tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/confederate-flag-18104/articlesConfederate Flag – The Conversation2022-12-23T14:00:34Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1966382022-12-23T14:00:34Z2022-12-23T14:00:34ZCommittee report focus is not on demonstrators – 5 essential reads on the symbols they carried on Jan. 6<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/502173/original/file-20221220-26-jghfgp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=52%2C7%2C4962%2C3331&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The congressional investigation into Jan. 6, 2021, focused on one man, not the masses.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/CapitolRiotInvestigation/eb11d0215eb547bf9b79a940c00679ce/photo">Al Drago/Pool Photo via AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the <a href="https://january6th.house.gov/sites/democrats.january6th.house.gov/files/Report_FinalReport_Jan6SelectCommittee.pdf">final report emerges</a> from the congressional committee investigating the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, the focus is on the role of then-President Donald Trump and those close to him. That’s crucial information, but it leaves out another important chapter of the story.</p>
<p>There were thousands of people demonstrating on the streets of Washington, D.C., that day, whose actions are not recounted in detail in the congressional report. They carried a variety of political and ideological flags and signs. The Conversation asked scholars to explain what they saw – including ancient Norse images and more recent flags from U.S. history.</p>
<p>Here are five articles from The Conversation’s coverage, explaining what many of the symbols mean.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378635/original/file-20210113-20219-10pr52k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man carries the Confederate battle flag in the U.S. Capitol." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378635/original/file-20210113-20219-10pr52k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378635/original/file-20210113-20219-10pr52k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378635/original/file-20210113-20219-10pr52k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378635/original/file-20210113-20219-10pr52k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378635/original/file-20210113-20219-10pr52k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378635/original/file-20210113-20219-10pr52k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378635/original/file-20210113-20219-10pr52k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A man carries the Confederate battle flag in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, between portraits of senators who both opposed and supported slavery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/supporter-of-us-president-donald-trump-carries-a-news-photo/1230455296">Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>1. The Confederate battle flag</h2>
<p>Perhaps the most recognized symbol of white supremacy is the Confederate battle flag. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-confederate-battle-flag-which-rioters-flew-inside-the-us-capitol-has-long-been-a-symbol-of-white-insurrection-153071">Since its debut during the Civil War</a>, the Confederate battle flag has been flown regularly by white insurrectionists and reactionaries fighting against rising tides of newly won Black political power,” writes <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/jordan-brasher-345465">Jordan Brasher</a> at Columbus State University, who has studied how the Confederacy has been memorialized.</p>
<p>He notes that in one photo from inside the Capitol, the flag’s history came into sharp relief as the man carrying it was standing between “the portraits of two Civil War-era U.S. senators – one an ardent proponent of slavery and the other an abolitionist once beaten unconscious for his views on the Senate floor.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Gadsden flags fly at a Jan. 6, 2021, protest at the Capitol." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377429/original/file-20210106-15-1yksevy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=18%2C36%2C6020%2C3974&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377429/original/file-20210106-15-1yksevy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377429/original/file-20210106-15-1yksevy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377429/original/file-20210106-15-1yksevy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377429/original/file-20210106-15-1yksevy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377429/original/file-20210106-15-1yksevy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377429/original/file-20210106-15-1yksevy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gadsden flags fly at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/capitol-police-line-the-barricades-as-trump-supporters-news-photo/1230452268">Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>2. The yellow Gadsden flag</h2>
<p>Another flag with a racist history is the “Don’t Tread On Me” flag. A symbol warning of self-defense, it was designed by slave owner and trader Christopher Gadsden when the American Revolution began, as Iowa State University graphic design scholar <a href="https://www.design.iastate.edu/faculty/bruski/">Paul Bruski</a> writes.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://theconversation.com/yellow-gadsden-flag-prominent-in-capitol-takeover-carries-a-long-and-shifting-history-145142">Because of its creator’s history</a> and because it is commonly flown alongside ‘Trump 2020’ flags, the Confederate battle flag and other white-supremacist flags, some may now see the Gadsden flag as a symbol of intolerance and hate – or even racism,” he explains.</p>
<p>It has been adopted by the tea party movement and other Republican-leaning groups, but the flag still carries the legacy, and the name, of its creator.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="U.S. Capitol storming, gallows, Trump supporters" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377789/original/file-20210108-21-lkk5io.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=67%2C33%2C5540%2C3631&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377789/original/file-20210108-21-lkk5io.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377789/original/file-20210108-21-lkk5io.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377789/original/file-20210108-21-lkk5io.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377789/original/file-20210108-21-lkk5io.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377789/original/file-20210108-21-lkk5io.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377789/original/file-20210108-21-lkk5io.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A gallows symbolizing the lynching of Jews was among the hate symbols carried as crowds stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/trump-supporters-near-the-u-s-capitol-on-january-06-2021-in-news-photo/1230476983?adppopup=true">Shay Horse/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>3. Powerful antisemitism</h2>
<p>Another arm of white supremacy doesn’t target Blacks. Instead, it demonizes Jewish people. Plenty of antisemitic symbols were on display during the riot, as <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=VKv2qFsAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Jonathan D. Sarna</a> explains.</p>
<p>Sarna is a Brandeis University scholar of American antisemitism and describes the ways that “<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-scholar-of-american-anti-semitism-explains-the-hate-symbols-present-during-the-us-capitol-riot-152883">[c]alls to exterminate Jews are common in far-right and white nationalist circles</a>.” That included a gallows erected outside the Capitol, evoking a disturbing element of a 1978 novel depicting the takeover of Washington, along with mass lynchings and slaughtering of Jews.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378899/original/file-20210114-18-lw7lz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man wearing a horned hat and displaying Norse tattoos." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378899/original/file-20210114-18-lw7lz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378899/original/file-20210114-18-lw7lz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378899/original/file-20210114-18-lw7lz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378899/original/file-20210114-18-lw7lz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378899/original/file-20210114-18-lw7lz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378899/original/file-20210114-18-lw7lz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378899/original/file-20210114-18-lw7lz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A man known as Jake Angeli, now imprisoned for his role in the Capitol riot, wears a horned hat and tattoos of Norse images.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/supporters-of-us-president-donald-trump-including-jake-news-photo/1230468102">Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>4. Co-opted Norse mythology</h2>
<p>Among the most striking images of the January riot were those of a man wearing a horned hat and no shirt, displaying several large tattoos. He is known as Jake Angeli, but his full name is Jacob Chansley, and he is <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/17/politics/jacob-chansley-qanon-shaman-january-6-sentencing/index.html">serving a 41-month sentence in prison</a> for his role in the riot. </p>
<p>Tom Birkett, a lecturer in Old English at University College Cork in Ireland, explains that many of the symbols Chansley wore are from Norse mythology. However, he explains, “<a href="https://theconversation.com/us-capitol-riot-the-myths-behind-the-tattoos-worn-by-qanon-shaman-jake-angeli-152996">These symbols have also been co-opted by a growing far-right movement</a>.”</p>
<p>Birkett traces the modern use of Norse symbols back to the Nazis and points out that they are a form of code hidden in plain sight: “If certain symbols are hard for the general public to spot, they are certainly dog whistles to members of an increasingly global white supremacist movement who know exactly what they mean.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378318/original/file-20210112-21-115ikuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C622%2C4914%2C3014&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Rioters scale structures while flying flags outside the Capitol." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378318/original/file-20210112-21-115ikuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C622%2C4914%2C3014&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378318/original/file-20210112-21-115ikuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378318/original/file-20210112-21-115ikuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378318/original/file-20210112-21-115ikuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378318/original/file-20210112-21-115ikuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378318/original/file-20210112-21-115ikuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378318/original/file-20210112-21-115ikuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The yellow-and-red-striped flag of the defeated American-backed Republic of Vietnam flies at the U.S. Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-donald-trumps-supporters-gather-outside-the-news-photo/1230458129">Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>5. An outlier, of sorts</h2>
<p>Another flag was prominent at the Capitol riot, one that doesn’t strictly represent white supremacy: the flag of the former independent country of South Vietnam. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://faculty.sites.uci.edu/longbui/">Long T. Bui</a>, a global studies scholar at the University of California, Irvine, explains that when flown by Vietnamese Americans, many of whom support Trump, the flag symbolizes militant nationalism.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-flag-of-south-vietnam-flew-at-us-capitol-siege-152937">[S]ome Vietnamese Americans view their fallen homeland</a> as an extension of the American push for freedom and democracy worldwide. I have interviewed Vietnamese American soldiers who fear American freedom is failing,” he explains.</p>
<p><em>This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives and is an update of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/symbols-of-white-supremacy-flew-proudly-at-the-capitol-riot-5-essential-reads-153055">article previously published</a> on Jan. 15, 2021.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196638/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The role of then-President Donald Trump and his aides and advisers is important, but there is a lot more to the story of Jan. 6, 2021, than what happened behind closed doors.Jeff Inglis, Politics + Society Editor, The Conversation USLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1676862021-09-15T19:19:09Z2021-09-15T19:19:09ZCapitol Police prepare for a return of insurrectionists to Washington – 5 essential reads on the symbols they carried on Jan. 6<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421185/original/file-20210914-27-1860236.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=53%2C0%2C6000%2C3970&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The U.S. Capitol Police are making security preparations for the planned rally.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/CapitolBreachFence/2c65b78735bc44cba43fc30ef9d5d891/photo">AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A rally in Washington, slated for Sept. 18, 2021, is being billed as an effort to <a href="https://www.rollcall.com/2021/09/08/capitol-police-prepare-for-sept-18-rally-lawmakers-invited/">support people who face criminal charges</a> for their involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.</p>
<p>Many of the same groups who participated in January are <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/proud-boys-oath-keepers-extremist-rally-september-18-washington-d-c/">expected to return to the nation’s capital</a> for this demonstration. Capitol Police are <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/08/politics/capitol-hill-security-september-18-rally/index.html">reportedly preparing for violence</a> and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/13/politics/capitol-hill-fencing-returns/index.html">erecting protective fencing</a> around the building.</p>
<p>The groups involved in January’s attack on the Capitol carried a variety of political and ideological flags and signs. The Conversation asked scholars to explain what they saw – including ancient Norse images and more recent flags from U.S. history – and what those symbols mean.</p>
<p>Here are five articles from The Conversation’s coverage, explaining what many of the symbols mean.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378635/original/file-20210113-20219-10pr52k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man carries the Confederate battle flag in the U.S. Capitol." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378635/original/file-20210113-20219-10pr52k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378635/original/file-20210113-20219-10pr52k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378635/original/file-20210113-20219-10pr52k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378635/original/file-20210113-20219-10pr52k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378635/original/file-20210113-20219-10pr52k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378635/original/file-20210113-20219-10pr52k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378635/original/file-20210113-20219-10pr52k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A man carries the Confederate battle flag in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, between portraits of senators who both opposed and supported slavery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/supporter-of-us-president-donald-trump-carries-a-news-photo/1230455296">Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>1. The Confederate battle flag</h2>
<p>Perhaps the most recognized symbol of white supremacy is the Confederate battle flag. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-confederate-battle-flag-which-rioters-flew-inside-the-us-capitol-has-long-been-a-symbol-of-white-insurrection-153071">Since its debut during the Civil War</a>, the Confederate battle flag has been flown regularly by white insurrectionists and reactionaries fighting against rising tides of newly won Black political power,” writes <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=Vjw_kxsAAAAJ">Jordan Brasher</a> at Columbus State University, who has studied how the Confederacy has been memorialized.</p>
<p>He notes that in one photo from inside the Capitol, the flag’s history came into sharp relief as the man carrying it was standing between “the portraits of two Civil War-era U.S. senators – one an ardent proponent of slavery and the other an abolitionist once beaten unconscious for his views on the Senate floor.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Gadsden flags fly at a Jan. 6, 2021, protest at the Capitol." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377429/original/file-20210106-15-1yksevy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=18%2C36%2C6020%2C3974&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377429/original/file-20210106-15-1yksevy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377429/original/file-20210106-15-1yksevy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377429/original/file-20210106-15-1yksevy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377429/original/file-20210106-15-1yksevy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377429/original/file-20210106-15-1yksevy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377429/original/file-20210106-15-1yksevy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gadsden flags fly at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/capitol-police-line-the-barricades-as-trump-supporters-news-photo/1230452268">Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>2. The yellow Gadsden flag</h2>
<p>Another flag with a racist history is the “Don’t Tread On Me” flag. A symbol warning of self-defense, it was designed by slave owner and trader Christopher Gadsden when the American Revolution began, as Iowa State University graphic design scholar <a href="https://www.design.iastate.edu/faculty/bruski/">Paul Bruski</a> writes.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://theconversation.com/yellow-gadsden-flag-prominent-in-capitol-takeover-carries-a-long-and-shifting-history-145142">Because of its creator’s history</a> and because it is commonly flown alongside ‘Trump 2020’ flags, the Confederate battle flag and other white-supremacist flags, some may now see the Gadsden flag as a symbol of intolerance and hate – or even racism,” he explains.</p>
<p>It has been adopted by the tea party movement and other Republican-leaning groups, but the flag still carries the legacy, and the name, of its creator.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="U.S. Capitol storming, gallows, Trump supporters" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377789/original/file-20210108-21-lkk5io.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=67%2C33%2C5540%2C3631&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377789/original/file-20210108-21-lkk5io.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377789/original/file-20210108-21-lkk5io.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377789/original/file-20210108-21-lkk5io.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377789/original/file-20210108-21-lkk5io.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377789/original/file-20210108-21-lkk5io.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377789/original/file-20210108-21-lkk5io.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A gallows symbolizing the lynching of Jews was among the hate symbols carried as crowds stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/trump-supporters-near-the-u-s-capitol-on-january-06-2021-in-news-photo/1230476983?adppopup=true">Shay Horse/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>3. Powerful anti-Semitism</h2>
<p>Another arm of white supremacy doesn’t target Blacks. Instead, it demonizes Jewish people. Plenty of anti-Semitic symbols were on display during the riot, as <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=VKv2qFsAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Jonathan D. Sarna</a> explains.</p>
<p>Sarna is a Brandeis University scholar of American anti-Semitism and describes the ways that “<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-scholar-of-american-anti-semitism-explains-the-hate-symbols-present-during-the-us-capitol-riot-152883">[c]alls to exterminate Jews are common in far-right and white nationalist circles</a>.” That included a gallows erected outside the Capitol, evoking a disturbing element of a 1978 novel depicting the takeover of Washington, along with mass lynchings and slaughtering of Jews.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378899/original/file-20210114-18-lw7lz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man wearing a horned hat and displaying Norse tattoos." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378899/original/file-20210114-18-lw7lz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378899/original/file-20210114-18-lw7lz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378899/original/file-20210114-18-lw7lz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378899/original/file-20210114-18-lw7lz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378899/original/file-20210114-18-lw7lz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378899/original/file-20210114-18-lw7lz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378899/original/file-20210114-18-lw7lz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A man known as Jake Angeli, who is soon to be sentenced for his role in the Capitol riot, wears a horned hat and tattoos of Norse images.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/supporters-of-us-president-donald-trump-including-jake-news-photo/1230468102">Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>4. Co-opted Norse mythology</h2>
<p>Among the most striking images of the January riot were those of a man wearing a horned hat and no shirt, displaying several large tattoos. He is known as Jake Angeli, but his full name is Jacob Chansley, and he has <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/qanon-shaman-jacob-chansley-january-6-capitol-riot-guilty-plea/">pleaded guilty to one of six charges</a> as part of a plea deal for his role in the riot. </p>
<p>Tom Birkett, a lecturer in Old English at University College Cork in Ireland, explains that many of the symbols Chansley wore are from Norse mythology. However, he explains, “<a href="https://theconversation.com/us-capitol-riot-the-myths-behind-the-tattoos-worn-by-qanon-shaman-jake-angeli-152996">These symbols have also been co-opted by a growing far-right movement</a>.”</p>
<p>Birkett traces the modern use of Norse symbols back to the Nazis and points out that they are a form of code hidden in plain sight: “If certain symbols are hard for the general public to spot, they are certainly dog whistles to members of an increasingly global white supremacist movement who know exactly what they mean.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378318/original/file-20210112-21-115ikuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C622%2C4914%2C3014&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Rioters scale structures while flying flags outside the Capitol." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378318/original/file-20210112-21-115ikuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C622%2C4914%2C3014&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378318/original/file-20210112-21-115ikuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378318/original/file-20210112-21-115ikuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378318/original/file-20210112-21-115ikuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378318/original/file-20210112-21-115ikuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378318/original/file-20210112-21-115ikuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378318/original/file-20210112-21-115ikuf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The yellow and red-striped flag of the defeated American-backed Republic of Vietnam flies at the U.S. Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-donald-trumps-supporters-gather-outside-the-news-photo/1230458129">Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>5. An outlier, of sorts</h2>
<p>Another flag was prominent at the Capitol riot, one that doesn’t strictly represent white supremacy: the flag of the former independent country of South Vietnam. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://faculty.sites.uci.edu/longbui/">Long T. Bui</a>, a global studies scholar at the University of California, Irvine, explains that when flown by Vietnamese Americans, many of whom support Trump, the flag symbolizes militant nationalism.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-flag-of-south-vietnam-flew-at-us-capitol-siege-152937">[S]ome Vietnamese Americans view their fallen homeland</a> as an extension of the American push for freedom and democracy worldwide. I have interviewed Vietnamese American soldiers who fear American freedom is failing,” he explains.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives and is an update of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/symbols-of-white-supremacy-flew-proudly-at-the-capitol-riot-5-essential-reads-153055">article previously published</a> on Jan. 15, 2021.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167686/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Groups who share support for white supremacy say they are planning to return to the nation’s capital for a demonstration to support those arrested for their roles in the Jan. 6 insurrection.Jeff Inglis, Politics + Society Editor, The Conversation USLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1573042021-03-31T12:17:03Z2021-03-31T12:17:03ZGermany’s strange nostalgia for the antebellum American South<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392674/original/file-20210330-15-1hxrckf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=20%2C125%2C4311%2C2946&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'Onkel Toms Hütte' – or Uncle Tom's Cabin – is the name of a subway station in Berlin.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/U-Bahnhof_Onkel_Toms_H%C3%BCtte_20130705_8.jpg">DXR via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Swastikas may be banned in Berlin, but Confederate flags still fly. </p>
<p>Alongside MAGA hats and Trump 2020 banners, <a href="https://www.fr.de/politik/coronavirus-corona-demo-proteste-berlin-hygienedemos-querdenker-fahnen-reichsflagge-reichskriegsfahne-90036343.html">Reich flags</a> and Brandenburg eagles, the American South’s battle flag has been <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/23/germanys-lateral-thinkers-unite/">raised high</a> during Germany’s anti-lockdown demonstrations – the most recent of which took place in Dresden in early March. </p>
<p>It’s appeared in the window of <a href="https://twitter.com/JCNB1/status/1302739145450811394">an apartment complex</a> and in advertisements for <a href="https://twitter.com/Confederate_DE/status/951183000355647488">an annual Christmas carnival</a>. The flag has also reportedly been seen <a href="https://twitter.com/nthnashma/status/1270784520489439233">in Berlin’s bars</a>.</p>
<p>Perhaps its presence in Germany simply represents how the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-confederate-battle-flag-which-rioters-flew-inside-the-us-capitol-has-long-been-a-symbol-of-white-insurrection-153071">Confederate battle flag</a> has become an international meme of the contemporary far right. The Stars and Bars could exist as just another image decontextualized and propagated through the internet’s airless corridors like, say, <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvc777md">Che Guevara</a>. German Neo-Nazi websites do sell “Südstaaten” – or Southern – gear, along with <a href="https://www.zeit.de/2018/49/nazi-mode-rechtsextremismus-christoph-schulze-interview">Ansgar Aryan</a> and <a href="https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/neo-nazi-fashion-thor-steinar-and-the-changing-look-of-the-german-far-right-a-587746.html">Thor Steinar</a> merch.</p>
<p>However, <a href="https://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/engl/student_display.cfm?Person_ID=1055827">as a cultural historian writing on transnational fascism</a>, I see the flag as part of a longer history of German nostalgia for the American antebellum South. Germans’ identification with the region stretches back, paradoxically, to <a href="https://www.google.de/books/edition/Mightier_than_the_Sword_Uncle_Tom_s_Cabi/MZTFk9A1HaEC?hl=de&gbpv=0">the very book that helped bring an end</a> to that era of slavery: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Harriet_Beecher_Stowe.html?id=p1VbAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Uncle Tom’s Cabin</a>.”</p>
<h2>From Uncle Tom to … Nazism?</h2>
<p>On the U3 Line of Berlin’s mass transit system, there’s a stop called Onkel Toms Hütte, or Uncle Tom’s Cabin. </p>
<p>The stop bears the name of a neighborhood tavern and beer garden that stood for almost 100 years, from <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/is-the-street-name-uncle-tom-racist/a-54416596">1884 until 1978</a>. German restaurants, inns and beer gardens bore the title of the anti-slavery polemic, which became a shorthand for a type of Southern comfort – evidence of the novel’s complex, counterintuitive and, at times, disturbing reception.</p>
<p>When the novel was translated into German and published in 1852 – the same year as its American release – <a href="https://www.google.de/books/edition/Uncle_Tom_s_Cabin_in_Germany/CYoluwEACAAJ?hl=de">it was immensely popular</a>. Though the melodrama about the cruelty of American slavery did much to stir German opinion against the practice, it also initiated a fascination with the seemingly simpler life of the slave depicted in Stowe’s domestic scenes. </p>
<p>A cottage industry sprouted up around it: plays, musical scores, <a href="https://www.google.de/books/edition/Europ%C3%A4ische_Sklavenleben/-3c9AQAAMAAJ?hl=de&gbpv=1&dq=europ%C3%A4ische+sklavenleben&pg=RA2-PA1&printsec=frontcover">even European-set reimaginings</a> in which slavery became an increasingly elastic concept. </p>
<p>The Berlin tavern, built in 1884, adopted the name Onkel Toms Hütte because its proprietor <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/is-the-street-name-uncle-tom-racist/a-54416596">liked the novel</a>. It was just one of many leisure establishments that drew on Stowe’s novel to promise a “good ol’ time.” <a href="https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110481327-016">Heike Paul</a>, a professor of American studies at FAU Erlängern-Nuremberg, characterizes this attitude as a “romanticization of slavery and a nostalgic, even remorseful view of its ‘pastness.’”</p>
