The War of Northern Regression

"Dagnabbit, Fishy Sue, they up and took down the Reb flag over t' the capitol! Guess we cain't hate thum coloreds no more. Welp, better call all 23 kids in here and tell 'em the bad news. While we're at it, the hell we need all these guns fer, anyway?"

...said nobody ever.

Yeah, ok, I see everybody's point. The flag of the Confederacy celebrates an armed insurrection against the United States perpetrated by slaveholders to preserve the source of their wealth: humans as property. I get it. Really. (Plus when everybody else is hollering, "It's over, take it down!"? You know I have to shed a tear of pride.)

But ugh! the persistent focus on this emblem smacks me as problematic in a number of ways. Oh, do let's count them.

First, the frequent and vigorous insistence that the Confederate flag has no other meaning than "Golly, it sure was nice when the darkies knew their place" does not make it so. The meanings and associations of that symbol, existing in the brains of the millions of humans with roots in the Confederate states, are far more multivalent and complex than the prevailing formula allows. People's identities and sense of family history are infinitely more nuanced than a single fraught icon can convey.

I mean, seriously: consider the United States' 239-year international track record on human rights, economic justice, or the sovereignty of nations; and examine your own gut-level feelings about that nation's flag. Simple revulsion? No? Then you're a fucking racist.

Whose backs DON'T we tread on for our prosperity?

I'm not arguing in favor of official, taxpayer-supported promotion of the "rebel" flag. I just don't think it's particularly effective to stand in the North screaming "Racist!" all the doo-dah day across the Mason-Dixon line.

I mean, just because it worked for THIS guy...

 Anyway, the icon isn't the culture. I'm embarrassed at the number of smart people around me who seem to believe that iconography precedes a value system instead of the other way around. Sure, an icon can be employed to reinforce and rally and unite; but even if we (generously and for the sake of argument) view the Confederate flag as solely or primarily a rallying point for a racist culture, to suggest that removing the flag will somehow topple that culture, Jenga style, betrays a naïveté so pernicious and silly it borders on prayer, for fuck's sake.

Tied to this is the persistent scaffold-axiom that anybody with a sense of place and pride in the Confederate South must come from a slave-owning or -trafficking family. This again oversimplifies both racist and classism: slave ownership was for rich people. The lower and middle classes were, in the mid-19th century, whupped up into a froth over "states' rights" and such because the one percenters had the means to sell that bill of goods—sound familiar? sheesh, why does every generation think they invented Fox News?—and because nationalism always sells. Alas, something about human development—something probably intrinsic to our success as a species—ensures you can pretty much always convince a good chunk of people to stand on the M-D line screaming "Racist!" (or "Tyrant!").

Which brings us to a few related points: I've seen numerous posts dripping with druidic righteousness...

... suggesting:

(1) That the Great White Union that prosecuted the Civil War did so in the name of freedom and human dignity, a sort of belated promotion of black folk to the status of "men"—you remember men, right? We cited them as having been "created equal" in the Declaration of Independence.

Seriously? You're seriously going to look at me without a dram of irony and insist that "the Civil War was about ending slavery, period"? As if the moral crisis of 21st-century racism trumps any and all historical forces?

(2) That that same gubmt wasn't, even back then, actively colluding with corporations and business in their effective (if not legal) ownership of workers, ruthless exploitation of the poor and of natural resources, child labor, etc.; and that that same collusion and exploitation, despite some progressive setbacks in the early 20th century, hasn't continued to this day. Derp.

(3) That armed insurrection against a federal government that's essentially a figurehead for capital is a bad thing. Whut.

So there you have it. Of course every argument I rehearse here will be similarly reduced to "Gourd proudly flies Confederate battle flag!" and I will add a bright shiny medal proclaiming me RACISM APOLOGIST which I will hang next to the medal for RAPE APOLOGIST. I have been around the block before and I know how this works. (In case you're new here, the formula is: "Sumter, Sumter, Sumter, DARK SIDE.")