Posted on 01/06/2003 7:55:23 PM PST by stainlessbanner
At the beginning of the school year, Dixie Outfitters T-shirts were all the rage at Cherokee High School. Girls seemed partial to one featuring the Confederate battle flag in the shape of a rose. Boys often wore styles that discreetly but unmistakably displayed Dixie Outfitters' rebel emblem logo.
But now the most popular Dixie Outfitters shirt at the school doesn't feature a flag at all. It says: ''Jesus and the Confederate Battle Flag: Banned From Our Schools But Forever in Our Hearts.'' It became an instant favorite after school officials prohibited shirts featuring the battle flag in response to complaints from two African-American families who found them intimidating and offensive.
The ban is stirring old passions about Confederate symbols and their place in Southern history in this increasingly suburban high school, 40 miles northwest of Atlanta. Similar disputes over the flag are being played out more frequently in school systems -- and courtrooms -- across the South and elsewhere, as a new generation's fashion choices raise questions about where historical pride ends and racial insult begins.
Schools in states from Michigan to Alabama have banned the popular Dixie Outfitters shirts just as they might gang colors or miniskirts, saying they are disruptive to the school environment. The rebel flag's modern association with white supremacists makes it a flashpoint for racial confrontation, school officials say.
''This isn't an attempt to refute Southern heritage,'' said Mike McGowan, a Cherokee County schools spokesman. ''This is an issue of a disruption of the learning environment in one of our schools.''
Walter C. Butler Jr., president of the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP, said it is unreasonable to ask African Americans not to react to someone wearing the rebel flag. ''To ask black people to respect a flag that was flown by people who wanted to totally subjugate and dehumanize you -- that is totally unthinkable,'' he said.
But the prohibitions against flag-themed clothing have prompted angry students, parents, Confederate-heritage groups and even the American Civil Liberties Union to respond with protests and lawsuits that argue that students' First Amendment rights are being trampled in the name of political correctness.
''This is our heritage. Nobody should be upset with these shirts,'' said Ree Simpson, a senior soccer player at Cherokee who says she owns eight Confederate-themed shirts. ''During Hispanic Heritage Month, we had to go through having a kid on the intercom every day talking about their history. Do you think they allow that during Confederate History Month?''
Simpson said no one complains when African-American students wear clothes made by FUBU, a black-owned company whose acronym means ''For Us By Us.'' Worse, she says, school officials have nothing to say when black students make the biting crack that the acronym also means ''farmers used to beat us.'' Similarly, she says, people assume that members of the school's growing Latino population mean no harm when they wear T-shirts bearing the Mexican flag.
Simpson believes the rebel flag should be viewed the same way. The days when the banner was a symbol of racial hatred and oppression are long gone, she contends. Far from being an expression of hate, she says, her affection for the flag simply reflects Southern pride. ''I'm a country girl. I can't help it. I love the South,'' she said. ''If people want to call me a redneck, let them.''
It is a sentiment that is apparently widely shared at Cherokee, and beyond. The day after Cherokee Principal Bill Sebring announced the T-shirt ban on the school's intercom this fall, more than 100 students were either sent home or told to change clothes when they defiantly wore the shirts to school. In the weeks that followed, angry parents and Confederate heritage groups organized flag-waving protests outside the school and at several school board meetings.
''All hell broke loose,'' said Tom Roach, an attorney for the Cherokee County school system. When principals banned the shirts at other county high schools in the past, he said, ''there was no public outcry. No complaints. No problems.''
But the Confederate flag was a particularly hot topic in Georgia this year. Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes was upset in his re-election bid in part because he successfully pushed for redesign of the Georgia state flag, which was formerly dominated by the Confederate battle emblem. On the new state banner, the emblem is reduced to a small icon. During the campaign, Barnes' opponent, Sonny Perdue, called for a referendum on the new flag, a position that analysts say helped make him the state's first elected Republican governor since Reconstruction.
Elsewhere in the South, civil rights groups have mobilized to remove the banner in recent years. Activists had it removed from atop the South Carolina statehouse and from other public places, saying it is an insult to African Americans and others who view it as a symbol of bigotry and state-sanctioned injustice. But that campaign has stirred a resentful backlash from groups that view it as an attack on their heritage.
''We're not in a battle just for that flag, we're in a battle to determine whether our Southern heritage and culture survives,'' said Dan Coleman, public relations director for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, one of the groups that joined the protests at Cherokee High School.
The battle over Confederate-themed clothing has made its way to the courts, which generally have sided with school dress codes that prevent items that officials deem disruptive.
In a 1969 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Tinker vs. Des Moines Independent Community School District that school officials could not prohibit students from wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War, but only because the court found that the armbands were not disturbing the school atmosphere.
