Editor’s Note: The following blog also was posted in abbreviated form as “Reader View: Clinging to Dixie? Society will judge” by the Sante Fe New Mexican on July 20, 2015.
Original Meaning Has Come And Gone
You ask your son before he goes out to wear something other than a T-shirt otherwise people might think he’s a punk. You ask your daughter to put on a skirt with more length otherwise people might think she’s, well, you know. You ask your husband to shave before a dinner party otherwise people might think he’s a slob. You might even ask your wife to … best keep that to yourself.
What’s consistent is concern for how society perceives us and loved ones. We understand society perceives things a certain way and desire to avoid misunderstanding. So you ask yourself and those you care about to avoid giving an impression that’s not accurate as society will think what society wants to think. It might not be fair but historically we bring it upon ourselves.
Some people want to continue to fly the Dixie flag as a symbol of their Southern pride without being perceived as racist. Well, like Gen. William T. Sherman and his “March to the Sea” that army has come and gone. Society will judge you, I and everyone else based on modern-day perceptions, and of all the symbols representative of the Confederacy, Dixie is one symbol that long ago lost its original meaning. Today it stands for segregation.
I recently attended an event at which an audience member yelled “don’t take our flag.” He meant Dixie, but no one was trying to take his or anyone’s flag. Fly whatever you want from the flagpole, hang it out the window of a truck or name your dog after it. No one is going to outlaw Dixie. No one is trying to extinguish your constitutional right to free speech. If the flag speaks for your individual views, whatever they might be, then fly the silly thing. But we’re all entitled to our interpretation of what you and the flag represent.
Switzerland of American Thought
So the first matter of real world importance is whether government should fly the flag on government property. What you do on your property is your business. But Dixie is the recognized political symbol of segregation, a state’s rights argument of a handful of the South’s former rebellious states. And according to the Constitution, the same document that protects your free speech, government is expected to remain secular and politically unbiased.
No Christian cross or Star of David or images of tree goddesses on capitol grounds. No monuments to the 10 Commandments or the Torah, or any other religious conviction. Not even removable signs that support a particular political view. You and I should be able to visit our representatives, enjoy the solitude of a park-like setting or tour our state capitol and absorb the history so many capitols provide without the bother of influence. Our capitol grounds, government facilities in general, should be the Switzerland of American thought.
So in the aftermath of the Charleston tragedy in which a young white man sits for an hour in a Bible study group before opening fire with a hand gun and killing nine unarmed African-American adults, and the subsequent discovery of photographs of the gunman holding Dixie, presumably in support of white supremacy, many in society have turned on the flag. First used for the purpose of helping Confederate troops distinguish their forces from Union forces in the smoke of battle the flag is now a target on all fronts.
Up until the day of the tragedy, June 17, three Southern states – Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina – continued to prominently fly Dixie on capitol grounds. Alabama’s governor, Robert J. Bentley, one week later gave the order to have Dixie removed from the grounds in Montgomery. Yet, South Carolina, site of the tragedy, dragged its feet three weeks and had to run a bill through its legislature to take the same step. Who knew South Carolina could make Alabama look progressive.
South Carolina Stands Down After 154 Years
However, July 9, in Columbia, the urging of Gov. Nikki Haley and impassioned speeches by State Sen. Paul Thurmond, son of late U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond (a pro-segregationist Democratic presidential candidate in 1948) and State Rep. Jenny Horne, a descendant of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, all three Republicans, led South Carolina into the modern age. More than 154 years after a Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard and Confederate forces bombarded Union forces at Fort Sumter, Gov. Haley signed the bill to have Dixie removed and delivered, as a relic of history, to the Confederate Room at the State Museum.
The War of Northern Aggression, or the Civil War for those of Yankee heritage, is almost over. Mississippi is still holding its breath and stomping its feet. The Southern holdout incorporated Dixie into its state flag more than 100 years ago and it’s going to take some doing to have it removed. Some might argue the state hasn’t fully reconstructed and its readmittance to the Union in 1870 should be rescinded. I say hold federal funds in reserve until a new flag is introduced. When social security checks fail to arrive, legislators in Jackson will take another look at their flag.