<p>This hazy romanticization was undergirded by racial prejudice, which found in Stowe’s depiction of Tom as a “<a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1595m04.8">happy slave</a>” a justification for racial hierarchy. Though “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was originally cultivating sympathy for Black slaves, by the early 20th century it was invoked by both German progressives and conservatives as proof of Black inferiority and <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/zaa-2005-0404/html">as a justification for colonization</a>. An introduction to a 1911 German edition of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” describes how “the Negroes are undeniably an inferior race, and, now that they have been freed, are widely perceived to be a plague in the United States.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A smiling girl sits on the lap of a laughing Black man." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392834/original/file-20210331-19-1u0wfpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392834/original/file-20210331-19-1u0wfpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392834/original/file-20210331-19-1u0wfpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392834/original/file-20210331-19-1u0wfpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392834/original/file-20210331-19-1u0wfpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392834/original/file-20210331-19-1u0wfpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392834/original/file-20210331-19-1u0wfpj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘The happy slave’ trope in ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ resonated in Germany.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://img.discogs.com/SdMh63czWYSmdL4DCKD8a_RHy3k=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2248014-1360515760-8251.jpeg.jpg">Discogs</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/zaa-2005-0404/html">Bettina Hofmann</a>, a professor of American studies at Bergische Universität Wuppertal, argues that “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” introduced racial terms to the German language that foreshadow the Nazi race categories. However, as she qualifies, “it would be an anachronism to accuse Stowe of having paved the way for Hitler’s thoughts on race.” </p>
<p>Still, it remains a dim possibility that “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” had at least some influence. Stowe’s novel was, after all, one of Hitler’s <a href="https://www.google.de/books/edition/Hitler_s_Private_Library/6KljrMYS3e4C?hl=de&gbpv=1&dq=timothy+ryback+hitler%27s+private+library&printsec=frontcover">self-proclaimed favorite books</a>. </p>
<h2>‘The Lost Cause’ in the Thousand-Year Reich</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Amerika_im_Dritten_Reich/rK4aAQAAIAAJ?hl=de&gbpv=0&bsq=philipp%20gassert">Despite a general ambivalence toward the U.S.</a>, Nazi Germany did sympathize with the antebellum South. The pubs inspired by “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” fed – and fed off of – the desire for a simpler life that slaves were supposed to have enjoyed, and which Nazism, in its idea of “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Volksgemeinschaft">volksgemeinschaft</a>,” a people’s community, also promised. </p>
<p>The South after the Civil War and Germany after World War I had suffered humiliating defeats, and each revised its identity and history in the face of those losses. As both had prided themselves on their military prowess, they sought to fashion narratives that would explain their losses without admitting their shortcomings. Recognizing the similarities, the German historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch brings them together in his 2000 book “<a href="https://www.google.de/books/edition/The_Culture_of_Defeat/TSkwAAAAQBAJ?hl=de&gbpv=1&dq=schivelbusch+culture+of+defeat&printsec=frontcover">The Culture of Defeat</a>.” </p>
<p>However, Schivelbusch emphasizes the differences in the stories they told. The South crafted the narrative of the “<a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/lost-cause-the/">Lost Cause</a>,” in which the experience of defeat became a Christlike sacrifice. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Nazis trumpeted the “<a href="https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/brills-digital-library-of-world-war-i/stab-in-the-back-legend-dolchstosslegende-beww1_en_0563">Dolchstoßlegend</a>,” the myth of the stab in the back. The German Army had been undefeated in the field, they claimed, but lost the war because of sabotage from within. This myth focused attention on internal enemies who needed to be eliminated.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392659/original/file-20210330-23-1qm5afo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman looks at a movie poster of 'Gone with the Wind.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392659/original/file-20210330-23-1qm5afo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392659/original/file-20210330-23-1qm5afo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392659/original/file-20210330-23-1qm5afo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392659/original/file-20210330-23-1qm5afo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392659/original/file-20210330-23-1qm5afo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392659/original/file-20210330-23-1qm5afo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392659/original/file-20210330-23-1qm5afo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Depictions of the South – found in films like ‘Gone with the Wind’ – found an eager audience in Germany.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/germany-movie-posters-and-movie-announcements-woman-looking-news-photo/542393517?adppopup=true">ullstein bild via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But the “Lost Cause” nonetheless resonated in Nazi Germany. The success of Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Gone-with-the-Wind-novel">Gone with the Wind</a>” and David O. Selznick’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031381/">subsequent 1939 film adaptation</a> points to a desire in Nazi Germany for the melodrama of sacrifice that Schivelbusch suggests the German narrative of defeat lacked. The sentimental novel went through 16 printings in Germany, selling <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40581977">nearly 300,000 copies</a>. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels watched the film repeatedly, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40581977">even as they eventually banned</a> it for general viewership. Praising the film in his diary, Goebbels declared, “<a href="https://www.google.de/books/edition/The_Goebbels_Diaries_1939_1941/LZ5SPwAACAAJ?hl=de">We will follow this example</a>.” </p>
<p>The onetime Nazi functionary <a href="https://books.google.de/books?id=htfLPlvxVzIC&lpg=PA5&redir_esc=y">Hermann Rauschning</a> writes that Hitler felt the Confederacy had been the real America. </p>
<p>“Since the Civil War, in which the Southern States were conquered, against all historical logic and sound sense, the Americans have been in a condition of political and popular decay,” he recalled Hitler telling him. Though perhaps apocryphal, <a href="https://books.google.de/books?id=htfLPlvxVzIC&lpg=PA5&redir_esc=y">Rauschning’s memory of the Führer’s words</a> squares with Hitler’s enthusiasm for “Gone with the Wind”: “In that war, it was not the Southern States, but the American people themselves who were conquered.” </p>
<h2>Danger of Stars and Bars sentimentality</h2>
<p>It is not only the self-declared far-right that flies the Confederate flag in Germany. Civil War reenactors do mock battle under <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/06/confederates-on-the-rhine/239724/">its banner</a>, an East Berlin country music scene gathers with it <a href="https://www.zeit.de/kultur/2020-05/country-musik-szene-konfoederiertenflagge-suedstaaten-usa-cowboys/komplettansicht">hung aloft</a>, and even some enthusiasts of German author Karl May, who set his novels in the American West, <a href="https://www.saechsische.de/suedstaatenflagge-flagge-beim-karl-may-fest-erlaubt-3835976.html">wave it proudly</a>. These groups insist their use of the flag “has no racist meaning.” When pressed, <a href="https://www.zeit.de/kultur/2020-05/country-musik-szene-konfoederiertenflagge-suedstaaten-usa-cowboys/komplettansicht">they appeal to tradition</a>. </p>
<p>[<em>Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>Distrust of nostalgia has been a vital part of Germany’s post-World War II national project of “<a href="https://www.google.de/books/edition/Learning_from_the_Germans/PrZuDwAAQBAJ?hl=de&gbpv=1&dq=susan+neiman+learning+from+the+germans&printsec=frontcover">working through the past</a>.” One would expect Germans, of all people, to be wary of such justifications. </p>
<p>For sale at an online German neo-Nazi merchandiser is an image of the Confederate flag bearing a “Totenkopf” – a skull and crossbones. It is an embellishment of the flag. And yet it reveals what has been there, hiding behind nostalgia, all along.</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to correct the date of the release of the film “Gone with the Wind.” It was in 1939, not 1941.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157304/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sanders Isaac Bernstein is a fellow of the Studienstiftung des Abgeordnetenhauses von Berlin and a Manning Endowed Fellow at the University of Southern California.</span></em></p>Why did Confederate flags start appearing in the country’s anti-lockdown protests?Sanders Isaac Bernstein, Provost’s PhD Fellow in English Literature, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1531122021-01-25T13:30:10Z2021-01-25T13:30:10ZHow history textbooks will deal with the US Capitol attack<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379874/original/file-20210121-19-1djw89h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C2986%2C1998&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rioters clash with police as they try to enter the Capitol building. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rioters-clash-with-police-trying-to-enter-capitol-building-news-photo/1230465266?adppopup=true">Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editor’s note: The Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol represented an event unlike any other in American history. But how will it be portrayed in history textbooks used in America’s K-12 schools and colleges? Here, three scholars of American history weigh in.</em></p>
<h2>How soon can we expect this attack to be included in history textbooks?</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A photo of a woman wearing a teal shirt." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380050/original/file-20210121-15-fo2e5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380050/original/file-20210121-15-fo2e5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380050/original/file-20210121-15-fo2e5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380050/original/file-20210121-15-fo2e5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380050/original/file-20210121-15-fo2e5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380050/original/file-20210121-15-fo2e5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380050/original/file-20210121-15-fo2e5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wendy L. Wall, professor of 20th-century American history at Binghamton University.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.binghamton.edu/history/faculty/profile.html?id=wwall">Binghamton University</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Wendy L. Wall, professor of 20th-century American history at Binghamton University</strong></p>
<p>The <a href="https://dailyprogress.com/news/national/media-captures-unprecedented-storming-of-u-s-capitol/article_8ad9015a-bac9-50f0-b3ee-fa5372d713e9.html">unprecedented nature</a> of this attack, combined with the widespread sense that it marks a historical turning point, ensures that it will appear in textbooks as soon as publishing turnaround times allow. </p>
<p>In recent years, the college textbook market has <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/digital-textbooks-radical-transformation/">increasingly turned to digital formats</a>. That means changes will likely be made in months rather than years, at least at the college level.</p>
<p>Publishers generally revise print textbooks every few years. The Sept. 11, 2001 attacks appeared in texts published in 2003, although textbook writers were still trying to understand the full ramifications of 9/11 at the time. As the historian <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=sXkhkTYAAAAJ&hl=en">Philip Jenkins</a> noted in his preface to one of those 2003 books, “it is much too early to tell what all the consequences of the terrorist attacks will be.”</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A photo of a man in a black shirt wearing glasses." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379877/original/file-20210121-13-1k3qmfv.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379877/original/file-20210121-13-1k3qmfv.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=704&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379877/original/file-20210121-13-1k3qmfv.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=704&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379877/original/file-20210121-13-1k3qmfv.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=704&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379877/original/file-20210121-13-1k3qmfv.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379877/original/file-20210121-13-1k3qmfv.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379877/original/file-20210121-13-1k3qmfv.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Christian K. Anderson, associate professor of educational leadership and policies at the University of South Carolina.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/education/faculty-staff/anderson_christian.php">University of South Carolina</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Christian K. Anderson, associate professor of educational leadership and policies at the University of South Carolina</strong></p>
<p>Often the distance of time and space is needed to evaluate the historical significance of an event. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol – and the subsequent swift <a href="https://theconversation.com/at-impeachment-hearing-lawmakers-will-deliberate-over-a-deadly-weapon-used-in-the-attack-on-capitol-hill-president-trumps-words-153074">second impeachment</a> of President Donald Trump for his role in inciting mob violence.</p>
<p>A fear immediately arose that this sort of thing <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/politics/state-capitols-protests-trump.html">will only continue around the country</a>. That, to me, is all the more reason that having some historical understanding of current events is crucial for <a href="https://www.scholastic.com/content/corp-home/capitol-statement.html">people of all ages</a>.</p>
<p>Consider what happened after <a href="https://www.senate.gov/senators/FeaturedBios/Featured_Bio_Sumner.htm">Sen. Charles Sumner</a> of Massachusetts, the ardent abolitionist, was <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/The_Caning_of_Senator_Charles_Sumner.htm">nearly beaten to death</a> on the Senate floor in 1856 by Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina. Brooks beat Sumner because he was insulted by Sumner’s attacks on slavery.</p>
<p>Brooks walked out of the Senate chamber without immediate repercussions. He was later censured by the House but then reelected by South Carolinians, many of whom had sent him canes to replace the one he had broken while beating Sumner. </p>
<p>Historian <a href="http://www.stephenpuleo.com/about-steve/">Stephen Puleo</a> argues that this incident is one of several that <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15807860-the-caning">led to the Civil War</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380064/original/file-20210121-17-cwxvxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man waves the Confederate flag in the US Capitol." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380064/original/file-20210121-17-cwxvxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380064/original/file-20210121-17-cwxvxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380064/original/file-20210121-17-cwxvxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380064/original/file-20210121-17-cwxvxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380064/original/file-20210121-17-cwxvxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380064/original/file-20210121-17-cwxvxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380064/original/file-20210121-17-cwxvxp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A man carries a Confederate flag during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/supporter-of-us-president-donald-trump-carries-a-news-photo/1230455296?adppopup=true">saul loeb/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Interestingly, a portrait of Sumner can be seen in the photo of one of the rioters who was parading through the Capitol with a Confederate flag during the attack. In the same image is a portrait of <a href="https://theconversation.com/authorities-are-yanking-the-legacy-of-slaveholder-john-c-calhoun-from-public-sphere-but-his-bigotry-remains-embedded-in-american-society-140917">John C. Calhoun</a>. A devout slavery proponent, Calhoun represented South Carolina in the Senate and served as vice president in the early 19th century.</p>
<p>To me, that a Confederate flag could enter the Capitol – particularly when the Confederacy itself never invaded Washington, D.C., much less the Capitol – stands as a stark sign of how the attack is part of a much larger thread of history.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="A photo of a woman wearing glasses." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379879/original/file-20210121-13-jng9n6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379879/original/file-20210121-13-jng9n6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379879/original/file-20210121-13-jng9n6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379879/original/file-20210121-13-jng9n6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379879/original/file-20210121-13-jng9n6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379879/original/file-20210121-13-jng9n6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379879/original/file-20210121-13-jng9n6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Daisy Martin, director of the History & Civics Project at UC Santa Cruz.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://scale.stanford.edu/about/staff/daisy-martin">UC Santa Cruz</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>Daisy Martin, director of the History & Civics Project at the University of California, Santa Cruz</strong></p>
<p>For K-12 education, the timing of including this attack on the Capitol in history textbooks is likely more affected by textbook companies’ revision schedules and states or school districts’ textbook adoption schedules than considerations about how much time must pass after an event to get the narrative right. This attack is a part of U.S. history now. It could be included in textbooks by the fall of 2021, if publishers can respond that quickly. The attack was not a complete anomaly, and it can be described as both a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/opinions/capitol-riot-confederacy-reconstruction-birth-of-a-nation-merritt-barnes/index.html">continuation of and a change from the past</a>, even while its long-term impacts are still unfolding. This event was seen worldwide. Its significance and drama likely will interest students, potentially propelling them into deeper questions about democracy, <a href="https://theconversation.com/symbols-of-white-supremacy-flew-proudly-at-the-capitol-riot-5-essential-reads-153055">white supremacy</a> and the American past. </p>
<h2>How will the attack itself be portrayed?</h2>
<p><strong>Wall:</strong> Dutch historian Pieter Geyl once called history “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/493146?seq=1">an argument without end</a>.” While history is based on facts, scholars are constantly reinterpreting and arguing over the past as they uncover new evidence and develop new methodologies. Contemporary politics and social and cultural trends also reshape what historians view as important. For decades after World War II, most scholars believed that liberalism had triumphed in the U.S. Historians saw modern conservatism as irrational and irrelevant, and paid it <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/right/">scant attention</a> in scholarly accounts or textbooks. That changed after the <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Reaganland/Rick-Perlstein/9781476793054">conservative political resurgence</a> ushered in by the presidency of Ronald Reagan.</p>
<p>Textbooks once focused almost exclusively on the militancy of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/25622477.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Aeede2bdc4a34a5a6e3b9949195ff455a">Black Power</a>, a political and social movement of the 1960s and 1970s that advocated racial pride, economic empowerment and self-determination for people of African descent. Today many college textbooks <a href="http://www.americanyawp.com/text/27-the-sixties/#VII_Beyond_Civil_Rights">also discuss</a> the educational, food and medical programs that groups like the Black Panthers set up in African American communities.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380253/original/file-20210122-15-1ity79g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People line up to get food at a table." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380253/original/file-20210122-15-1ity79g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380253/original/file-20210122-15-1ity79g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380253/original/file-20210122-15-1ity79g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380253/original/file-20210122-15-1ity79g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380253/original/file-20210122-15-1ity79g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380253/original/file-20210122-15-1ity79g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380253/original/file-20210122-15-1ity79g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Members of the Black Panthers distribute food to people in New Haven, Connecticut.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/members-of-the-black-panther-party-stand-behind-tables-and-news-photo/85211692?adppopup=true">David Fenton/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>New sources, new approaches and changing sensibilities will shape textbook accounts of this attack as well. Moreover, authors and publishers will make different decisions when they decide how much space to devote to the attack, what photos they will use to illustrate it and how to assign blame and contextualize it.</p>
<p>Was this attack the culmination of the four years of the Trump presidency or of the direction the Republican Party has taken over the <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/01/07/historians-and-political-scientists-react-wednesdays-siege-capitol">last four decades</a>? Does it reflect a deeply <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2021/01/historians-on-the-unprecedented-chaos-in-congress/#close">American strain of white supremacy</a> or the rise of virulent populism and <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/74199/ousted-autocratic-e%20presidents-and-their-backers-in-the-legislative-branch/">authoritarianism</a> around the globe? Is it the result of how <a href="https://www.timesnownews.com/international/article/capitol-attack-will-go-down-in-history-as-social-medias-911-eu-commissioner/705802">social media is influencing democracy</a>? Textbook authors might emphasize one or more of these themes and questions – or others, including some we can’t yet foresee.</p>
<p><strong>Anderson:</strong> Surely, all of these terms being mentioned – riot, insurrection, attack, sedition, treason – will be used. A good approach for a text might be to list each of these terms along with others, such as “protest,” with definitions. As an exercise or discussion question section, readers could be given examples of each of these from history and asked to determine how they would define the events that took place on Jan. 6, 2021. Alternatively, they could be asked to evaluate those events against each of these terms. In the end, it is likely that most students would conclude that there is a lot of overlap among these terms and that more than one might apply.</p>
<p>Is there a right or wrong answer? No. History is all about interpretation and reinterpretation. At some point a select few terms may become the most used, but for now professors, teachers, students and others will wrestle with what happened, why it happened and what we call it. The ambiguity is part of process.</p>
<p><strong>Martin:</strong> Textbooks should not carry the history curriculum on their own. A textbook can be a reference in the classroom, but it is also a source that, just like any other source, is worthy of interrogation. The content included in textbooks regarding the insurrection at the Capitol should therefore be the start of a conversation, rather than the end of it. History requires consulting multiple sources and identifying, critiquing and constructing evidence-based narratives. Engaging students in doing this work in the classroom, rather than just memorizing a particular narrative, is a better representation of the historical discipline and allows students to learn history.</p>
<p>[<em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=experts">Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get expert takes on today’s news, every day.</a></em>]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153112/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wendy Wall has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and has been paid for work done for various textbook publishers. She is a member of the Tioga County Democratic Committee in Tioga County, New York.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christian K. Anderson receives funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daisy Martin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The whole world saw the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol. How will the textbooks read by America’s students describe what took place?Wendy Wall, Associate Professor of 20th Century American History, Binghamton University, State University of New YorkChristian K. Anderson, Associate Professor of Higher Education, University of South CarolinaDaisy Martin, Director of The History & Civics Project, University of California, Santa CruzLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1434052020-08-17T12:23:46Z2020-08-17T12:23:46ZHit ’em where it hurts – how economic threats are a potent tool for changing people’s minds about the Confederate flag<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352554/original/file-20200812-18-11jt3se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C16%2C3589%2C2376&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Mississippi state flag, with a representation of the Confederate battle flag, is raised one last time over the state Capitol building on July 1, 2020.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Racial-Injustice-Confederate-Flag-Mississippi/87de408c0f404e8bb390b32c84d63636/49/0">AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Activists nationwide have resumed demanding the removal of statues and symbols that are considered racially offensive – such as of slave owners, Confederate leaders and the Confederate flag.</p>
<p>The requests – and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-24/the-confederate-flag-has-cost-south-carolina-millions-in-tourism-thanks-to-naacp-boycott">related boycotts</a> and threats of other <a href="https://mississippitoday.org/2020/06/23/top-ceo-people-will-boycott-mississippi-products-if-lawmakers-put-state-flag-on-ballot/">economic protests</a> – have been part of the national controversy about racism in American life and have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/us/politics/trump-bubba-wallace-nascar.html">sparked questions</a> about how to recognize traumatic elements of U.S. history.</p>
<p>Typically, the debate about the role of Confederate imagery in public life is seen as a political, social or racial issue. But in recent research, we discovered that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1065912919899725">economic concerns could be effective</a> in shifting Southerners’ attitudes about Confederate symbols. </p>
<p>Public officials and individual citizens alike are more likely to oppose the presence of Confederate symbols when they learn it may be bad for local business.</p>
<h2>Longstanding support</h2>
<p>Decisions to <a href="https://www.history.com/news/how-the-u-s-got-so-many-confederate-monuments">build Confederate monuments</a> or display the Confederate battle flag were not, of course, controversial among white Southerners. Even recently, it wasn’t common for many white Americans – either in public service or as private citizens – to actively support removing Confederate imagery.</p>
<p>Yet some organizations have long opposed Confederate symbols. For instance, the NAACP called an <a href="https://www.naacp.org/latest/naacp-ends-boycott-of-south-carolina/">economic boycott of South Carolina</a> from 2000 to 2015 because the <a href="https://time.com/3930464/south-carolina-confederate-flag-1962/">Confederate battle flag flew over the State House</a> in Columbia, alongside the state and U.S. flags.</p>
<p>As recently as 2011 a plurality of white Southerners <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2011/04/08/civil-war-at-150-still-relevant-still-divisive/">saw the Confederate flag as more positive than negative</a>. </p>
<p>Political elites were not much different: In 2000, when South Carolina hosted a debate during the Republican presidential primaries, both George W. Bush and John McCain initially supported leaving decisions up to state officials about whether to keep the Confederate flag flying, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/20/us/after-campaigning-on-candor-mccain-admits-he-lacked-it-on-confederate-flag-issue.html">though McCain equivocated on the issue throughout the campaign</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352557/original/file-20200812-14-1t72sva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman takes a Confederate flag off a public display." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352557/original/file-20200812-14-1t72sva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352557/original/file-20200812-14-1t72sva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352557/original/file-20200812-14-1t72sva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352557/original/file-20200812-14-1t72sva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352557/original/file-20200812-14-1t72sva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352557/original/file-20200812-14-1t72sva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352557/original/file-20200812-14-1t72sva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protests against public displays of the Confederate flag, including this one from Bree Newsome in North Carolina in 2015, have led to the flag’s removal from many venues.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Black-Women-Activism/e45035c175394e1e9764a596e299004f/404/0">AP Photo/Bruce Smith</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A rapid change</h2>
<p>Opposition to public display of Confederate symbols has shifted in more recent years.</p>
<p>In some cases, public officials have encountered changing political circumstances. In 2015, for instance, South Carolina <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/22/us/Transcript-Gov-Nikki-R-Haley-of-South-Carolina-Addresses-Removing-the-Confederate-Battle-Flag.html">Gov. Nikki Haley supported a bipartisan call</a> to remove the flag from the State House in the wake of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/look-for-the-patterns-in-charleston-43593">racially motivated mass shooting</a> of African Americans at a Charleston church.</p>
<p>Our research found that presenting divisive social and political issues in terms of their potential economic consequences can change the views of both political elites and the public at large.</p>
<p>This came up, for instance, during a <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/heres-how-black-power-finally-prevailed-in-mississippi-state-flag-fight">legislative debate in Mississippi</a> in June 2020. Some of the people arguing that the Confederate flag should not be part of the state flag said that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06/28/mississippi-legislators-expected-debate-removal-confederate-icon-state-flag/">keeping it might impede job creation</a> and economic development in their state. </p>
<p>Those tactics are similar to economic arguments from other groups seeking social change, such as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/28/how-lgbt-activists-beat-back-unfriendly-laws-emphasize-economics-not-just-equality/">LGBT-rights advocates</a> explaining how the business community would be hurt by continued discrimination.</p>
