Anti-Confederate
Early this year while I was walking my Schipperke around my suburban neighborhood, I saw something that struck me so deeply I had to do a double-take. Surely, I hadn’t just seen what I saw: Positioned on the upper right hand corner, on the back windshield of a blue Ford truck, fastened like a badge, was the unmistakable “Southern cross” of the Confederate flag; to add insult to injury, the statement “Never Apologize For Being Right!” was emblazoned across the front. I was affronted by the racism and the gall of my neighbor to display such an egregious symbol; it was like discovering a Nazi lived on my block, and worse still, that I had moved into a neighborhood where that behavior was tolerated, and maybe even congruous with other residents’ opinions. I had never been confronted by this treasonous allegiance before and naively thought that this sort of sentiment was long behind us. After all, our country had just witnessed the cold murder of Trayvon Martin and a string of police brutality, so I thought that these racial acts had softened the hearts of anyone with even the most minuscule amount of prejudice. But seeing the Confederate flag unabashedly raised in plain view forced me to re-adjust my myopic view of the world, least of all, because we now have a president in office who doesn’t denounce white supremacy, allowing those racist individuals to feel that their opinions are right. However, the overt racism we’re seeing in the news stems from an ideology long ago harbored in the souls of many individuals. When you look back at the contentious history of our country it becomes evident that hatred and injustice towards Blacks exists because the institution of slavery—the cornerstone of today’s inequality—is not ancient history as we were taught to believe.
It’s 2018 and it has only been 153 years since the abolishment of slavery, a result of the Union’s victory in the Civil War and enactment of the thirteenth amendment, ending the legal institution of slavery in the United States; it has only been sixty-four years after the segregation of public schools was pronounced unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education (and even with that, just in the last couple of years a school in the south remained segregated); it has only been fifty-three years since the Voting Rights Acts of 1965, which sought to overcome the barriers that denied African Americans the right to vote under the fifteenth amendment ratified in 1870. These are small numbers compared to the length of time the institution of slavery endured in the United States—246 years—and the minuscule patch of time that has elapsed since slavery was legally terminated. In my freshman year of high school in 2003, the subject of slavery was taught as if it was a part of history, buried with the sarcophagi of Egyptian times—certainly not a period in our history that occurred merely a century and a half ago and lasted more than two centuries. It’s astonishing to reconcile with the fact that every day for over two hundred years there were bodies treated as property, physically and mentally enslaved; people who, against their will, gave up their homes, language, families, and in short, their entire lives to serve someone who usurped the position of master. It’s unfathomable that as children we are given such a hazy overview of an institution that currently affects our country’s citizens catastrophically. We’re never explicitly told that racists exists and racism prevails in the minds of many; moreover, that the trauma of slavery has trickled down to our present-day lives, and yet there are symbols such as the Confederate flag and monuments for Confederate leaders that, despite the mantra that their symbols serve to honor Southern pride and heritage, are actually used to commemorate the rabid rage of a people who fought to keep slavery legal.
It wasn’t until I saw the footage captured on cell phones of police brutality, the murder of Trayvon Martin, and the release of the film Straight Outta Compton that I was confronted with the issue of inequality and racism in our country. Growing up in inner-city Reading, Pennsylvania, in a Catholic school with kids who looked like me, it was easy to be imperceptive when it came to the racial disadvantages of our country when everyone around me was in the same socioeconomic status: poor. I didn’t notice the class differences until I entered a Catholic high school where everyone around me was now predominantly white. My four Hispanic friends and I, alongside two Black boys, made up the minority group, sticking out like an untucked T-shirt. Because I remained close with my elementary school friends, I didn’t have knowledge of how my white classmates lived, but our differences grew more disparate as we got older. While my friends and I hiked to our houses or were picked up by our parents like kindergartners, most of our classmates were driving to school in brand new spankin’ cars, resulting in a section of our senior yearbook devoted to the best (ahem, most expensive) cars from the class of ‘07. Neither my friends or I were considered for the honor. It wasn’t until I started looking back on my high school years that I understood many of my white peers were descendants of ancestors who owned businesses that were subsequently passed down to their children, thereby, molding my classmates’ privileged childhoods. Neither of my parents’ families were rich, so the concept of an inheritance was utterly lost on me.
I think because my parents weren’t from this country, and didn’t move to the states until their late adolescence—my mother at fourteen and my father at nineteen—they weren’t able to teach my sisters and I the tumultuous history between Blacks and the system created by whites because they were ignorant of it as immigrants. I believe it’s this mixture of ignorance and a lack of empathy that lends itself to people’s outright use of the Confederate flag introduced by the Civil War during a period when the country was fighting over the economics of slavery, and states’ rights. For anyone who exhibits the Confederate flag, it symbolizes the beliefs the South refused to relinquish when they seceded from the North; the Confederate flag is the ribbon one brandishes to support a cause. It’s senseless for anyone to defend their use of the flag by stating its single purpose is to represent their Southern pride and heritage. I read this great article by Roberto A. Ferdman titled, “What the Confederate flag really means to America today, according to a race historian,” in which Ferdman interviews Mathew Guterl, a professor of Africana and American studies at Brown University, about why the Confederate flag shouldn’t be used. According to Guterl “when people say ‘heritage not hate,’ they are omitting the obvious, which is that that heritage is hate. When someone says it’s about history, well that particular history is inseparable from hate, because it is about hate. It’s about racism, and it’s about slavery.” This article further informs readers that the Confederate flag reemerged in the 40’s and 50’s as an opposition to the Civil Rights movement, a movement where Blacks freed from slavery had to fight for their equal rights. It’s deplorable that African-Americans had to protest for their civil rights; it’s worse that their fellow neighbors didn’t agree with equal rights and dug up the Confederate flag to protest that movement. Sadly, this resistance towards equality for all is nothing new. In Michael Che’s special Michael Che Matters, Che comically but profoundly expounds on the absurdity of opposing another’s right to equality:
We can’t agree on anything anymore. As a country, we just can’t agree. We just fight about everything. We can’t even agree on Black Lives Matter. That’s a controversial statement. Black lives matter. Not matters more than you, just matters. Matters. Just matters… We can’t agree on that shit? What the fuck is less than matters? Black lives exist? Can we say that?... We ask for the lowest rights. Gays are fighting for equal rights… Black people was fighting for civil rights. Not even equal. Just civil.
