The Confederate flag is not enough: Why our new race debate misses the point

Responding to widespread public pressure, South Carolina governor Nikki Haley is calling for the removal of the Confederate flag from the State Capitol inCharleston. Although my colleague, S.E. Smith, pointed out that Haley has no power to actually remove it, she has joined other GOP politicians in denouncing the flag—including Lindsey Graham, Mitt Romney, and Donald Trump. In addition, Walmart and Amazon have dropped all apparel donning the flag, while Virginia is dropping the flag as an option from their personalized license plates. While it’s absolutely time for the flag to go the way of the dodo, it’s hardly a cure for the real problems haunting Charleston less than a week after nine people were gunned down in the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church by Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old who subscribed to white supremacist ideologies. You can kill a symbol, but it’s not as easy to extinguish an idea—or the gun politics that help enforce it.

his is not to deny the power of the Confederate flag’s removal. The flag is not simply a memorial commemorating “bravery in the Civil War,” as Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly recently argued, it’s a reminder of the peculiar institution that the South fought to protect: slavery. If Barack Obama told Marc Maron that the slave trade “casts a long shadow and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on,” it is not an abstract idea. He was being literal—slavery’s shadow can be seen flapping in the Charleston wind every day.

However, if slavery is part of our DNA, the effects of America’s troubled history won’t be quelled by taking down the flags of South Carolina, Mississippi, or any other flags that honor “Southern heritage.” Instead, we must combat that heritage itself, which continues to be romanticized in our schools, our homes, and our entertainment.

In a widely circulated photo that’s indicative of Dylann Roof’s ideologies, he’s pictured in front of the Confederate Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, one emblazoned with the Confederate flag, and the image shocked Americans. But shouldn’t we be more concerned with the fact that such an establishment continues to operate? Or that it’s far from the only museum of its kind?

This speaks to the stark discrepancy between how different parts of the country remember the Civil War. While 52 percent of all Americans believe that the war was a dispute over slavery, a 2011 CNN poll found that an alarmingly high 42 percent still believe that it was about states’ rights. Even more disturbing is the fact that nearly a quarter of respondents reported that they empathize more with the South’s cause than the North—and that figure jumps up to around 40 percent among Southern white folks. Clearly Charleston’s Confederate Museum does not want for potential customers.

This divide comes down to the words we use to describe the Civil War itself, often known in the South as “Lincoln’s War” or “The War of Northern Aggression,” which suggests that it was a conflict started by the Abraham Lincoln and Union.Idaho Statesman writer Banyard Woods grew up in Charleston, where their classroom education about the “War of Northern Aggression” tiptoed around the painful realities of the conflict, truths that many in the South clearly still cannot face up to.

“When we studied the Revolutionary War, we learned about Francis Marion, the ‘Swamp Fox,’ but we did not learn that despite hosting more battles than any other colony, South Carolina contributed fewer fighters than any other to the Continental Army, because they needed the men to oppress the slave population, partially because of the fear of another Stono Creek,” Woods writes.

This apologia for the war—cherrypicking the aspects most ripe for nostalgia—is surprisingly common in popular narratives about the Civil War, from the absurdly successful Gone with the Windto Birth of a Nation, a movie that wasn’t just popular among Southern Democrats. Woodrow Wilson liked D.W. Griffith’s ode to “Southern bravery” so much that he regularly showed it in the White House. In the film’s most infamous scene, Griffith depicts the effects of allowing black people intoCongress after Reconstruction. It’s presented like a zoo.

However, our double consciousness around the Civil War reflects more than just how we view the past. It’s a reflection of our historical present. The current NRA president, Jim Porter, even referred to the “War of Northern Aggression” in a 2015 speech.

The NRA was started, 1871, right here in New York state. It was started by some Yankee generals who didn’t like the way my Southern boys had the ability to shoot in what we call the “War of Northern Aggression.” Now, y’all might call it the Civil War, but we call it the War of Northern Aggression down south.

But that was the very reason that they started the National Rifle Association, was to teach and train the civilian in the use of the standard military firearm. And I am one who still feels very strongly that that is one of our most greatest charges that we can have today, is to train the civilian in the use of the standard military firearm, so that when they have to fight for their country they’re ready to do it.

Porter’s statement (note the way he says “my Southern boys”) is a reflection of the ways in which we’ve allowed a debate over the removal of a flag to usurp the conversations we should be having instead. In addition to fighting the legacy of slavery—as well as America’s broader racial issues—Porter shows that racism and opposition to gun control often go hand in hand.

