CONFEDERATE FLAG: YES OR NO
In 1991 my attention was drawn to a news item describing how a Harvard student chose to fly the Confederate flag from her window. After mulling it over, I decided to write a letter to the president of Harvard expressing my view on the topic. The recent events in South Carolina—the killing of nine black people in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church—sent me searching for a copy of the letter I had sent. Although some of the references are dated (24 years ago) I believe the same arguments remain as pertinent today as they were then. Apparently I was somewhat ahead of the curve; it’s taken nearly a quarter of a century before a majority consensus has emerged strong enough to carry to fruition the ideas expressed herein, a quarter of a century ago! -Prof. Rosenberg
Freedom of Speech and the Flying of the Confederate Flag (1991)
President of Harvard College
Boston, Massachusetts
Dear Sir:
I watched with uncertain emotions the television news story detailing the college student at Harvard who, for her own reasons, chose to fly the Confederate flag from her window. To me such a flag suggests that those with Southern roots and loyalties have not accepted the defeat of 1865; they have not accepted the fact that the war should have ended the South’s racist oppression of Black Americans. The student will not turn back the clock by such a display, nor do I think that is her intent. I understand that the flag to her might be a symbol of regional loyalty; such an argument, and other similar ones that have been advanced in defense of her right to fly the Confederate flag, do not necessarily depend on any kind of open racist vitriol for justification.
However, having said that much, let me go one step further. As one who believes in democracy and holds all human beings to be equal without regard to color of skin, I absolutely oppose the display of the Confederate flag on your campus. That flag was first raised in revolt against the United States of America. Whether the student in question is doing well in her history courses, it is an indisputable fact that the North won the Civil War. As a consequence, the United States remained one country and slavery was abolished forever.
The Confederacy, by contrast, stood for continuing of the brutal enslavement of the Negro race indefinitely; this “new country” was synonymous with slavery to all intents and purposes. Slavery itself was a system so abhorrent in its excesses and dehumanizing treatment of slaves that no enlightened person today, versed in the principles of democratic thought, would dare defend it. Hence, the Confederate flag remains the symbol of death and mayhem, whippings and torture, to tens of millions of Americans.
That flag is especially odious to Black people who remember well all the injustices and indignities for which it stood—who remember well what life was like for their ancestors in the Southern states that comprised the Confederacy: a living hell with no end to the violence and insult done to their persons. And that flag is, or should be, equally odious to every American citizen—white, black, brown, or what have you—who defends actively the democratic principles by which we as a nation profess to live.
From a legal viewpoint, then, what can we say of the status of the flag that the Harvard coed chose to fly: that it is mere emblem? Personal room decoration? Artistic statement? Historic relic? We make too light of the matter if we subscribe to any of these simplifications and if we take only the short-term view. That flag must be seen in its proper context:
1) The Confederate flag is either a foreign flag, as the Confederacy conceived of itself as a separate or foreign country intending to make separate trade and diplomatic alliances with other nations, or
2) It is the flag of treason raised in unlawful rebellion against the duly constituted United States, a rebellion whose main purpose was to perpetuate human bondage.
The Confederate flag is the flag of the Black race enchained; it is the flag of slavery, pure and simple. It is an historical association that can never be broken. As those chains were forged of iron, so too was the link between the flag and slavery forged with unbreakable certainty. Southern soldiers in revolt against the United States swore allegiance to that flag; they killed thousands of Union soldiers defending their country in the South’s ill-conceived effort to preserve outright chattel slavery.
The Confederate flag, thus understood, is no minor emblem or insignificant symbol—it stood for the South’s attempted separation from the United States even if it meant the violent tearing apart of the national sovereignty in existence in 1861. The southern “way of life” and the Confederate flag were raised upon the scarred and bloodied backs of the slaves; the rebellion symbolized by the flag was meant to continue the enslavement and exploitation of Black labor for pecuniary gain.
Such a flag represented a death threat to every democratic principle enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution; in short, as symbol it signified then, as it does today, a violation of those democratic values held most dear in the hearts and minds of American men and women. The flag conveys a message: it said of an entire race of human beings that they were not human at all but property—not fit for education or religion, family life or marriage, justice or freedom, but fit only for the neck shackle and leg-chains of bondage, fit only for the deadly whip and to be worked to slow death like animals, like beasts of burden.
If we appreciate fully what the Confederate flag symbolized in the past, and continues to symbolize today for millions of Americans, then we must question seriously the propriety of its display . . . To allow this flag to be flown is a terrible mistake, at least if we are sincere in our democratic belief and commitment to equality for all Americans.
There are those who try to make light of flying the Confederate flag; “it is not as serious as all that, don’t you know?” Say what you will, anyone who has freed himself from bigotry would not wish to defend the flying of the Confederate flag–they would have acquired the sensitivity to acknowledge the pain it causes so many American citizens.
It involves a magician’s sleight of hand for the flag’s defenders to substitute one issue for the other—to deny the flag has nothing to do with racism but is only some sort of cultural memory. The two issues are inseparable. You might as well expect a German to say the flying of a swastika had nothing to do with Hitler’s Final Solution–the mass extermination of Jewish people–and is only a “cultural memento” without other significance. These symbols, by their very nature, instantly invoke memories of the historical conditions under which they arose and how those conditions came to epitomize the most extreme racial bigotry and anti-Semitism the world has ever witnessed.
To try and dissociate the Confederate flag from slavery and its legacy of racism is a pretension that can never succeed. It is an insult to the true American flag and an insult to all Americans who believe the years of second class citizenship for Black citizens must end—for to fly that flag in light of all that Black people have suffered is to attempt to perpetuate their second class citizenship. It is to say they have no voice that one needs hear; it is to say no one need respect their rights and sensibilities by removing from sight this damnable symbol of slavery and segregation. The burning cross, the white hood of the Ku Klux Klan, the lynch rope, and the Confederate flag are inseparable symbols of racist terror. If we can open our minds and hearts to identify with the feelings of Black Americans, there is no question that the flag must come down.
If the Flag Codes of 1942 do not allow disrespect and mishandling of the American flag, then what are we to say of this display of the Southern symbol of Slavery? Can there be greater disrespect for the American flag shown than the student choosing to fly the Confederate flag instead, the flag which stands for the exact opposite of these bedrock principles of democracy and freedom for all Americans? Can there be a greater insult to the American Flag than for a student to refuse to fly the Stars and Stripes and fly instead the flag of destructive rebellion, which can be readily faulted on at least three counts:
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It is not an official flag of the United States of America.
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It represented slavery and the subjugation of one race by another; it stood for treason and rebellion, for the Civil War began with acts perpetrated by the Southern states that deserve no lesser characterization.
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It continues to represent prejudice, bigotry, and southern “loyalty”; it is an insult to the larger democratic, multi-ethnic, equality-for-all vision of our nation.