the subject is forgotten so much as avoided... these were fathers, brothers, and sons.
"it's almost 150 years in the past, after all"
I hesitate to say it, but that's a particularly American view of history -- ask Gerry Adams or Ian Paisley about the Boyne... or get a Serb, a Kosovar, or a Croat talking about the past.... or talk to an ex-Soviet athlete about their 'friends' on the East German national team.
Fascinatingly, I just looked up the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and it was first published in, of all places, The Atlantic Monthly.
I grew up in the South and understood the"heritage" thing.
I did'nt trip off the "rednecks". As a matter of fact, it was pretty obvious which one's could be trusted and which one's could not.
However, " Why is the confederate flag not considered a symbol of treason against the U.S.?
Forget, just the racial overtones,how about the fact that it symbolizes the most overt act of treason against the U.S.
Many of the people who claim to be patriotic (to the US) wear the confederate flag with zeal.
Yeah, see, I was all going along with TNC, and now you've spoken up and I get a sudden irrational urge to go and pick up a Confederate flag.
Not that I will, because I agree with TNC. And I agree with lighthouse that calling it a symbol of treason is more cache than it deserves. But let's not forget that the United States of America is, first and foremost, a nation of traitors that only escaped the noose by virtue of being really expensive to kill -- and that is a heritage that I take (a perhaps bizarre) pride in.
But all that means is that we were "traitors" to the British Empire. When we talk about patriotism, we mean loyalty to the United States. For neo-Confederates to style themselves as U.S. patriots is like if we styled ourselves British patriots.
And why shouldn't we style ourselves British patriots? Did not those noose-escapees consider themselves to be upholding their rights as heirs of the Magna Carta (inter alia)? Does not the Civil War of 1776 demonstrate that sometimes one's principles demand that one commit treason against one's state, and that it is in fact a noble and virtuous thing? Or is it merely that it doesn't count as treason because we won?
By all means go ahead pick up a flag......but please note that what I said is correct. Any American citizen who takes up arms against the U.S. is committing an act of treason. So whether it's you, me, or lighthouse's ancestors it's treasonous.
And let's not forget the most important point the South and the British both got their asses kicked.
Your stated fact is not in dispute.
Argumentum ad baculum might be of central importance to you, but I find actually valid moral reasoning to be more satisfying, even if it is a fragile thing.
One way to think about the confederate flag (in response to the folks who claim they fly it due to heritage rather than racism) is from the perspective of trademark law. If Coca Cola doesn't fight to protect their trademark, they're no longer allowed to have it as a trademark. When the klan was marching under the confederate flag, did these heritage-obsessed people counter-demonstrate in defense of their allegedly non-racist icon? If not, they should no longer be allowed to use it and proclaim its non-racist.
dylanh
I could accept the argument that the flag was about heritage, not hate, if the flag was popular among black southerners as well. But for the most part, it's only white southerners flying that flag. That should tell you all you need to know.
Living in the Pacific Northwest I've never actually seen a Confederate flag flying on a flag pole. Where I did see the Confederate flag flying was in the interior of British Columbia, Canada. I'd just like to know why that would be. I asked a local in the town but she had no idea what the flag was let alone why it was flying. I also saw the Confederate flag hanging in a window of house located in a First Nation Reserve in the same area of B.C. I'd love to know the rationale for the flag in the Great White North.
I've seen a Confederate flag flying in Shaniko, Oregon as recently as last summer, and it had been flying in the same place the previous two summers as well. It's worth remembering that the Klan was active in Oregon in the 1920s, too.
Shaniko is within shouting distance of Antelope/Rajneeshpuram, another revolutionary episode in the surprising weirdness of the American West. I've seen the Stars'n'Bars on pickup trucks Yakima WA, and there are places near Ruby Ridge, ID where I wouldn't want to have an excellent tan (as the one-and-only Sylvio Berlusconi enthused about Obama).
I'm a lily-white guy of German heritage, with some friends and acquaintances who, darn it, forgot to be Caucasian... there are a few places out here, mostly touristy places, where the people who pump the gas and sell the groceries will smile and nod when the credit card is passed ... but whom I hope my excellently tanned friends won't accidentally encounter around midnight, up on Tango Creek.
To get the full rationale of the confederate flag in the Great White North, you should read "Confederates in the Attic"
I grew up in Western Pennsylvania, the original Arsenal of Democracy, just north of West Virginia. The confederate flag was flown up and down the spine of the Alleghenies, and its fliers would tell you they were saluting "heritage."
But if you said to them: West Virginia was carved out of Virginia by your forebears who were Union sympathizers, they would not believe you or punch you in the face. If you said to them: your home region forged the cannon shot that killed Johnny Reb, they would scratch their head.
The stars and bars has very little to do with the Civil War these days. It's like Christianism has very little to do with Christ. Instead, the Stars and Bars are about saying "fuck you" to the man. And "the man" here is some slick jackass from the coast whose going to come in and tell you what to do (god-damned feds what with their Affirmative Action laws and... where's my social security check?).
And because the white "fuck you" crowd typically lives around other white "fuck you" members, you end up with the stars-and-bars brand of nationalism. Johnny Reb getcher gun.
