It
shouldn’t have taken 150 years and the deaths of nine innocent churchgoers for
Southern states to renounce the Confederate flag.
I’ve spent my whole life in the Northeast, but I have Southern
roots. My late grandfather came from a long line of sharecroppers who toiled in
the fields of Decatur, Georgia for generations. Their history of hardship was
common in the South.
Where my grandfather grew up, poor whites often blamed their
misfortune on the only group of people less fortunate than they: black people.
For these marginalized whites, the Confederate battle flag came to symbolize
what might have been.
To me, the Confederate battle flag represents the dehumanization
of black people. Renewed calls to banish it from public spaces across the South
pit a national drive to stamp out prejudice against the region’s pride in its
history — even if that particular history is nothing to be proud of.
Many Southerners insist that the emblem merely salutes Southern
heritage. But lynch mobs have never rallied behind sweet tea and collard
greens.
Separatist flags signified white defiance during the Civil War. A century later, they were embraced by the millions of whites who refused to acknowledge black people’s rights amid the racist backlash against the civil rights movement.
Dylann Roof,
who was fond of photographing himself with the rebel flag, made his sentiments
clear when he allegedly murdered nine African Americans in a historically black
Charleston church.
Extremist groups that burn crosses on front lawns, set black
churches on fire, and commit violent hate crimes often fly the same banner.
Confederate flags, in short, epitomize white supremacy.
In the Charleston tragedy’s wake, South Carolina Governor Nikki
Haley called for the Confederate battle flag to be taken down from
state property. As far as Haley is concerned, South Carolinians should retain
the right to fly the flag on their own property, but “the State House is
different.”
Most South Carolina lawmakers agree, though the flag still flew
as President Barack Obama delivered a rousing eulogy for the late Reverend
Clementa Pinckney — the most prominent of the nine people killed in Charlestown.
Alabama governor Robert Bentley banned the flag from his state’s capitol. Other states,
like Mississippi, are considering whether to drop Confederate
symbols from their state flags. Virginia and Georgia are phasing out their Confederate-themed
specialty license plates.
What exactly are they waiting for?
How many more churches must be spattered with bullets, or set on fire, before more Southern politicians admit that
Confederate flags represent hatred and incite violence? It shouldn’t have taken
150 years — and the recent deaths of nine innocent churchgoers — for Southern
states to renounce this symbol.
Furling those flags won’t bring back lives or end systemic
racism. But it will send a message that our state governments at least reject
symbols of racist brutality.
As states remove the flag from public property, they should
raise up the ideals of liberty and equal rights. Southern governments have an
opportunity to shatter their racist reputations and prove that Southern
hospitality is second to none.
Olivia Alperstein is an
OtherWords Next Leader intern at the Institute for Policy Studies whose
paternal grandfather’s family lived for many generations in Georgia. OtherWords.org