And that brings me to the second matter of real world importance. What Dixie represents today. My great-great-grandfather owned slaves and fought for Mississippi. My great-grandfather no doubt saw life irrevocably changed as a result of the conflict. My grandfather “fought” the war until his death in 1979 and like many of his generation never quite reconciled his upbringing with changing times. My great-grandmother was from Texas, as were her parents, and possibly shared with many Texans the dilemma of split Union and Confederate allegiances.
But the war was their war. The cause was their cause. My ancestry encompasses the full American experience, but though the family is distinctly Southern back to the days when our allegiance was given to an English monarch, I feel no obligation to embrace the views of Civil War ancestors. Those who carried the cause into the next century were the product of their day and we gave many in the 1960s and 1970s the benefit of the doubt that their minds hadn’t caught up with their hearts.
Times They Are A Changing
We’re nearly 50 years past the civil rights era and people are still asking for benefit of the doubt. It’s not going to happen. Dixie represents segregation. What you say, what you imply, is what you mean. What you stand up for is what you represent. You’ve had the better part of five decades to wrap your mind around the modern world. No longer will society excuse tears for ancestors you never met for a cause you’ll never grasp fought at time lost to the past and a lack of empathy for those who’ve experienced racism first hand.
Let’s dispel two misconceptions. Racism also was rampant to a degree in the North just those states had the historical good sense to avoid formal legislation. And Dixie eventually was incorporated into the national Confederate flag, but it never stood alone as the national flag. Growing up in Texas we recognized the original “Stars and Bars” which was a cross between the Lone Star flag and the Betsy Ross flag. Dixie was a 50 cent souvenir you bought at truck stops. What started out as a battle flag, essentially a tool of war, was hijacked by those with darker purposes.
During Reconstruction white supremacy groups embraced the flag as their symbol during a reign of terror in the South, and in the aftermath of World War II several Southern states in a fuss with the federal courts embraced the flag as a symbol of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” as Alabama’s pro-segregationist Gov. George Wallace said in 1963. The Civil War aside that’s how society has perceived Dixie the past half century.
Think about this. The swastika, recognized as a symbol of the Nazi party, is thousands of years old and long incorporated as a decorative symbol in Eastern religions. Yet a modern-day follower of such faiths would think twice before displaying the symbol in this country or Europe. With thousands still alive with memories of World War II battlegrounds and prison camps, I can’t imagine convincing a Holocaust survivor the swastika on the front door “just adds something” to a home’s décor. Sometimes symbols of innocence are adopted by others and become symbols of hate. Dixie falls in that category.
No Obligation to My Ancestors
I recognize my ancestors were the product of their times and their views were the result of influences in their day but to carry on their fight, 150 years after the war, I also would have to carry on the ancestral fight against Germany, Great Britain and the Roman Catholic Church, among others, as each either attempted to destroy the way of life of my ancestors or pointed guns and picks in the family’s direction at some point in the past 325 years.
Now if you’re mad at the nearby store for pulling Confederate items from the shelves then be mad. But you’re freedom of speech hasn’t been inhibited. The store exercised its freedom to offer whatever goods it deems appropriate and profitable. Exercise your freedom and shop elsewhere. If you’re dying to fly Dixie because your ancestor took at bullet at Bull Run then erect a flagpole. Take it one further and tattoo to your body a permanent shrine to Gen. Robert E. Lee and every ancestor who might have worn the gray against Northern aggressors.
But don’t ever think greater society will look at you as a proud Southerner. People of all colors, North and South, will exercise their rights, their freedom of speech, albeit opinion, and judge you based on their understanding of the flag’s symbolism. Perhaps family and friends will voice support of your Confederate pride but hold silent their true convictions for the sake of a Memorial Day picnic. But there’s no escaping history. Society sees Dixie and sees racism.
Know your ancestry. Be proud of your heritage. Fly Dixie if you must. But understand 21st century standards and 19th century causes rarely reconcile. One of the many symbols of the Confederacy no longer represents the views you’d like society to acknowledge. And if you truly maintain a modern, all encompassing, view of society in both your heart and mind, let go of a silly piece of cloth, now a symbol of mankind’s subjugation of others, and embrace mankind itself.
Copyright (c) 2015 by Jeffrey Rembert. All Rights Reserved.