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.

ought-six: "So, the War could not have been to end slavery, could it?"

The Deep South Slave-Power's declarations of secession, and forming a new Confederacy were all about protecting slavery against the perceived threat from "Ape" Lincoln and his "Black Republicans".

The Deep South provoked, started and formally declared war on the United States (May 6, 1861) in order to win support from Upper South slave states which until then had been unwilling to join their Confederacy.

The North accepted the Confederacy's war of aggression in order to preserve the Union, but at the same time used the war to destroy the root cause: slavery.

So, if you give it some thought it all makes sense.

The “Don’t Tread On Me” flag will be next.

It already has been. After 9/11 the flag was flown on my Husband's and other submarines. It was amazing to see fly as they coming up the river.

After the tea party's started popping up all over the place, the Navy announced that they were not to be flown on vessels or buildings on bases.

Waynes: "Dred-Scott did not have anything to do with expanding slavery in to northern states."

It certainly did!
Certainly in the minds of Northerners it did, and it's legal language was absolutely clear: Africans were not human beings and therefore could never be citizens.
So slaves would remain slaves regardless of where they were taken -- to other slave states, or to non-slave states -- they were still slaves regardless.

In practical effect, that meant Northern states' acts outlawing slavery were themselves unconstitutional, according to the Dred-Scott Supreme Court.

According to Lincoln, Dred-Scott required only one more such decision confirming it to make slavery again lawful in every state, just as it had been back on July 4, 1776.

That just makes no sense. The Southern states knew slavery was legal, and that it would take a Constitutional Amendment to outlaw slavery, and that was not going to happen because Congress did not have the votes to pass such an Amendment, and there were not 3/4 of the states who would ratify it. The Southern states did not have to secede to keep slavery; that is an argument that gained traction in the 1960s (i.e., that the Southern states seceded specifically to keep slavery). But it is a specious argument.

ought-six: "The Southern states did not have to secede to keep slavery; that is an argument that gained traction in the 1960s (i.e., that the Southern states seceded specifically to keep slavery).
But it is a specious argument."

Of course, in reality the Slave-Power did not have to declare secession to keep slavery lawful in the South.
But if you read their official Declarations of Reasons for Secession, you'll see that protecting slavery is the only issue seriously mentioned:

For example, here is the Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union:

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.
Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.
These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun.
These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.
That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation.
There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin."

So there are just no ifs, ands or buts about it: protecting their "peculiar institution" of slavery was the real reason, the only real reason.

Then you didn’t really read what I wrote.
Dred-Scott said two things which in effect made abolitionism illegal — first, it said slaves were not humans and could NEVER be citizens.
Second, it said that slaves were always slaves REGARDLESS of where their owners took them, slave state or free state.
This meant, for example, that a man with 100 slaves could take them to any Northern state, and they would still be his slaves, not automatically freed!

That’s why Northerners like Lincoln said it only needed one more such Supreme Court decision to confirm that slavery was the law of the land in every state, whether they wanted it or not.

And that is exactly what fueled the Republican revolution of 1860.

” ....they FOLLOWED the directives and emancipation orders of their government, a government THEY ELECTED.”
Almost every state except for the Border States had outlawed slavery BY 1860. That does not mean that they loved the Negros Slaves but they thought it WRONG to enslave a fellow human being.
I have read letters of the soldiers and even the Abolitionist who lived among the Blacks became disenchanted.
Nevertheless, they, THE MILITARY, “FOLLOWED the directives and emancipation orders of their government....” all 330,000 OF THEM that died.

“Nevertheless, they, THE MILITARY, “FOLLOWED the directives and emancipation orders of their government....” “

Which, when it gets right down to it, was not to free anyone.

The Emancipation Proclamation, for instance, freed no one: It specifically did NOT apply to any area of the South that was under federal control, nor did it apply to any state or territory that was not “in rebellion,” so it did not apply to the neutral slave states or even those few Northern states that still had some slaves (granted, not many slaves). It only applied to the states still “in rebellion,” but as soon as any areas of those states came under federal control, the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply.

The Emancipation Proclamation was a ploy by Lincoln to try to stir up the slaves into an uprising against the Confederacy.

The only slaves that were “liberated” were those who agreed to join the Union forces to fight against the Confederates. Those who did not so agree were not freed, but were put under arrest and confined. That pissed off a good number of the Union troops who had to guard them.

“The Deep South provoked...”
You mean like John Brown murdering and terrorizing non-slaveholders in Kansas and the “Secret Six” financing the Brown’s Slave “UPRISING” at Harper’s Ferry, (READ: kill all Whites in the South)..... same as financing the ISIS today? Or invading Virginia like Hitler did Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia to consolidate Greater Germany?
Secession was an open question till Lincoln settled it by force just like Cromwell settled it by trying to destroy the Irish .... it is just the way it was, and is, till things change again..

...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.”

Ah, the irony of it all...

Their self-righteousness is so blinding that they refuse to see where this road leads.

Oh, they see where it leads ..... for us. And they gloat and revel in their hatred of us.

What they don't see is that in the end, they'll wind up like the big-hat Bolsheviks who were tried and shot by Stalin, and the 30,000 Red Army officers who followed them into the meat grinder of political expediency in a regime committed to final solutions.

Moving goalposts Part XXV:

Did you notice that the cry the other day was to confine the Battle Flag to museums?

Now -- oh, the horror! the horror! -- the writer pulls his hair out and rends his garments, to think that there are Confederate museums OMG OMG ...... gotta tear them down!

Clear case of moving the goalposts.

But the truth is, they were the perpetrators, and it's a Big Lie to pretend otherwise.

Untruer words were never spoken. Lincoln cobbled up that war, and it's all going to come out eventually, unless state archivists start burning the public records of six States whose governors were in up to their eyeballs with Lincoln's launch of the war.

Their responsibility for initiating a war to conquer the departing States and turn them into military provinces, is as absolute as Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's, for starting wars with Austria and France in 1869 and 1870.

Historians see through stuff like yours.

The real question remains, will the Liberals ban the Carol Burnett Show skit of Gone with the Wind from YouTube?

Will Harvey Korman’s Gravestone be overturned and his Body removed from his Gravesite in Liberal Santa Monica?

These are questions that must be answered so the Country can move on from the nasty little issue it was faced with back in the 1860’s. Funny, I can’t remember exactly what it was that happened back then, but I’ve heard it wasn’t good.

BillLies: "Almost every state except for the Border States had outlawed slavery BY 1860."

What you meant to say here is: every Northern state had outlawed slavery by 1860, but no Southern or Border states outlawed it.

Some Northern states outlawed slavery gradually, such that by the 1860 census, New Jersey still reported 18 slaves, down from 12,000 in 1800.
New York reported 21,000 slaves in 1790, but by 1840 only 4 were left, and by 1850, none.

In the Border States of Missouri and Kentucky, slave populations were rising slowly in 1860, but not as fast as white populations.
In Border States of Maryland and Delaware actual numbers of slaves were falling slowly in 1860, even though neither state had outlawed it.

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