<h2>What’s the effect?</h2>
<p>In our research, we surveyed voters as well as elected officials at both city and county levels. We wanted to measure whether, and how much, economic interests might affect Southerners’ attitudes toward the presence of Confederate symbols. We randomly assigned the participants into one of three equal-sized groups.</p>
<p>The first group read a vignette asking them to imagine that a Confederate flag was displayed on local government property in their county, and then asked them, on a scale from 1 to 7, how likely they were to support removal of the flag.</p>
<p>The second group was given the same basic information as the first group, but with additional language indicating that the continued presence of Confederate flag on public property in their county would mean a major multinational company would not want to relocate to the community.</p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>The last group was given the same information as the second group, but with an additional assertion that the continued presence of the flag would have an effect large enough to affect the stock market in a way that would hurt the respondents’ personal economic bottom line.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352555/original/file-20200812-20-1esr1sl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A truck carrying a Confederate battle flag is parked next to a Confederate statue." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352555/original/file-20200812-20-1esr1sl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352555/original/file-20200812-20-1esr1sl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352555/original/file-20200812-20-1esr1sl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352555/original/file-20200812-20-1esr1sl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352555/original/file-20200812-20-1esr1sl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352555/original/file-20200812-20-1esr1sl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352555/original/file-20200812-20-1esr1sl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When told their local economies might be hurt by continued display of Confederate flags, Southerners were more likely to support removing them.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/South-Carolina-Daily-Life/30b7111dc5dd459c80024884a8c382dc/266/0">AP Photo/Steve Helber</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We found that Southerners were far more likely to support removal of Confederate symbols from public property when told there would be economic harm if they stayed up. Both voters and elected officials became about a half-point more likely on our seven-point scale to support removal after receiving information about the economic threats associated with the continued presence of the Confederate flag.</p>
<p>Controversies around socially and racially divisive monuments and symbols are likely to continue in the U.S. Our findings indicate that social movements might change more people’s minds by emphasizing not only the history of Southern racial injustice, but also by using the potent threats of boycotts and other forms of economic pressure.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143405/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Public officials and individual citizens alike are more likely to oppose the presence of Confederate symbols when informed it may be bad for local business.Jordan Carr Peterson, Assistant Professor of Political Science, North Carolina State UniversityChristian Grose, Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1432562020-07-23T23:56:39Z2020-07-23T23:56:39ZWhy is the Confederate flag so offensive?<p>Most Australians — aside from a few groups dedicated to <a href="http://2ndvirginiacsa.tripod.com/index.html">reenacting American Civil War battles</a> and history buffs including <a href="https://www.newsmaker.com.au/news/287596/american-civil-war-continues-to-interest-bob-carr-speaking#.XxksmfgzZyp">Bob Carr</a> and <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/all-the-pms-men-20090917-ftpg.html">Kim Beazley</a> — were not familiar until recently with the charged history of the flag of the Confederate States of America. </p>
<p>Now the flag is in the Australian news with reports SAS military in Afghanistan in 2012 used the bold red, blue and white flag to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-22/australian-soldiers-with-a-confederate-flag/12477738?nw=0">guide in a US helicopter</a>. Two SAS personnel also <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-22/australian-soldiers-signal-with-confederate-flag-in-afghanistan/12476530">posed for a photograph</a> with the flag.</p>
<p>Why do these images of Australian soldiers posing with a flag from another country’s long-ago war provoke such strong reactions? Because the flag has long symbolised defiance, rebellion, an ideal of whiteness and the social and political exclusion of non-white people — in a word, racism.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1285653340232331264"}"></div></p>
<h2>The Confederacy defeated, but not punished</h2>
<p>The flag represents the Confederate States of America (CSA or Confederacy), created in 1861 when 11 states seceded from the 85-year-old nation. This rebellion was prompted by the election of Abraham Lincoln as president. Lincoln argued slavery should not be extended to new territories the United States was annexing in the west. Southern enslavers feared slavery in their established states would be Lincoln’s next target. </p>
<p>The ensuing four-year Civil War between the CSA and US was resolved in 1865 with the defeat of the Confederacy and the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/thirteenth-amendment">near-abolition of enslavement</a>.</p>
<p>In the aftermath of the war, a longer battle began: how to interpret the war. For 155 years, this struggle has turned largely on the contradiction that although the US fought to end slavery, most white Americans, including in the North, had little commitment to ending racism.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-confederate-battleflag-comes-in-waves-with-a-history-that-is-still-unfurling-43997">The Confederate battleflag comes in waves, with a history that is still unfurling</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>After a decade of military occupation of the South, known as the period of <a href="https://time.com/5562869/reconstruction-history/">Reconstruction</a>, the US military withdrew its forces. White Southerners, who had <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZIeiIgHl7A">retained their land</a>, implemented <a href="https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3100">unjust legal and labour systems</a>, <a href="https://eji.org/reports/reconstruction-in-america-overview/">underpinned by violence</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-herald-suns-serena-williams-cartoon-draws-on-a-long-and-damaging-history-of-racist-caricature-102982">racist ideas about black people’s inferiority</a>.</p>
<h2>Memorials of war</h2>
<p>The reembrace of white Southerners into the nation showed a desire to <a href="http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/the-lost-cause-reading-list/">“heal” the nation</a> by downplaying the horrors of enslavement and the struggle to end it. </p>
<p>New narratives depicted the war as a righteous, though tragic, struggle over “states’ rights”. By avoiding a conversation as to what those rights were about — that is, enslavement — <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/01/03/04/reviews/010304.04fonert.html">by the 1890s, they remade the meaning of the war</a>.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-louisiana-to-queensland-how-american-slave-owners-started-again-in-australia-140725">From Louisiana to Queensland: how American slave owners started again in Australia</a>
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</em>
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<hr>
<p>Confederate flags were a powerful symbol in reinterpreting the <a href="https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/the-name-of-war/">War of the Rebellion</a>. In the 1915 box-office hit feature film, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0004972/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">The Birth of a Nation</a>, for example, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebtiJH3EOHo?t=1:00m55s">the central battle scene</a> involves a key character, Ben Cameron of South Carolina, ramming the pole of a Confederate flag down a United States army cannon. </p>
<p>In the very next shot, however, the injured Cameron is rescued from the no-man’s land between trenches by his longtime family friend, Northerner and US Army commander, Phil Stoneman. </p>
<p>The movie’s second half cemented the theme of reconciling white Southerners and white Northerners. As it stated in an intertitle, “The former enemies of North and South are united again in common defense of their Aryan birthright”. It even became a tool to <a href="https://www.history.com/news/kkk-birth-of-a-nation-film">recruit new members to the Ku Klux Klan</a>. </p>
<p>The war, in this telling, was a struggle between white and Black Americans, not between the US and the rebel Confederacy.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349078/original/file-20200723-31-1h9rd6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Old film footage of Civil war film." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349078/original/file-20200723-31-1h9rd6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349078/original/file-20200723-31-1h9rd6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349078/original/file-20200723-31-1h9rd6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349078/original/file-20200723-31-1h9rd6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349078/original/file-20200723-31-1h9rd6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349078/original/file-20200723-31-1h9rd6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349078/original/file-20200723-31-1h9rd6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jamming the flag in the famous war film The Birth of a Nation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebtiJH3EOHo?t=1:00m55s">YouTube</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Blowing in the wind</h2>
<p>The Confederate flag featured prominently in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031381/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Gone with the Wind</a> (1939), another immensely popular film that again glorified the way of life of white Southerners during and immediately after slavery. In this case, however, Hollywood used the more visually striking Confederate Battle Flag, which General Robert E. Lee had flown during the war, rather than any of the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2015/06/24/us/confederate-flag-myths-facts/index.html">CSA’s national flags</a>. </p>
<p>As Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) arrives at a makeshift hospital, the camera pans back to a field of hundreds of wounded and dead soldiers. The scene shifts only once those soldiers are framed by a <a href="https://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/article25592437.html">Confederate flag, blowing majestically</a> in the breeze.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349087/original/file-20200723-15-1uxupr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Confederate flag flies over the battlefield in Gone with the Wind." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349087/original/file-20200723-15-1uxupr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349087/original/file-20200723-15-1uxupr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349087/original/file-20200723-15-1uxupr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349087/original/file-20200723-15-1uxupr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349087/original/file-20200723-15-1uxupr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349087/original/file-20200723-15-1uxupr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349087/original/file-20200723-15-1uxupr2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The battlefield in Gone with the Wind (1939).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNzhjNjI0YmYtZWY3Yi00MzJjLWJmZDgtMDE4NDNjYWVlMTA3XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjE5MzM3MjA@._V1_.jpg">IMDB</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These two films buttressed a political economy that relied on a cheap labour force of disenfranchised Black Americans. But as African Americans began to make headway in the fight for civil rights, starting <a href="https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/fdr-racial-discrimination-1942">during World War II</a>, symbols such as the Confederate flag became <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/how-us-military-came-embrace-confederate-flag/613027/">even more important</a> to those who felt affronted by their gains. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/i-am-not-your-nice-mammy-how-racist-stereotypes-still-impact-women-111028">I am not your nice 'Mammy': How racist stereotypes still impact women</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Enter the ‘Dixiecrats’</h2>
<p>In the late 1940s, a new political party of Southerners opposed <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/07/26/how-harry-s-truman-went-from-being-a-racist-to-desegregating-the-military/">Harry S. Truman</a> and the Democratic Party’s <a href="https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/executive-orders/9981/executive-order-9981">relatively sympathetic stance on civil rights</a>. </p>
<p>These “<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-g-o-p-s-dixiecrat-problem">Dixiecrats</a>” adopted the Confederate battle flag as their party’s emblem. From that point, the flag was clearly associated with racist opposition to civil rights and with umbrage at perceived government intrusion into the lives of individuals.</p>
<p>When civil rights activism was at its most visible, in the 1950s and 1960s, many white Southerners became firmly attached to the flag. </p>
<p>The state of Georgia, where <a href="https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/a5799059-a479-474e-8df4-8f38c8d948a3/georgias-resistance-to-the-civil-rights-movement/#.Xxkv2PgzZyo">resistance to desegregation</a> was <a href="http://digital.wustl.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=eop;cc=eop;rgn=main;view=text;idno=pri0015.0208.083">fierce</a>, adopted a <a href="https://time.com/5867157/confederate-flag-georgia/">new state flag</a> that incorporated the Confederate flag. </p>
<p>A few years later, in 1961, neighbouring state South Carolina began <a href="https://time.com/3930464/south-carolina-confederate-flag-1962/">flying the Confederate flag above its state Capitol</a>. </p>
<h2>Banning the flag</h2>
<p>In 2000, after years of protest, South Carolina legislators moved the Confederate flag to the State House’s grounds. Then, after <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/28/dylann-roof-charleston-church-shooting-appeal">white supremacist Dylann Roof</a> endorsed the Confederate flag and murdered nine black churchgoers in 2015, activist Bree Newsome shimmied up the pole and removed it in a galvanising act of <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/bree-newsome-removes-confederate-flag-south-carolina-state-house">civil disobedience</a>.</p>
<p>Two weeks later, the flag in South Carolina’s house of government was finally <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85CUyq4fJGQ%20%20https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/10/confederate-flag-south-carolina-statehouse">removed for good</a>. In the <a href="https://hgreen.people.ua.edu/csa-monument-mapping-project.html">years</a> since, hundreds of Confederate flags, statues and memorials have disappeared, including in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/us/politics/confederate-statues-us-capitol.html">national Capitol</a>. </p>
<p>In 2016, recognising the flag’s toxic history, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2015/06/22/politics/confederate-flag-walmart-south-carolina/index.html">major retailers announced</a> they would no longer sell the flag. </p>
<p>In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, the removal of Confederate symbols has <a href="http://cwmemory.com/recent-confederate-monument-removals/">accelerated</a>. In recent months, Southern company <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/jul/07/bubba-wallace-donald-trump-twitter-nascar">Nascar</a> has banned the flag and the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/confederate-flag-military-bases-ban/2020/07/17/301e9b48-c832-11ea-a9d3-74640f25b953_story.html">Department of Defense</a> has effectively done so, too.</p>
<p>In a polarised political and media environment, many white Southerners continue to defend their allegiance to the Confederate flag. </p>
<p>They claim the battle flag represents their Southern heritage, as if that heritage comprises an innocent history of mint juleps and church-going. The problem with that claim, as the history of the use of the flag demonstrates, is that the heritage it symbolises is also that of enslavement, inequality, violence and gross injustice. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1286085886468333569"}"></div></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143256/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clare Corbould has received funding from the Australian Research Council. She is a member of the Australian Greens.</span></em></p>Flying the distinctive Confederate flag stokes strong reactions — as Australian soldiers are discovering.Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1421192020-07-17T12:16:55Z2020-07-17T12:16:55ZConfederate flags fly worldwide, igniting social tensions and inflaming historic traumas<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348002/original/file-20200716-27-1n0w6uk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=53%2C10%2C3369%2C2010&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Brazil's 'Festa Confederada.' Organizers say the annual event celebrates their Southern American heritage, but some Black Brazilians disagree.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jordan Brasher</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The United States isn’t the only country debating Confederate symbols. </p>
<p>The Confederate flag can be seen flying in Ireland, Germany, Brazil <a href="https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/handle/1773/43616/Crelling_washington_0250O_19735.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">and beyond</a>. Sometimes, the red-white-and-blue-crossed flag is seemingly displayed as kitsch, a kind of Americana. Other times, its display conveys a political meaning more reflective of the flag’s origins in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/to-fully-appreciate-black-history-the-us-must-let-go-of-lingering-confederate-nostalgia-90723">slave-holding, Southern American republic</a>. </p>
<p>Wherever the Confederacy crops up, controversy usually follows. My <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=aahQqKkAAAAJ">academic research</a> as a cultural geographer traces how Confederate iconography gets stitched into the cultural fabric of places thousands of miles from the United States. </p>
<h2>Irish ‘rebels’</h2>
<p>In the city of Cork, Ireland, fans of the local hurling and soccer teams have <a href="https://www.irishcentral.com/news/confederate-flag-flew-proudly-at-a-major-irish-sporting-event">long flown</a> the Confederate flag, which is sometimes called the “rebel flag,” from the stands. Both teams are called “The Rebels,” and their team colors match those of the Confederate flag. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"896828827963469826"}"></div></p>
<p>After NASCAR banned Confederate flags at its racing courses in June 2020, a Gaelic Athletic Association administrator <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/06/12/ireland-is-addressing-its-own-issue-confederate-flags-being-displayed-by-sports-fans/">announced</a> that it would ban the flag at <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/cork-gaa-to-confiscate-confederate-flags-from-fans-attending-matches-1.4277385">Cork soccer games</a>, too. Some Cork Rebels fans had already <a href="https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/calls-for-cork-fans-to-abstain-from-flying-the-confederate-flag-in-croke-park-amid-violent-protests-in-virginia-36027521.html">soured on the flag</a>. In 2017 a defender of Confederate statues <a href="https://theconversation.com/charlottesville-attack-shows-homegrown-terror-on-the-right-is-on-the-rise-78242">killed anti-racism activist Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia</a>, cementing for many the flag’s association with white supremacy.</p>
<p>But the Red Hand Defenders, a right-wing paramilitary organization in Ireland, still brandishes the Confederate flag because of its potent political symbolism.</p>
<p>[<em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=experts">Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get expert takes on today’s news, every day.</a></em>]</p>
<p>The Protestant hardliner group emerged in the Ulster region in 1998 to oppose Northern Ireland’s possible secession from the United Kingdom and reunification with Ireland. To thwart this “home rule” campaign, the Red Hand Defenders <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/red-hand-defender-claims-belfast-bombing-1.409422">executed a series of deadly bombings</a> and in 1999 killed the Catholic human rights lawyer Rosemary Nelson. </p>
<p>Ireland’s connection with the Confederacy dates back to the Civil War. Many of the Confederate generals whose statues dot the U.S. South, including Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, were Scots-Irish. Their families came from Ulster, which includes parts of both Ireland and Northern Ireland.</p>
<p>In a 2008 post called “War of Northern Aggression,” the Belfast-based photography website Extra Mural Activity featured some <a href="https://extramuralactivity.com/2008/06/04/the-war-of-northern-aggression/">murals in the Ulster region</a>, including <a href="https://extramuralactivity.com/2008/06/04/the-war-of-northern-aggression/#jp-carousel-19450">one celebrating the Ulster heritage of</a> Generals Lee and Jackson. </p>
<p>“The Confederate attempt to secede from the union is put in parallel with loyalist resistance to Home Rule,” it explains.</p>
<h2>Brazil’s Confederate roots</h2>
<p>Like Ireland, Brazil has an ancestral connection to the American Confederacy. </p>
<p>After the Civil War ended slavery in the United States, some <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/blar.12202">8,000 to 10,000</a> Confederate soldiers left the vanquished South and migrated to Brazil. There, farmland was cheap and slavery was <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/slavery-sociology">still legal</a>. <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/blar.12202">Historical research</a> suggests that as many as 50 Confederate families purchased over 500 enslaved Black people in Brazil. </p>
<p>Today, the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/brazil-confederate-flag-civil-war-americana-santa-barbara/2020/07/11/1e8a7c84-bec4-11ea-b4f6-cb39cd8940fb_story.html">descendants of these “Confederados</a>,” as the Americans came to be known in Portuguese, hold an annual <a href="http://www.focusongeography.org/publications/articles/brazil_confederacy/index.html">festival in São Paulo state celebrating their heritage</a>. Dancers clad in antebellum and Civil War attire square dance to American country music on <a href="https://theconversation.com/brazils-long-strange-love-affair-with-the-confederacy-ignites-racial-tension-115548">an enormous stage emblazoned with the Confederate flag</a> while visitors enjoy Southern fried chicken and biscuits and purchase Confederacy-themed souvenirs. </p>
<p>The festival, held in the <a href="https://www.sbnoticias.com.br/noticia/Festa-Confederada-acontece-neste-fim-de-semana-no-Cemiterio-do-Campo/167994">Protestant cemetery</a> where many original Confederate settlers were buried back when Brazil was predominantly Catholic, began in 1980. Since the 2017 killing in Charlottesville, the Confederados’ event has met <a href="http://www.focusongeography.org/publications/articles/brazil_confederacy/index.html">resistance from Black Brazilians</a>, who find its <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1743873X.2020.1768262">romanticization of the slaveholding South</a> and its Confederate iconography disturbing. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346771/original/file-20200710-30-zqaf57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346771/original/file-20200710-30-zqaf57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346771/original/file-20200710-30-zqaf57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346771/original/file-20200710-30-zqaf57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346771/original/file-20200710-30-zqaf57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346771/original/file-20200710-30-zqaf57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346771/original/file-20200710-30-zqaf57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Confederate iconography sold on miniature flags, buttons and mousepads at the 2019 ‘Festa Confederada.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jordan Brasher</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>White supremacy in Germany</h2>
<p>For Neo-Nazis in Germany, the white supremacy embedded in Confederate iconography is useful. It’s a stand-in for the Nazi swastika, which has <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/german-law-journal/article/ban-of-rightwing-extremist-symbols-according-to-section-86a-of-the-german-criminal-code/9C27FD4AFAC94347A3F04EE17C9E5DCD">been banned in Germany since the Holocaust</a>. And during <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/06/confederates-on-the-rhine/239724/">Civil War reenactments in Germany</a>, Germans who side with the South are often acting out “Nazi fantasies of racial superiority,” Wolfgang Hochbruck, professor of American Studies at the University of Freiburg, told The Atlantic in 2011. </p>
<p>In those situations, the Germans flying the Confederate flag clearly understand its historic origins and meaning. That’s not always the case. A Confederate flag spontaneously <a href="https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/handle/1773/43616/Crelling_washington_0250O_19735.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">appeared in the crowd at the fall of the Berlin Wall</a> in 1989, for example. </p>
<p>There, it may have been understood as <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/how-us-military-came-embrace-confederate-flag/613027/">a symbol of anti-communism</a>. A recent <a href="https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/bitstream/handle/1773/43616/Crelling_washington_0250O_19735.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">study</a> shows that German schools, like <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20180131/teaching-hard-history">many in the United States</a>, teach the Civil War as primarily a battle over Southern states’ desire to remain “free” from federal interference – not over their desire to preserve slavery. </p>
<p>Historians have debunked this “<a href="https://qz.com/378533/for-the-last-time-the-american-civil-war-was-not-about-states-rights/">states rights</a>” theory of the conflict. But many in Germany may still view the flag as a symbol of freedom or independence.</p>
<p>Sometimes, people in Germany and elsewhere seem to see the Confederate flag as simply part of American culture. The Confederate iconography spotted at a country music festival in <a href="http://ruthellengruber.com/blog/2015/06/23/confederate-flag-in-europes-wild-westcountry-scene/">Geiselwind</a> in 2007, for example, was probably seen as kitsch.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346763/original/file-20200710-18-vfb2cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/346763/original/file-20200710-18-vfb2cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346763/original/file-20200710-18-vfb2cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346763/original/file-20200710-18-vfb2cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346763/original/file-20200710-18-vfb2cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346763/original/file-20200710-18-vfb2cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/346763/original/file-20200710-18-vfb2cd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Confederate flag among German flags as the Berlin Wall crumbled in 1989.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">public domain</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Culture wars</h2>
<p>Though Confederate iconography takes on different meanings in other countries, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=aahQqKkAAAAJ">research shows</a> it often crops up along those countries’ own political fractures, religious conflicts and racial divides. Flying it tends to inflame simmering social tensions, reopen old wounds and spur debates about history like those underway in the United States. </p>
<p>For Americans, who are almost evenly split <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/30/us/minneapolis-floyd-protests.html">on whether the Confederacy represents racism</a>, the Confederate flag is today an unmistakable signal of a deeply divided society. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/18/politics/confederate-statues-removal-robert-e-lee-jefferson/index.html">In a 2020 poll, 52% said they support</a> removing Confederate monuments from public space.</p>
<p>That’s <a href="https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=3663">up 19 percentage points</a> since 2017, when modern blood was shed over the 19th-century Confederacy. Charlottesville has forced people everywhere to contend with both the historic reality of the American South and, increasingly, its surprisingly worldwide 21st-century legacy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142119/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jordan Brasher has received funding from the National Security Education Program's David L. Boren Fellowship, The University of Tennessee’s Thomas-Penley-Allen Fellowship, the W.K. McClure Scholarship for the Study of World Affairs, and the Stewart K. McCroskey Memorial Fund. Jordan Brasher is a member of the American Association of Geographers and a Research Fellow with Tourism RESET, a collaborative research and outreach initiative dedicated to identifying, studying, and challenging patterns of social inequity in the tourism industry. </span></em></p>Symbols of the Confederacy can be seen in Brazil, Ireland, Germany and beyond. While some people may not grasp their racist history, others clearly fly the ‘rebel flag’ to defend white supremacy.Jordan Brasher, Assistant Professor of Geography, Columbus State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1285032019-12-19T13:52:28Z2019-12-19T13:52:28ZConfederate Christmas ornaments are smaller than statues – but they send the same racist message<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307509/original/file-20191217-58302-hef1w6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C0%2C3435%2C2297&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Decorated with ornaments purchased, created and inherited for years, even generations, Christmas trees are a reflection of a family's history and tastes.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/7j8ZcZ">John Morgan/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As Christmas approaches, many families undertake a familiar ritual: an annual sojourn to the attic, basement or closet to pull out a box of treasured ornaments bought, created and collected over years, even generations. </p>
<p>Hanging these ornaments on the tree is an opportunity to reconnect with memories of personal milestones, holiday icons and, in many cases, destinations visited. </p>
<p>But, I argue, it may be time to take some of these old travel keepsakes off the tree. </p>
