The Confederate Flag and Why I Might Be a Hypocrite

Symbology is a tricky thing.

The Confederate flag does not endure because of its ties to slavery or the South’s historic and ongoing issues with race relations. It endures because it represents rebellion and ancestral pride to those that still wave it from their homes and boats or emblazon it on cars/vans/lower backs/beer koozies.

The cultural disconnect emerges from the human instinct to rally around or against symbols. The Confederate Battle Flag harkens back to a war lost long ago, but because the symbol has been co-opted by groups as divergent as the hate-mongering Klu Klux Klan to the harmless and lovable bootleggers, the Dukes of Hazzard, the flag’s meaning has also become confused.

Is it hate? Is it heritage? The answer is it is both. Any honest assessment of the flag’s legacy cannot sever one from the other. As such, it is appropriate to remove the flag from government buildings, but inappropriate to ban it altogether because it is not the only popular symbol that comes loaded with very complicated and distasteful connotations.

While chewing over this controversy, I looked to my own history with symbology to do some spiritual housekeeping. I wanted to find out if I am guilty of the same casual disregard of history.

Turns out I am.

Oklahomans will remember Michael Ivins of The Flaming Lips inspiring a nationwide controversy during a trip to the state capitol. “Do You Realize” was being dubbed the state’s official rock song. He wore a t-shirt bearing the Soviet Hammer and Sickle which, understandably, did not sit well with legislators. The negative reaction from conservatives stemmed from the memory of one of the most vicious regimes in human history. Adolf Hitler’s Nazis where a more pure evil, but Joseph Stalin was responsible for far more deaths and a more sustained brutality.

Yet I found myself among many left-leaning music fans wearing a Hammer and Sickle t-shirt with “Motherfucker” underneath as a protest of our legislators’ temper tantrum over Ivins’ choice of clothing.

But why? Why is the Hammer and Sickle okay, but the Battle Flag is not? My initial reasoning was that I am not a communist nor do I sympathize with the fallen Russian empire. There was no expectation of shared values with the soviet regime.

I wore it because, for a post-modern art piece, it’s hard to beat.

I also have a belt buckle bearing the Rising Sun Japanese flag. I do not condone the staggering war crimes committed by Japanese forces during World War II and understand why those of Chinese or Korean ancestry are touchy with how the image has transformed within American pop culture.

But it really is a sharp-looking belt buckle. UFC superstar Georges St-Pierre apparently shares my fashion sense. He had a gi designed with the Rising Sun motif, but apologized following an open letter from Chan Sung Jung, the Korean Zombie. The featherweight fighter explained to GSP why the symbol was offensive to citizens of Asian nations that fell in the crosshairs of Imperial Japan.

I also once burned a Jerusalem Cross into the hilt of a wooden practice sword when I was in high school because it was beautiful and badass, as any wooden practice sword owned by an awkward teenager should be. Yet, that symbol has a much different impact in the Islamic world because of the horrors of the European Crusades into the Holy Land.

These are examples of me embracing symbols without thinking of the very, very dark shadows they cast across other cultures.

Perhaps a difference that legitimizes the Rising Sun and the Jerusalem Cross is the same that justifies our American flag. They are symbols of ongoing stories. Yes, our nation has done terrible things in the past, but we are getting better. We are a more just and tolerant society now than we were one hundred years ago and, one can hope, we will be an even more just and tolerant society in another hundred years. We continue to make mistakes, but we also continue to make great strides. In that same respect, modern Japan is not the imperialistic force that spread death and misery across the Pacific nor does the Catholic Church continue to spearhead genocidal campaigns across the Middle East.

But the Confederate Battle Flag, Hammer and Sickle, and swastika represent the past. Their stories are closed and one cannot reclaim these symbols while conveniently whitewashing the atrocities committed by those that followed the banner.

But grace should be afforded too because these symbols are remnants of a cultural heritage. Even if that heritage is stained, it is still a part of the family histories of millions of people. It is a hard thing to expect others to abandon their ancestries. It is also unfair to expect others to swallow their fear because we really, really like a belt buckle.

What we need is to just understand that there is a time and place for symbols. As a personal act of free expression, wearing a Confederate Battle Flag patch should be protected if, for no other reason, loyalty to the symbol will only be heightened by the slightest hint of a national ban. But that same flag, which carries the stain of slavery, should not fly over government buildings which are meant to represent all Americans equally. I can not imagine how foreboding it would be to walk into a City Hall as an African-American with the flag of the Confederacy flying from the flagpole.