While they’re treated as separate issues, research has shown they’re all part of the same problem—white supremacy. In 2013, Pacific Standard’s Tom Jacobs reported on a study from Australia’s Monash University, which found that a “high score on a common measure of racial resentment increases the odds that a person will (a) have a gun in the house, and (b) be opposed to gun control. This holds true even after other ‘explanatory variables,’ including political party affiliation, are taken into account.”

It goes further than that: Our current gun control debate is actually a product of the Civil War itself, with the post-Reconstruction Ku Klux Klan fighting for gun control as a way to keep guns out of the hands of black people. “Before the Civil War, blacks in the South had never been allowed to possess guns,” the Daily Beast’s Adam Winkler writes. “During the war, however, blacks obtained guns for the first time.” That power scared whites so thoroughly that Southern states developed reactionary Black Codes, discriminatory policies that barred gun ownership from black people.

Although the development of the NRA should have then empowered black people (by lobbying for everyone’s right to own a gun), the gun laws that developed in the wake of the Uniform and Firearms Act continued to prevent equal access. The first gun control law, the Uniform and Firearms Act of 1934, required gun owners to apply for a license. But Winkler writes that there was a catch: “According to the law, only ‘suitable people’ with a ‘proper reason’ for being armed in public were eligible.” These terms were so vague that they could apply to anyone, and that loophole was often used to target prospective black gun owners.

While the Right’s stance on gun control has since shifted to the other extreme, policies continue to arm white men at the expense of people of color, who are structurally barred from ownership. “America’s most recent gun control efforts, such as requiring federally licensed dealers to conduct background checks, aren’t designed to keep blacks from having guns, only criminals,” Winkler writes. “Of course, the unfortunate reality is that the criminal population in America is disproportionately made up of racial minorities.”

Winkler reminds us that the more things change, the more they stay the same, especially for black folks in America. Retiring the Confederate flag might be a way to cosmetically address those concerns, but it doesn’t explain why it was still flying to begin with—or why so many people will fight to protect it, clutching their guns and heritage. Confronting the symbols of white supremacy means a true reckoning with a past that is very much alive—in Dylann Roof’s Facebook photos, on the streets of South Carolina, in our textbooks, and in our courts.

Throwing away a flag is a nice gesture, but for those mourning Charleston’s dead, it’s not the one they need.

Nico Lang is the Opinion Editor at the Daily Dot, as well as a contributor to L.A. Times, Rolling Stone, and the Onion A.V. Club. You can follow him on Twitter @nico_lang.

FACT: April 15, 1861...Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to “suppress the rebellion.” (Seen throughout the country as a declaration of war against the seceded states.)
FACT: April 19, 1861...Lincoln ordered the blockade of Southern ports. (In and of itself an act of war against the South.)
FACT: April 27, 1861...Lincoln ordered an expanded blockade to include North Carolina and Virginia; (Another act of war against the South.)
May 6, 1861...The South declares war against the North.

So, who started the war? Don’t say the South when it fired on Fort Sumter, because Fort Sumter was in South Carolina, which had seceded, and thus was not a part of the United States, and a United States military force was occupying South Carolina territory and refused to vacate it. So, who actually initiated aggression against an independent country? Lincoln’s federals did when they blockaded Southern ports. All prior to the South declaring war. It’s like December, 1941. Did the war with Japan begin when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor? Or did it begin when Roosevelt asked for and Congress issued a Declaration of War a few days later? Of course that war began on December 7, 1941 with the Japanese attack on pearl Harbor.

Did WWII in Europe begin on September 1, 1939 with the German attack on Poland? Or did it begin later when the Poles could make a declaration of war? It began on September 1, 1939 with the German invasion of Poland.

Finally, you snidely assert that my country is NOT the USA. You can kiss my white ass, bub, because USA is my country, a country I proudly served during Vietnam while in the US Air Force.

But you don’t defend the USA whenever there’s an opportunity to to trash us in favor of your real heartthrob, the CSA.