<p>In researching my 2019 book, “<a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-2869-8.html">Confederate Exceptionalism</a>,” I studied sites throughout the American South whose <a href="https://theconversation.com/slave-lifes-harsh-realities-are-erased-in-christmas-tours-of-southern-plantations-125042">histories are tied to enslaved labor</a>. Seemingly charming souvenirs are sold to commemorate many of these places – from the White House of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia, to Stone Mountain, a Georgia cliffside carved with images of Confederate generals.</p>
<p>Christmas ornaments are among them. And while these keepsakes may seem apolitical, their very circulation enables Confederate myths and symbols to become “normal” features of people’s daily lives. My research suggests they can thus desensitize Americans to the destructive nature of such stories and icons. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307512/original/file-20191217-58339-1phcofe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307512/original/file-20191217-58339-1phcofe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307512/original/file-20191217-58339-1phcofe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307512/original/file-20191217-58339-1phcofe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307512/original/file-20191217-58339-1phcofe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307512/original/file-20191217-58339-1phcofe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307512/original/file-20191217-58339-1phcofe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307512/original/file-20191217-58339-1phcofe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The front and back of a Christmas ornament commemorating Georgia’s Stone Mountain, the ‘Mt. Rushmore of the Confederacy,’ screengrab Dec. 17, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.zazzle.com/stone_mountain_atlanta_georgia_ornaments-175760156339078337?rf=238840279726397180&tc=EAIaIQobChMIhvGY5pe95gIVWNyGCh1JOwU7EAQYASABEgJ3RfD_BwE&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=us_shopping&utm_term=z175760156339078337&ca_chid=2001810&ca_source=gaw&ca_ace=&ca_nw=g&ca_dev=c&ca_pl=&ca_pos=1o1&ca_cid=381150128120&ca_agid=77529482133&ca_caid=6483100273&ca_adid=381150128120&ca_kwt=&ca_mt=&ca_fid=&ca_tid=pla-542343087558&ca_lp=9004354&ca_li=1015519&ca_devm=&ca_plt=&gclsrc=aw.ds&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIhvGY5pe95gIVWNyGCh1JOwU7EAQYASABEgJ3RfD_BwE">www.zazzle.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Contesting Confederate symbols</h2>
<p>In recent years the U.S. has seen heated conversations about public symbols that commemorate the Confederacy, centered on the Confederate battle flag and statues of Confederate generals. </p>
<p>After a white shooter’s <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/charleston-church-massacre-2015/">deadly 2015 massacre of nine black congregants at Emanuel AME Church</a> in Charleston, South Carolina, activist Bree Newsome scaled the flagpole outside the state capitol to <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/6/27/15880052/bree-newsome-south-carolinas-confederate-flag">remove the Confederate flag flying there</a>. </p>
<p>After Newsome’s act of civil resistance, then-President Barack Obama referred to the Confederate battle flag as “<a href="https://gawker.com/obama-on-confederate-flag-a-reminder-of-systemic-oppr-1714239113">a reminder of systemic oppression and racial subjugation</a>.” But some <a href="http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/why-conservatives-love-defending-the-confederate-flag.html">in the U.S.</a> and <a href="http://theconversation.com/brazils-long-strange-love-affair-with-the-confederacy-ignites-racial-tension-115548">even abroad</a> still see the flag as a symbol of “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/19/does-the-confederate-flag-breed-racism/the-confederate-flag-is-a-matter-of-pride-and-heritage-not-hatred">heritage not hate</a>.”</p>
<p>Statues of Confederate generals that dot courthouse lawns and public plazas across the United States have prompted similar controversy. In 2017 plans to remove a Robert E. Lee statue triggered violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a white supremacist at the <a href="https://time.com/charlottesville-white-nationalist-rally-clashes/">“Unite the Right” rally</a> killed activist counter-protester Heather Heyer.</p>
<p>That tragedy spurred more cities, towns and colleges to <a href="https://theconversation.com/tearing-down-confederate-statues-leaves-structural-racism-intact-101951">remove or relocate Confederate statues</a> seen as offensive. Nationwide debates followed on how best to grapple appropriately with this <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-confederate-statue-graveyard-could-help-bury-the-old-south-118034">chapter of American history</a>. </p>
<h2>Consuming the Confederacy</h2>
<p>Beyond the scope of these national discussions, my <a href="https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-2869-8.html">research on Confederate myths and memory</a> finds, many unexamined Confederate symbols have made their way into people’s kitchens, bedrooms and living rooms. </p>
<p>Take “Confederate cookbooks” that help modern-day chefs recreate the recipes of the Old South and stuffed animals based on Little Sorrel, the <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-skin-of-little-sorrel-lexington-virginia">taxidermied war horse of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson</a>, for example.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307760/original/file-20191218-11951-o3hc0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307760/original/file-20191218-11951-o3hc0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307760/original/file-20191218-11951-o3hc0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307760/original/file-20191218-11951-o3hc0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307760/original/file-20191218-11951-o3hc0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307760/original/file-20191218-11951-o3hc0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307760/original/file-20191218-11951-o3hc0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307760/original/file-20191218-11951-o3hc0d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Little Sorrell was the favored war horse of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/oeZBsc">Internet Archive Book Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>People probably don’t reflect on the horrors of slavery when baking an apple pie or purchasing a cuddly toy for their child. They aren’t meant to. But they are <a href="https://ugapress.org/book/9780820331690/dixie-emporium/">participating in that history and its mythologies</a> nonetheless.</p>
<p>In that way, seemingly apolitical objects like cookbooks, toys and Christmas ornaments commemorating Confederate history serve to normalize – rather than problematize – the objects, rituals and stories surrounding the Confederacy.</p>
<h2>More than a souvenir</h2>
<p>As a result, tree ornaments depicting the White House of the Confederacy, a <a href="https://www.stratfordhall.org/">home of Gen. Robert E. Lee</a> or the carvings of Stone Mountain are not simply mementos of a leisurely visit. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307515/original/file-20191217-58321-191iz7t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307515/original/file-20191217-58321-191iz7t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/307515/original/file-20191217-58321-191iz7t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307515/original/file-20191217-58321-191iz7t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307515/original/file-20191217-58321-191iz7t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307515/original/file-20191217-58321-191iz7t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=707&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307515/original/file-20191217-58321-191iz7t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=707&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/307515/original/file-20191217-58321-191iz7t.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=707&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A decorative ornament on sale at the White House of the Confederacy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://acwm.org/product/white-house-ornament">American Civil War Museum</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These places and people are also icons of the “<a href="https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/lost_cause_the">Lost Cause</a>,” an ideology that romanticizes the Confederacy by portraying the American Civil War as a battle of “states’ rights” rather than a fight to preserve slavery. </p>
<p>The Lost Cause is <a href="https://www.jacksonville.com/news/national/2017-08-22/how-civil-war-taught-school-depends-where-you-live">still taught in some Southern schools</a>, demonstrating that the vestiges of the Confederacy are powerful and lasting. Like Confederate statues and flags, Confederate Christmas ornaments strengthen this myth that the Confederacy – an entity built on white supremacy – was about southern “heritage.”</p>
<p>What appears to be a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0160738390900856">nostalgic trip reminder</a>, then, is in fact deeply implicated in a complex matrix of memory, history and racism in the United States. It’s just packaged in a seemingly benign way.</p>
<p>Christmas ornaments communicate something about <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10510970109388553?needAccess=true">the person or family that displays them</a>. They reveal their history, passions and aesthetic taste. </p>
<p>So pause to consider whether your Christmas tree represents your values. Does a keepsake from Stone Mountain really belong between an ornament crafted in a kindergarten classroom and a glass nutcracker gifted by your grandmother? </p>
<p>[ <em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128503/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole Maurantonio does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Take a good look at those old Christmas ornaments before hanging them on the tree – you may find it’s time to retire some family keepsakes.Nicole Maurantonio, Associate Professor of Rhetoric & Communication Studies and American Studies, University of RichmondLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1155482019-05-06T10:37:30Z2019-05-06T10:37:30ZBrazil’s long, strange love affair with the Confederacy ignites racial tension<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272324/original/file-20190502-103063-1kkkuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C271%2C3706%2C2426&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Visitors and performers at Brazil's 'Confederate Party,' held each April in São Paulo state.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jordan Brasher</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The aroma of fried chicken and biscuits roused my appetite as the country sounds of Alison Krauss, Alan Jackson and Johnny Cash played over the loudspeakers.</p>
<p>This might have been a county fair back home in Tennessee, but it wasn’t. I was in a cemetery in rural Brazil, at the “<a href="http://festaconfederada.com.br/">Festa Confederada</a>” – the “Confederate Party” – an annual celebration of southern U.S. heritage held each April in Santa Bárbara d'Oeste, in São Paulo state. </p>
<p>A sign explaining “What the Confederate Flag Really Means” in both English and Portuguese greeted the roughly 2,500 visitors – most of them white – at the entryway of the American Cemetery. Inside, women wearing Antebellum-style hoop skirts square danced with men clad in gray Confederate uniforms. Couples in T-shirts were doing the two-step.</p>
<p>Just outside cemetery grounds stood black activists protesting the April 28 party with signs and banners saying, “Down with the Confederate flag.”</p>
<p>How did an American debate about racism make its way to Brazil? That’s a tangled question I’m unraveling in my dissertation research on <a href="https://scholar.google.com.br/citations?user=aahQqKkAAAAJ&hl=en">the history and meaning of Confederate symbols in Brazil</a>.</p>
<h2>The Confederacy comes to Brazil</h2>
<p>Brazil has a long, strange relationship with the United States Confederacy. </p>
<p>After the Civil War ended in 1865, ending slavery in the United States, some <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/blar.12202">8,000 to 10,000</a> Southern soldiers and their families left the vanquished Confederacy and went to Brazil. </p>
<p>There, slavery was still legal. Roughly <a href="https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Transatlantic_Slave_Trade_The#start_entry">40%</a> of the nearly 11 million Africans <a href="https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Slave_Ships_and_the_Middle_Passage">forcibly brought across the Atlantic</a> between 1517 and 1867 went to work on sugarcane plantations in Brazil. It was the last country in the Western Hemisphere to formally abolish slavery, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/slavery-sociology">in 1888</a> – 23 years <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/slavery-abolished-in-america">after the United States</a>.</p>
<p>Legal slavery may have been a draw for the Confederate soldiers who migrated to Brazil after abolition. </p>
<p>Brazilian <a href="http://repositorio.unicamp.br/bitstream/REPOSIP/285977/1/Silva_CelioAntonioAlcantara_D.pdf">political economist Célio Antonio Alcântara Silva</a> analyzed letters sent to Brazilian consulates and vice-consulates in the United States at the end of the Civil War and found that <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/blar.12202">74% of Southerners inquiring about emigration were slaveowners</a>. </p>
<p>At the time, <a href="https://eh.net/encyclopedia/slavery-in-the-united-states/">25% of white Southern households owned slaves</a>. That means the people interested in moving to Brazil in the 1860s disproportionately represented a relatively small, slaveholding slice of the free Southern population. </p>
<p>Because the exact number of Confederate families that migrated to Brazil is unknown, it is impossible to state with certainty how many rejoined the slave trade upon arrival. Silva’s research finds records of 54 Confederate families that purchased, in total, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/blar.12202">536 enslaved Africans</a> in Brazil.</p>
<p>The Brazilian historian <a href="https://ufrb.academia.edu/LucianaBrito">Luciana da Cruz Brito</a> has also found evidence in the 150-year-old Confederado journals she dug up that <a href="https://revistas.ufrj.br/index.php/RevistaHistoriaComparada/article/view/2354">slavery attracted white Southerners to Brazil</a>. </p>
<p>In one, an American named Charles Gunter wrote about his desire to purchase enslaved people in Brazil at a lower price than he could in the U.S. Another Confederado, James Gaston, expressed disappointment that he couldn’t bring recently freed African Americans to Brazil.</p>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-394" class="tc-infographic" height="400px" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/394/0c6d9f49f4eb0045ae7f3692650eabbbf0a38cc8/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Rural expertise</h2>
<p>Despite these historical records, many descendants of the Confederados dispute that slavery brought their forefathers to Brazil. </p>
<p>As early as the 1860s, Brazil was actively recruiting Southern American plantation owners, part of an <a href="https://www.history.com/news/confederacy-in-brazil-civil-war">immigration policy aimed at attracting</a> Europeans, European-American and other “white” migrants. According to historians <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/book/36697">Cyrus and James Dawsey</a>, who were <a href="https://www.alabamaheritage.com/issue-42-fall-1996.html">born and raised near Confederado communities in São Paulo</a>, Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II also promised cheap land to any American farmer who would come with a plow – a technology Brazil lacked.</p>
<p>Either way, thousands of white southerners <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/blar.12202">made Brazil their new home</a> after the Civil War. In São Paulo state, they established a somewhat closed and culturally homogeneous community that maintained its southern traditions for generations. </p>
<p>Brazil’s Confederados continued to speak English and to practice their Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian faiths, introducing Protestantism to the Catholic country. </p>
<p>To this day, many Confederado descendants still <a href="http://fdasbo.org.br/site/historia/">describe</a> the Civil War as the “War of Secession” – <a href="https://www.journalofthecivilwarera.org/2018/09/what-the-name-civil-war-tells-us-and-why-it-matters/">one of its original southern names</a>. </p>
<p>And, since 1986, at the American Cemetery where their ancestors were laid to rest – as Protestants, they were barred from burial alongside Catholics – the <a href="http://fdasbo.org.br/site/">Fraternity of American Descendants</a> has held a low-profile, annual celebration of their southern heritage.</p>
<h2>Racism and the legacy of Charlottesville in Brazil</h2>
<p>For three decades, Brazil’s Confederate Party was relatively uncontroversial. </p>
<p>That <a href="https://liberal.com.br/cidades/s-barbara/movimentos-sociais-protestam-contra-uso-da-bandeira-confederada-1001118/">changed</a> after the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 when an anti-racist protester Heather Heyer was murdered by a white supremacist <a href="https://theconversation.com/charlottesville-attack-shows-homegrown-terror-on-the-right-is-on-the-rise-78242">at the “Unite the Right”</a> march protesting the Virginia city’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/us/charlottesville-violence-spurs-new-resistance-to-confederate-symbols.html">planned removal of a statue</a> of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.</p>
<p>Racism is a persistent social problem in <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/7846.html">multicultural Brazil</a>, where about half the population is of African descent. White Brazilians on average earn <a href="https://www.cartacapital.com.br/sociedade/seis-estatisticas-que-mostram-o-abismo-racial-no-brasil/">twice as much as</a> black Brazilians, and <a href="https://www.cartacapital.com.br/sociedade/seis-estatisticas-que-mostram-o-abismo-racial-no-brasil/">two-thirds of all prisoners</a> are black. </p>
<p>Efforts since 2010 to set racial quotas for <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/09/29/495665329/for-affirmative-action-brazil-sets-up-controversial-boards-to-determine-race">university admissions and government jobs</a> have been controversial. In a country where people use <a href="https://blackwomenofbrazil.co/racial-classification-and-terminology-in-brazil/">dozens of categories</a> to identify their race, allegations of fraud and <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/05/brazils-new-problem-with-blackness-affirmative-action/">questions about who is and isn’t “black”</a> have plagued the affirmative action system.</p>
<p>One month after the violence in Charlottesville, black activists in São Paulo organized a public <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fybBkbVqxA&list=PLlLA-q8V2jm_sdiJi792pSHz2hJgtY-NF">debate</a> with the Fraternity of American Descendants, which organizes the annual Confederate Party. The activists wanted to discuss its embrace of Confederate symbols. </p>
<p>“You can leave the flag behind,” said professor Claúdia Monteiro of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/UnegroAmericana/">UNEGRO</a>, a member organization of Brazil’s national <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/movimento-negro-unificado-founded-1978/">Unified Black Movement</a>. “Black people can’t. The stigma [it represents] is in the color of our skin.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272310/original/file-20190502-103078-1a6w92d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272310/original/file-20190502-103078-1a6w92d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272310/original/file-20190502-103078-1a6w92d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272310/original/file-20190502-103078-1a6w92d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272310/original/file-20190502-103078-1a6w92d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272310/original/file-20190502-103078-1a6w92d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272310/original/file-20190502-103078-1a6w92d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Activists from Brazil’s black rights movement protest the Confederate Party in Santa Bárbara d'Oeste, São Paulo state, April 28, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.facebook.com/UnegroAmericana/photos/a.2199940713651435/2199949216983918/?type=3&theater">Courtesy of UNEGRO</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Fraternity of American Descendants insists their group does not represent racism. In a 2018 <a href="https://issuu.com/fdasbo/docs/boletim_fda_2017_09_web">bulletin</a>, the organization stated that it “does not discriminate based on race, gender, color, age, religion or on any other basis.”</p>
<p>Marcelo Dodson, ex-president of the Fraternity of American Descendants, said in the 2017 debate that the Civil War was a battle not for slavery but for small government, low taxes, free commerce and <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/underground-railroad-states-rights-114536">states’ rights</a> – a stance many American <a href="https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/lost_cause_the">defenders of the Confederacy’s “lost cause”</a> also maintain. </p>
<h2>Confederate culture lives on</h2>
<p>The 2017 dialogue between black activists and Confederados, which was filmed and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fybBkbVqxA&list=PLlLA-q8V2jm_sdiJi792pSHz2hJgtY-NF">posted on YouTube</a>, did not resolve their <a href="https://liberal.com.br/cidades/regiao/historiador-destaca-heterogeneidade-de-imigrantes-norte-americanos-1004404/">disagreement</a>. </p>
<p>Last year, visitors to the Confederate Party were greeted by protesters who <a href="https://www.novomomento.com.br/Pol%C3%ADtica%20Cr%C3%ADtica/58872/festa-dos-confederados-enfrenta-protesto-da-unegro--">said</a> the Confederate flag was a symbol of oppression. </p>
<p>This year, black activists outside the cemetery in Santa Bárbara d'Oeste carried the same message, <a href="https://liberal.com.br/cidades/s-barbara/movimentos-sociais-protestam-contra-uso-da-bandeira-confederada-1001118/">saying</a> “a lot of blood” was shed under the auspices of the Confederate flag. They also played drums and practiced capoeira, <a href="https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/talhid">an Afro-Brazilian dance and martial art form</a>, in a display of Brazil’s deep African roots. </p>
<p>A week after the Confederate Party, <a href="https://cartacampinas.com.br/2019/04/x-mais-de-100-entidades-protestam-contra-o-uso-de-bandeira-racista-em-festa-de-santa-barbara-doeste/">at least 100 civil society groups</a> from across the country had signed a <a href="https://www.sbnoticias.com.br/noticia/Festa-Confederada-acontece-dia-28-em-SB-e-e-alvo-de-manifesto/167593">manifesto</a> criticizing the event’s use of “symbols that elevate white supremacy” – a sign of <a href="https://liberal.com.br/cidades/s-barbara/movimentos-sociais-protestam-contra-uso-da-bandeira-confederada-1001118/">growing Brazilian awareness</a> about the complicated, controversial history of the American Confederacy. </p>
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<p><a href="http://www.aag.org">Jordan Brasher is a member of the American Association of Geographers</a></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jordan Brasher receives funding from the National Security Education Program's David L. Boren Fellowship, The University of Tennessee’s Thomas-Penley-Allen Fellowship, the W.K. McClure Scholarship for the Study of World Affairs, and the Stewart K. McCroskey Memorial Fund. Jordan Brasher is a member of the American Association of Geographers. </span></em></p>The Confederate flag debate has arrived to Brazil, pitting black activists against the Brazilian descendants of soldiers who fled the South after the Civil War.Jordan Brasher, Doctoral Candidate in Geography, University of TennesseeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/777582017-05-25T03:31:44Z2017-05-25T03:31:44ZWhat veterans’ poems can teach us about healing on Memorial Day<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170872/original/file-20170524-31366-1wzk00u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A visitor pauses at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/J. David Ake, File</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Memorial Day, a national holiday to honor the <a href="http://www.va.gov/opa/publications/factsheets/fs_americas_wars.pdf">1.17 million men and women who have died</a> to create and maintain the freedoms outlined in our Constitution, is not the only Memorial Day.</p>
<p>The holiday <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674008199">emerged from the Civil War</a> as a celebration almost exclusively for veterans of the Union Army to remember those who had died. Veterans and their families from Confederate states held their own celebrations. Thus, it remains fraught with conflict and ambiguity.</p>
<p>In 2017, <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-04-24/what-to-know-about-confederate-memorial-day">seven states</a> – Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia – chose to also celebrate some form of Confederate Memorial Day. It’s usually celebrated on April 26 – the day associated with the surrender of <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780759116320/Memory-in-Black-and-White-Race-Commemoration-and-the-Post-Bellum-Landscape">General Joe Johnston</a>, nine days after General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox at the end of the Civil War.</p>
<p>How can we overcome these deep divides? </p>
<p>Having served 28 years in the U.S. Army and as a teacher and <a href="http://veteransinsociety.wordpress.com">researcher who studies the roles veterans and their family play in society</a>, I believe poems written by veterans that focus on honoring those who have died may give us a clue.</p>
<h2>Bridging divisions</h2>
<p>Tension between North and South remains. We see it not only on days dedicated to remembrance. It surfaces daily as communities such as <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/robert-e-lee-statue-removed-new-orleans/">New Orleans</a> wrestle with whether or not to keep memorial statues honoring Confederate leaders like Robert E. Lee.</p>
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<span class="caption">Seaman Daniel Odoi of the Navy Operational Support Center of New York City presents the American flag on Memorial Day 2013.</span>
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<p>One poet who does not ignore these divides is <a href="https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/yusef-komunyakaa">Yusef Komunyakaa</a>, an Army veteran who served in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970 and earned a Bronze Star. He is now a professor at New York University.</p>
<p>In “<a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/resources/learning/core-poems/detail/47867">Facing It</a>,” a poem about visiting the Vietnam War Memorial, Komunyakaa, an African-American, confronts the wall and issues linked to war and race. He writes:</p>
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<p>“My black face fades / hiding inside the black granite.”</p>
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<p>But he is also a veteran honoring those who died; he is balancing the pain of loss with the guilt of not being a name on the wall: </p>
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<p>“I go down the 58,022 names, / half-expecting to find / my own in letters like smoke. / I touch the name Andrew Johnson; / I see the booby trap’s white flash.”</p>
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<p>The poem ends with two powerful images that offer a glimmer of hope: </p>
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<p>“A white vet’s image floats / closer to me, then his pale eyes / look through mine. I’m a window. / He’s lost his right arm / inside the stone. In the black mirror / a woman’s trying to erase names: / No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair.”</p>
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<p>The image of the speaker becoming a “window” addresses how two vets, one white and one black, bridge the racial divide and become linked through shared acts of sacrifice and remembrance. Yet even with such a positive affirming metaphor, the speaker’s mind and heart are not fully at ease.</p>
<p>The next image creates dissonance and worry: Will the names be erased? The concluding line relieves that worry – the names are not being erased. More importantly, the final image of a simple act of caring calls to mind the sacrifices made to protect women and children by those whose names are on the wall. As a result, their image in the stone becomes a living memorial.</p>
<h2>Memory and reflection</h2>
<p>We can also learn from Brock Jones, an Army veteran who served three tours of duty in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. He named his award-winning book “<a href="http://www.uapress.com/dd-product/cenotaph/">Cenotaph</a>,” the name for a tomb to honor those whose graves lie elsewhere. By using the name of a monument for those not present, a monument with historical ties to ancient Greece and Egypt as well as our own culture, Brock highlights how honoring the dead goes beyond culture and country. </p>
<p>Jones’ poems do not focus outward toward social strife, but inward. They address language’s inability to capture or express loss linked to memories of war. They also point to how those remaining alive, particularly those who have not served, might come to understand the depth of the sacrifice expressed by memorials and, by extension, Memorial Day.</p>
<p>In “Arkansas,” a poem that takes place at the Arkansas pillar, one of 56 pillars at the <a href="http://www.wwiimemorial.com/">National WWII Memorial</a> in Washington, D.C., the speaker remembers a journey with his grandfather:</p>
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<p>“dead eight years ago this summer / to the Atlantic pavilion engraved / with foreign names he never forgot. / Bastogne. / Yeah, we was there. / St. Marie Eglise. / We was near there.”</p>
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<p>The poem ends with the grandfather described as “a hunched figure, in front of ARKANSAS. Still, in front of ARKANSAS.” The grandfather is burdened by memories he carries, memories that render him “still” (motionless), memories that will remain with him “still.”</p>
<p>“Memorial from a Park Bench” offers a broader perspective, one that any visitor sitting on a bench in front of a memorial might experience. For the visitor, the memorial becomes “an opened book,” a place where “A word loses its ability to conjure / trapped inside a black mirror.” </p>
<p>The words are “names,” which “could be lines / of poems or a grocery list. / They could be just lines.” But they are not “just lines.”</p>
<p>At poem’s end, when all is contemplated, “Here are names and black stone / and your only reflection.”</p>
<p>Jones shifts the emotional and intellectual burden from the person on the bench to the poem’s readers, and thus to broader society. These words cannot be just lines or lists; they become, by being memorialized in a black stone, a “mirror,” the reader’s and thus society’s “reflection.” All on the bench are implicated; the names died for us, and, as a result, are us. </p>
<h2>Memorial Day and mindfulness</h2>
<p>Memorial Day may have “official” roots honoring Union dead, but veteran poets of recent wars serving a United States have found ways to honor all those who have died in battle.</p>
<p>Our country may be divided, but by taking a moment to pause and reflect on names etched on monument walls or gravestones, everyone on benches may see their own reflections, and in so doing further the task President Abraham Lincoln outlined in his 1865 <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres32.html">Second Inaugural Address</a> “to bind up the nation’s wounds…to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”</p>
