The Flag of the Confederacy

I’ve heard of people speak of the flag as their “heritage,” because they had a confederate General as an ancestor. It’s not so simple.

The thing about the Confederate flag is that has a much more checkered history than simply being the flag of an insurrection or separatist rebellion. The Confederate States of America existed from 1860 to 1865. The stars and bars flew over most of its member states for five years, and it was the battle flag of the Confederate army during those same years.

However, that same flag became a symbol of something else, as soon as the South was defeated. It wasn’t just the symbol of a defeated insurrection; it was the symbol of a stubborn resistance that began as soon as so-called Reconstruction, and has continued to this very day.

It was and is a symbol of White Supremacy. As such, it was a symbol to rally troops like the Ku Klux Klan, but it was not an innocent symbol, only used to make people feel good about their heritage.

The Confederate battle flag was also a symbol of White Terror, waged against black people, the former slaves. The flag-wavers hoped their flag, and what it symbolized, would intimidate blacks, in the South, and latterly, elsewhere, as well. When a group of white-robed, white-hooded white people gathered under the Confederate standard, it was intended to terrorize blacks, so that they wouldn’t ever try to do what Union sympathizers had attempted to encourage in the beginning of Reconstruction: to become fully functional citizens of a new South, and latterly of the rest of the country.

Put simply: the Confederate flag as symbol, is a symbol of White Terror.

Think about the history. When the South was defeated and the 14th and 15th Amendments were ratified, ensuring that slavery would never again be legal in the United States, the Confederate flag gained a new meaning.

The flag became symbol of segregation, Jim Crow laws, anti-miscegenation laws, the poll taxes, and all the rest, a panoply of laws and practices that insured that black people would always be ignorant, oppressed, powerless, and helpless against the power of the White-dominated states.

After the enactment of Civil Rights laws and the dismantling of legal segregation, the Federal Government’s incursion into enforcement of equal treatment and the abolition of legal difference based upon race, the Confederate flag became, again, a symbol of resistance—against an overweening Government—but along the way, it had also become, as Dylann Roof demonstrated, a symbol of racial hatred.

An example comes from, of all places, Hyde Park, NY.

West of the village of Hyde Park proper, home to FDR’s homestead, there is a campground owned and maintained by Seventh Day Adventists. Every summer, they hold large meetings there; people stay in the dorms, and come from all over the region and beyond. They are black Seventh Day Adventists. Apparently, the church is (or was) still racially divided.

One summer, perhaps three or four years ago, I noticed the house next to the campground: a small house, but with a large upstairs deck: a very large Confederate flag was draped across the upstairs space—for the whole time the campground hosted guests that summer. It must have been more important to flaunt the flag than to use the deck, since it shrouded the porch behind it. That Fall, the flag disappeared. What else could it mean than that the house’s inhabitants hated and despised the campers next door?

I have no idea whether the flag wavers in Hyde Park originally came from the South, or not. Regardless, the Confederate flag was a convenient symbol of their anger and resistance to the gathering of black people who had descended on the grounds of the land right next door.

For Dylann Roof it was a symbol of what he hoped would be the beginning of a race war, in which black people would be re-subjugated, perhaps enslaved, or even eliminated.

The Confederate flag should be consigned to museums, but it should be labeled not only as the battle flag of the Confederacy, but as a racist symbol of the failed strain of White Supremacy that still animates many warped and twisted Americans.

I hope that with the flag’s interment in museums, that the sickness of racial thinking will shrivel and die. Races never really did exist, except in peoples’ minds: they are social constructions, as the absurd “one-drop rule” demonstrates. Even Hitler’s “Aryans” weren’t “racially pure.” Germans evolved as a product of thousands of years of intermixture on the steppes of Eurasia, after all.

Hitler wasn’t even blond.

Anti-Black Terrorism in Charleston, SC

t “There is no sanctuary for any of us.” Patricia Williams Lessane: NYT oped 06/19/15

Terrorism is commonly defined as violent acts (or the threat of violent acts) intended to create fear (terror), perpetrated for an economic,[1] religious, political, or ideological goal, and which deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants…. Wikipedia.

The killing of nine black people by a very young white man in the midst of a church, in the midst of a prayer meeting was an act of terrorism. In retrospect, it was only the latest and most horrific of a series of events that appear to have the same effect, if not always the same conscious intent.

I have a black friend, educated, in a good white collar job, who has a long commute, and worries each time he gets in the car, that he could be stopped by the police, and killed, or jailed for no reason, just as many other black people have been, especially in the last several months, which began with the high profile killing of the unarmed Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO by a white policeman.

