I have promised three or four times to stop posting on this but . . . .
I will make one more brief attempt to respond to Kevin's posting below,
with perhaps a slightly different approach.
Kevin seems to be arguing that those who fly the confederate flag do so
for essentially non-political, non-racist reason. THis is true, he
argues, even if the motivation for adding the flag was racist and
segregationist.
These is a level at which they may be true. The child who flies a state
flag with the "stars and bars" on it may simply be waving the state
flag, without any political intent.
This however, does not mean that there is no political content to the
flag; it only means that the person using the flag does not know or
understand the content. Someone viewing the flag, however, may still
see that content.
Let me offer what I hope will be a non-confrontational example:
A person living in a remote part of the globe who is not a Christian and
does not know anything about Christianity finds rosary beads, or a
crucifix, and starts wearing them. I missionary arrives and assumes the
person is Catholic. The person is not Catholic and does not accept
Catholic doctrine, but the Priest will assume otherwise, and plausible
act on that assumption.
Now, the issues here is not this stark. Surely the modern person who
flys the confederate flag, or puts it on his truck, knows some of its
history, knows something of slavery, racism, the KKK, and all that has
historically been tied to the flag. This modern flag flyer, at one
level, implicitly endorses this history, even if he says, no I don't.
If he is utterly ignorant of the past (like the person who wore the
crucifix), nevertheless, others will assume that the flag flyer is
endorsing the flag and its meaning. Moreover, today, with all of the
controversy over the flag, it is unlikely that anyone would be unaware
that the has stood for racism and segretion, and was used in the 1960s
and beyond as a symbol of white supremacy.
Kevin writes: "Thus, it seems to me a safe bet to presume that the
meaning of the Confederate flag today is something other than what it
was 50 years ago." I would urge him to ask his African Americn students
if they think this is true. Or better yet, put the flag on your lapel
and on your car, and visit your nearest AME Church this Sunday, and see
how people respond to you.
Paul FInkelman
[log in to unmask] wrote:
> I have changed the title of the thread again, to highlight a
> point which I think is important, and which it would seem
> (given how badly Professor Finkelman has misinterpreted my
> argument) I did not make with sufficient clarity. Mea
> culpa; allow me to beg your collective indulgence and try
> again.
>
> *****
>
> Public history--and clearly the Confederate heritage groups
> are engaged in a kind of public history--takes place in the
> present. Like all history, even the most abstruse academic
> history, it is about the present as much as it is about the
> past. Public history is one of the ways in which people
> craft their identity, usually by valorizing the past;
> occasionally (as, for example, in the Holocaust Museum in
> Washington DC) by holding it up as a moral example of past
> atrocities, something, that is, to be condemned morally.
> Thus, it strikes me as axiomatic that if the larger society
> and culture changes, the context within which public history
> takes place changes too. The symbols of public history
> therefore have evolving meaning--they take their meaning not
> just from the past, but also from the public conversation of
> the present.
>
> I can't imagine that anyone disagrees with any of this. But
> I will stop here, briefly, to ask if what I am saying sounds
> reasonable.
>
> *****
>
> Thus, a subtext within the discussion between Professor
> Finkelman and myself is "how much has really changed from
> the 1950s to now?" It seems to me self-evident that the
> answer to that question must be "a great deal." IF that is
> true--if the racial mores and attitudes and ethics of
> southerners are substantially different than they were 50
> years ago--AND if you accept my argument about public
> history above--THEN it follows logically and of necessity
> that the symbols of public history today connote different
> things than they did 50 years ago.
>
> I can't imagine that anyone disagrees with that, either.
> But I will stop here, briefly, to ask if what I am arguing
> sounds reasonable.
>
> *****
>
> Thus, it seems to me a safe bet to presume that the meaning
> of the Confederate flag today is something other than what
> it was 50 years ago. This is not the same thing as saying
> that the flag is not a symbol of racism. It may well be.
> However, given the nature of political change, it strikes me
> as worthy of our consideration that the Confederate flag, to
> many of those who display it, means something other than "I
> hate black people." Moreover, there is substantial
> anecdotal evidence to support such an interpretation.
>
> Let me be clear that this is a provisional argument. I
> think it is safe to say, however, that even in private,
> racism functions differently than it did 50 years ago. So
> even if the Confederate flag is universally a symbol of
> racism (and I don't think that it is--although I am open to
> being persuaded otherwise) it nonetheless is operating
> differently than in the past.
>
> I think the way to find out what is going on is to look at
> what the people who are producing this form of public
> history--the heritage groups themselves--actually have to
> say about the matter. If Professor Finkelman is correct,
> that we can read the symbol of the Confederate flag as
> functionally static, continuous with its meaning 50 years
> ago, then that should emerge from the evidence itself.
>
> I think this would make a terrific research project, by the
> way. I'd very much like to see what results from it.
>
> *****
>
> Here is the original passage that I wrote, which seems to
> have been the source of confusion:
>
> ". . . political symbols evolve with time, and it seems
> unlikely that the flag now conveys or connotes, to those who
> display it, quite the same meaning as it did in 1954. In
> 1954 there was a vibrant and angry public political movement
> to sustain and preserve Jim Crow. No such movement exists
> today--indeed, in our public life today there is pretty much
> uniform consensus that Jim Crow was morally wrong. Even the
> most ardent southern "red neck" today, at least in public,
> will say that equal rights for all American citizens is a
> good thing. So the Confederate heritage movement today does
> not seem to connote, to those who support it, a
> straightforward politics of nostalgia for segregation.
> Whatever else the flag means to those who display it today,
> it does not mean the same thing as it did 50 years ago."
>
> Warm regards,
> Kevin
> Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
> Department of History
> James Madison University
>
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--
Paul Finkelman
Chapman Distinguished Professor
University of Tulsa College of Law
3120 East 4th Place
Tulsa, Oklahoma 74104-2499
918-631-3706 (office)
918-631-2194 (fax)
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