When I said:
The confederate flag was flown up and down the spine of the Alleghenies, and its fliers would tell you they were saluting "heritage."
I meant to say:
When I was growing up, I saw the confederate flag was flown up and down the spine of the Alleghenies, and its fliers would tell you they were saluting "heritage."
I have also seen the confederate battle flag displayed on the odd pick-up truck in rural Ontario, Canada. I think it may have to do with the flag as symbol of a rural, working class, rebellious, redneck identity. It my may also be a reaction to the increasing urbanization of Canada, and the increasing cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism of those urban areas.
It may also have something to do with growth in popularity in rural Canada with NASCAR culture and larry the Cable Guy, and as result many things Southern. It's not unusual to here the phrase "Get'r Done" in some places. However, I'm just speculating.
I do know of an incident near Keswick, ON where someone flew a confederate battle flag outside there home alongside a skeleton painted black with noose around its neck. There is no doubting the connotations there. However the black population of that community is probably miniscule if not non-existent.
At the close of the Civil War, an implicit (and, sometimes, explicit) settlement was made between the North and the South: The South would accept that they lost the war and that the Federal Government was legitimate, and the North would accept that the rebellion was a noble if extremely misguided cause.
And we're still paying for that settlement today. I'm not convinced it was not the best way of reuniting the country, but it gave the Confederate cause an aura of romance and legitimacy, a connection with a mythical Antebellum era, that allows things like the Confederate battle flag to be viewed as an icon of a lost culture rather than a symbol of a vicious, racist government.
I'm from South Carolina and to me the flag represented the South as a region. It's where I grew up and I love it, backwards politics and all. It wasn't until college when I really realized how rightfully offended african-americans were by the flag, and that the 'southern heritage group' of which I was a part was more interested in politics than history. I personally don't find the flag offensive, but I will no longer defend it. About 6 months ago my young daughters found my confederate flag in a box of my old stuff that my mom brought to me. I was actually pretty horrified to watch them run around using it as a cape. I threw it out.
Is it possible that, just as many right-leaning Americans tend toward nationalistic flag worship because of a cultural empathy with the folks that make up our armed forces, some Southerners, as Carrington points out, feel a closeness to the people (as opposed to the ideas) who fought and died in the Civil War?
It really seems like some micro-nationalistic tendency to me. And, as we've witnessed over the past six or seven years, nationalism tends to promote blindness to the horrible nature of war and its motivations. "Just because they were on the wrong side doesn't mean they're not worth celebrating", or something along those lines.
Really, it all smacks of racism (and, really, a pride in racism), but, in the spirit of the blog, I though this wasn't an altogether unreasonable question to pose.
I am not a southerner, but I did live in Virginia for a while.
I have never met anyone, or ever heard of anyone who defends "southern culture" who is not a racist. Ta-Nehisi, you are right.
As a political point, I am willing to argue the usefulness of arguing about the flag, but it is clearly racially charged.
I have to take issue with this. In my opinion the flag is a racist symbol, I think that's cut and dry, even if a small percentage of the people flying it have convinced themselves otherwise.
But there is a lot to "southern culture" beyond racism. Most of the things that make the south distinct from the north have to do with the influence of African culture there, meaning that there is a lot of room to celebrate "southern culture" without being a racist. (not that there aren't a lot of racists who talk about "southern culture" as a kind of code)
Not to be disingenous, but considering the much longer, deeper and more violent history of Christianity's part in slavery than the relatively short-lived Confederacy (slavery's defense was most often a religious one), one would think more people would recoil at the sight of a bible than a Confederate flag.
I think you highlight exactly the point some of the commenter are making: the stars and bars has seldom if ever been used as part of a constructive, non-racist movement.
The Christian bible was the inspirational book of choice for the abolitionists, many of the slaves and a significant proportion of the participants in the Civil Rights movement (as was, incidentally, the Hebrew bible - if you want to talk about the impact of history and myth consider Jews who came to the right moral conclusion and participated disproportionally in the Civil Rights movement in part because of the tradition that "they were slaves in Egypt").
You can certainly find bad actors who use(d) the Christian bible as justification for any number of objectionable things, but in contrast to the battle flag there aren't really that many offsetting good works. As another commenter pointed out, there has never been an attempt to reclaim the heritage for non-racist causes. When was the last Daughters of the Confederacy Speak Out Against Racism rally?
To me, the question is not whether or not the flag stands for someone's heritage or someone's hate. It doesn't take much imagination to see that it stands for the latter or the two.
However, that being said, the question, or perhaps the comments that concern me the most are about the people who purposely wear these symbols, and whether or not there are to be hence forth recognized as racists.
We assume to much when we assume they are racists. We assume they know or have been told that a = b. When in actuallity, people really do honestly believe that it is a matter of heritage, and nothing more. Ignorance does not equal racism.
Quote historians and politicians all you want. I will not argue over what it means, I will argue though that some of the people, admitedly not all, do deseverve the benefit of the doubt. People's actions towards another human being dictate their character, not what they wear on their shirts.
With all that being said...I am white...and a male. So perhaps I fail to understand what exactly qualifies one to be a racist.