These events have likely caused nightmares in many, just because the color of their skin and features mark them as descendants of slavery.

Roof, the young murderer, apparently expressed racist sentiments freely, but we all know he is not alone, even if he may have acted alone in this case. White racism, unfortunately, is still not just a legacy, but a reality in 21st Century America.

It has now come out that the day of the shooting, June 18th, was the 193rd anniversary of the planned slave uprising by Denmark Vesey, the founder of the Mother Church, Emmanuel AME Episcopal in Charleston, SC. The anniversary marks the suppression of that uprising, that is, the suppression of one of the most significant attempts by the slaves in South Carolina to rebel. Is it likely that a high school dropout and drifter would have known that? Which raises the question: who was behind him? Who radicalized this boyish young man, and directed him to go to the church on that particular day? Who directed him to find the prominent black State Senator, Clementa Pinckney? Why did he say “I have to do this, I have to kill all of you,” who then refrained from killing one of them, so that she could report what happened? This doesn’t sound like a lone crazy. It was an act of calculated terror. Black people everywhere will have nightmares because of him, and fear for their lives wherever they are. And this comes after all the other killings: by police, vigilantes, homeowners…

The killings have as their sum, a wave of terror against black people. This is what terror is supposed to do: intimidate people who have been targeted by it. This is the intended effect of Islamic State against Shiites and Christians, and is also the intent of terrorist jihadists in the US, Europe, and the other parts of the world.

South Carolina’s capital still flies the confederate flag over a Confederate war memorial; it was not lowered, although other flags at the State Capitol were lowered to half staff in mourning.

An investigation into Roof’s connections must be made, and the root of this terrorism must be uncovered if at all possible, and stopped. This isn’t just violent racism; it’s an attempt to cow every non-white person anywhere in the US. This looks more and more like an undercover movement like the KKK after Reconstruction in the South: dedicated to re-terrorizing and subjugating the former slave population. Who knows who’s behind it, but it seems unlikely that Dylann Roof was a lone, crazy gunman acting out of his lonely, crazy fantasy of doing, what he told his captors was “something big,” on June 18th, 2015.

Apres Nous Le Deluge

Older in Sweet Spot In ref to NYT 6/15/15 The older generation is better off than any other age group, in large part because the stability of Social Security has given us all a floor upon which to float, rather than sink, in the economic tides. The extremely wealthy gained almost all of the recovery; seniors hardly. So, a class, the billionaire part of it, especially, siphoned off the good times, while the rest of Americans, with the exception of seniors, were the losers: flat or declining earnings, increased demands at work, including having no time of your own—the “flexible” labor market.

Seniors are not to blame for the declining standard of living of nearly everyone else—except for the very rich. We are only lucky that we have Social Security, and for many of us, yes, we were lucky in real estate, perhaps in investments, possibly in finding a part-time job to supplement Social Security and make possible a moderately middle class lifestyle.

We did not fund the “think tanks” that created the “conservative” agenda, although a regrettable number of seniors may have joined the resulting reactionary counter-revolution.

That money came from the same place as the money now flowing into the electoral system, through superpacs and all sorts of other “legal” ways to buy elections for their own interests. One of those interests is to somehow persuade people they don’t really want Social Security any longer: it’s Government Tyranny. Huge majorities of Americans want to inherit it, however; they don’t want to jettison it; they want to expand it.

So, what does the the NYTimes article illustrate: “American Seniors Find a Middle-class Sweet Spot? It isn’t that seniors have been greedy. So far, we’ve been lucky, Social Security and Medicare now and stable jobs in the past, and maybe even retirement pensions. That is what everyone should be getting. But everyone, not either very wealthy or a senior, took the brunt of the losses of the Great Recession and only the very wealthy gained far more than they’d lost, in the recovery. Flat incomes (in buying power) and loss of job security for the many, stability and modest gains for my generation, wildly inflated incomes engorging a very few.

Bernie Sanders is hitting chords of discontent, and well he might. Most people, even the many who are gulled by Fox and Rush, can see only worse times ahead, not better, and yet we’re still a growing economy—one of the few in the developed world.

I once taught a political science course on Revolution. The dominant theme of all the revolution scholars was relative deprivation: good times followed by the immiseration of most, especially from the middle class, combined with a sharpening class divide from the very rich, was the proximate cause for many revolutions in the past.

It could happen here. I hope not. Radical reform is better than manning the barricades.