The reenergized furor over the status of what is commonly called "the Confederate flag" in the wake of the terror murders at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church has missed a telling point, its use by people in the North and other areas of the country who have no connection to the Southern states in their personal experience or in their families. I live in Maine, the home of the legendary Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of Gettysburg fame, the northern most state on the East Coast, about as unsouthern as it's possible to be and I've seen it on cars with Maine license plates, on leather jackets owned by men whose accents couldn't be more downeast and who have never set foot outside of New England. I've seen it on New Hampshire Yankees and others with no experience of the South or any claim to have any heritage or sentimental attachment to any southern state. And there is no ambiguity as to what it stands for, it is an emblem of white supremacy, of racism and of right-wing politics. I don't believe I have ever seen it used, in any context, by a supporter of equality, equal justice and economic justice, I've never seen it used in any context that was remotely unrelated to racist politics or by non racists.
Frequently, in the period after the Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s and 60s, it has been seen in association with the German Iron Cross by people who had no German heritage and for whom the symbol could not have possibly escaped association with the German military, and in the post WWII era, Nazism.
I have never seen the Confederate flag used by a person I knew to be Jewish, no doubt them knowing its association with, not only such things as the Iron Cross but with the Klu Klux Klan and other groups which have targeted Jews as well as black people, Latinos and other racial, ethnic and religious minorities.
The Confederate flag isn't just any symbol of Southern identity or it wouldn't be so often seen in the contexts and displayed by the people I identified above. Nor is it a symbol universally recognized as such by all Southerners. A large percentage of Southerners are the very people who were oppressed and murdered by, first the government which raised that flag and, then, by the people who continued that practice into the period when official, legal slavery was abolished. Certainly it's no symbol of anything positive about their homeland for them. The nine people murdered at the Emanuel AME Church were certainly not represented by that flag. And there are, I am absolutely certain, many white people in the southern states who would like the thing taken down and never used as anything but a reminder of an evil period in which they were the last of the states to give up slavery.
By the way, slavery was practiced in every one of the original states and people every much as in favor of slavery, who profited from it directly and indirectly were as northern as it was possible to be were found all over the North during the war and after. I heard the stupid joke about "everyone owning two" here in the very period when Southern states were reintroducing the flag in question. Within two miles of where I'm sitting as I type this, in Maine, there are graves of people held in slavery, the families who held them in slavery, still here. One of the members of one of those families, I know had that flag on his bedroom wall as young adult. I used to buy pot from him in the 60s. Back when a nickle bag cost five bucks. With his Maine Yankee accent, I don't suppose he'd have won universal acceptance among those who used that flag in the south. I know some of his ancestors' names are on the Civil War roll as having fought for the Union. That's one of the benefits of living all of your life in the same small town, you get to see the limits of heritage in action and such lessons on the endurance of history.
The Confederate flag is a symbol of racism and hate and injustice. From where I sit and from the identity of those who are bent on retaining it.
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