On a purely practical level, while I do believe that not everyone who waves the Confederate flag, will by default hate me and make me feel horrible and/or cause me physical harm on sight -- if I see the flag waving I'm not going to stick around to find out, y'know? When my car breaks down in the middle of the night and I need help, I'll just mosey one door down the road to the house without the flag that makes burning crosses spring involuntarily to my mind.
(This is not to say I might not still wind up harmed...but nobody's REALLY a telepath. You go on what clues you have.)
I am Scotch Irish and my family came to America before the revolution and lived in the South. I have several ancestors who fought for the Confederacy as well as a few that fought for the Union(and one who fought for the Americans during the Revolution in North Carolina). I am not ashamed of my family that fought for the Confederacy because, well, they are family. I had Confederate flags around as a kid until I got old enough to know what it was about and then I tossed them.
You dont have to adapt the ideology of your ancestors or its icons in order to honor them. Europeans have much more practice at this than we do.
As far as the confederate flag being a flag of treason and rebellion, well that is seen by many as a feature, not a bug. It gives the flag more cache than it deserves.
This leads to another question: for southerners proud of their southern heritage, why is it that the only heritage they celebrate is that five year period when they were in open rebellion against the United States? There is nothing worth celebrating in the other hundreds of years when the Confederate flag didn't fly?
I grew up in Southern Alabama in the 80s. I'm white. I knew a large clan of respectable, upper middle class white folks who thought interracial marriage was a disgusting abomination, thought the desegregation of schools was a disaster (and put their kids in private schools specifically so they wouldn't have to go to school with black children), dropped the n-bomb casually from time to time, etc.
Textbook racists. But they would have been mortally offended if you ever called them that.
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.)
Maybe the solution here is for blacks to adopt the Confederate flag as a symbol of their own, perhaps arguing that it was the uprising of the CSA against the Union that ultimately caused the end of slavery perhaps decades before the institution would have ended on its own. What better way to make the flag useless for white supremacists--after all, people would then have to ask them when they became so interested in black pride--while still letting non-racist supporters of southern heritage (as well as Lynyrd Skynyrd fans) display the flag with pride?
A few rappers (Andre 3000, Pastor Troy, Lil Jon) tried that about 7 or 8 years back and it was sensational for like five minutes.
I figure all of them probably got their coat pulled by some old granduncle who vowed to put his rockports up their skinny behinds if they didnt stop celebrating the flag that flew during lynchings.
Pretty cool and post-modern till you have to look an old Black man or woman in the eye and explain just how clever you are.
The fantastic short story "The Appropriation of Cultures" by Percival Everett sort of tries out exactly this scenario.
The American flag is somewhat analogous to the Confederate flag controversy--after all, native Americans could argue that the Stars and Stripes were flown by troops who slaughtered their ancestors or "relocated" them and took their land unlawfully, while those who today fly the flag see it symbolizing something different (freedom, conquering tyranny abroad, etc.). The analogy isn't exact--after all, hate groups haven't really adopted the American flag the way some have adopted the Confederate flag, and of course the U.S. wasn't founded with destruction of the Indian as a central goal the way slavery was a leading (if not THE leading) cause of secession--but the point stands that a symbol can only mean what we take it to mean.
A lot of nonracist southerners take pride in the Confederacy and its symbols, seeing it as a romantic lost cause, rebellion against central authority, or regional pride--and they have a point in that these motivations surely meant more to the typical foot soldier in the Confederate front lines. But they have to also understand how much slavery and white supremacy caused the secession, and how racist groups have used the Confederate flag in the years since then, and that it's not unreasonable for blacks to take some offense in seeing the flag displayed. Unless the flag is somehow widely adopted by nonracist groups so as to lose any racist meaning--which would be nice, but probably never going to happen--these nonracist southern pride types should consider a new symbol that won't get them lumped in with the hate groups. After all, why display something that you know is going to cause hurt where you don't intend it?
I believe I'm the commenter you're talking about here, TNC. The main point I was trying to make was that in certain parts of the south, there has been a legitimate shift in the meaning of the confederate flag in the popular consciousness, and people who visit from other parts of the country, where the flag pretty much equates to swastikas/ burning crosses/ dudes in white hoods, shouldn't draw the wrong conclusions from its ubiquitous presence. Some of the people who display it for non-racist reasons are doing so in ignorance or denial of its history, sure. Others, though, know its history but have positive associations with the flag that are unrelated to that, and would like to see it "rebranded," after a fashion. I'm not saying people shouldn't notify these people that the flag doesn't mean the same thing to everyone that it means to them. What I am saying is that if you look at the south with the assumption that people are displaying the flag with the intent to offend, you will draw a fair number of false conclusions about people's attitudes.
What I am saying is that if you look at the south with the assumption that people are displaying the flag with the intent to offend, you will draw a fair number of false conclusions about people's attitudes
What I think I can safely say is that at least they are well aware that they are offending their neighbors. Again, is it the confederate flag the only way to show attachment to Southern heritage?
Heritage?
What the hell kind of 'heritage' are they talking about, Coates?
One of racism, lynching, brutality against Black folk.
Don't sugarcoat it, and don't walk away from it, Coates. You were on the money yesterday.
The Confederate flag is a symbol of Black oppression, and I don't mean that in theory- in ACTUALITY. It is the flag of those that lynched. It is the flag of those that oppressed Black folk. It IS the flag of those that terrorized Black folk throughout the era of Jim Crow.
