The Flag

It’s difficult, I think, for non-Southerners to understand why removing the Confederate flag from the capitol grounds in South Carolina could possibly be something that arouses such emotion to retain it.  Here’s the thing.  It’s difficult for me as a Southerner to understand, too.  It’s difficult because it requires me to come to terms with some things. 

 

When my son studied the Civil War in the eighth grade.  As the unit came to a close, all of the students wore Civil War costumes to school one day.  The boys were given the choice of coming as Union or Confederate soldiers.  And even though he lived in Atlanta and had ancestors who fought for the Confederacy, my son chose the Union.  It was not the majority choice.  It made me very proud.

It made me very proud even if I had been brought up to believe in something called “Southern pride.”  It made me very proud even if I had been taught in my own childhood that the Confederate flag was a symbol of something noble about a “lost cause” rather than a symbol of racism.  Those are the phrases I’ve been surprised to hear brought out again over the last few weeks as if they made the Confederate flag defensible.  Of course, they don’t.  The flag went up over the South Carolina capitol in 1962 and made its appearance in the state flag of Georgia, my home, in 1956.  They were always a symbol of opposition to racial justice and not of some vague myth of something called Southern pride.  Happily, that symbol has been removed from both, and needs to be removed from the one state flag in which it remains. 

So why all the emotional reaction to what is so obviously right?  I think it’s because Southerners have a hard time coming to terms with the Civil War.  It’s amazing the things I’ve heard this week about the War (Southerners always capitalize this word when referring to the Civil War) and the South’s motivations for rebellion as the flag removal issue was debated.  Here’s the thing I think Southerners have to face.  While the causes of the war are complex and the reason people fought are many, there’s no getting around that the defense of slavery is simply indefensible.  Any way you cut it, slavery had a lot to do with it.  In fact, it’s pretty difficult to get around that that was the main reason for it, or at the very least, that without slavery, the whole thing wouldn’t have happened.

This is what makes it very difficult for us, some more so than others.  It’s difficult for me to conceive of my ancestors who fought for the South as monsters.  I don’t know whether or not they owned slaves, but they may have.  It would still be difficult for me to see them as monsters.  I didn’t know them, of course, but I knew the children they reared as my grandparents, who themselves had a more moderate approach to race (my grandfather referred to the Klan as “fools,” but it may have been for the attire).  And I learned a lot about how to live and love from these people. 

Here’s what I as a Southerner have come to realize.  Try as I once might have, it is impossible to justify my ancestors’ actions in the War, at least to the extent I know what those actions were.  They may have been fighting to preserve a dying economic system.  It was indefensible.  They may have just been fighting to protect their homes and owned no slaves at all.  It is just as indefensible.  They were undoubtedly culturally conditioned and maybe it’s wrong to judge them by the standards of a later day.  Still, though, there’s no defense.  After all, they were capable of moral thought and, although I’m sure there would have been a price to pay, could have dissented from the majority point of view, just like their descendent, my son.  That would have made them the real Southern heroes of the War. 

So that’s what I have to come to terms with.  Most of my Southern compatriots three generations back were conformists in a system of evil.  I’m going to hold onto the fact that they weren’t evil themselves, not because of Southern mythology but because I have personal evidence of the love they passed down in my family.  But it doesn’t mean I can defend their actions in any way, unless there were some I don’t know of back there who had the moral courage to stand up for right. 

I think this is what white Southerners have to come to terms with.  Getting rid of the flag is a good step.  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that coming to terms with it evokes no small amount of emotion.
 

And, by the way, I hardly think Southerners are the only ones who have some things to come to terms with.  It’s just that the presenting issues for us, like flags, are less subtle and lend themselves less to denial.  That may the grace of being a Southerner today.

Peace,