I still do not seem to be successful at conveying my
thoughts clearly.

I will respond to Paul's posting point by point:

>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.

I think all public history is political, in the sense that
it conveys a statement about what kind of place public
society should be.  So I would not agree with the statement
above.

Moreover, I think I have been consistent in framing my
observations tentatively, rather than in absolute terms.  I
have left open the possibility that the Confederate flag is
today a racist symbol, intended as such by the heritage
groups which promote it.  But too, I have been insisting
that we leave open the possibility that they do not intend
to convey a racist statement.

So a fairer statement of my position would be "Kevin seems
to be arguing that those who fly the confederate flag MAY do
so for essentially non-racist reasons."

I have suggested that if we want to know why some people
display the Confederate flag, we should look at what they
actually have to say about it.  Otherwise, we risk creating
straw men--we risk ascribing to those who fly the flag
motives that they may not in fact possess.

>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.

Of course.  But even more importantly, the symbol may--
indeed, I will go further and say, surely does--mean
different things to different people.  The US Flag, for
example, clearly means very different things to different
people, as the argument over whether or not it is sacred
makes clear (you cannot desecrate the flag, for example by
burning it, if you do not think it is sacred in the first
place).  This is true of most potent symbols.  Their meaning
is not absolute and fixed--it changes depending on the
larger context.

>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.

I don't think this is necessarily true.  Some people who
display the Confederate flag endorse a different meaning for
it because they adhere to a different history.  If you
believe that the Confederate flag derives its meaning from
the Confederacy (which the people I have talked to
personally seem to believe) and that secession was not about
slavery (as they also seem to believe), and that the
soldiers who fought for the CSA were not fighting for
slavery (which they also seem to believe) then it is
entirely possible to construct a non-racist meaning for the
flag.  Its not a meaning based on an especially accurate
understanding of history.  Ironically, in the eyes of people
who espouse these beliefs, the people who waved the flag in
the 1950s in support of massive resistance are the ones who
got the history wrong.  *They* are the ones who abused the
symbol.  There is nothing inconsistent in this view of the
flag, provided you buy into the underlying assumptions.  And
at least in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, *lots* of
people buy into those assumptions.

Paul, you seem to be endorsing a fixed and absolute
understanding of the function of symbols.  The "meaning" of
the Confederate flag was fixed in the 1950s, and cannot (or
perhaps "has not" would be better) change, is how I read
your argument.  Moreover, you seem to be insisting that
those people who read the flag as a symbol of massive
resistance are the only ones with a legitimate understanding
of it.

I just don't think political symbols work this way.  I think
they are impinged upon by historical forces.  Cultural
symbols are not fixed because the culture changes; political
symbols are not fixed because politics change too.  If the
flag is indeed a cultural and political symbol, and if the
cultural and political context has in fact changed, then the
meaning of the symbol is different.  Exactly what that
meaning is, to the various groups for whom it is meaningful
and potent, seems to me to be an open question, waiting for
an empirically based answer.

>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.

I've already done this.  The conversation was enlightening
to all involved, and confirmed my view that there is a huge
divergence over the meaning of this symbol.

Warm regards,
Kevin

Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Department of History
James Madison University

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