<p>By being mindful, we might understand what Robert Dana, a WWII vet wrote in “At the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.”: that “These lives once theirs / are now ours.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77758/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Dubinsky received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities to put on a three-week Summer Institute for faculty on Veterans in Society. He is affiliated with Virginia Tech Veterans Caucus. </span></em></p>An Army veteran and professor of rhetoric explores poetry written by veterans about a divisive holiday born of the Civil War.James Dubinsky, Associate Professor of English, Virginia TechLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/544202016-02-24T12:55:17Z2016-02-24T12:55:17ZSouth Carolina’s painful legacy of racism endures to this day<p>As this year’s presidential primaries roll on, South Carolina has once again taken its place as the first primary in the South. As ever, it does so under the weight of a legacy of racism – and one that all too recently played out in tragic fashion. </p>
<p>On the evening of June 17 2015, a gunman <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/18/us/the-charleston-shooting-what-happened.html?_r=0">opened fire on congregants</a> gathered for a prayer meeting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The shooter killed nine people, including senior pastor and state senator Clemente C. Pinckney, and wounded one other. </p>
<p>The following morning, police arrested 21-year-old Dylann Roof. A self-proclaimed white supremacist, Roof reportedly later confessed that he had hoped his attack on the black church would act as the catalyst for a <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/dylann-roof-confesses-church-shooting-says-he-wanted-start-race-war-344797">race war</a>. His trial has yet to begin; his attorneys have said he will plead guilty only if the prosecution <a href="http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20160211/PC16/160219868/1177/with-death-penalty-decision-uncertain-judge-delays-dylann-roof-x2019-s-federal-trial">does not seek the death penalty</a>.</p>
<p>The attack’s target was profoundly symbolic. <a href="https://theconversation.com/emanuel-ame-has-long-been-a-target-for-hate-as-well-as-place-of-hope-43601">Mother Emanuel</a>, as it’s known, is home to the oldest independent black congregation in the US, and it has a historical tradition as a hub for black cultural and political activism. In 1822, church founder <a href="https://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/people/denmark_vesey.html">Denmark Vesey</a> was executed for plotting a slave insurrection. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/18/for-charlestons-emanuel-a-m-e-church-one-of-the-oldest-in-america-shooting-is-another-painful-chapter-in-long-history/">Martin Luther King</a> also used the church to push for black voting rights in 1962. </p>
<p>The massacre therefore not only claimed the lives of individual congregants, but also inflicted deep psychic wounds on the broader African American community beyond South Carolina’s borders.</p>
<p>The Charleston spree shooting also focused renewed attention on the persistence of hate groups in the US. According to the <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/issues/hate-and-extremism">Southern Poverty Law Center</a>, which monitors and campaigns against extremist organisations, there are 784 such groups currently active across the country. In South Carolina alone, this includes the neo-Confederate <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/league-south">League of the South</a> and the anti-immigrant <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/roan-garcia-quintana">Americans Have Had Enough</a>.</p>
<p>While these extremist organisations are clearly a threat, it is not only on the political margins but also in the mainstream that race continues to be a source of conflict and controversy in the Palmetto State. </p>
<p>South Carolina, like the rest of the American South, has made considerable progress since the days of legalised discrimination and segregation. But the historical legacy of its race problems continues to impact on contemporary politics.</p>
<h2>From margins to mainstream</h2>
<p>When photographs of Roof posing with a Confederate battle flag were released, they renewed a long-running debate about what many regard as a symbol of unreconstructed white racism. </p>
<p>In January 2000, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/18/us/46000-march-on-south-carolina-capitol-to-bring-down-confederate-flag.html">46,000 people marched in protest</a> at the continued display of the flag on the dome of the South Carolina State House in Columbia. That demonstration, along with an <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/11/naacp-south-carolina-ban_n_7777356.html">economic boycott</a> of the state launched by the <a href="http://www.naacp.org/pages/naacp-history">National Association for the Advancement of Colored People</a> (NAACP), prompted legislators to <a href="https://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/race/041300race-ra.html">pass a bill</a> to relocate the flag to a site in the state grounds. The same year, public pressure led South Carolina to finally recognise Martin Luther King Day as a paid holiday – the last state in the Union to do so.</p>
<p>But it was only after the 2015 church shooting that state officials consented to the complete removal of the rebel flag. </p>
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<p>Race also looks set to be a big influence in this year’s South Carolina presidential primary. While the junior US Senator for South Carolina, Tim Scott, is a black Republican, African Americans are expected to turn out in overwhelming numbers for the Democrats, and more than 55% of the Democratic voting base in South Carolina is black. </p>
<p>Hillary Clinton badly needs to mobilise that vote in order to secure an emphatic victory in the Democratic primary and fire up what momentum she seems to have regained by <a href="https://theconversation.com/four-reasons-why-clintons-nevada-victory-is-important-55002">defeating her rival Bernie Sanders in Nevada</a>. She will hope that a win will prove she still has an impermeable “firewall” across the southern states, shutting the Vermont senator out of the race. </p>
<p>Sanders has recently secured <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/bernie-sanders-and-hillary-clinton-battle-over-black-endorsements">some endorsements</a> from prominent African American figures, but it would nonetheless be an astonishing feat if he manages to turn the tide of black votes that looks set to sweep Clinton to victory. Despite some searing critiques of her record on black issues, notably from academic and activist <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/hillary-clinton-does-not-deserve-black-peoples-votes/">Michelle Alexander</a>, opinion polls <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/16/politics/south-carolina-poll-cnn-orc/">suggest</a> that Clinton holds a 40-point lead among the state’s black Democratic voters. </p>
<p>The former secretary of state has vigorously courted African American voters with campaign commercials emphasising the need for new investments in jobs and education to overturn “generations of neglect”. Conversely, with gun control such a concern for many African Americans after the Emanuel church shooting, Sanders’ equivocation on the issue is a serious electoral obstacle.</p>
<p>In stark contrast, Republican candidates are out to woo an angry and alienated white electorate resentful of what they see as an unrepresentative and out of touch political elite. </p>
<h2>Beyond black and white</h2>
<p>While the historical fault line between black and white remains an important influence on contemporary politics in South Carolina, the racial dynamics of the state have in recent years become more complicated. </p>
<p>South Carolina has the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/03/latino-population-growth_n_3860441.html">second-fastest-growing Latino population</a> of all the states, after Alabama. Republican candidates have been <a href="https://theconversation.com/harsh-republican-immigration-rhetoric-is-invigorating-latino-voters-54682">struggling to appeal to this emerging electorate</a> because of their stance on immigration. Whoever wins the Republican nomination will face a serious challenge attracting Latino voters across the country. And while anti-immigrant firebrand frontrunner Donald Trump was long expected to have the biggest problem there, his showing in the Nevada caucuses saw him <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2016/02/24/nevada-caucuses-results-donald-trump-latino-vote-chalian-sot.cnn">win with Latinos by a huge margin</a>, as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio combined only just matched his performance there. </p>
<p>The race-baiting demagoguery of Trump in particular gives political succour to extremists who pose a violent threat to African Americans and Latinos. South Carolina was a <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-south-carolinas-republican-primary-is-such-a-dirty-brawl-54135">predictably ugly</a> stop on that journey. The state’s Republican leaders in the South fought a rearguard action against him, with the governor, Nikki Haley, eloquently arguing that “during anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. We must resist this temptation”. </p>
<p>But with Trump storming to victory in both South Carolina and in the race for the nomination more generally, it remains to be seen whether reason will triumph over emotion.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54420/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clive Webb does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The votes in South Carolina’s presidential primaries are once again expected to fall along racial lines.Clive Webb, Professor Of Modern American History, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/539122016-01-30T22:17:06Z2016-01-30T22:17:06ZHistory is not a morality play: both sides on #RhodesMustFall debate should remember that<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109699/original/image-20160129-3888-a3dc3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The grave of Cecil John Rhodes in Zimbabwe's Matopos Hills. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/susanad813/1331708335/sizes/l">Susan E Adams/flickr.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Oriel College at Oxford University <a href="http://www.oriel.ox.ac.uk/content/oriel-college-statement-decision-about-rhodes-statue">has decided not</a> to take down a statue of the beneficent imperialist Cecil Rhodes despite <a href="https://www.change.org/p/oriel-college-oxford-university-oriel-college-oxford-university-remove-the-cecil-rhodes-statue">the high-profile #RhodesMustFall campaign</a>. </p>
<p>The campaign against Rhodes because of his white supremacist plundering of Africa points to an important truth about the man and about British history – but it is not the only truth. In its announcement the college noted that it would address how best to offer the statue historical context and “do justice to the complexity of the debate.” </p>
<p>This acknowledgement of the complexity of history is welcome in a climate that encourages its simplification for the sake of present-day emotional well-being. Flattening out historical meaning for the purpose of producing a therapeutic salve for the slights and injustices of today is a mistake, both politically and intellectually. </p>
<p>In his <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Between_the_World_and_Me.html?id=TV05BgAAQBAJ&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y">2015 autobiography</a>, the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates vividly recounted some of the horrors that African Americans have faced historically, and continue to face. His own understanding of history was transformed through the study of history at university. He began studying it, he declares: </p>
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<p>Imagining history to be a unified narrative, free of debate, which uncovered, would simply verify everything that I had always suspected. </p>
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<p>But history upended and complicated his understanding and he realised that “the gnawing discomfort, the chaos, the intellectual vertigo was not an alarm. It was a kind of beacon”.</p>
<p>The beacon of knowledge and enlightenment wrought through intense study and an embrace of complexity is something that all students, at Oxford and elsewhere, would do well to keep in sight.</p>
<p>Instead, the #Rhodesmustfall campaign presents history as emotional therapy; an exercise in self esteem. The fact that Oriel has been so amenable to its demands by <a href="http://www.oriel.ox.ac.uk/content/statement-oriel-college-about-issues-raised-rhodes-must-fall-oxford-petition">removing a plaque</a> and initially agreeing to the consultation is not a sign of the college’s own intellectual robustness.</p>
<h2>Campaigns spreading in the US</h2>
<p>It would be a mistake to view the Rhodes debate in isolation. Princeton students <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/nov/23/princeton-woodrow-wilson-racism-students-remove-name">forced their university administration</a> into a conversation bent toward the removal of former president Woodrow Wilson’s name from campus buildings because of its racist connotations. </p>
<p>Students at the College of William and Mary in Thomas Jefferson’s beloved Virginia <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/23/college-william-mary-students-want-statue-incestuous-rapist-racist-thomas-jefferson-removed/">want his statue removed</a> from their campus. He too is tagged, like Rhodes, as racist. </p>
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<p>But African American civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King’s commitment to full diversity has also come under scrutiny by students at the University of Oregon <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/u-of-oregon-debates-removing-mlk-quote-for-not-being-inclusive-enough/">who recently debated</a> removing a quotation from his 1963 “I have a Dream” speech from the wall of their student centre on the grounds that it wasn’t inclusive enough for current sensibilities. </p>
<p>Defenders counter the charges against these American icons with citations of their more positive aspects or actions. Wilson racially segregated federal buildings, but he <a href="http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/843">was a liberal internationalist</a> who worked tirelessly for peace between nations. Jefferson was a slave owner but also <a href="https://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/jefferson-and-declaration">took a stand</a> against colonial rule and heralded the equality of all men when he penned the Declaration of Independence in 1776. </p>
<p>In Africa, Rhodes’ imperialist adventures were brutally racist but his legacy <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-cecil-john-rhodes-said-in-his-will-about-who-should-get-scholarships-53172">includes an endowment</a> that has made possible an Oxford education for thousands of scholars from around the world – including the current leader of the #Rhodesmustfall campaign <a href="http://www.rhodeshouse.ox.ac.uk/rhodes-scholars-elect-class-of-2014/ntokozo-qwabe">Ntokozo Qwabe</a>.</p>
<p>Martin Luther King was a <a href="https://www.quora.com/What-evidence-exists-that-Martin-Luther-King-Jr-engaged-in-orgies-with-white-prostitutes-and-other-women">philanderer</a> and sexist according to the students in Oregon, but he was also an inspiring champion of civil rights. </p>
<p>Yet historical reflection should do more than plot people on axes of good and evil. In <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQXPiBUQaIk">a scene</a> in the cult US movie Donnie Darko, an officious teacher with a penchant for therapeutic learning styles passes out moral dilemma cards to her students, asking them to respond by placing an X on a chalkboard “lifeline” marked with Love and Fear at either end. </p>
<p>Reading his card, Darko has to make a judegment about whether somebody is driven by love or fear in returning a lost wallet but keeping the money inside. Bemused, Darko points out that “things just aren’t that simple … You can’t just lump everything into these two categories and then deny everything else.” He earns a zero for the day. </p>
<p>Both sides of the Rhodes debate would score full marks in that class. But there is no room for contradictions, irony, nuance or paradox in the history they conjure. </p>
<h2>Examining the role of history</h2>
<p>History is not, and should not be, a morality play. But the debate today is not really about morality. Campaigners are not arguing for right over wrong, neither are they contesting the past in order to change the world. Instead, they are insisting that they shouldn’t have to feel bad. </p>
<p>They argue that they are traumatised at the sight of a statue or a flag. They accuse those who resist their <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jun/18/oxford-uni-must-decolonise-its-campus-and-curriculum-say-students">demands to “decolonise”</a> knowledge production as continuing the violence of colonialism, as if an academic curriculum were akin to genocide and imperial conquest. These students are not fearless crusaders for justice, they are fragile victims demanding protection from words and images. They are not making history but eroding it. </p>
<p>It is not a new debate. Twenty years ago, American historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/11/26/specials/schlesinger-therapy.html">argued</a> against history as a form of therapy – for both “militant monoculturalists” and “militant multiculturalists”. His conclusion, that “both ideologues distort and corrupt history” has merit. But there is, as ever, more to it than that.</p>
<h2>Statues won’t make a difference</h2>
<p>In the abstract, it is not important whether any of the relics in question go or stay. Except that if they go now, they go for the wrong reasons. Campaigners are deluding themselves if they think that removing a flag or statue will make any difference to inequalities of race, class or gender – or even indeed to who attends Oxford. </p>
<p>In fact, trying to shield minorities from the sight of past racists or from the full story of Britain’s imperial heritage suggests that campaigners think they are not capable of coping with, let alone making, history. This in itself is a form of elitist racism. And it is not true.</p>
<p>There are many historical examples of real challenges to oppression and racism. Some of those challenges failed, some succeeded and some were only partially successful. But to grasp the how and the why, and to build a better and more equitable future, history must be a fully open book.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53912/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cheryl Hudson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Why Oriel College Oxford was right not to agree to take down a statue of the British imperalist.Cheryl Hudson, University Teacher in American History , University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/442182015-07-08T12:40:45Z2015-07-08T12:40:45ZWhy the case for the removal of Confederate memorials isn’t so clear-cut<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87671/original/image-20150707-1291-1napxnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A detail of Arlington National Cemetery's Confederate Memorial – unveiled in 1914 – depicts a black soldier fighting alongside his white master.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/23165290@N00/6799214927/in/photolist-bmPKHz-7Kt1qA-7KsQdJ-7KsGm7-7KoLkn-csZ2KA-vT1eQ-6yvQBT-6yzWUW-5g2xw3-4L97az-9j1Lop-7RnMrL-9r1fsC-8HPpST-7Mqycj-7MmAfz-7MmAjt-7MmA9M-6H6xuj-awoaof-5g2A2L-JBna9-7Hz5nc-5fYjfj-5fYmds-7Rjv4k-7Rjv6H-8JA3Fk-51kRiN-cC44uo-6f84jN-6f3Z3z-quaXCY-8WnJ1d-5kJKn9-e8BMWV-84KYfT-e6REgm-8WnHeW-5W9uZc-hib6r-59fUs6-6DeuSj-ooTCbs-9Hc9KB-59fUrT-6voQ7g-5EKp5E-5gVC4a">Tim Evanson/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On April 24, New Orleans city employees <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/04/24/525413502/under-cover-of-night-new-orleans-begins-dismantling-confederate-monuments">began the process of removing four Confederate monuments</a>. But there are pitfalls in eliminating memorials to the Confederacy – statues and monuments, along with the buildings, parks, schools and military bases named after Confederate soldiers. Primarily, we risk forgetting the connections of past racial crimes to current racial inequality.</p>
<h2>Confederate memorials abound</h2>
<p>Statues of Confederate soldiers are common in the South in a number of <a href="http://blurblawg.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54f871a9c883301a511b962aa970c-pi">courthouse squares</a>, while streets and parks bear the names of people or events associated with the Confederacy. </p>
<p>In Southampton, Virginia, <a href="http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2010/08/blackhead-signpost-road.html">Black Head Signpost Road</a> is named for the head of a slave executed during the Nat Turner Rebellion. (His head was put on a post along the road as a warning.) <a href="http://blurblawg.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54f871a9c88330120a95ed28a970b-popup">Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway</a>, which runs from Florida to California, was named in the 1920s. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87675/original/image-20150707-1311-69s5b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87675/original/image-20150707-1311-69s5b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87675/original/image-20150707-1311-69s5b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87675/original/image-20150707-1311-69s5b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87675/original/image-20150707-1311-69s5b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87675/original/image-20150707-1311-69s5b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87675/original/image-20150707-1311-69s5b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87675/original/image-20150707-1311-69s5b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A map of Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway. Like most Confederate memorials, it was conceived in the 60 years after the end of the Civil War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/24354425@N03/11916800764/in/photolist-6Wd11Q-eEL9Qa-dwogwQ-dwofJb-arrjfi-ja3HG9">Stuart Rankin/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Virginia legislature even continues to pay US$5 per year to cemeteries in the state for every Confederate soldier buried in them. (The money is supposed to help preserve the cemeteries.) </p>
<p>In prior years, some cities and institutions have responded to the concerns of those who view these monuments as distasteful symbols of discrimination and oppression. In little towns throughout the South, from Reidsville, North Carolina to Southampton County, Virginia (scene of the Nat Turner Rebellion), Confederate statues have been moved from courthouse squares and town centers to less prominent places, like cemeteries. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, buildings named after Confederate officers (such as Saunders Hall at the University of North Carolina), Klansmen (Simkins Hall at the University of Texas-Austin) and politicians supporting Jim Crow (Governor Charles Aycock at Duke and East Carolina) have been renamed. </p>
<p>In recent years, the call to remove or rename is getting even louder. In 2015, Senator Mitch McConnell <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/245865-mcconnell-kentucky-should-rethink-jefferson-davis-statue">said</a> Kentucky should consider ridding the Kentucky State House of its Jefferson Davis statue; in Memphis, one City Council member <a href="http://www.11alive.com/story/news/local/stone-mountain/2015/07/01/stone-mountain-past-present/29587035/">drew up an ordinance to</a> remove the statue of Confederate cavalry officer and Klansman Nathan Bedford Forrest from a public park; and Tennessee’s governor <a href="http://wkrn.com/2015/06/23/gov-haslam-to-address-calls-for-confederate-monument-to-be-taken-out-of-tn-capitol/">has suggested</a> that a bust of Forrest be removed from State Capitol grounds.</p>
<h2>Legal obstacles</h2>
<p>Some monuments may be so offensive to the local community that they’ll need to be removed. And certainly, they can serve as rallying points for contemporary white supremacists. Others are particularly poignant reminders of the days of slavery and Jim Crow. </p>
<p>Nathan Bedford Forrest Park, in an African American section of Memphis, was renamed because the City Council thought it was an affront to the local population. In such cases, the redistribution of cultural capital may serve to stop a continuing harm.</p>
<p>This is a decision that should largely be made at the local level. However, the legislatures of four states – <a href="http://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t10c001.php">South Carolina </a>, <a href="http://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2010/title-50/chapter-3/article-1/50-3-1">Georgia</a>, <a href="http://law.justia.com/codes/mississippi/2013/title-55/chapter-15/alteration-of-historical-monuments-and-memorials/section-55-15-81">Mississippi</a> and <a href="http://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/2014/title-4/chapter-1/part-4/section-4-1-412">Tennessee</a> – have passed Heritage Protection Acts that prohibit the removal of Confederate monuments from public property (or renaming of public buildings).</p>
<p>This movement started in South Carolina in 2000, and the statues were pushed by supporters of Confederate heritage.</p>
<h2>A case for preservation</h2>
<p>Clearly, there’s a lot of work to be done if we’re going to completely wipe out all traces of names and structures that honor the Confederacy.</p>
<p>However, while I’m no supporter of the Confederacy, there are several reasons <em>not</em> to remove monuments or rename buildings.</p>
<p>As an aside: Confederate flags are entirely different. New flags have to be put up constantly, because they can wear out quickly. Thus, flying a Confederate flag reflects a continuing commitment to maintaining a symbol of white supremacy. Confederate monuments, on the other hand, were almost all erected decades ago. </p>
<p>For this reason, they’re part of our landscape. Yes, they’re reminders of the days of slavery and secession. But they teach important lessons: they point to a Southern political system that, from the 1870s to the 1930s (the period of most frequent commemoration), continued to support the ideals of the Confederacy. They’re graphic reminders of Jim Crow, and the ways white supremacy was codified in statutes, social practices and stone. And they reveal the psychology (however misguided) of an era and people: the fact that white Southerners and their elected leaders believed in the righteousness of their society. </p>
<p>Ultimately, removal of the monuments will, quite literally, erase an unsavory – but important – part of our nation’s history.</p>
<h2>In present-day poverty, the echoes of a racist past</h2>
<p>There’s a second reason to go slow on renaming. It’s important (for individuals, as well as communities) to understand how our past is connected to the present. </p>
<p>The legacy of violence and limited educational and vocational opportunities during the eras of slavery and Jim Crow are undeniably connected to the fact that <a href="http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/44-children-in-poverty-by-race-and-ethnicity#detailed/1/any/false/36,868,867,133,38/10,11,9,12,1,13,185/324,323">one-third of African American children today live in poverty</a>.</p>
<p>Those who argue for expanded social welfare spending to alleviate the ravages of poverty <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/lbj-michigan/">make the plea</a> that poverty is related not to personal culpability, but to <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/">legacies of racism that have lasted for generations</a>. Confederate statues are tangible symbols of this legacy of oppression.</p>
<p>They’re another reminder of the need for nuance in the telling of our nation’s history; in understanding how we get to where we are today, we need to acknowledge the good along with the bad – which means not tearing it down. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This is an updated version of an article first published on July 8, 2015.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44218/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alfred L. Brophy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What message does it send when we remove symbols of an unsavory – but important – part of American history?Alfred L. Brophy, Judge John J. Parker Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/441272015-07-07T09:00:47Z2015-07-07T09:00:47ZWill the Charleston tragedy serve as an inflection point for race relations?<p>On June 17, in Charleston, South Carolina, it was once again proven that – to some, at least – black lives <em>don’t</em> matter. But this time it wasn’t under color of authority. This time, it was in a church, and at the hands of a person who’s clearly and unambiguously <a href="http://lastrhodesian.com/data/documents/rtf88.txt">racist.</a> </p>
<p>What’s happened in the wake of the tragedy is as shocking in scope as it is in its swiftness. President Obama used it as an opportunity to remind us of the racism that continues to plague the nation. Further, the <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/take-down-the-confederate-flag-now/396290/%20http:/www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/take-down-the-confederate-flag-now/396290/">suspect’s affinity for the Confederate battle flag</a> led to Governor Nikki Haley’s call for its removal from the State Capitol and on <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-confederate-flag-south-carolina-20150706-story.html#page=1">Monday July 6</a> the South Carolina Senate voted 37 to 3 to do just that. People of all racial hues took to the streets to protest the killings and their basis in racism.</p>
<p>All of this has led <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/is-charleston-a-turning-point-for-america-on-race_b_7666608.html">some to believe</a> that what’s happening in South Carolina represents an inflection point when it comes to race: an opportunity to hit the “reset button” where racism is concerned in America. </p>
<p>Before we embrace this conclusion lock, stock and barrel, however, we need to take a closer look. </p>
<p>My experience writing on <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10354.html">race, social movements</a> and the <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9083.html">postwar South</a> suggests that we must look to the past for clues about the likelihood Charleston serving as a game changer. </p>
<h2>The role of both domestic and international opinion</h2>
<p>Whether we define racial progress in symbolic or substantive ways, history suggests that when whites use violence against blacks, it sometimes backfires, resulting in racial progress. </p>
<p>However, the conditions under which it happens are very specific. </p>
<p>Typically, there are at least two audiences – third parties, if you will – to which forces of change appeal: one domestic, the other international. </p>
<p>The sympathy of the domestic audience (generally non-Southern) has – for much of the past 60 years – resided with the progressive forces as they witnessed scenes in which peaceful black protesters, who simply wished to be treated in accordance with the law of the land, were brutalized by white southerners. Such scenes evoked moral revulsion and emotional shock.</p>
<p>The international audience was no less important.</p>
<p>In the context of the Cold War, during which the United States was engaged in a global ideological struggle with the Soviet Union, race and racism were crucial elements.</p>
<p>To the extent that both superpowers were in a competition for international influence, and the United States often advertised itself as a beacon for freedom and democracy, the continued oppression of 10% of its population rendered such a claim dubious at best. </p>