FRiend, the facts are indisputable.
First the Confederacy provoked war dozens of times by unlawfully seizing by force US Federal properties —forts, ships, arsenals, mints, etc.
Outgoing Democrat President Buchanan did nothing to stop secessionist lawlessness, but in those few cases where there were actual Union troops, Buchanan held the forts, and attempted to resupply them.
Dough - faced and sympathetic as Buchanan was to the Southern cause, he never agreed that Confederate seizures of Federal properties was lawful.
After his inauguration on March 4, 1861, Lincoln merely continued Buchanan’s policy of supplying Union troops in Southern forts.
But by now the Confederacy was going berserk, demanding immediate surrender, and when the Union commander at Fort Sumter tried to delay a few days longer, Confederates launched a military assault that began the Civil War as certainly as the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor began US direct participation in WWII.

Those are facts which cannot be disputed.
It’s also factual to report that the Confederacy soon formally declared war and sent military aid to pro-Confederates in the Union state of Missouri, all before a single Confederate soldier was killed directly by any Union force, and before any Union Army invaded a single Confederate state.

As for whether Lincoln ever “declared war”, insane Confederates were saying his Inaugural Address on March 4, was a “declaration of war” when in fact it offered an olive branch of peace.
But Confederates had no interest in peace, and called everything Lincoln said war declarations.
In the meantime, all of the actual warfare was being conducted be the Confederacy against the United States.

Out of timr, must run...

Lincoln saw the firing on Fort Sumter as an attack on his revenue collection interests. Prior to Sumter’s bombardment, in his first inaugural address, Lincoln had this to say about Sumter and other forts and federal properties:

“The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere.”

What exactly is he saying in that passage? He is saying he will invade and use force against and among the people to hold, occupy and possess the property and places belonging to the government and to collect the duties and impost (i.e., the revenues).”

It is clear that Lincoln is saying he will take up arms to collect taxes and revenues and to retake governmental (federal) property and holdings. Prior to the bombardment of Sumter in mid-April, 1861 federal property in the seceded states had been taken over by those states, without violence, including customs houses and military and naval installations. Indeed, the seceded states even offered to pay the federal government for those properties. It is also clear that Lincoln was obsessed with collecting revenues (taxes).

In his first inaugural address, Lincoln basically gave the South the option of taxes or war. Historian Charles Adams said: “The mere suggestion that the South could secede unmolested as long as it paid taxes to the U.S. Government was a demand for tribute, which was an outrage. Such tax policy would never be tolerated. War was a certainty.”

Lincoln knew that federal installations in the seceded states, especially those in the harbors, were essential for revenue collection, even if they held little or no military value. He also knew he would lose those revenues if the seceded states were allowed to stay out of the Union. The Philadelphia Press, in mid-January, 1861, said the following:

“In the enforcement of the revenue laws, the forts are of primary importance. Their guns cover just so much ground as is necessary to enable the United States to enforce their laws….Those forts the United States must maintain. It is not a question of coercing South Carolina, but of enforcing the revenue laws….The practical point, either way, is – whether the revenue laws of the United States shall or shall not be enforced at those three ports, Charleston, Beaufort, and Georgetown, or whether they shall or shall not be made free ports, open to the commerce of the world, with no other restriction upon it than South Carolina shall see proper to impose….Forts are to be held to enforce the revenue laws, not to conquer a state….It is the enforcement of the revenue laws, not the coercion of the State, that is the question of the hour. If those laws cannot be enforced, the Union is clearly gone; if they can, it is safe.”

That same newspaper, immediately after South Carolina seceded in December, 1860, said that:

“The government cannot well avoid collecting the federal revenues at all Southern ports, even after the passage of secession ordinances; and if this duty is discharged, any State which assumes a rebellious attitude will still be obliged to contribute revenue to support the Federal Government or have her foreign commerce entirely destroyed.”

Sounds almost like a declaration of war, and would have been if uttered by the Congress instead of a newspaper.

The New York Evening Post said, in early March, 1861:

“That either the revenue from duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the port must be closed to importations from abroad, is generally admitted. If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed; the sources which supply our treasury will be dried up; we shall have no money to carry on the government; the nation will become bankrupt before next crop pf corn is ripe.”

Fort Sumter, located as it was in the middle of Charleston Harbor, commanded the passages into the interior harbor and port. As such, it could easily have interdicted Southern commerce by closing down a free trade port (the prohibitive Morrill Tariff went into effect in early March, 1861, so commerce and trade had a choice between paying low taxes in Confederate ports or high taxes in Union ports, which would have been wholly unfavorable to Northern interests). Economics demanded that Sumter be defended by the Union on the one hand and on the other hand rendered inoperable by the Confederacy.

In a nutshell, the North saw a free and independent South as an economic threat that could be fatal to the nation.

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