What The Confederate Flag Means and What We Can Learn From The Fiasco

Twenty years ago I worked at a Christian summer camp.

Shortly after I introduced myself to my roommate for the summer, he took a giant rebel flag from his suitcase and hung it above his bed. He told me he was from South Carolina and wanted the world to know it.

I laughed.

Later in the day, though, one of the guys across the hall came in and introduced himself. We made conversation for a while and I noticed he kept looking up at the flag. I asked why and he said that, as a black man, it was pretty offensive.

My new roommate looked shocked. What do you mean? He asked.

From there a great conversation ensued.

The flag meant two different things to to different people.

In the end, my roommate took the flag down, apologizing to the guy across the hall. And to be honest, we all had a great summer and there was no tension after that.

Still, I learned a little something that day.

I learned that, while we think words and symbols are fixed, they aren’t. The meaning of things change and there’s nothing we can do about it.

In fact, if we keep using words and symbols from the perspective of their old meanings, we end up looking like a fool, as though “our perception of meaning is the correct perception of meaning.”

My roommate was no racist.

He was a proud South Carolinian who wanted the world to know about his state.

He knew the flag was used to identify a region of the country fighting to keep slaves, but that was a long time ago, and what did it have to do with the here and now?

For my roommate, the flag meant that we fished in muddy rivers and caught lightning bugs in a jar and played the best college football in the country.

He was naive.

As we’ve evolved as a country, that flag has become the symbol of racism and hatred.

The meaning of the flag has changed and too many now perceive it anything but innocent.

And besides, a region of the country defending slavery is nothing to be proud of and a symbol that nods to that dark history shouldn’t be celebrated. Nor is it the appropriate symbol to represent a “southern way of life.”

I’m glad Alabama has removed the rebel flag from it’s government facilities last week.

Photo Credit: Stuart Seeger, Creative Commons

And I hope South Carolina does the same.

The lesson here for all of us is that what we say may not be what other people hear, and smart people pay attention to both.

It’s time for the south to understand that as innocent as they think the flag is, it isn’t perceived that way by far too many Americans.

And healing our racial divides is more important than symbol representing southern pride. The meaning of things evolve and we must evolve too.

What The Confederate Flag Means and What We Can Learn From The Fiasco is a post from: Storyline Blog