<p>Further, to the degree that much of the competition for strategic access and alliances, by the 1950s, took place among nations in which people of color were in the majority, Jim Crow – and African diplomats being <a href="http://www.indiana.edu/%7Epsource/PDF/Archive%20Articles/Spring2012/2012%20-%20Spring%20-%208%20-%20Murray%20Vachon,%20Nicholas.pdf">kicked out</a> of diners – didn’t play too well. </p>
<p>Of course, the Soviets took advantage of every act of violence and repression that took place in the South, denouncing such blatant hypocrisy to worldwide audiences. The violence associated with the Freedom Rides serves as one example of this. “Scenes of bloodshed in Montgomery are,” <a href="http://www.crmvet.org/riders/ns6107_world.pdf">said Radio Moscow</a>, “the worst examples of savagery…taking place in a country which has the boldness to declare that its way of life is…an example for other people.” </p>
<p>With these caveats in mind, let’s now consider the relationship between violence and racial progress, beginning with the civil rights legislation of 1957 and 1960. </p>
<h2>Violence and racial progress</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87540/original/image-20150706-973-crobj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87540/original/image-20150706-973-crobj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=628&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87540/original/image-20150706-973-crobj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=628&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87540/original/image-20150706-973-crobj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=628&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87540/original/image-20150706-973-crobj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=789&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87540/original/image-20150706-973-crobj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=789&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87540/original/image-20150706-973-crobj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=789&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Emmett Till was 14 when he was killed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:14EmmettTillBefore_(2534273093).jpg">ImageEditor</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was close on the heels of the<a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-death-of-emmett-till"> murder of Emmett Till</a> (1955) and the attempt to integrate Central High School in <a>Little Rock, Arkansas</a> (1957) that civil rights bills were ratified with the intention of improving access to voting for black southerners. </p>
<p>Ultimately, however, both <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Black_Ballots.html?id=RqFOuIhndtYC">fell far short</a> of the stated goal. For instance, as of 1958, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1952827?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">only Tennessee</a> could boast that more than 40% of its black eligible voters were actually registered. </p>
<p>What happened? </p>
<p>In the aftermath of Emmett Till’s murder and, especially the white resistance at Little Rock, the Eisenhower Administration was moved to <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9560.html">push for civil rights legislation</a> as a means of blunting continuing <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/40023174?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Soviet assaults</a> on the “American way of life.” As the president <a href="http://faculty.nwacc.edu/dvinzant/documents/LaytonIntlPressureandLRCrisis.pdf">himself said</a>, after ordering the deployment of federal troops to protect the new black students at Little Rock’s Central High School:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[I]t would be difficult to exaggerate the harm being done to the prestige and influence, and indeed to the safety, of our nation and the world. Our enemies are gloating over this incident and using it everywhere to misrepresent our whole nation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>On the domestic side, however, the audience was limited to white southerners, because civil rights failed to register on the national agenda in the 1950s. And since southern reactionaries and their representatives weren’t too keen on displacing white supremacy, it is hardly surprising that the civil rights legislation of 1957 and 1960 failed to achieve its goals.</p>
<p>Now go forward four years. </p>
<p>The racial progress achieved with the legislation of 1964 and 1965 also took place in the shadow of the Cold War. </p>
<p>These were the days of the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis. But the domestic audience also played an important role here – and this time it was nationwide. </p>
<p>The attacks on Freedom Riders and sit-in participants, the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in which four young girls were murdered, the spectacle during which fire hoses and dogs were turned loose on women and children protesters, and the “Bloody Sunday” march from Montgomery to Selma: this violence was extensively covered by the <a href="http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/07/march-7-1965-civil-rights-marchers-attacked-in-selma/comment-page-1/">national media</a> with shocking photographs like that of protester Amelia Boynton lying unconscious on the Edmond Pettus Bridge in Selma. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87541/original/image-20150706-1000-myavff.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87541/original/image-20150706-1000-myavff.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87541/original/image-20150706-1000-myavff.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87541/original/image-20150706-1000-myavff.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87541/original/image-20150706-1000-myavff.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87541/original/image-20150706-1000-myavff.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87541/original/image-20150706-1000-myavff.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alabama police attack on Bloody Sunday.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bloody_Sunday-Alabama_police_attack.jpeg">FBI</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Civil rights catapulted to the top of the American social and political agenda. </p>
<p>Many Americans were <a href="http://www.history.com/news/selmas-bloody-sunday-50-years-ago">outraged</a> at the behavior of many southern whites, law enforcement included. Ultimately, this outrage resulted in legislation that outlawed discrimination on the basis of race (among other factors), segregation, and expedited the implementation of the Brown decision. </p>
<p>Let us now return to the tragedy in Charleston.</p>
<h2>Who is watching Charleston?</h2>
<p>The domestic audience is certainly paying attention to South Carolina, as any glance at today’s media shows. What’s missing, however, is the international audience. This, in my judgment, is critical. </p>
<p>In the absence of an external existential threat to keep America honest, the impetus for racial progress lies squarely in the domestic sphere. </p>
<p>And this means that change is at the mercy of reactionary conservatives, people who, as my <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10354.html">research and that of Matt Barreto </a>into the Tea Party has shown, are fervent, disdainful of compromise and fearful of an existential threat to an American way of life in which mainly white Christians are the chosen group. </p>
<p>As I’ve argued <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9083.html">elsewhere</a>, these sentiments can be traced to the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, in which the return of the “New Negro” from World War I represented a threat to the existing racial order. </p>
<p>Dylann Roof is an outlier in terms of his actions, but his resentments are more widespread than may be generally acknowledged. Research I conducted in 2010 makes the case that the suspect isn’t the only one who harbors such sentiments; disdain for blacks is quite prevalent among contemporary <a href="http://depts.washington.edu/uwiser/mssrp_table.pdf">reactionaries.</a>.</p>
<p>When it was discovered that Roof has an affinity for the Confederate battle flag, it further confirmed what many blacks have come to believe: that the Confederate flag <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/06/22/416548613/the-complicated-political-history-of-the-confederate-flag">represents the continued oppression of blacks. </a> </p>
<p>This, then, is what needs to be kept in mind as we witness South Carolina’s lawmakers <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-confederate-flag-south-carolina-20150706-story.html#page=1">debate </a>Governor Haley’s call to remove the flag from the State Capitol. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fWlh5CdQTRI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">South Carolina’s Senate debates - now comes the House.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yes, white-on-black violence, as it appears to prick the conscious of sympathetic whites, has resulted in adjustments in the past, and it may do so again. </p>
<p>However, we must remain mindful of the fact that more enduring progress has taken place when domestic sympathy was reinforced by the political pragmatism associated with the presence of an international pressure. </p>
<p>If we’re talking about a <em>global</em> military and ideological threat that has the capacity to threaten the existence of the United States or, at the very least, that claims to be interested in black lives, we’re fresh out of those at the moment: Islamist terrorism fails to meet either criteria. </p>
<p>What is more, as my own research confirms, the <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2014/06/04-tea-party-future-political-movement-parker">reactionary right</a> only continues to grow. Today’s Republican Party has been forced to adopt positions on, say, comprehensive immigration reform that are at odds with the moderate wing of the party. </p>
<p>The fact is that GOP moderates and reactionaries significantly <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10354.html">part ways</a> on issues related to race. For instance, only 10% of reactionaries believed coverage of the George Zimmerman trial “raised important issues about race” warranting further discussion, compared to 40% of GOP moderates. In another example, when asked to evaluate the persistence of racial discrimination when it comes to voting in the wake of the 2013 Supreme Court <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/us/supreme-court-ruling.html?_r=0">rollback of voting rights</a> for blacks, 50% of GOP moderates believe this to be true versus 37% of GOP reactionaries. </p>
<p>I for one, remain to be convinced that the popular outrage we see now will result in real change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44127/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Sebastian Parker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>On July 6, the South Carolina Senate voted to remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds. In the past white-on-black violence has led to real change - but under specific conditions.Christopher Sebastian Parker, Associate Professor, Political Science , University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/439972015-07-03T02:23:05Z2015-07-03T02:23:05ZThe Confederate battleflag comes in waves, with a history that is still unfurling<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87091/original/image-20150702-27135-dw8hrl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People protest the Confederate battle flag.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Michael Nelson</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is a long-read essay. Enjoy!</em></p>
<p>At the <a href="https://theconversation.com/obamas-amazing-grace-shows-how-music-can-lift-oratory-high-44076">funeral</a> of Clementa Pinkney last week, Barack Obama gave the Confederate battleflag what many assume is its final – if delayed – death sentence in public life, <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33205363">saying</a> he believed it belongs in a museum.</p>
<p>But the battleflag‘s backstory is far more complex and contested than either Obama’s resolve or the substantially unified voices of the press may suggest. The president’s condemnation mirrors the current and rapidly-changing public mood – but attitudes to the flag have deeper roots.</p>
<h2>The first life of the battleflag</h2>
<p>Obama consciously linked into an ongoing and live history of African-American public agitation against the Confederate battleflag, over seven decades. </p>
<p>Existing African-American understanding of the flag as an inevitably racialised symbol became a self-fulfilling prophecy in the wake of the <a href="http://www.civilrights.org/education/brown/">Brown v Board of Education</a> judgment in 1954 when it was consciously adopted as the symbol of opposition to desegregation and the civil rights movement. </p>
<p>But the choice of the battleflag as a rallying point may also have been due to its popularity way beyond the former Confederate states in the 1950s. The flag had begun to appear in a range of contexts – from its use by sporting fans to use in electoral campaigns.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87092/original/image-20150702-27106-10v674a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87092/original/image-20150702-27106-10v674a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87092/original/image-20150702-27106-10v674a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87092/original/image-20150702-27106-10v674a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87092/original/image-20150702-27106-10v674a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87092/original/image-20150702-27106-10v674a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87092/original/image-20150702-27106-10v674a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87092/original/image-20150702-27106-10v674a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">After Charleston, does the Confederate battleflag belong in a museum?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">edward stojakovic/Flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The backstory that led to the flag becoming a highly contested symbol in the 1950s and 1960s is not what you may expect. </p>
<p>Although named popularly the Confederate Flag, it never was an official flag of the Confederate regime, even though that regime changed its flag design three times in four years, designs that today are hardly known to the general public. </p>
<p>Nor is the flag the right format for military usage. Designed after the <a href="http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/bullrun.html">Battle of Bull Run</a> in 1861 to stop confusion between the Confederate government flag and the United States flag, regulations prescribed a square in different sizes for different branches of service. The design was the familiar blue and red St Andrews cross.</p>
<p>Rectangular flags, which had isolated use in the armies west of the Mississippi and in the Confederate navy, became more common after the war. Industrial flag makers chose to standardise production of Confederate motif flags with their other products and created a relic that was rarely part of the wartime experience.</p>
<p>Actual Confederate government flags have not attracted the extremes of language generated by the battleflag – despite officially signifying a regime that enshrined chattel slavery. They apparently do not cause what law students of Washington and Lee University called “psychological shackles” in their <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/16/washington--lee-confederate_n_5161367.html">successful petition</a> in 2014 to remove the battleflags decorating Robert E Lee’s tomb.</p>
<h2>The rise of the battleflag</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87097/original/image-20150702-10579-a46ihv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87097/original/image-20150702-10579-a46ihv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87097/original/image-20150702-10579-a46ihv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87097/original/image-20150702-10579-a46ihv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=821&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87097/original/image-20150702-10579-a46ihv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1032&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87097/original/image-20150702-10579-a46ihv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1032&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87097/original/image-20150702-10579-a46ihv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1032&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ku Klux Klan parade in Washington DC in 1928.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The battleflag remained relatively invisible until the 1940s. Its usage was contained by veterans and organisations such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy to memorial occasions and ceremonies honouring living soldiers. </p>
<p>Closely connected to issues of mourning of family members and former comrades, it surprisingly infrequently leached out into explicitly racist/ racial contexts. Conversely there are myriad images from the interwar heydays of the Ku Klux Klan using the stars and stripes to evoke the imagery of totalitarian regimes – including the famous images of a massed rally in Washington DC in 1925. </p>
<p>In the post-second-world-war boomtime the flag became a popular cultural fad. It was an image on regional tourist souvenirs in an era when recreational travel by air or by car became affordable as never before. The flag became central to new forms of consumption and desire that had little relation to the history of the American Civil War (1861-1865). </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87094/original/image-20150702-10590-1vgpcal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87094/original/image-20150702-10590-1vgpcal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87094/original/image-20150702-10590-1vgpcal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87094/original/image-20150702-10590-1vgpcal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87094/original/image-20150702-10590-1vgpcal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87094/original/image-20150702-10590-1vgpcal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87094/original/image-20150702-10590-1vgpcal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87094/original/image-20150702-10590-1vgpcal.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Confederate flag merchandise is still common.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Elizabeth Prata/Flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was during this era that the plethora of Confederate battleflag-themed garmentry, including swimwear and underwear, began to appear. Those items still find willing buyers. </p>
<p>There was an upswing of an unofficial, spontaneous visibility of the battleflag among the US military in the second world war which escalated further into the Korean War. The flag became associated broadly with the distant homeland north and south, and also with a certain good-humoured, rough and ready resilience of a type that Australians were beginning to brand as “larrikinesque” in the same era.</p>
<h2>The battleflag after Vietnam</h2>
<p>Deployment of the battleflag by individual military personnel continued in the Vietnam War (even though African-American soldiers often protested against the use of Confederate symbols and rituals and army officials tried to limit these unofficial displays of the battleflag as they caused tensions and divisions in racially-mixed facilities).</p>
<p>The association of the battleflag with working-class masculinity, sports fans, car racing, elaborate customised vehicles, professional truck drivers and country and western music began around the 1950s/ 1960s, as the enthusiasm for the battleflag moved from military to civilian life. </p>
<p>Confederate heritage groups were concerned about what they saw as “insults” to the flag due to working-class appropriations. The Dukes of Hazzard television show, dedicated to the antics of the Duke family in Georgia, visibly consolidated such ideas. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87107/original/image-20150702-10612-225yo8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87107/original/image-20150702-10612-225yo8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87107/original/image-20150702-10612-225yo8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87107/original/image-20150702-10612-225yo8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87107/original/image-20150702-10612-225yo8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87107/original/image-20150702-10612-225yo8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87107/original/image-20150702-10612-225yo8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87107/original/image-20150702-10612-225yo8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The iconic Dukes of Hazzard Dodge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Julien's Auction</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The Confederate flag in Europe</h2>
<p>Transcultural uses of the battleflag in Europe and England for several decades have shown little engagement with American racial politics. </p>
<p>While some academics target European football hooligans and anti-immigrant protesters for using the battleflag to make <em>de facto</em> racist comments, European sporting fans often use the battleflag to highlight intra-national rivalries. It’s quite a different usage to that in the United States.</p>
<p>For example, the flag speaks to consciousness of north/ south divides that have been live in both Irish and Italian histories. Sicily has deployed the battleflag to romanticise a sense of victimisation by what is regarded as the dominant and discriminatory north and to suggest a resistance at a vernacular level. </p>
<p>On the other hand I have seen, during January 2014, in a densely populated immigrant district of Paris around the Gare de l’Est, a French-African shop owner both retailing and himself modelling striking confederate flag-themed trousers. This directly cuts across North American definitions of the flag as an <em>a priori</em> Afrophobic symbol. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87095/original/image-20150702-10615-1gbwtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87095/original/image-20150702-10615-1gbwtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87095/original/image-20150702-10615-1gbwtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87095/original/image-20150702-10615-1gbwtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87095/original/image-20150702-10615-1gbwtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=311&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87095/original/image-20150702-10615-1gbwtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87095/original/image-20150702-10615-1gbwtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87095/original/image-20150702-10615-1gbwtz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Civil war re-enactments are popular all over the world.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Darryl Moran/Flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The appearance of the battleflag in Europe also highlights the continuing widespread interest there in Civil War re-enacting. It also reflects a European interest in “wild west” re-enacting that includes a racial mimicry of Native Americans by Caucasians that would be unacceptable in the United States.</p>
<p>Scandinavia has adopted the Confederate battleflag in the <a href="http://jalopnik%20.com/your-guide-to-europes-weirdest-car-culture-raggare-512086377">Raggare subculture</a>, based upon retro North-American cultural imagery of the 1950s and restoring classic cars. Here the battleflag retains a highly positive image, similarly to the rockabilly subculture. </p>
<p>The few press articles to appear after <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/charleston">the Charleston shootings</a> that have defended the battleflag as something that can have multiple meanings, other than festering racial intolerance, or suggesting that the battleflag can evoke <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2015/jun/22/confederate-flag-pop-culture-harmless-americana-racist-symbol">the rich presence</a> of the American South in the popular cultural imagination, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11692452/Confederate-flag-what-is-it-and-why-is-it-controversial.html">come from British dailies</a> – again suggesting that the battleflag has different meanings outside the United States. </p>
<h2>Flying the flag in Australia</h2>
<p>The battleflag certainly surfaced within the mid-20th century obsession with North-American history in Australia. Tourist attractions around Lakes Entrance in rural Victoria included a Gone With the Wind/ Confederate-themed museum that seems not to have survived into the digital age. The <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050021/">Grey Ghost </a> (1957-8) was a Confederate-themed television series that screened in Australia. </p>
<p>Disney <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057201/">offered</a> Johnny Shiloh (1963), a family-themed TV narrative about a Union drummer boy whose annoying mannerisms as directed on screen probably won many hearts and minds for the Confederacy. </p>
<p>With the guide of the maps and diagrams in the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Golden-Book-Civil-War/dp/B000W63T7S">Golden Book of the Civil War </a> (1961), the conflict offered something more complex and tangible than “Cowboys and Indians” for scripting play scenarios.</p>
<p>While Confederate re-enactors have loyally unfurled the (mostly typically rectangular) battleflag in Australia since the 1960s, sword-play tournaments, medieval/ early modern re-enacting and fantasy cosplay with medieval styling have now far outpaced American Civil War re-enacting in attracting Australian “living history” enthusiasts today. </p>
<p>Although the battleflag is still often displayed in “smoking paraphernalia” shops alongside Rastafarian imagery, ANC colours and the new South African flag, a context that would be inexplicable to both African American and white parties to current American debates. </p>
<p>Truck drivers and motorcyclists, including the Rebels gang, openly show or wear the battleflag in Australia, as in the United States</p>
<h2>Redefining the flag</h2>
<p>The rapid redefining of Confederate imagery as unacceptable has had strange flow on effects in popular culture, given the particular high profile of the American Civil War in the global public imagination. </p>
<p>In the wake of the Charleston shootings, digital games with Civil War and battleflag content <a href="http://kotaku.com/civil-war-game-pulled-from-apple-store-now-doing-great-1714206497">have been pulled</a> from the Apple App store. </p>
<p>EBay, Amazon, Walmart and many other retailers have <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2015/06/22/politics/confederate-flag-walmart-south-carolina/">stopped</a> stocking Confederate-themed products. Gift shops at the visitors centres at National Park Service battlefield sites including Gettysburg and Antietam have removed Confederate-themed souvenirs. </p>
<p>Last week a video of an ISIS flag cake made to order at Walmart for a disgruntled Confederate sympathiser who wanted to show up the hypocrisy of banning battleflag cakes when ISIS cakes were freely traded went viral. The episode has <a href="http://www.people.com/article/walmart-apologizes-isis-cake-confederate-flag-cake">led to a ban</a> on ISIS cakes.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/q7ePFollQQE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Isis cake video that went viral.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For all the companies that have ceased trading in or making Confederate-themed items, other companies are reporting extraordinary upswings of business – thousands of battleflags are being sold. Official prohibitions, and personal lobbying by concerned groups and individuals to remove flags, are being counterbalanced by widespread public disobedience through display of the battleflag. </p>
<p>Flags have been removed – but private ownership of flags means that there has been little if any change in the numerical frequency of flag displays, although the nature of the sites have changed from symbolically charged sites of legal and political governance to private property and possessions. </p>
<p>The nature of these contestations is by no means new to anyone who has followed the very volatile presence of the American Civil War in popular culture. </p>
<p>There is a chasm between the desire to erase what is perceived as racist imagery and the desire to celebrate “Confederate heritage”. </p>
<p>The accurately-shaped square battleflag on the Confederate memorial outside the South Carolina Congress building was a compromise, made in 2000, when the flag was removed from the Congress Dome, when the resolution fell more favourably towards Confederate sympathisers. </p>
<p>These contests have often filtered down to a highly personal level, such as school girl <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2135135/Texanna-Edwards-Teenager-banned-Tennessee-prom-showed-Confederate-flag-dress.html">Texanna Edwards</a>’ 2012 battle with Gibson County High School to wear a Confederate flag-themed ballgown to the school dance, or the <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/04/neo-confederates-freak-out-about-ru-paul-museum-display">complaints</a> about a life-sized cardboard cutout of African American drag queen Ru Paul at the Museum of the Confederacy, again featuring a battleflag themed evening dress.</p>
<p>High schools have long taken a particularly uncompromising attitude towards confederate imagery worn on school premises as part of a conscious effort to uphold the historical commitment to integration. Students have complained about class peers being allowed to wear garments with Malcolm X and African themes, when battleflag motifs are banned. </p>
<p>These incidents still occur relatively frequently and often in schools outside the former Confederacy. Gettysburg’s Lutheran Theological Seminary, for example, has caused particular anxiety within the online community by recently <a href="http://www.ltsg.edu/about-us/news/2015/confederatebattleflag">preventing</a> any “symbols of hate speech and racism” being displayed during re-enactments on its grounds. There is now a boycott page for the Seminary’s renowned Civil War Museum on Facebook. This ban cuts deeply among re-enactors because the cupola on the still-standing Schmucker Hall administration block at the college was an actual military observation point, from where General Buford oversaw troop movements.</p>
<p>Dukes of Hazzard toy cars have been withdrawn from production due to the battleflag imagery. Actor Ben Jones <a href="http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/cooter-from-dukes-of-hazard-said-this-about-the-confederate-flag-battle-this-is-epic/">criticised</a> this decision in an online essay: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think all of Hazzard Nation understands that the Confederate battle flag is the symbol that represents the indomitable spirit of independence which keeps us makin’ our way the only way we know how. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This week pay TV stations in North America have dropped the Dukes of Hazzard re-runs in mid series.</p>
<h2>The future of the flag</h2>
<p>Dylann Roof’s terrorist act in Charleston has triggered an unprecedented pace and proliferation in these familiar disputes. For the time being he has ensured that public consensus favours the prohibition of the battleflag. </p>
<p>There has been a slow but steady removal of battleflags and open celebrations of the Confederacy over the last 20 years. Though African Americans have long defined the battleflag as offensive, it has taken six, nearly seven decades, for a broad consensus of white public opinion to accept their definition. </p>
<p>This judgement has acquired an urgent plausibility in the wake of the Mother Emmanuel shootings – but it is more contested and unexpected than internet activism may assume.</p>