There is no ' heritage' behind that flag other than hate and oppression.
An interesting dynamic about flying the Battle flag that hasn't been mentioned is that in some parts of the north and midwest the revulsion and derision towards the south and southerners who fly the flag is still very real. It's not as vocal, but my grandparents (Upatate NY methodists) who had grandparents who remembered keeping runaway slaves in the basement as children saw the flag as a symbol of both slavery and treason.
I still see it that way. I don't think anyone who flies the battle flag can be seen as an American patriot, and I am suspect fo their loyalties. This is the prejudice that I bring to the table, and many other white from northern rural stack bring as well. My parents hated Dukes of Hazard with a passion, and now I understand why.
When someone flies the Battle Flag, its is like extending a middle finger to most of the rest of the country. They are saying "I do not care what you care about. I spit on this Union you care about"
It's harsh, but I think most people who fly that flag understand it, and that's part of the reason they do it. There are kids around here (Exurb Seattle) who fly the Battle Flag. They have no southern Heritage, they are just saying FU to the Black, Hispanic, Asian and Native kids who they go to school with.
Interesting. Downstate VT Methodists.
I'd venture that part of the difference between Yankees and Southerners is demographic: Northern WASPs get swamped by the tides of immigration to a much larger degree than do Southern WASPs.
Which raises the question... by the way, to whom, exactly, are they raising a middle finger?
More specifically, there are other ethnic tensions in this country besides black-white.
Or, to put it another way, I've spent enough time in Boston to realize that a 'stars and bars' license plate is speaking not just to Twymons, but also -- and perhaps specifically -- to Cabots, Lowells as well.
Reading Little Women unabridged, I was struck by the casual prejudice in the novel.
Not racism, mind you - the Civil War was a noble cause! Led by New England abolitionists! - but the way Alcott describes the Irish and/or Catholic characters in the book? Wooh boy.
My thoughts on this changed dramatically when I was stranded in East Texas with a flat tire on my motorcycle. My side bags carried the brazen messages "Texans for Obama" and "Obama '08".
Imagine my shock when two rednecks in a beat-up pickup truck stopped to offer me a bottle of water and a shady spot in their driveway, and even the use of a phone. And, oh yeah, they had a big Confederate flag bumper sticker.
I'm inclined to agree with the folks who point to a particular southern, rural point of view as utterly failing to consider what the flag means to African Americans and more liberal whites, and yet being somewhat understandable on the grounds of their uneducated ignorance and poverty. I don't give the same benefit of the doubt to the advocates, particularly lawyers, who do genuine damage in advocating that it be flown publicly, or to the sophomoric types who make brazen claims about Southern identity. It ought not to be flown in public spaces, ever. But it's a little easier for me to understand how some well-meaning people might see it as a more admirable symbol than what we can conceive.
All that having been said -- if I saw my son wearing one, he'd be dead meat.
Wasn't there a picture on Sullivan's blog -- roadside billboard: Confederate flag, with the text 'Rednecks 4 Obama: even we've had enough.'
This is the type of thing I was talking about in my previous post- all I'm asking for here is for folks to not make untoward assumptions about the dude in Wal-Mart aisle 6 who has his kid in a stars and bars t-shirt because he's proud to be from south carolina. Or, on the more educated side, the geeky civil war reenactor who is proud he got out of his cubicle for a weekend to get drunk and pretend to be stonewall jackson. The politicians who want the damn thing flying from the capitol building are another story.
Distinctions should be made here. Rightly, it has been pointed out that the particular flag we're speaking of was used in the 1950's as a means, I can only imagine, to bring up old sh*t. It is impossible in the South to not understand what that flag means because it's impossible to not know black people, and yet be unbelievably ignorant of our struggle. Slavery, for all its other issues, as an institution bound people inextricably to one another. Where else have slaves been freed and oppressors lament that their slaves have abandoned them? Where else would a distinction be made between a good and bad master? And where else but the south, has there been reckoning, forcing us to look ourselves in the eye -- victim and oppressor?
I appreciate, however, a visible vice. If one is to do a soul-searching in the history of race and violence in America, one would do well to remember how many lynchings occurred in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, etc. How 'white only' towns spread in the Midwest. At least the South has a flag. What equivalent have we in NYC, the only place someone has asked me about my job as a nanny, while I was hanging out with my friend's kids?
In the case of the flag, I'm reminded of my favorite toast (taught to me by an Irish woman):
"May those who love us, love us.
And for those who don't, may God turn their ankles
so we know them by their limp."
I would hate to see what would fly in its place.
Speaking as a Southerner, born and raised, I've always believed that one of the main elements of Southern culture was courtesy.
And if there's any way it can possibly be considered courteous to deliberately display a flag that you KNOW causes fear and discomfort in your neighbors, it's one that uses a definition of "courtesy" that I never learned.
Interesting discussion. But here's the thing I don't get. My sister's neighbor, a woman in her 60s and a staunch Republican, put up a Confederate battle flag on her porch, in place of her usual Notre Dame U. flag, on Jan 20, 2009. Not sure why she chose to do that on that day, but I guess it was just a heritage thing....
