Well, it's already started. With less than 100 days until the centennial Olympic games, the media is setting its gaze upon the Georgia state flag, two-thirds of which is comprised of the Confederate battle flag. It's the fight that's been fought countless times since Reconstruction. To fly or not to fly. Tradition or treason. Heritage or hate.
In a recent Political Union debate about the flag-burning amendment, a liberal asked one student speaker whether they had ever asked a flag-burner why he was committing this act. The point was that flag-burning could represent motives other than a disdain of freedom and a loathing of veterans. I wonder whether that same liberal would have so quickly risen to the defense of a Southerner accused of racism for merely unfurling the Confederate banner. I doubt it.
Rather he would have pointed to the numerous injustices incurred in the name of the Confederate States. Most people reason that the Confederate flag can stand for only one thing-slavery. This group says that everyone who has ever flown that banner has believed in the subjugation of the black race.This logic is approved by individuals with extremely short institutional memory. The Confederate States were a response to the abuses of a government gone wrong, the correction of a system of latitudinal disenfranchisement. Of course, there are whole sections of shame woven into that flag, but so it is with any meaningful symbol that withstands the test of time. If slavery is theonly meaning behind the stars in that banner, why does it still fly in so many Southern households when one is hard-pressed to find a true proponent of slavery in this day and age? The institution was wrong, and now it is gone. Let us no longer hold the symbol responsible for a long-dead mistaken people.
One sight I find most unsettling is that of violent, racist organizations taking as their symbol the flag for which so many nobly gave their lives. The actions of these organizations are immoral, but to impugn their sins upon the symbol which they stole from a nation with radically different ideals is wrong.
Slavery will never be forgotten, but its existence should not be used to delegitimize the 13 states who once chose to form a separate compact. The Confederate flag is the symbol of a people who so opposed infringements on their personal liberties that they sacrificed half of their population to prevent any further such injustices. It is the symbol of the wisdom to understand one's rights, the courage to question the infringement of those rights, and the strength to take arms against one's very nation if need be. What nobler ideals are there?
Copyright 1996, The Yale Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
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