<p>Before the Charleston shootings the most recent link of highly-publicised gun crime to the battleflag was the 1995 death of the white 19-year-old Michael Westerman in Kentucky, accidentally shot during a high-speed car chase by an African American youth who objected to the battleflag that Westerman flew off his red pickup truck.</p>
<p>That case attracted widespread press attention, and triggered widespread debate, especially for the complex details of working-class rural life, where mutual poverty created a hitherto somewhat less polarised daily interaction between racial groups than in larger cities. One of Westerman’s pursuers was actually a personal friend who did not recognise him until too late due to the tinted windows of his truck. Westermans <a href="http://people.terry.uga.edu/dawndba/4500Death4Dixie.htm">was buried</a> with quasi military honours under the battleflag. </p>
<p>In one of the most thoughtful of all articles written on the future of public memory and the battleflag in the wake of the Charleston shootings, Professor Glenda Gilmore of Yale University <a href="http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/159804">suggested</a> last week that the shooting is actually not a Civil war or Civil Rights story. </p>
<p>Gilmore argued that conservative politicians were responding to changing demographics in the south and no longer needed to retain or buy the loyalty of the white working class to ensure re-election. By now consistently supporting the removal of Confederate imagery from public view, wrote Gilmore, “leaders of the Newest South hope to make their values more palatable for national consumption and export them to a global stage in 2016”. </p>
<p>This pragmatism brings this debate closer to Australia in an abstract rather than a literal manner. Political parties have made a similar shift from supporting lower-income earners.</p>
<p>Working-class anxieties about employment, demographic change and global population movements are secondary to the neoliberal advantage of having an always-insecure workforce competing for often transient jobs. </p>
<p>Another clear instance of pragmatism disguised as human rights is when the University of Mississippi changed the mascots and insiginia of its (gridiron) football team when the former Confederate soldier and flag imagery made it increasingly hard to attract high-level atheletes in the 1980s and 1990s. </p>
<p>Reading Dylann Roof only in terms of the battleflag, the disappearance of which from official and public space he has substantially facilitated, is restricted. With his history of social isolation, drifting without education and jobs, and finally radicalisation via the internet, there are significant parallels to the global phenomenon of many and varied disaffected young men – including Islamicists, Islamophobes, Anti-Semites, Anders Brevik and anti-feminist shooter Marc Lepine – who kill to cleanse society of those they see as undesirable/ inferior. </p>
<p>The battleflag could thus also be an expression of, rather than the causal agent of, a problem that stretches far beyond its regional history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43997/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Juliette Peers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>President Obama’s recent condemnation of the Confederate battleflag mirrors the current and rapidly-changing public mood on this artefact. But attitudes to the flag have deeper roots.Juliette Peers, Senior Lecturer School of Architecture & Urban Design, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/441222015-07-02T10:20:36Z2015-07-02T10:20:36ZThe political work of the Confederate flag<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87022/original/image-20150701-27106-a513vh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ninian_reid/16606208892/in/photolist-riramq-3dqCuR-6GSWiZ-8nS2G2-8TdmPC-dVEJ7L-8EbD6v-2ScYW-4LUTxz-jB1Rqp-4GZ4ss-o83Kna-dD7AnH-o6iGiG-5kKkDK-jB2SF6-3aQB11-nQTAW4-o6UWe3-nLy8Kc-nBk3GW-8ZnzAB-7c8Gg2-9oQQLB-7iG4Ei-nPmDCT-jL2ESp-jL4gir-jL4NBC-jL6ee1-jL3xJc-jL3Fun-jL2dnR-jL4UGn-jL5uB7-jL37HT-jL4hPk-jL4d4i-jL3ZoD-jL4DU6-jL46ww-jL6TUC-jL5VuU-jL2uFT-jL4bQh-jL374V-jL4CA5-jL2yXg-jL334T-jL3kJT">Ninian Reed flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Confederate flag may soon be gone with the wind. </p>
<p>It is a remarkable reversal of fortunes for one of America’s most divisive but enduring symbols. </p>
<p>In 2001, Mississippians <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/18/us/mississippi-votes-wide-margin-keep-state-flag-that-includes-confederate-emblem.html">voted two-to-one</a> in favor of keeping the flag. </p>
<p>The year before, flag defenders in South Carolina <a href="http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2000/05/24/south-carolina-gov-signs-confederate-flag-compromise">worked out a deal</a> that removed the flag from above the State Capitol dome, but placed it in an arguably more prominent position, atop a Confederate memorial in front of the Capitol. </p>
<p>Now, 14 years later, in the wake of the murder of nine African Americans at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston by a flag-waving white supremacist, South Carolina’s most prominent Republican politicians advocate removing the flag altogether. </p>
<p>High-ranking Republicans <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/charleston-church-shooting/tide-turning-mississippi-gop-leader-says-banish-confederate-flag-n380066">in Mississippi</a> have issued similar calls to remove the emblem from the Mississippi state flag. A number of other southern states have already taken steps to sever ties with the embattled banner.</p>
<p>Public opinion on the flag has seemed to shift with lightning speed, and yet it is a wonder how, in our modern multiracial democracy, a symbol of a rebellious slave-holding regime from the 19th century has held on as long as it has. </p>
<p>The answer, at least in large part, is that the flag has persisted because it has performed important cultural and political work for the Democratic and Republican parties alike. </p>
<h2>The South shifts</h2>
<p>It is impossible to separate the history of the flag from the historic partisan shift in southern politics since the 1960s. </p>
<p>Abraham Lincoln, in his <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres32.html">second inaugural address</a>, said that everyone knew that slavery was “somehow the cause” of the Civil War. </p>
<p>Today, most people acknowledge that race was somehow the cause of the Republican takeover in the South. </p>
<p>The pithiest and most enduring summation of the process is often attributed to Lyndon Johnson, whose path to national prominence lay in his ability to reconcile the southern segregationist wing of the party with labor and liberal groups. </p>
<p>In 1964 conservative Republicans like Barry Goldwater were making in roads among states rights Democrats. Many crossed party lines to vote for the anti-government Republican. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87054/original/image-20150701-27151-12wjwfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87054/original/image-20150701-27151-12wjwfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87054/original/image-20150701-27151-12wjwfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87054/original/image-20150701-27151-12wjwfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87054/original/image-20150701-27151-12wjwfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87054/original/image-20150701-27151-12wjwfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87054/original/image-20150701-27151-12wjwfo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King Jr after the signing of the Voting Rights Act.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_B._Johnson#/media/File:Lyndon_Johnson_and_Martin_Luther_King,_Jr._-_Voting_Rights_Act.jpg">Yoichi Okamoto - Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum. Image Serial Number: A1030-17a.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Johnson <a href="http://capitalresearch.org/2014/10/we-have-lost-the-south-for-a-generation-what-lyndon-johnson-said-or-would-have-said-if-only-he-had-said-it/">reportedly lamented </a>to an aide that he had just given over the South to the Republicans for the next generation, although some have questioned the veracity of the quote. </p>
<p>Regardless of whether Johnson actually said it, what’s clear is that Republican ascendancy in the South was slower and more contested than this bit of folklore allows. </p>
<p>Despite Barry Goldwater’s victory in five Deep South states in 1964, for decades afterwards, Democrats kept tight control over almost every southern state. </p>
<p>As thousands of new black voters entered politics thanks to the 1965 Voting Rights Act, astute young Democratic candidates moved to the middle and built powerful biracial political coalitions. These were the New South Democrats. </p>
<p>They were genuine southern boys, raised in the rural South who had seen the error of the region’s ways. They embodied the moral awakening that the region and the nation had undergone, and two of them, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, ended up riding that compelling political narrative all the way to the White House.</p>
<p>But the New South narrative was always a fragile thing, because these men operated in a schizophrenic southern Democratic Party undergoing massive changes. </p>
<p>Old-time Dixiecrats mixed with new black voters, at least for a while. Gaining a foothold required no small amount of political juggling, as evidenced by the still <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-riddle-of-jimmy-carter-20110201">whispered reports</a> of Jimmy Carter’s 1970 gubernatorial primary.</p>
<p>Republicans running against such candidates faced a tall order. They had no entree to the black vote given Democratic dominance on civil rights and their own anti-federal government ideology. To win they had to amass an overwhelming majority of the white vote.</p>
<p>Their trouble was not only electoral but cultural. This is where the Confederate flag and other symbols of the southern past proved so useful for Republicans. </p>
<h2>Appealing to southern nationalism</h2>
<p>Modern GOP organizations in the South were started by college-educated white-collar professionals, a large number of whom were recent migrants to the region who came as contributors to the South’s booming economy. </p>
<p>Party leaders in South Carolina had plenty of money, thanks to conservative businessmen such as <a href="https://www.scgop.com/2009/12/14/great-things-are-happening/">Roger Milliken</a>, who was also a key contributor to the National Review in its early years, but they had little political experience. </p>
<p>They were alienated economically and culturally from the working-class whites and <a href="http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Lost_Cause_The">Lost Cause</a> enthusiasts who were most disenchanted with the civil rights policies of the national Democratic Party – and who were most likely to join the Republicans. </p>
<p>In South Carolina, the GOP got a boost in 1964 when <a href="http://us.macmillan.com/stromthurmondsamerica/josephcrespino">Strom Thurmond</a>, the former Dixiecrat presidential candidate, switched parties. In 1966, the first time Thurmond ran as a Republican, the GOP state convention opened under a huge Confederate banner. </p>
<p>A number of African Americans had attended previous Republican conventions in the state, a vestige of the historic tie between the GOP and black voters that dated back to emancipation, but none was present in 1966.</p>
<p>Yet throughout the 1970s, Republican appeals to southern nationalism had an ersatz quality to it. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87055/original/image-20150701-27109-12jv9ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87055/original/image-20150701-27109-12jv9ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87055/original/image-20150701-27109-12jv9ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87055/original/image-20150701-27109-12jv9ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87055/original/image-20150701-27109-12jv9ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87055/original/image-20150701-27109-12jv9ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87055/original/image-20150701-27109-12jv9ry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ninian_reid/16606208892/in/photolist-riramq-3dqCuR-6GSWiZ-8nS2G2-8TdmPC-dVEJ7L-8EbD6v-2ScYW-4LUTxz-jB1Rqp-4GZ4ss-o83Kna-dD7AnH-o6iGiG-5kKkDK-jB2SF6-3aQB11-nQTAW4-o6UWe3-nLy8Kc-nBk3GW-8ZnzAB-7c8Gg2-9oQQLB-7iG4Ei-nPmDCT-jL2ESp-jL4gir-jL4NBC-jL6ee1-jL3xJc-jL3Fun-jL2dnR-jL4UGn-jL5uB7-jL37HT-jL4hPk-jL4d4i-jL3ZoD-jL4DU6-jL46ww-jL6TUC-jL5VuU-jL2uFT-jL4bQh-jL374V-jL4CA5-jL2yXg-jL334T-jL3kJT">Ninian Reed flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The real candidate of southern nationalists was Alabama governor George Wallace, who ran both as a Democrat and as an independent candidate. Confederate flags were common at his rallies across the nation that turned out thousands of disaffected Democrats in the late 1960s and early 1970s. </p>
<p>Richard Nixon was obsessed with the Wallace vote in both of his campaigns, and GOP operatives throughout the South understood it as key to Republican success in the region. </p>
<p>It was in tone-deaf pursuit of Wallace voters that Ronald Reagan delivered perhaps <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/opinion/13herbert.html">the most infamous</a> <a href="http://neshobademocrat.com/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=297&ArticleID=15599">speech</a> of his career. </p>
<p>In 1980, in Neshoba County, Mississippi, where only 16 years earlier three civil rights workers had been murdered, Reagan linked his conservative agenda with the states’ rights cause that had driven generations of southern segregationists. </p>
<p>The 1980s was the decade of real partisan transition that occurred in southern politics. </p>
<p>Reagan brought over the last of the remaining Dixiecrats as well as a younger generation of conservative southern Democrats. </p>
<p>There were still one-off instances of southern Democratic identification with the flag, such as a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/06/22/what-those-clinton-gore-confederate-flag-buttons-say-about-politics-in-2015/">Clinton-Gore campaign button </a>that circulated in 1992, but leading southern Democrats, Clinton foremost among them, <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/24/the-clinton-confederate-flag-conspiracy-theory-is-a-new-low.html">made clear</a> their opposition to the Confederate flag. </p>
<p>Not so for the Republicans. The trick then and now for national Republican candidates is how to tap this visceral core of conservative voters without alienating moderate supporters from outside the region. </p>
<p>It has led Republican presidential candidates to twist themselves into all sorts of compromising positions, particularly since the 1980s, when South Carolina positioned itself as one of the earliest and most important primary states, the bellwether for the region that any GOP candidate would have to dominate if they were to win a national election. </p>
<h2>Race v religion</h2>
<p>The success of the Republican Party for the last 50 years, in both the South and throughout the country, has been rooted in its ability to hold together an inherently unstable union between economic elites and working-class whites.</p>
<p>They have managed this in largest part by appealing to a range of cultural issues. Race has been one of those cultural touchstones since the earliest days of the southern Republican takeover. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87057/original/image-20150701-27138-12i9yki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87057/original/image-20150701-27138-12i9yki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87057/original/image-20150701-27138-12i9yki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87057/original/image-20150701-27138-12i9yki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87057/original/image-20150701-27138-12i9yki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87057/original/image-20150701-27138-12i9yki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/87057/original/image-20150701-27138-12i9yki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A billboard in Alabama.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0f/Go_to_church....jpg/640px-Go_to_church....jpg">PugFather</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since the late 1970s, however, so too has religion, when conservative GOP activists made a concerted effort to politicize and recruit <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133.html#.VZRNCEgRL1E">evangelical and fundamentalist voters</a> who had previously remained on the margins of American politics.</p>
<p>Dylann Roof’s evil actions in Charleston have managed to pit against each other the two most important cultural constituencies in the southern Republican Party. </p>
<p>It is no coincidence that almost all of the Republican officials who have called for the flag’s removal have invoked their Christian faith as motivation for their efforts. </p>
<p>Chances are, a lot more southern Republicans have attended a Wednesday Bible study – the scene of Dylann Roof’s evil act – than have ever attended a Confederate memorial service. </p>
<p>But just because the flag goes away doesn’t mean that the hard-core racist right will. Ugly displays of <a href="http://race2012pbs.org/">racist animus</a> have been regular parts of Tea Party gatherings since Barack Obama’s election.</p>
<p>Regardless of what happens with the flag, the GOP will continue to struggle with immigration issues and recruitment of minority voters. </p>
<p>If conservative evangelical Republicans manage to purge southern states of the Confederate flag, the real victors will not be Republicans but southerners themselves, white and black.</p>
<p>Whatever political and cultural work the flag might have performed in the past, it is time for it to end.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44122/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph Crespino does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Public opinion on the flag may have shifted with lightning speed, but how did it hold on as long as it did? The answer has to do with how it served both Democratic and Republican parties alike.Joseph Crespino, Professor of History, Emory UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/440502015-07-01T10:07:04Z2015-07-01T10:07:04ZBree Newsome’s Superwoman-style, Confederate flag pole climb was an artistic statement<p>On June 28, in the early hours of the morning, 30-year-old helmeted activist Bree Newsome scaled the flagpole at the South Carolina State House and cut down the controversial Confederate flag, which was first raised there <a href="http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/jun/22/eugene-robinson/confederate-flag-wasnt-flown-south-carolina-state-/">in 1961</a>, almost 100 years after the Civil War. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Bree Newsome takes down the Confederate flag at the South Carolina State House.</span></figcaption>
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<p>It’s easy to dismiss Newsome’s actions as a social media stunt. Many have ridiculed it as pointless (or worse, harmful) theatrics that might derail legal action to take down the flag permanently. For example, The Baltimore Sun <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/howard/columbia/bs-md-bree-newsome-20150627-story.html">quoted</a> two South Carolina lawmakers – Democratic State Senator Marlon Kimpson and Republican State Senator Shane Massey – who called the action counterproductive:</p>
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<p>Yes, Newsome was arrested and the flag went right back up. </p>
<p>But Newsome’s climb can be viewed as a significant piece of socially engaged performance art that brought attention to the flag issue. And in the long run, it <em>will</em> work to get it removed, while encouraging people to think about what the flag means, particularly to African Americans. </p>
<h2>Two types of socially engaged art</h2>
<p>Let’s take a closer look at why this is the case.</p>
<p>Socially engaged art can be divided into two categories: symbolic practice and actual practice. (Newsome’s climb is the latter.) </p>
<p>The ideas of symbolic and actual practice are key concepts in artist and performer Pablo Helguera’s book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Education-Socially-Engaged-Art-Techniques/dp/1934978590">Education for Socially Engaged Art</a>. Helguera, who’s also the curator of public programming for New York City's Museum of Modern Art, sees symbolic practice as socially motivated representations of ideas or issues in an artwork. </p>
<p>An example of symbolic practice would be artist Sonya Clark’s timely pieces “Unraveled” and “Unraveling,” which went on display at New York’s Mixed Greens gallery just days before the Charleston murders occurred. </p>
<p>In the work, Clark presents two Confederate flags. With volunteers, Clark completely unraveled one during performances in the space, with the threads bundled into separate piles of red, white and blue. The other is partially unraveled. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3YSpbtHo88A?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Sonya Clark: Unraveling the Confederate flag.</span></figcaption>
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<p>As the website Mother Jones <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/06/sonya-clark-unraveling-confederate-flag">pointed out</a>, Clark uses the flag unraveling “to evoke the slow, patient work of unraveling racism.” Her work encourages contemplation and calls attention to what the Confederate flag represents. </p>
<p>Actual practice projects, on the other hand, involve direct action that can have an impact outside of gallery walls. For example, Rick Lowe’s <a href="http://projectrowhouses.org/">Project Row Houses</a> preserved and revitalized an historic Houston neighborhood. Meanwhile, Tania Bruguera’s <a href="http://www.taniabruguera.com/cms/486-0-Immigrant+Movement+International.htm">Immigrant Movement International</a> provides public workshops, events, actions and partnerships with immigrant and social service organizations in Queens, New York.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86904/original/image-20150630-5846-o1h0jv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86904/original/image-20150630-5846-o1h0jv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86904/original/image-20150630-5846-o1h0jv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86904/original/image-20150630-5846-o1h0jv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86904/original/image-20150630-5846-o1h0jv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86904/original/image-20150630-5846-o1h0jv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86904/original/image-20150630-5846-o1h0jv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Rick Lowe walks in front of his Project Row Houses.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Lowe_2014_hi-res-download_2.jpg">John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These projects are large in scale, and are grounded in art and aesthetics. They provide actual social and community services in addition to gallery, performance and gathering spaces. </p>
<h2>Public expression promotes change</h2>
<p>In his book, Helguera highlights the importance of both types of practice. He also looks at Jürgen Habermas’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_Communicative_Action">Theory of Communicative Action</a>, which proposes that social change can happen after individuals engage in public conversations that are rationally argumentative in nature. In other words, people need to “duke it out” publicly in civil disagreement. </p>
<p>Helguera notes that communicative action “can have a lasting effect on the spheres of politics and culture as a true emancipatory force.” It’s more than just talk.</p>
<p>Activist artists like Favianna Rodriguez, whose work is grounded in empowering people around issues of inequality and racism, point out that artists and other cultural workers are essential to creating significant and lasting social change. They do this by changing hearts and minds through culture, and by eventually shifting power in communities. Rodriguez sees legislative and policy change as a two-step process, and <a href="http://creativemornings.com/talks/favianna-rodriguez/2">insists that</a> “before you change politics, you have to change culture.”</p>
<p>In the case of the Charleston shooting, connecting the Confederate flag’s symbolism with the killer of nine black people at Bible study in their church provides an opportunity for this kind of national conversation. </p>
<p>So here’s why Newsome’s climb was a work of performance art: even though it happened in real life and in real time, it acted as a metaphor for the dismantling of institutionalized racism. Her Superwoman-styled action added a collective exclamation point to the demands to remove the Confederate flag, while tapping into the deeply rooted American mythology of <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=jmizUitWGNQC&pg=PA54&lpg=PA54&dq=lone+heroes+in+popular+culture&source=bl&ots=nAj9nRhIV9&sig=toT1T10MgIsL3b-eCZHC7RtD_Dg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=cOaSVbbVHcH3-QGf6ZzABg&ved=0CC4Q6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=lone%20heroes%20in%20popular%20culture&f=false">individual heroism</a>. </p>
<p>Individuals <em>can</em> galvanize large groups of people, leading to permanent change – that part of the myth is true. Newsome’s actions spoke to people who are tired of waiting for racial justice, and reenergized them for the rest of the battle.</p>
<p>Though her act of cutting down the divisive flag from the South Carolina State Capitol failed to permanently remove it, it drew waves of continued media attention to the issue. She performed an action movie gesture as a vicarious and thrilling experience for anyone who wanted this symbol of the Confederacy – synonymous with racism for so many people – removed, even for a brief time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44050/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colette Gaiter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Newsome’s actions can be thought of as a significant piece of performance art.Colette Gaiter, Associate Professor, Department of Art and Design, University of DelawareLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/438142015-06-25T05:18:11Z2015-06-25T05:18:11ZFrom South Carolina to Northern Ireland: why the flags we fly matter<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86298/original/image-20150624-31522-qxdtth.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Some things belong in the past.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dwmoran/4942550621/in/photolist-8wKS72-8wNnMm-8wKvLB-8wLUDG-8wLd9Q-8wKrnc-8wMJRS-8wMqrf-8wMpS5-8wJuh4-8wHfvP-8wNY41-8wNTUY-8wN337-8wMzi7-8wMWMA-8wHQdN-8wMVLY-8wHPja-8wJiS2-8wHWzS-8wMPVJ-8wEYv6-8wHo36-8wGNcn-8wNtyd-8wNYXC-8wNTaN-8wHHYv-8wGbNx-8wK6qa-8wKPHC-8wJE4x-8wJWDu-8wNWfJ-8wHnmr-8wG2gH-8wKxbB-8wM2UQ-8wNUVS-8wKR6a-8wKLov-8wHqtM-8wLacA-8wKyNX-8wHNp8-8wGNWi-8wG4Yv-8wKf5n-8wNKKy">Darryl Moran</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Following the <a href="https://theconversation.com/hate-violence-and-the-tragedy-of-the-charleston-shootings-43579">tragic shooting</a> of nine black worshippers at a church in Charleston, the national focus in the US has turned to a debate about whether <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-the-confederate-flag-unconstitutional-43760">the Confederate flag</a> – the symbol of the Southern slave states who lost the American Civil War – should fly atop the South Carolina State House. </p>
<p>It may seem strange to some that in a country wracked by <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-us-gun-control-compares-to-the-rest-of-the-world-43590">gun violence</a>, race inequalities and hate crime, the discussion has become one about symbolism.</p>
<p>But symbols matter. Flags, emblems, lapel badges, car stickers and the like are all ways of expressing belonging, of conveying what is important to us and the groups with which we identify. They can be used to both communicate and construct identity. </p>
<p>In settings where identity and territory are linked, such as the American South or Northern Ireland, symbols come to mark cultural boundaries. Symbols therefore look inward and outward at the same time; inward to define how we see ourselves and outward to how we see others. </p>
<p>This is how symbols can so easily become wrapped up with enmity. A flag can be part of national rituals but it can also be used to marginalise other groups. A Union Jack takes on a different meaning at the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/proms/11095087/BBC-Proms-2014-Last-Night-of-the-Proms-review-soaringly-carried-away.html">Last Night of the Proms</a> compared to a <a href="http://www.itv.com/news/anglia/story/2015-06-24/britain-first-march-planned-for-luton/">Britain First rally</a>. </p>
<p>Whenever we want to distinguish ourselves from others in settings of conflict, flags are very effective in discriminating between insiders and outsiders. We therefore cloak ourselves in them – sometimes literally – for the purpose of using them as cultural weapons. </p>
<h2>New beginnings</h2>
<p>Managing cultural symbols in post-conflict settings requires the opposite dynamic. Symbols must be designed in this setting to convey reconciliation, integration and accommodation. Sometimes this can mean new symbols to signify to citizens that the peace process is at once an ending of the old conflict, and a beginning of a new post-conflict society. </p>
<p>This happens most often where partition or new nations emerge from peace settlements, such as in the new states that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. New cultural symbols are used as part of the nation-building project. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86299/original/image-20150624-31507-1xz88fe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86299/original/image-20150624-31507-1xz88fe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86299/original/image-20150624-31507-1xz88fe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86299/original/image-20150624-31507-1xz88fe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86299/original/image-20150624-31507-1xz88fe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86299/original/image-20150624-31507-1xz88fe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86299/original/image-20150624-31507-1xz88fe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bosnian flags old and new fly in Sarajevo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Bosnia_and_Herzegovina#/media/File:Bosnian_flags_in_Sarajevo.jpg">Sabri76</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is rare for new cultural symbols to emerge in peace processes where the territory remains intact – when what emerges is a different regime rather than a new state. Post-apartheid South Africa’s new national symbols represent the best example. The flag of South Africa was adopted in 1994 at the time of the first free election to represent the new democracy. </p>
<p>Three of the colours – black, green and yellow – are found in the banner of the African National Congress. The other three – red, white and blue – are displayed on the old <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_South_African_flags#/media/File:Flag_of_Transvaal.svg">Transvaal vierkleur</a>, the Dutch tricolour and the British Union flag.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86304/original/image-20150624-31522-1otkwng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86304/original/image-20150624-31522-1otkwng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86304/original/image-20150624-31522-1otkwng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86304/original/image-20150624-31522-1otkwng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86304/original/image-20150624-31522-1otkwng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86304/original/image-20150624-31522-1otkwng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86304/original/image-20150624-31522-1otkwng.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bill Clinton receives one of South Africa’s brand new flags in 1994.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:New_South_African_flag_unveiling.jpg">United States Federal Government.</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>It’s worth noting, of course, that Charleston shooter Dylann Roof has been <a href="http://time.com/3926593/charleston-killer-flags/">pictured wearing</a> both the apartheid-era South African and the Rhodesian flags pinned to his jacket. </p>
