COMMENTARY: Why the Confederate flag must go

After the end of the Civil War in 1865, the Confederate flag was adopted by hateful organizations like the Klu Klux Klan and others and used during terrorist actions: killing and terrorizing people of color, marginalized people, Jews and Catholics, in the name of white supremacy and Southern heritage – the opposite of America’s founding values of equality and freedom of religion.

With companies like NASCAR banning the Confederate flag from events and locations, there is hope that the U.S. is finally coming together as a nation to address the racism in the country.

The Confederate flag is a heinous symbol of repression and national and cultural brainwashing. To understand why there is an ongoing battle to remove the flag, there needs to be an understanding of why it has been flown for so long.

Why is a flag so important? Are flags not just, ultimately, rags in the breeze?

In the grand scheme of the universe, yes, but flags – like monuments, salutes, and slogans – represent and commemorate the values and ideology of the people who claim them.

Flags are a public way to identify and unify people and their origins in a way that is understood by both people who identify with it and people who do not. They represent a society’s common set of values and goals.

If flags are physical symbols that convey a society’s values and goals, myths serve as a society’s soul and internalization of its values. A myth is a narrative that serves as a foundation to a culture and is subject to change over time as the culture that created it changes. They serve to remind future generations of their predecessor’s ideals, goals, dreams, and fears. The Lost Cause myth is a mythologizing of the people, events and causes that began the American Civil War as taught by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and United Confederate Veterans (UCV) through school boards and textbooks and commemorated by erecting monuments (UDC accomplished this through their privileged connections to influential people and without having the right to vote). The Lost Cause is based on several themes (or pillars):

1. The South fought to preserve states’ rights against an overreaching federal government, not slavery.
2. The Confederate flag is displayed and flown to honor Confederate soldiers who died heroically trying to defend their way of life and homeland against overwhelming odds
3. The Confederate flag should be celebrated and flown like any other flag like Ireland, Puerto Rico or Mexico because it is part of the South’s heritage

The South fought to preserve states’ rights against an overreaching federal government, not to preserve slavery. By making slavery part of their constitution, the Confederate States of America asserted racial supremacy and slavery as a core value and founding principle of the states and people who lived and fought for it. By fighting for the Confederate States of America, under the Confederate flag, soldiers were fighting for a right to own enslaved people.

Vice president of the Confederate States of America Alexander H. Stephen’s 1861 Cornerstone speech said that the Confederacy’s cornerstone was the belief that black people were not equals with white men and slavery was their “natural and normal condition”.

Confederate soldiers chose to fight instead of voting over enslaved people, even if it violated the laws of other states within the country as with the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which obligated Northern free states to capture and return escaped slaves back into slavery no matter where they were in the U.S. – regardless if they were found in a state where slavery was abolished. State right or not, fighting for the right to own people is not something their descendants should honor them for even if it was their conviction.

Displaying the Confederate flag honors Confederate soldiers who took up arms to defend what they believed in, against overwhelming odds.

The Confederacy fought for the right to purchase, own and sell slaves and for the belief of the supremacy of the “white race” over all others. Though most did not own slaves, they believed in racial supremacy and slavery as much as the clergy, politicians and plantation elite who governed them.

With local, religious and governmental levels proclaiming the foundation of their society was under threat by freed people and Abolitionist movements in the North and western territories, soldiers knew they were fighting to preserve a caste system of racial hierarchy.

Why can the Confederate flag be celebrated and flown like other flags like Ireland, Puerto Rico (a territory of the USA) or Mexico if it’s part of Southern heritage?

The Confederate flag is not the flag that was officially used to represent the Confederacy during the Civil War, despite standing for the same values. There were three versions of the Confederate flag, as well as various others used by other states, over the course of the Civil War that represented the slave states: the Stars and Bars, the Stainless Banner and the Bloodstained Banner.

The flag flown today as the Confederate flag is a modern version of one that was used on the battlefield by General Robert E. Lee’s Army of North Virginia (ANV) and was not used as it was to represent the Confederacy. The first few versions of the confederate flag were called Stars and Bars before being abandoned, for its similarity to the Union flag, in favor of the Stainless Banner, designed by William Porcher Miles. The Stainless Banner was used by the Confederacy from 1863-1865. The Stainless Banner was a white rectangle featuring the ANV’s flag in the top left corner.

After much criticism that the Stainless Banner was being mistaken as a flag of surrender amid artillery and gun smoke, the Blood-Stained Banner (a modified Stainless Banner with a thick red bar on its right edge) was created and adopted March 4, 1865, but scarcely fabricated – the Confederacy fell less than one month later. The modern version of the Confederate flag is a rectangular version of the ANV’s flag used by post-Civil War hate organizations like the KKK and their supporters, like the UDC, who romanticized a slaved-based society and supremacist ideology. Both they and the flag have earned such a deep tie to discrimination and white supremacy through their actions and ideals, it is used by white supremacist groups outside the U.S. like Neo-Nazis. Flying a Confederate flag honors those who fought under it; flying a Confederate flag honors those who fought for its ideals; flying a Confederate flag honors those who fought for its ideals of racial supremacy; flying a Confederate flag honors a heritage of racial supremacy.

Remove all flags and statues that honor figures of America’s past that have enslaved people and committed acts of genocide and discrimination starting with the Confederate flag and related monuments, but do not consign them to oblivion. They represent the shameful truth of the country’s history and as such should be displayed in museums alongside other artifacts that contextualize how they were used by the Confederacy, UDC, UCV and KKK as rally points for post-war cultural brainwashing and discrimination. That way the memory of white racial supremacy in the country is not forgotten and repeated.

Southern heritage has more to be proud of than the Confederate flag and what it represents. Celebrate that which can be peacefully shared and enjoyed by people of all walks of life regardless of race, nationality, religion, gender, class or creed, not symbols laden with ties to supremacy and discrimination.

CORRECTION: All uses of ‘Confederate Flag’ and ‘confederate flag’ were changed to ‘Confederate flag’ as The Signal Editorial Board ruled a style change after the article published.