The Lower Frequencies

The sheer number of Facebook posts on my feed concerning the Confederate flag should probably dissuade me from adding to the clutter, but it’s been hard to squelch the thoughts turning around in my head so I’m going to go ahead and put some of them down.

Warning: opinions ahead.

Those defending the flag mention “heritage” and honoring those soldiers who fought bravely for the South in the Civil War, who acted on their principles and apparently never out of any actual desire to see the continued subjugation of the African race (“most Southerners didn’t even own slaves” – as if that’s a defense for not seeing anything wrong with the others who did). They also mention the fact that the flag wasn’t THE flag of the Confederacy – “it was only a battle flag” – and thus doesn’t REALLY signify the hatred, bigotry and intimidation that many in this country seem to think it does. I’m not really sure what argument is being made with this one, to be honest – the flag represented men who were fighting to support the South’s desire to maintain slavery (sure, and state’s rights), who were killing Northerners who, yes, were probably just as racist, but who were fighting for the morally defensible side.  Sorry, the side fighting against slavery trumps everything else.

Then I’ve seen supporters trot out pictures of the Klan carrying American flags, and asking why THAT flag isn’t subject to the same outrage. Or they point out any number of awful things committed by America under the American flag. A disingenuous argument at best, as the American flag has not been co-opted by outliers, whether they be racist organizations or just regional areas. The American flag is a national symbol – it is flown everywhere, from Maine to California and everywhere in between and represents to the majority of Americans the ideals of freedom and opportunity. The Confederate flag?  Not so much. Isolated to the Southeast, it has its roots in the “War of Northern Aggression” and enjoyed a resurgence in the South as a symbol of defiance against the Civil Rights movement. Anyone who claims that the Southern Cross doesn’t carry some pretty heavy racist baggage, then, is either misinformed at best or lying. And, really, if the best argument that can be mustered in defense of a flag is, “well, America’s done bad things, too” then it’s probably time to reconsider your stance a bit.

That being said, the current rush among retailers to ban the sale and manufacture of the flag is an empty gesture, at best. What does it accomplish? A store declaring “We’re against racism”? Pardon my french, but no shit, really? It’s the easiest thing in the world for these companies to do, and amounts to nothing more than a public relations ploy. How much will it effect Wal-Mart’s bottom-line, you think? Amazon’s? And yet that’s where our attention has been turned.

It’s a band-aid fix for something that requires major surgery.

That’s what frustrates me the most about this.  The racist killer Roof is seen in a picture holding a Confederate flag, and suddenly all the attention is placed on the damned piece of cloth. In the rush for the easy action, the simple action, the harder questions aren’t being asked, much less answered: what led Roof to hold these views? How did he decide that killing members of a church was the right course of action?  What needs to change in society that these views no longer have the ability to develop and grow?

Probably obvious, but the Confederate flag isn’t the answer to any of the above.

This entry was posted on June 26, 2015 at 7:20 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.