<h2>Civil wars</h2>
<p>In the case of a civil war, new cultural symbols rarely mark its conclusion, for while the ending of civil wars represent a closure on the conflict, they do not always involve a new beginning. Indeed in civil wars social transformation rarely follows on from the conflict, so symbols remain contested because there is no opening up to a different future, merely the ending of the violence of the past. </p>
<p>The ending of the US Civil War is a good example. For while the war ended, very little else changed with respect to race relations. This allowed citizens to maintain allegiance to the cultural symbols of the old Confederacy. The absence of social transformation allowed the old cultural symbols to survive to this day as markers of what some felt was an unfinished conflict. </p>
<p>Northern Ireland represents another example. Tensions over flags continue and they remain as cultural weapons. Loyalists protest nightly in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-24388338">Twaddell Avenue</a> now their flag <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-20651163">no longer flies daily above Belfast City Hall</a>, and a Republican councillor <a href="http://www.colerainetimes.co.uk/news/local-news/dup-members-call-for-investigation-1-6814324">unfurls the Irish Tricolour</a> at an inaugural meeting of a new council. Contested identities seem to require public expressions of support for the cultural symbols that embody this conflict. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86306/original/image-20150624-31518-1p8u9x0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86306/original/image-20150624-31518-1p8u9x0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=700&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86306/original/image-20150624-31518-1p8u9x0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=700&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86306/original/image-20150624-31518-1p8u9x0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=700&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86306/original/image-20150624-31518-1p8u9x0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=880&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86306/original/image-20150624-31518-1p8u9x0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=880&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86306/original/image-20150624-31518-1p8u9x0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=880&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">City Hall Belfast.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is because Northern Ireland has witnessed the end of war but not the beginning of a shared society. Cultural symbols are used to hang onto the past, not create a new future. </p>
<p>The Confederate flag is the past and it seems dysfunctional that it should fly on US public buildings still. <a href="https://theconversation.com/nikki-haleys-call-to-take-down-confederate-flag-reveals-ongoing-shift-in-gop-strategy-43744">Some politicians</a> have agreed it should do so no longer.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43814/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Brewer receives funding from the ESRC and the Leverhulme Trust</span></em></p>Symbols matter – and there’s no stronger symbol than a flag in a post-conflict society.John Brewer, Professor of Post Conflict Studies, Queen's University BelfastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/437652015-06-24T16:00:14Z2015-06-24T16:00:14ZThe license plate as podium: Who speaks – you or the government?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86170/original/image-20150623-19427-z7nkeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Government speech versus free speech</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=14349983233442240000&searchterm=us%20supreme%20court&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=248796931">Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><strong>Texas offers drivers a choice of specialty license plates but is the state, not the driver, doing the talking, when there’s a message on the plate? A recent Supreme Court case addressed the issues raised when state and private citizens team up to produce speech.</strong> </p>
<p>On June 18, in <a href="http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-144_758b.pdf">Walker v. Texas Division</a>, the Supreme Court ruled that the state of Texas could refuse to produce a specialty license plate featuring a Confederate battle flag. The ruling overturns a previous decision from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.</p>
<p>Writing for a five-person majority, Justice Stephen Breyer concluded that specialty license plates are a form of government speech, and therefore Texas may decide what the plates can say and what they cannot.</p>
<p>“Indeed,” Breyer writes, “a person who displays a message on a Texas license plate likely intends to convey to the public that the State has endorsed that message. If not, the individual could simply display the message in question in larger letters on a bumper sticker right next to the plate,” Breyer writes.</p>
<h2>Alito: Vanity plates are private speech on government property</h2>
<p>In dissent, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Anthony Kennedy, argued that the plates are really instances of private speech on government property. </p>
<p>This understanding would have triggered a requirement that the state not reject plates on the basis of viewpoint. Thus, the decision by the Texas Division of Motor Vehicles to reject the Confederate plate as “offensive” would have been unconstitutional. </p>
<p>It is absurd, Justice Alito argued, to think that the state of Texas is speaking on license plates that say “Rather Be Golfing” or “NASCAR—24 Jeff Gordon.” These specialty plates are not government speech, Alito insisted. Instead, they are private speech on a government-issued piece of property.</p>
<p>The Court’s decision has already had an impact. </p>
<p>The Governor of Virginia <a href="http://www.richmond.com/news/local/article_24731074-9400-5766-9dfb-56c92e310923.html">just announced</a> that that state will discontinue its Sons of Confederate Veterans plate. The outcome also suggests an answer to another case pending before the Court, in which North Carolina approved a “Choose Life” plate but rejected a pro-choice one. If the plates are government speech, the power to choose what to say lies with the government.</p>
<h2>What private-public partnerships constitute “government speech”?</h2>
<p>In our society, many kinds of speech combine private and public participation. These range from donated monuments in public parks, to publicly subsidized nonprofits, to student clubs at state universities and even to to beef commercials. </p>
<p>In recent years, the Supreme Court has taken to calling more of these partnerships “government speech.” </p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/24/politics/justices-say-all-ranchers-must-help-pay-for-federal-ads.html">The court did this</a> with the “Beef: It’s What’s for Dinner” commercials, which were funded by American beef producers through a special mandatory tax. It <a href="http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/08pdf/07-665.pdf">did it again</a> with a privately donated monument of the Ten Commandments in a public park. Justice Scalia wrote the majority opinion in the beef case, and Justice Alito did so in the Ten Commandments case. </p>
<p>Justice Breyer’s majority opinion invokes these earlier opinions as if to say, “If that was government speech, then this is too.”</p>
<p>“Government speech” is, however, an awkward way to characterize what is going on when citizens and the government are partners in creating a message. The real problem is the competing demands on the government. </p>
<p>On one hand, the First Amendment requires the government not to censor private individuals for their points of view. On the other hand, federal, state, and local governments have the power to take a stand on policy issues–we cast a vote for some candidates over others precisely because of the policies they will implement.</p>
<p>Sometimes, the government even has an obligation to take a certain position. The Establishment Clause and the Equal Protection Clause require the government to express certain values and reject others. For example, the state cannot endorse a particular religion, nor can it deny the equality of citizens under the law.</p>
<p>Cases like <em>Walker</em> put states in a dilemma. Does the First Amendment require them to partner with the Sons of Confederate Veterans? Or can they say no? Or are they <em>required</em> to say no, under the Equal Protection Clause? People disagree about when the government must be neutral, and when it either can, or must, implement its own values.</p>
<h2>The Ku Klux Klan’s adopt-a-highway scenario</h2>
<p>The same problem has arisen when the Ku Klux Klan has applied to participate in Adopt-A-Highway programs, as it did in Missouri in the late 1990s. </p>
<p>The Eighth Circuit concluded that, under the First Amendment, Missouri had to let the Klan participate. <a href="http://media.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/00/03/992334P.pdf">link text</a> The majority’s decision in <em>Walker</em> suggests that now the state could say no to partnering with a viewpoint so counter to its own values. </p>
<p>To go further, an interesting aspect of the Court’s <em>Walker</em> ruling is that, if license plates are deemed government speech, then certain messages on them might violate the Establishment Clause or even the Equal Protection Clause. A plate deemed to be improperly religious or, say, racist or sexist, could become something that the state not only could reject but would have to reject.</p>
<p>I doubt the Supreme Court majority thinks the state of Texas is anything but indifferent toward golfing. But it probably thinks that the state should retain some power to refuse to partner with speech it rejects as a matter of policy. The Court uses the term “government speech” to state this conclusion. </p>
<p>But calling something “government speech” does not tell us when the state can take a position and when it must remain neutral. </p>
<p>Calling license plates “government speech” is just the Court’s way of affirming another form of government speech: the state’s power to say “No.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43765/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leslie Kendrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The South shall rise again – but not on Texas car bumpers. A look at the Supreme Court’s nix on adding Confederate flags to Texas vanity license platesLeslie Kendrick, Professor of Law , University of VirginiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/437672015-06-24T15:45:05Z2015-06-24T15:45:05ZObama and the N-word<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86189/original/image-20150624-20047-1yod7dg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The president reacts to the news of the shooting in Charleston, South Carolina. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jonathan Ernst/Reuters</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The president <a href="http://potus.wtfpod.com/podcast/episodes/episode_613_-_president_barack_obama/">said the N-word</a>, and it became a top news story. </p>
<p>Now, it wasn’t the first time a president said the word — recordings exist in which <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/21/books/on-the-way-with-lbj.html">Lyndon Johnson</a> and <a href="http://www.csdp.org/research/nixonpot.txt">Richard Nixon</a> use the term artfully and prolifically. </p>
<p>However, it was the first time in recent memory that we know that a president used the term and meant to be heard saying it publicly. And, of course, it is not lost on audiences that said president is black. </p>
<p>Since I am someone who studies how black politicians born after 1960 advocate for African American interests, this story definitely piqued my interest. </p>
<p>What does it mean for any president, much less a black one who used race-neutral campaign tactics, to use such a word? </p>
<p>And is our attention on this story a distraction, especially in light of real racial issues, like police brutality and the recent hate crime in Charleston?</p>
<h2>A proper use of language</h2>
<p>I think people are making a bigger deal about President Obama’s use of this word than is necessary. </p>
<p>Yes, it is rarely heard in polite company. But if one has to use the word, the way in which President Obama deployed it was entirely proper.</p>
<p>He was not using it as part of his Chris Rock or Richard Pryor impression. He was not calling out any person or group of people. He used the term in the context of talking about people who say that word. </p>
<p>And frankly, by using the actual word instead of resorting to the contrivance of saying “the N-word,” he was rhetorically effective.</p>
<p>The problem is our collective American tendency to be superficial.</p>
<p>When President Obama invoked the N-word, he was making an important point about structural racism and our moral responsibility to be vigilant against all remaining forms of racial discrimination. </p>
<p>He rightly pointed out that some people think that refraining from the use of racial slurs is the sum of eliminating racism. </p>
<p>He rightfully observed that removing those words from one’s vocabulary is but a small part of promoting racial equality. </p>
<p>Yes, we should modify our language to be respectful of all people, but one can racially profile, deny jobs, housing and equal pay, and provide substandard schooling to minorities without calling them a racial slur. Frankly, these things are materially more important.</p>
<p>In his own way, President Obama was trying to shock Americans into thinking more critically about racial issues.</p>
<h2>Starting a conversation about race</h2>
<p>There is a tendency in this country to avoid serious conversations about race. </p>
<p>We’d rather relegate racism to the 1950s or contend that it is a province of backwards southerners. </p>
<p>Then, when we are confronted with the facts of continuing inequality — like the fact that in New York, black and Latino youth were more likely to be <a href="http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/public_information/TR534_FINALCompiled.pdf">stopped and frisked by the police without cause</a> or that last year, the Pew Research Center found that <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealth-gaps-great-recession/">median white net worth was 13 times the median net worth of blacks</a> — we look for every other possible explanation and refuse to confront the ways that racism explains a lot of the disparity. </p>
<p>Americans’ tendency to not address an obvious cause of so much inequality and strife dooms us to repeat the same cycle of racial conflict and even violence over and over again.</p>
<p>Some people might argue that by resurrecting such a hurtful word, President Obama was creating another smokescreen for racial issues. </p>
<p>Instead of talking about healing Charleston, for instance, news programs are devoting airtime to deconstructing the president’s use of this word. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Just one of the many media dissections of the president’s language.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hopefully, though, the president’s deployment of this term (and his larger argument for having deeper discussions about how to reduce racial inequality) will sink in because of the shock of having him speak so bluntly about the issue. </p>
<p>If by next week, we are talking about actual structural inequality and not about the fact that President Obama said the N-word (to be clear, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/search?q=confederate+flag">current debate</a> about the Confederate flag is an important one but a symbolic issue), then perhaps we can give him credit for having started a meaningful dialogue about race.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43767/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andra Gillespie currently supports her research through funding from Emory University. She has previously received fellowship support from the National Science Foundation and the Ford Foundation.</span></em></p>What does it mean for any president, much less a black one, to use such a word?Andra Gillespie, Associate Professor, Political Science , Emory UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/437602015-06-24T01:35:04Z2015-06-24T01:35:04ZIs the Confederate flag unconstitutional?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86172/original/image-20150623-19377-1z7gx8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People in Columbia, SC speak out.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmcleod/19086487542/in/photolist-uTtjGN-uUd7XP-dr2Y9T-5vLVbZ-4HMRP8-uNE2BR-uNyy69-uNyzMA-v3PHSA-v5BeMq-uNDX3k-u9h76B-uNvEJy-v3LGcC-u95M1f-uNyciL-v6oUWM-v5AN5d-uNF81K-uNw92Q-u96bXJ-u95cU5-v69xNB-u9hWH6-u97kJE-v5A3VY-u988Vs-u964X1-uND7qk-v6pQjZ-v5A6UU-uBmSK3-uBmTrJ-tX6VTD-uRCmv5-uUd6vR-7x4Xds-7x1bWM-4bWhha-252DV7-EChpK-8eXoq4-a3ibwX-8f1F1s-8fj7kj-8f1EYQ-8eXonR-8eXoka-8iedAa-8X8G3H">Perry B McLeod</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The tragedy in Charleston has revived the movement to take the Confederate battle flag from the South Carolina statehouse grounds. </p>
<p>On Monday June 22 - five days after the shooting in the AME Emanuel Church - South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley called a press conference to announce that, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>it is time to remove the flag from our capitol grounds…This flag, while an integral part of our past, does not represent the future of our great state. </p>
</blockquote>
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<p>This is a particularly sensitive issue because the flag is on state property. </p>
<p>The Confederate flag on public property leads many to ask: what message is the government sending? </p>
<h2>The case against flying the Confederate flag</h2>
<p>For those who want the flag to come down, the message is a reminder of white supremacy and the war fought to maintain slavery.</p>
<p>States have been taking Confederate flags and monuments down for years now, and refusing new requests to fly them. </p>
<p>Just this term the Supreme Court in <a href="http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-144_758b.pdf">Walker v Texas Sons of Confederate Veterans</a> permitted Texas to reject a specialty license plate proposed by the Sons of Confederate Veterans with a Confederate battle flag on it. </p>
<p>Justice Breyer concluded that what appears on the license plate is a form of government speech and that Texas could decide for itself what speech to permit. When Texas decided that it did not want to include the Confederate battle flag, Breyer concluded there was no first amendment right of members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans to require Texas to include the flag.</p>
<p>Integral to the conclusion that Texas can keep the Confederate battle flag off their license plates are the twin ideas that the government is speaking through the license plates and that Texas can control its own speech. </p>
<p>Such principles were used to justify the 2009 decision of Pleasant Grove City, Utah, to reject a monument from the Summum church for display on public property. </p>
<p>Writing for the majority in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-665.ZS.html">City of Pleasant Grove v Summum</a>, Justice Alito said “the display of a permanent monument in a public park” is likely to be perceived as the government’s speech. </p>
<p>The city could reject a religious monument, because observers would think the government was endorsing that monument. </p>
<p>So far, so good: the state can (and many of us believe ought to) reject the display of the Confederate flag on government property.</p>
<p>Now look at the other side of this. </p>
<h2>What is the state saying by flying the Confederate battle flag?</h2>
<p>What happens when the state government decides to speak by putting a Confederate battle flag or a monument to the Confederacy on its property (or permitting others to do so)? </p>
<p>What message is the state sending? </p>
<p>While we’re working on that thought experiment, take, for instance, the Confederate monument in front of the Sussex County, Virginia Courthouse. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86173/original/image-20150623-19368-4amzqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86173/original/image-20150623-19368-4amzqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86173/original/image-20150623-19368-4amzqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86173/original/image-20150623-19368-4amzqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86173/original/image-20150623-19368-4amzqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86173/original/image-20150623-19368-4amzqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86173/original/image-20150623-19368-4amzqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86173/original/image-20150623-19368-4amzqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1006&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This is what is in front of the Sussex Courthouse in Virginia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2012/10/sussex-county-confederate-monument.html">Alfred Brophy</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Note the inscription: “The principles for which they fought live eternally.” </p>
<p>That makes me suspicious of the quality of justice that African Americans can receive inside that courthouse. </p>
<p>Indeed, many people now see the rise of the use of the Confederate flag <a href="http://xroads.virginia.edu/%7Eclass/am483_97/projects/sarratt/resurge.html">during the Civil Rights movement</a> as a response to the increasing claims of African Americans to equality.</p>
<p>And as Justice Alito recognized in the Summum case, monuments on public property will lead observers to “routinely—and reasonably—interpret them as conveying some message on the property owner’s behalf.”</p>
<h2>Violation of the 14th amendment?</h2>
<p>That leads to the question, then, of whether government speech that tells African Americans they are inferior – and perhaps that the era of slavery was right – violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. </p>
<p>This is a stretch of current equal protection doctrine, which is concerned with tangible questions like funding rather than speech. </p>
<p>However, if a state legislature passed a statute proclaiming African Americans are inferior I can imagine that such a bold and vicious statement might rise to the level of a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s promise that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” </p>
<p>Now take a further step: does the Confederate battle flag or a monument to the Confederacy tell African American citizens that they are inferior? And if so, does that violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?</p>
<p>While the answer to the latter question may not be clearly yes, I don’t think it is clearly no, either.</p>
<p>Ultimately, this is really more a question of whether a state – and its politicians – want to continue to fly a flag that is so closely associated with a war begun to maintain slavery. </p>
<p>Many supporters of the flag say that the meaning for them is about southern heritage, not race hatred. And in this I am inclined to believe their statements about their motive. </p>
<p>But at this point in American history the flag has become closely associated in the minds of many with white supremacy, slavery, and Jim Crow segregation. Whatever its meaning once was – or still is in the minds of some – in the minds of many it is time to realize that this is a symbol that is sending the wrong message to US citizens.</p>
<p>Before this becomes a lawsuit, the Confederate flag should be taken down from in front of the South Carolina State House.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43760/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alfred L. Brophy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Does the Confederate flag tell African American citizens that they are inferior? And if so, does that violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?Alfred L. Brophy, Judge John J Parker Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina at Chapel HillLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/437442015-06-23T18:52:04Z2015-06-23T18:52:04ZNikki Haley’s call to take down Confederate flag reveals ongoing shift in GOP strategy<p>This week in a televised press conference, Republican South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley called for the removal of the Confederate Battle Flag from the South Carolina Statehouse grounds. </p>
<p>Before this week, Haley, like other Republican politicians, resisted calls for its removal. Now Haley joins prominent southern Republicans – Tennessee Senators Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander, along with 2016 presidential hopefuls Lindsey Graham and Jeb Bush – in calling for the flag to be taken down.</p>
<p>What accounts for this dramatic turnabout? Surely, the massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church last week was a decisive factor. But the abandonment of the symbol of the Confederacy reflects a slow – but definitive – shift away from the <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-12-04/birth-of-the-southern-strategy">Southern Strategy</a> that had long tied white, southern racial animus to national Republican goals. </p>
<p>Beginning in the mid-20th century, the campaigns of Republican presidential nominees exploited race to win over white Democrats, first in the South and then nationally. </p>
<p>In the 1964 presidential election, Republican Senator Barry Goldwater ran in opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Bill. He won only five states outside his home state of Arizona – but all of them were in the Deep South. </p>
<p>Four years later, Richard Nixon sought to siphon votes from segregationist Alabama Governor George C Wallace by claiming to represent a silent majority of Americans who stood for “law and order” – those alarmed by the black protests sweeping through cities nationwide, and opposed to school desegregation via forced busing. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86144/original/image-20150623-19411-12ot21y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86144/original/image-20150623-19411-12ot21y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86144/original/image-20150623-19411-12ot21y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86144/original/image-20150623-19411-12ot21y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86144/original/image-20150623-19411-12ot21y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86144/original/image-20150623-19411-12ot21y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86144/original/image-20150623-19411-12ot21y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86144/original/image-20150623-19411-12ot21y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">During his 1968 campaign for the presidency, Richard Nixon appealed to ‘law and order’ (read: anti-black) voters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/NIXONcampaigns.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Reagan opened his 1980 campaign in Neshoba County, Mississippi (where civil rights workers James Cheney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/slain-civil-rights-workers-found">were murdered in 1964</a>), telling voters, “I believe in states’ rights” – a euphemism for opposition to federal civil rights enforcement.</p>
<p>And eight years later, George H W Bush’s campaign strategist Lee Atwater race-baited Bush’s Democratic opponent Michael Dukakis though a series of ads featuring a convicted black rapist. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Republican campaign strategist Lee Atwater’s infamous 1988 race-baiting attack ad.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Why, then, are Republicans now turning their backs on the symbol of white southern resistance it once depended on? </p>
<p>Political scientists have long debated when, why and how partisan political identities and interests change. They often point to dramatic events or the emergence of crucial new issues as critical junctures. </p>
<p>But we can also look at slower, more subtle changes in the ideas and commitments of political actors to understand how micropolitics produce broader shifts.</p>
<p>So what happened with the GOP and its relationship with race? </p>
<p>First, in the 1990s, the Democratic Party – which has its own <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dixiecrat-Revolt-Solid-South-1932-1968/dp/0807849103">historical issues with race</a> – would again exploit white fears for political gain. Bill Clinton, under the influence of the conservative, southern-based <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=2EsVAQAAIAAJ&dq=CPE+rejuvenation+of+the+Democratic+Party&lr=&as_brr=0&hl=pt-PT&cd=4">Democratic Leadership Council</a>, pushed through anti-crime legislation that’s largely responsible for creating the current prison-industrial complex (where blacks are <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/20/upshot/missing-black-men.html?abt=0002&abg=1">overwhelmingly represented</a>). He also dismantled welfare through instituting lifetime limits for recipients, reducing benefits and enforcing work requirements. </p>
<p>Second, with the absence of a strong black freedom struggle, a new generation of Republicans sought to interpret the legacy of the civil rights movement for their own gain. </p>
<p>These leaders included George W Bush, who acknowledged and apologized for the Southern Strategy while <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/elections/bushtext071000.htm">arguing for</a> neo-liberal and individualist forms of black empowerment. Later, prominent conservative figures like Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed and Fox News commentator Glenn Beck would regularly invoke Martin Luther King, Jr. </p>
<p>Third, the nation’s <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/pew-chart-on-americas-changing-demographics-2014-4">changing racial demographics</a> have forced Republicans to try to shed their image of the party of “stuffy old men” (as a <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/03/rnc-report-gop-scary-out-of-touch-88974.html">2012 report</a> from the Republican National Committee put it). </p>
<p>Meanwhile, a number of prominent Republican conservatives of color have emerged in the last decade. These include former Florida House member Allen West, Utah Representative Mia Love, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and Tea Party-backed presidential hopefuls such as Herman Cain and Dr Ben Carson. Even two of the Palmetto State’s most prominent politicians are minorities: Senator Tim Scott and Governor Nikki Haley. </p>
<p>Yet Haley’s announcement isn’t so much evidence that the Southern Strategy is <em>over</em>; rather, it shows that it’s done its job. </p>
<p>Republicans no longer need to court white southerners in overtly racist ways, because they’ve already fully absorbed them into the Republican coalition. Where else can they go?</p>
<p>This is not to say that the GOP has resolved its race problem. Indeed, Republican positions on voter ID laws, affirmative action, and social and economic policies are at odds with the political views of the overwhelming majority of African Americans. The GOP can simply pursue these ends without direct appeal to blatant symbols of white supremacy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43744/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph Lowndes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Historically, Republican politicians have subtly – and not-so-subtly – exploited racial fears.Joseph Lowndes, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of OregonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.