Robert E. Lee's birthday (1/19), maybe? In an odd sideshow to the heritage thing, some have begun advocating celebrating Lee's birthday in conjunction with MLK's on the 3d Monday in January.
I'm not sure if it is still the official state holiday in Virginia, but at least ten years ago when I was in college, they celebrated "Lee/Jackson/King Day," as in Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Martin Luther King. You know, because they were all such good buddies. There were, I kid you not, square dancers in confederate uniforms to entertain us in the cafeteria at my college on MLK day. It was BEYOND appalling. They tried to make up for it the next day with some kind of black power theme but shockingly enough, it really just didn't work.
It was Inauguration Day, guys...and this was in PA
Your nuanced and generous discussion of this is, I suppose, admirable...but fuck it ! They're racists !!!!
That about sums it up. A lot of the defense of this seems like rationalization.
And the only thing TNC left out of his post is that the confederate flag was only flying in Mississippi prior to 1950. Most of the other southern states hadn't flown that flag on a daily basis since Reconstruction. So it really looks more like a response to the start of the Civil Rights Movement than being proud of family and traditions.
As a matter of fact, while the Battle Flag of the Confederacy wasn't added to the state flag until the 50s, the design Georgia's state flags have always been modeled off of those of the Confederacy. So while it's obviously fair to say that the widespread use of the more provocative flag was in response to the Civil Rights Movement, the symbols of the Confederacy have been held in high regard since the Confederacy.
heritage? yeah, like a nazi swastika is just a symbol of german heritage... simply declaring that something represents your heritage doesn't make it so. not when it is an artifact of the darkest, most vile chapter of your history and a slap in the face to an entire race. flying a confederate flag is an exercise in either ignorance, denial, racism, or all three. as private citizens, people have this right. but no way it should fly above a government building. that's just disgraceful
By picking the swastika, you're actually arguing the other side from what you intend. It has an older, and more honorable history than the Nazi one you refer to -- just visit India for example, where the Jains and Hindus would be offended to be compared to Nazis. Is their long history of using the swastika symbol invalidated totally by the later Nazi context?
So just like the Battle Flag, the message received by you viewing the symbol may not be the same as the message intended. Your background and personal history tilt the meaning one way, but the world is not one homogenous lump, not yet anyway, and other people have other histories and other meanings.
As a moderately-well-educated and non-racist Southerner, I would never display the Battle Flag because I know the sensitivities of others and what others might assume from it (and I also know more appropriate varieties of Confederate flags if I ever chose to display one, although I'm more a Gadsden flag guy myself). And it's for sure that the Battle Flag is popular among some racists.
But there are those who think it represents the (non-racist) part of their heritage more than it represents racism per se. And there are those who intend it to mean a symbolic "Fuck You" not to a race other than their own, but to a class richer than their own, or to an ever-expanding government, to modern life, to their fate, or to some more inchoate half-formed idea of "Them", "The System", etc. And even if I am not one of them, that latter motivation at least rings some vague, partly-sympathetic bell.
But I can still wish, if that's what they mean, that they'd use another symbol for it.
The thing I really didn't get was when I was in Kentucky and saw a guy wearing a T-shirt that showed the Confederate battle flag and had the text, "If this flag offends you, you need to learn your history." I've seen comments of a similar vein online, too. To which I say: WTF? As if the people who objected to the flag were unaware of the Confederate flag's proud history of non-racism? No, the more you know about the flag's history, the more offended any reasonable person would be. About the only defense of it I can see is a sociological one --- Southerners displaying it out of solidarity with the land and culture, not the policies thereof --- but seriously, as one person wrote above, I thought one of the Southern values was supposed to be courtesy, and it's just plain rude to fly it, even if your intent is not to remind black people of slavery, lynchings, and Jim Crow.
So yeah, maybe that's not their intent, but still... symbols have meanings and if you're going to use those symbols, you need to understand what those meanings are. I can't walk around wearing a T-shirt that says "Fuck you, assholes" and claim that it really means "I am proud of the region where I was born and grew up," but that's exactly what these numbskulls are doing.
"Southerners displaying it out of solidarity with the land and culture"
It's not about land or culture, though. It's literally about a family line. That's what heritage means: that which we inherit from those who came before. We come from them. They live on in us.
To a lot of these people, flying the flag is a futile attempt to give nobility to fight which history has long since judged as being anything but noble. They don't want their ancestors to be forgotten or remembered as nothing more than racists, so they fly the flag.
Ironically, the flag they choose to fly reminds most people of lynchings and slavery.
The thing I really didn't get was when I was in Kentucky and saw a guy wearing a T-shirt that showed the Confederate battle flag and had the text, "If this flag offends you, you need to learn your history."
I agree. This guy really should learn his history.
For example, learning the fact that Kentucky was a slave state that never left the Union.
Below is a link to an oral history interview with a ninety year old southern white woman talking about the south's attachment and romanticism with the civil war. It may give some perspective on the attachment, and on the ability of rational southerners to recognize the folly of this attachment.
