Posted on 06/25/2015 3:05:10 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
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.
perhaps most importantly, genes were received.
without gene transfer there would be no Michael Jordan
330,000 WHITE Union military knowingly left their families and went to their DEATHS during the Civil War; they gave up their lives to free the BLACK AMERICAN SLAVES, they FOLLOWED the directives and emancipation orders of their government, a government THEY ELECTED. I have never heard a Progressive African-American, or a White Progressive, ever ACKNOWLEDGE, much less “thank” these men for their sacrifices, nor do they recognize the 260,000 White Union military who were wounded and/or grievously disabled; nor the widows; nor the children; nor the families of the military who also suffered TO FREE THE BLACK SLAVES.
Rein flick. Damn IPad.
Today, minorities have a better life in the South than in the North.
The South has economic growth, less crime, better schools and smaller governments.
There is more happening here than just a symbol.
How our families got here is irrelevant. That used to be the whole point of America. Ken Hamblin used to thank God his ancestors were slaves. My family name is german and they came as indentured servants for England after oppression by the French. Do I hate the French or Germans? My granmother’s father was an indentured servant from England. Should I then hate the American who paid for the trip? Where does it end?
That used to be the point to America. I remember being in the OR on. Case in the 80s and the surgeon had been born in Yugoslavia, educated in Germany, US, and Canada. One of the nurses remarked on his name as she was from the region. Turns out one was Serb and the other Croatian. They started to unpack their grievances and I had to stop them with, “Can we get back to the case, here? Guys, this is America. The whole point is you leave all that back there.”
The whole point here used to be it didn’t matter if your family were peons our princes “back there”. Here you were either useful or lazy and it was up to you. Of course, that don’t suit some people so we have to wade through all this crap all over again every 25 years it seems.
I would bet a significant sum that this is factually inaccurate. Georgia, for instance, was at the time sparsely populated.
SC contributed fewer fighters than DE? Really?
Also, most of the battles in SC didn't involve the Continental Army. They were fought in what was really a nasty little civil war between Tory and Patriot South Carolinians. IOW, they were busy at home, so probably fewer per capita joined the Continentals.
Well said. The left wants to "deconstruct" history, that is, rip away the societal context of the times and filter everything through their own PC lenses, because they are the people they've been waiting for.
But deconstruct is simply another word for demolish and that is their true aim; to demolish existing social stability and replace it w/ Utopia.
Their self-righteousness is so blinding that they refuse to see where this road leads.
W. Wilson is the father of the progressive movement, the quintessential modern democrat, if you will.
According to Science!, my DNA carries genes from ancestors who lived 40,000 years ago. So if this is in the “DNA” of America, then it is there forever so let’s stop pretending that kissing the butts of black and Prog activists will fix anything.
It’s not good enough to just ban the Confederate flag. We’ll also have to ban guns, institute reparations and somehow make blacks equal to whites economically (probably through direct transfers of wealth and income). Oh yes, we’ll also have to punish whites more and punish blacks less to have equal crime stats. Did I miss anything?
“Responding to widespread public pressure”
Responding to pressure from people she admires, which includes, apparently, the press, northeastern liberal media, and our communist president and his government.
If you think that burying a flag that is historically American (like it or not) is going to be enough, it won’t be. If you think wiping away everything named after “Lee” or “Jackson” or “Davis” and renaming them for communist heroes is going be enough, it won’t.
If you think that melting down every last statue representing the Confederate era, it won’t be.
This is about dividing today’s America. This is about excluding the South from political dialog - because we are more conservative - more American - than our government prefers.
Go ahead, do your worst. America will be saved, if it is to be saved, by a Southerner. No other region has the respect for what America actually IS - manifested by putting it in to action more than the South.
Nikki Haley has shown herself to be a short-sighted politician. She still won’t be welcome in the liberal circles she wishes to impress. She’s a woman, she’s got brown skin, and she’s “foreign” - so they will always hate her.
Contrast that with the citizens of South Carolina who elected her to lead them as Governor.
If she can’t see that, she’s self-immolating as a political figure - and betraying her fellow Southerners by somehow linking a deranged killer with a historically American flag.
I think we get sidetracked when we think this whole brouhaha is about the past. It’s about the present. I hate to say it, but it’s a shake down. The “Revs.” Jackson and Sharpton have perfected it. Get a few very squeaky wheels to throw huge tantrums, target and ostracize people with deep pockets, make them feel guilty, and blackmail them. Pure and simple.
Rational people have to keep calm, behave like adults, and ignore the tantrums. Eventually they will subside, but if they get even a little of what they want, the tantrums will continue and intensify.
There is no good reason to have any kind of discussion about race. It’s a waste of time discussing with insincere and/or irrational people.
OK. I'll go along with that. Let's ban memorials to every single politician and other person who supported slavery and segregation from public discourse. Let's start with wiping Woodrow Wilson from every public monument. Then Andrew Jackson, then pretty much every Southern Dixicrat Dem Senator and Congressman.
And race relations (all groups), across the board, are much, much better in the south.
The issue is NEVER the issue, the issue is ALWAYS the revolution.
Note his talk about guns and movies and education (history).
It's all on the plate.
You picked one of the pull quotes.
It’s about their gaining more control over society and permissible speech (at home, in schools, as well as shaping our entertainment).
It should be in a museum, they say. We're not talking about scrubbing it from history, just take it off the court house grounds... they say.
As said in Star Wars...."there is another".
Said other is most well known by the acronym "ISIS".
They don’t want “equality”. They want subjugation. That’s what Black Power means. That’s what Farrakhan, Malik Shabazz, & the NBP keep talking about- that & White genocide.
The progressives/ communists & the Muslims (like Bassem Masri of Ferguson & elsewhere- I want to say the NE or California) are using these disgruntled Blacks to do their dirty work.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.