By contrast, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit earlier this year revived a lawsuit by two Kentucky students suspended for wearing shirts featuring the Confederate flag. The court said the reasons for the suspension were vague and remanded the case to a lower court, where it was dismissed after the school district settled with the students.
Also, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit earlier this fall sided with a Washington, N.J., student who challenged his school's ban on a T-shirt displaying the word ''redneck.'' The student was suspended from Warren Hills Regional High School for wearing the shirt, which school officials said violated their ban on clothing that portrays racial stereotypes. The school's vice principal said he took ''redneck'' to mean a violent, bigoted person.
But the court overturned the ban, saying the shirt was not proven to be disruptive. School officials, noting the school has a history of racial tensions, have promised to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.
''Since last year, we have gotten well over 200 complaints about the banning of Confederate symbols in schools,'' said Kirk Lyons, lead counsel for the Southern Legal Resource Center, a North Carolina-based public-interest law firm that works to protect Confederate heritage and is in discussions with some families at Cherokee High School. He said the center is litigating six lawsuits and that dozens of others challenging Confederate clothing bans have been filed across the country.
As the controversy grows, Confederate-themed clothing has become more popular than ever. The owner of Georgia-based Dixie Outfitters says the firm sold 1 million T-shirts last year through the company's Web site and department stores across the South. Most of the shirts depict Southern scenes and symbols, often with the Confederate emblem.
''This is not your typical, in-your-face redneck type of shirt,'' said Dewey Barber, the firm's owner. ''They are espousing the Southern way of life. We're proud of our heritage down here.''
Barber said he is ''troubled'' that his shirts are frequently banned by school officials who view them as offensive. ''You can have an Iraqi flag in school. You can have the Russian flag. You can have every flag but the Confederate flag. It is puzzling and disturbing,'' he said.
Let me give you an example of "relatively unimportant." Some 40 years ago my father built a workshop on his property. Nice workshop...cement block, windows, a door that locked. Fast forward to 30 years later when we built another building on the same property to house two boats. We had to get a building permit from the local government and meet certain standards. This is not a public building where public safety standards have to be met. In other words it is "relatively unimportant" the quality of this shed since it has nothing to do with the public. It only needed to keep two boats out of the weather. Yet the government intervenes in this "relatively unimportant" matter and the shed ended up costing us about $15,000.00.
Where do we draw the line on "relatively unimportant" and government interference in private lives and private decisions.
Wow! Are you ever history challenged.
Explain please. At the time the north invaded the south, the south was funding some 75% of the federal treasury which was being spent in the north as "industrial development." You don't call that ruinous?
Slavery kept down the white man because it debased the value of white labor.
The very reason for the race riots in NYC and exclusionary laws in the north. The yankees realized that free, or cheap, black labor meant no jobs for whites. They didn't want them either.
I am confident that without slavery, there would not have been a Civil War as we know it.
Then what kind of "civil" war would there have been?
As a transplanted yankee, born and raised in the North,I understand your attitude, and I hope you can come to understand what the South considers the extremely offensive and naked hypocracy of the North.
This country endured a viscious and brutal civil war.The death toll was huge, on both sides.The actual battlefields were primarily located in the Southern states, who did indeed lose that war.Northern women were not brutally raped by invading soldiers.Northern homes were not burned to the ground.Northern landowners were not summarily deprived of family owned property.Northerners did not endure the decades of poverty and subjugation and the attempt of the "victors" to completely erradicate a society.
After all these years, one would think the North would get over their pride of victory and attempt to deal honestly with history and reality.
BTW, speaking historically on behalf of my Sioux ancestors,why dont you all get off my lands, and take your slaves with you?LOL!
Or am I, and my people, not an equally deserving minority who obviously would be mortally offended by the sight of a particular flag?
Stupid PC Barf alert.I get so sick of the inane worship of politics over reality.
As for Lee, he said he disliked slavery but thought it necessary, unavoidable and beneficial for the time being and for years to come. If all opponents of slavery were like him, there might still be slaves and slaveholders in the US.
Well, hell, I ain't gonna conjure him up. Maybe he's playing opening act for algore's book tour.
I don't think that would work in the public schools. The courts and lawyers wouldn't allow it.
There may be some public schools that require uniforms, but I'd be surprised. I doubt Clinton would have come out for uniforms in public schools if he thought it were at all possible to require them.
Out of curiostity, which areas were those?
Oh no, you made yourself perfectly clear! Thank you!
Yes but Lee freed his slaves when he left to serve in the Army of Northern VA. Grant still held his slaves until they were freed by Constitutional amendment in 1867 (not by the "emancipation" proclamation.)
Who? Who? WHO?
Don't respond. Yes he's off doing the liberal thang and creating discontent among the ill-informed masses...or is that massahs?
I've never heard of "magnet schools." Where does one find a magnet school?
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