The interview is from an Oral History series at the Fairfield County Museum in tiny WInnsboro, SC.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slfh4eCNonY
I grew up in a pretty liberal household in the Atlanta suburbs, which were then (and depending on the area, still are) primarily white and conservative. When I was growing up, 2/3 of the Georgia State flag was the Confederate Battle flag (it’s since been altered and a less polarizing flag of the Confederacy has taken its place). Growing up, I never understood, nor did I care to understand the motivation of people who would defend the flag against charges that it was either implicitly or explicitly romanticizing state-sponsored racism and enslavement. To me, people who flew the flag were racists. There were no two ways about it; it truly was as simple as that. People could argue all day long about heritage, but in the end, there was a reason that the Klan flew the thing.
I don’t know what I think today. To me, the flag still means essentially the same thing it always did. But I think a lot of the people who fly it really don’t think of it as having anything to do with race. Nor do I think they necessarily are racists. Nor do I think they make the connection of slavery to the Confederacy at all. They aren’t revisionists, they are the great grandchildren of revisionists. A history has been passed down to them from previous generations that literally attempts to extract the relevance of the South’s enslavement of a people from the list of causes of the so-called ‘War of Northern Aggression.’
In the end, nobody (or hardly anybody) wants to have ancestors who were slave owners. Fewer still want to have ancestors who went to war, in part, to maintain their rights to be slave owners. So history, for them, was rewritten to give the struggle some sense of nobility. To these people, the secession wasn’t about treason, it was about rebellion and (…) freedom and civil rights. (I know. Right?) To them, flying that flag is about standing up to tyranny. It’s about a noble fight lost and later vilified.
Of course they’re wrong! And of course people are offended by the flag. But this fight isn’t won by calling them racists or calling their ancestors white supremacists (even if both are true). From what I can tell, the only way to progress is to find some path towards empathy. On both sides, really. White southerners of the 21st century continue to be victimized by the racism of their forbearers in ways they don’t understand. I don’t think their ignorance is willful. I think it’s pathological. It’s like a PTSD that stretches for generations. It’s a shame they’ve been conditioned to reject and deny. But I think it’s there.
I grew up in Erie, PA, in the early 80s. Any farther north, and you're in the lake; any farther than that, and you're in Canada. There were quite a few people in the rural areas right outside town who had stars-and-bars bumper stickers and flags. Some of these people were Germans and Poles whose families weren't even here yet when the war broke out. I remember talking to a few of them back then, and asking, "You know, the South never got this far North, right?"
I don't remember exactly what they said in response, but I do remember that they said it had very little to do with either racism or "Southern Heritage." It had more to do with the idea that they felt like their lives and fortunes were being decided by people far away. They were upset about taxes, felt disconnected from the political leadership in Washington (or Harrisburg, or wherever), had low-paying jobs that could disappear at a moment's notice if some faceless corporate guy made a certain decision - and no prospects for any other employment if that happened, since all the industry fled the region decades ago.
I think they latched onto the symbol of that battle flag because objection to that sort of mess was one of the ideas that made the secessionist movement and Confederacy possible. I know it's extraordinarily hard to separate the racist legacy of slavery from the South's side in the Civil War. But if you strip away that (huge) aspect of the War, the antebellum South was in a fairly similar situation to many rural areas of the country today. Economically under-developed, holding on to a dwindling number of electoral votes and Congressional representation, socially marginalized. I suspect that people from rural areas also occupy a disproportionate amount of the country's best military leadership today, just like they did in the leadup to the Civil War, though I don't know where I'd go to look that up. Anyway, the situations are broadly similar (minus slavery); similar enough that there's crossover of symbolism between the two.
I do think that the flag is thrown around rather irresponsibly. It's just too soon after the fact for it to mean what those (apparently well-intentioned) rural people wanted it to mean. That said, I don't think that the stars-and-bars will be - always, forever, and for all time - only a symbol of hatred. Symbols change, times change, and meanings change. Ask a devout Hindu from the seventh century what the Swastika means, and you'd get a very different answer than if you ask a modern Israeli. A first-century Roman would have a very different opinion of the fasces than would a twenty-first century Roman. But that sort of thing took place over the course of centuries. There are still people alive today that are affected by the War's legacy, and segregation's legacy.
Even if one were to put aside the obvious racist symbolism of the Confederate Flag, people often overlook the simple fact that it is a symbol primarily of sedition and treason against the United States of America - by definition!
Flying it from a State Capitol shouldn't prompt debate, it should prompt federal troops coming in and finishing the job of Reconstruction for real, this time.
The Battle Flag...What's it To You?
Whatever you want it to be.
More than race divides the South. Once primarily agrarian, southern whites are divided by class and status and occupation and Church and a thousand boundaries, large and small, mostly invisible to Northern and Coastal Americans. Understanding those who defend the flag and
fly it without referencing these divides....futile.
When anyone looks at the battle flag, they will see what they want to see. They will bring their entire life's experiences into that judgment. If you are a Klansman, it represents White superiority and Christian civilization. If you are "jes, a good ole boy," it means stay out of my way, I am a free person and submit to no authority. If you are African American, it represents two centuries of slavery, and a further century of terror, poverty, and discrimination. If you are a racist, it signals your racism. And, if you are proud of being Southern, then it signifies your pride.
When you are poor and trapped and everything your family has is owned by the mill owner, by the absent landlord, by the company store...well, at least you are better than the Blacks!! You are better than somebody. Only one poster captured this truth..."when you look at a Klansman, look at his shoes."