To display the Confederate flag is to be acutely aware of the intentions behind the representation of that flag; you can’t change what the flag truthfully symbolizes and the hurt it causes anyone who sees this flag. As Guterl states, “You can’t filter out the racism and leave what’s pure and historical in the flag, because that purity doesn’t exist. Some things are so primitively stained or tarnished by history that that can never be set aside.” For anyone to defend their use of the flag is to be unsympathetic towards the individuals it intends to demoralize and enslave.
I believe there is an embarrassing and astonishing lack of empathy and sensitivity towards the history of hatred and abuse that African Americans have endured in this country, which make it possible for the feelings of the oppressed to be handled as lightly as a paper airplane. When I listened to Solange Knowles’s album, A Seat at the Table, I was moved by the fifth track, “Interlude: Dad was Mad,” where we hear Solange’s father speak about the tribulations of being one of the first students to attend an integrated school, always under the possibility of death as animosity fell upon their faces like rain. “Interlude” then segues into the next track, “Mad,” which expresses the apathy African-Americans face. In the pre-hook Solange sings,” I ran into this girl, she said, ‘Why you always blaming? Why you can’t just face it? Why you always gotta be so mad?’ I got a lot to be mad about.” For those of us who aren’t Black, we could never understand the years-long history of deprivation, oppression, and physical and mental enslavement enforced on the forsaken individuals at the inception of slavery; moreover, the impact on their descendants who would be released from one form of bondage and ushered into a new one: incarceration. In the outro to “Mad,” Solange croons, “I ran into this girl, I said ‘I’m tired of explaining.’ Man this shit is draining. But I’m not really allowed to be mad.” If we all felt more deeply the depravity of slavery, we wouldn’t second-guess viewing the Confederate flag as an egregious reminder of a time in our country where we were divided over the perpetuation of a most evil establishment.
One argument among those too ignorant to empathize or understand the injustice at the hands of our forefathers, is that slavery happened so long ago we need to forget it even happened (as our textbooks aim to perpetuate), perhaps under their blind delusion that the sentiments once felt by white masters is no longer viable. In his outstanding stand up special, Michael Che Matters, Michael Che dispels this defense by being able to wittingly discern the hypocrisy in this nation. He asks, “Why do Black people always have to get over shit so quickly? [...] Every time we bring some shit up. Slavery. ‘Oh, that was 400 years ago.’ Segregation. ‘Oh, you guys got Black History month out of it. Come on- we gave you February.’ Police shooting. ‘That was two weeks. Come on, you still...’ 9/11. ‘Oh, never forget.’” It’s funny. And it’s true. I know that I can’t let go of things that directly affect me and, I’m not proud to admit, I can hold on to the mere memory of a grudge like an elephant, but when it comes to other people’s problems…well, it’s just other people’s problems. However, equality in America is all of our problem and because there are people whose vision is affiliated with the Confederate States Constitution, we will continue to live in an unequivocally “separate, but equal” society; shame on us for not being further along in our progress towards equal rights. Shame on us for there even being a need to fight for equal rights.
I didn’t think that there was any purpose to the flag, however, I was forced to think differently after watching the sitcom, “The Carmichael Show.” Sadly, this show was cancelled last year (I’m still reeling from the shock) and it’s no longer available on Netflix, which is a damn shame because if you haven’t watched it, you need to watch it. There is an opening scene in season one, in an episode titled “Gender,” where Jerrod Carmichael is having a conversation with his parents, Joe and Cynthia, at the kitchen table alongside his girlfriend and older brother in defense of the Confederate flag:
Jerrod: All I’m saying is I, for one, am gonna be kind of sad to see the Confederate flag go.
Cynthia: You know that flag is a symbol of racism!
Jerrod: I know. That’s why we need it. It lets you know how people are without them having to tell you. Okay? ‘Cause the only thing worse than racism is surprise racism.
Joe: I don’t know. You weren’t around when I was growing up. “In your face racism” is pretty bad, too.
[…]
Jerrod: I would rather for, like, a diner in South Carolina to have the Confederate flag in the window, so I know not to go in there, than them not having the flag up and then I walk in and get my pie spat at.
While I abhor the sight of the Confederate flag, if I see you endorsing it at least I’ll know what your true feelings are, because the words decorated across the flag on my neighbor’s truck are the words that any racist person is thinking: “Never Apologize For Being Right!”; don’t apologize for your bigoted beliefs; don’t apologize for supporting a cause where the white race reigns supreme. Well, I can’t be friends with anyone who thinks like that, and I won’t apologize for that.
Works Cited
Ferdman A., Roberto. “What the Confederate flag really means to America today, according to a race historian.” The Washington Post, 19 June 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/19/what-the-confederate-flag-really-means-to-america-today-according-to-a-race-historian/.
“Gender.” The Carmichael Show, written by Mike Scully, directed by Betsy Thomas, season 1, episode 4, NBC, 2 Sept. 2015.
Michael Che Matters. Directed by Oz Rodriguez, Netflix, 2016.
Solange. “Interlude: Dad was Mad.” A Seat at the Table, Columbia Records, 2016