Understanding America without grappling with slavery and the Civil War (and their consequences) is impossible. The destruction and suffering caused by the Union Army in invading and occupying the South...necessary to preserve the Nation, but the cost was borne, ironically, not by the landed slave owning gentry, but by the 86% of Confederate soldiers who owned no slaves.
Symbols mean different things. How about memorials to dead Confederate soldiers? Or to it more bluntly..."to my dead ancestors who died defending this land?" Is that hate?
In a nation that constantly erases its history, should we remember the past? Should we celebrate it? Slavery is the American Sin...its consequences live long today.
To me, the flag represents State's rights, an illegal war, and a tyrannical president, who had he not been shot, had a plan for ethnic resettlement of any African he could round up.
How different would our history be if that had occurred?
Slavery is NOT uniquely American, in fact, it continues RIGHT NOW in Africa by our wonderful and caring Islamic friends.
The civil war, like all of our wars, has been neatly packaged, phrased, and boxed into simple action playsets for quick consumption.
The reality of it is far different, and it had nothing to do with race, save for the fact that slavery functioned as an industrial aspect of the Southern economy.
Mr. Lincoln was an open racist. One needs to spend but seconds on Google to discover this fact.
Once again, blacks in America are told where to hate, instead of looking it up for themselves.
There are plenty of blacks in the South that have discovered their own confederate heritage, much to the horror of the modern revisionists. How ironic.
> When the klan was marching under the confederate flag, did
> these heritage-obsessed people counter-demonstrate in defense
> of their allegedly non-racist icon? If not, they should no
> longer be allowed to use it and proclaim its non-racist.
Well, ah did... and as a heritage-obsessed southern expat (living in Oregon) w/ Indian, Black and White kin, ancestors of which fought to preserve the Union against other Indian, Black and White kin to preserve the rights of the states of the Confederacy, I never showed up at a klukker's rally without both the Confederate Battle Flag AND the Betsy Ross flag.
I don't fly the CBF any more, dammit, because the sight of it makes a lot of folks think I don't listen; but a lot of us do. Instead, I fly the Gadsden Flag and the Betsy Ross Flag.
I celebrate the Revolution, the Confederacy, and the bravery of Reconstruction. Ah voted for the n*****, and am damn proud of BHO, the best damn president in at least half a century.
Chattel slavery is wrong. It persists today, in the South in the Republican county where I grew up ( visit http://www.ciw-online.org ) and in the North. May we stop already with waving bloody flags of all colors? Instead, let's stop chattel slavery by Saudis abusing the rights of their household staff in the US, by farming contractors in Florida, and by pimps abusing women all over the country.
Americans of all colours everywhere in the U.S. have things they could learn from Southern Whites, like good old fashioned manners. But even at its best, notice how "Southern Heritage" does not usually refer to the cultural and historical heritage of Southern Blacks? Which is why I find the whole "heritage not hate" argument self-contradictory, since while perhaps not overtly hateful, it is nonetheless racist for the way it assumes Southern Heritage is Southern White heritage, and Southern Blacks are a footnote to that.
On the other hand, I was impressed with how many Confederate flag toting (literally), N-word uttering (literally) Southern Whites voted for Obama. Some people are not as racist as they allow themselves to be seen, and I think Obama knew this.
The Utility of Flags
The "Confederate Flag" most in evidence today is an invention of the Second KKK, popularized by the Sigma Chi fraternity during the 1920's. Those organizations then were not notably secessionist. Their "heritage" was mostly myth and costume. It was different in tone -- celebratory reaction -- from preceding civil war veteran and memorial movements or from the subsequent historical study and re-creation enterprises.
The Second Klan embraced a sort of bi-partisan jingoism and was mostly populated by individuals living outside of the ex-Confederate states. They supported the GOP-led isolationism and the conspicuously anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic US immigration laws of the time.
Anti-black racism associated with the flag in question increased, becoming more explicit and localized during the Dixiecrat and anti-desegretation, Red-baiting era following WWII. That, and resentment at losing local political power or petty privileges, has followed realignment of self-described "conservatives" into the GOP today.
The "not racist" and "heritage" claims have now followed retreat of that party into its Southern redoubt of agro-military pork and residual "private" or "libertarian" social and economic privilege.
Those residual claims of petty privilege are "not racist" by assertion and, indeed, have been intellectually reconstructed with "law and economics" arguments upheld by he Supreme Court.
So, the "heritage" claim comes to refer today more to the Heritage Foundation or to the "Ask Heritage" or "EIB" intellectual support facilities today than to actual southern culture or history.
Those of us serious about actual heritage, even if privileged or white, have embraced black history and culture. As Shelby Foote put it, "how do you think we learned to talk and eat like this?"
The flag design in wide use today was described in CSA records as authorized for use as a naval ensign or by Gen. Joe Johnson, as a personal standard during his brief tenure as a commanding general towards the end of the war. It is doubtful that such a flag ever physically existed or was ever used for any purpose during the civil war. It was not buried by N. B. Forrest to "rise again". (Battle flags "present", "advance", "stand", "rally", or "retreat". Or, they get captured and get displayed as trophies.
The "buried battle-flag" is late Victorian mythology associated with the Zulu War. As Mark Twain noted, a lot of Confederate "heritage" was made up by well after the war based on colorful illustrations of English novels such as those of Robert Louis Stevenson.
Use of a generic but bogus "Confederate" flag today is contemptable.
But, it is effective: The flag in question is actually used today as a "battle flag" would be to signal "rally" and to demarcate safe haven for racists and other refugees from a majority economy, culture, or polity that is felt by some "whites", without regard to region, to be discriminatory.
Indeed, our economy, culture, and polity are highly discriminatory along class lines demarcated largely by inherited wealth, status education, and professional credentials. It should not be surprising that some whites and blacks see and feel themselves "not racist" by definition, indeed, consider themselves victims of discrimination they cannot articulate other than as racial.
After all, those as benefit from economic, cultural (educational) and political (mostly professional) discrimination bask in "not racist" privilege and prestige, why should they not be mocked by the same claim?
Since nobody articulates economic and racial discrimination very well, the victims of it -- white or black -- use symbols to rally for some comfort and relative safety.
Curiously, the only way I can think of to mitigate racial distortion of history and its symbols is to cultivate or republican military institutions and their heritage. Those have consistently been more effectively egalitarian than fuedal legal and anglophile financial systems of economic privilege and discrimination.
Here in Texas, we are especially well-endowed with Confederate, Tejano, and Buffalo Soldier military heritage up to and including such curiosities as black veterans and at least one black pensioner of the Confederate Army as well as reputable CSA military and political figures who supported emancipation of slaves and arming freedmen in defense of the Deparment of the West.
Those are curiousities at best. They do not obscure the serious intepretation of history. But, authentic history and cultivation of actually republican and egalitarian institutions, such as they are, can mitigate the inevitable racism of resentment at entitled, self-serving, unpatriotic elites.
Those elites whine about this or that offending their delicate sensibilities. But, when a Confederate battle-flag is hoist above the capitol building in Charleston, the US Navy does not open fire.
No, damnyankee Liberals on Wall Street need and protect their "not racist" but privileged allies in the Deep South -- Whigs!
My great-grandmother told her favorite story of the War Between the States at her 105 birthday party back in the 50s. One afternoon her mother had just baked a pie and placed it on the windowsill to cool, as great-grandmother played with her new doll on the porch. Her father was away from the farm near Oxford, Mississippi fighting with Nathan Bedford Forest in one of the legendary calvary expeditions, but they expected him to return the farm any day.
They heard a noise on the road. Her mother ordered her to run up into the attic and hide. Yankee soldiers were coming. Peeking out from her hiding spot in the attic she saw five Yankee soldiers come into the yard. The leader smelled the pie and called out "Don't be alarmed. We won't hurt you." The women continued to hide while the Yankees fanned out into the farmyard, killing the livestock, hitching the wagon to the mule and filling it with the chickens, pigs, the family cow and whatever else they cared to steal. As the Yankees left the yard their leader stopped and took the doll which great grandmother had dropped on the porch. "I bet my little girl back in Ohio will love this doll," he said and laughed.
Several hours passed by. The women heard the noise of a wagon on the road and ran inside to hide. This time, the wagon was being driven by Confederate soldiers and the Yankees lay dead in the back. Apparently, her father and members of his military unit had been riding down the road and recognized his mule and his wagon and most especially the doll. The Confederates killed the thieves.
"I walked out into the yard and looked at those dead Yankees," great grandmother told us, "And I considered it a most satisfactory result. Those damn Yankees didn't have any business stealing from us." Years later my cousin and I dug in a gully where the Yankee thieves were dumped and we found buttons from their uniforms.
That's the reason I fly the confederate battle flag. It is a symbol of our independence and our allegiance to our region and states which we value more than that distant federal government run by pointy headed bureaucrats and a nappy headed socialist.
Whew! I read and enjoyed all the 81 previous posts, and I enjoyed reading this one until the last three words. Words like this are what give Southerners the terrible reputation we have.
I grew up in South Carolina in the 60s, and the CBF was our high school flag. I NEVER thought of it as a symbol of racism. To me it represented the South of those times -- the only region or people in the US that it was okay to ridicule in the mainstream media. For me the Stars and Bars meant, "We know everyone thinks we are ignorant hillbillies, but we have a way of life that those in the other parts of the country can't understand. We like things slow, and Bible-thumping, and bound by a handshake, etc., but we get no credit for the things that are good about our region." When I was young I honestly thought that southern African Americans were together with us white Southerners as loving the South and hating the way others looked down on us.
It angered me when racist groups began flying the Confederate flag - which I remember distinctly began to happen after the popularity of the Dukes of Hazzard TV program! I doubly despise to see the flag displayed now - both because I realize that it is hateful to African Americans, and also because the flag has been changed from a symbol of things I was once proud of, for others to use as a symbol of racism.
Finally, Hrumpgrumble, you are an embarrassment to intelligent Southerners.
What an interesting conversation! I grew up in Louisville, KY. Sixty years ago we sang both the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "Dixie" in our elementary school music classes, and I loved them both.
Later I attended a college which has a dormitory which had been funded many years before by The United Daughters of the Confederacy. I've never owned a confederate flag and don't feel the need to, but the confederacy it represents, for good or ill, is part of our history.