American politics
Democracy in America

The Confederate flag
Time for the museum

The confederate flag has no place flying over South Carolina's statehouse

(Update: On Monday South Carolina's Governor, Nikki Haley, along with both state Senators, Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, and a bipartisan group of other lawmakers called for the state to remove the Confederate battle flag from state grounds. "Our state is grieving, but we are also coming together," Ms Haley said.)


In 2001 Georgia adopted a new flag, with the state seal on a plain blue background, below which were the words “Georgia’s History”, and a row of all of the flags that had ever flown over the state. This design had the advantage of (literally) minimising the Confederate flag without erasing it. It had the disadvantage of looking like it was designed by a not particularly talented third-grade art class. Two years later, Georgia finished the job: the ugly compromise was replaced with a variant on the pre-1956 flag, without the Confederate symbol. The state seal features the motto “wisdom, justice, moderation”.

The Confederate flag has been back in the news lately, in the wake of the massacre of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina. Photos continue to surface of Dylann Roof, the alleged murderer and an avowed racist, brandishing the Confederate flag and staring into the camera with a dull malevolence. Many have been startled to learn that this very flag still flies in front of the state house in South Carolina. Since it is not the official flag, it cannot be lowered to mourn the dead. So there it sits at full mast, provoking, embittering and dividing South Carolinians as they try to come to terms with their grief.

Defenders of the Confederate flag say there is nothing inherently controversial or racist about it. It was adopted by the Confederate armies because the official Confederate national flag, the “stars and bars”, looked too much like the Union’s stars and stripes, and Confederate troops were killed by friendly fire in the smoke and confusion of battle. Its design was based on the cross of St Andrew, featuring in the Scottish and United Kingdom flags.

But what the Confederate flag means to most black Americans today, and to millions of their countrymen, is all too plain. The designer of Georgia’s 1956 flag was an explicit segregationist. The state legislature voted for the new flag after Denmark Groover, a state lawmaker, said it was created to “serve notice that we intend to uphold what we stood for, will stand for, and will fight for”.

Such remarks cannot be unsaid, nor unheard. But while “history cannot be unlived,” in the words of Maya Angelou, people can still change. Half a century after pushing Georgia’s new flag, Groover returned to the state legislature to support changing it. Many other white southerners have trod a similar same path, first clutching the Confederate flag in a burst of reactionary racism, then insisting the symbol had nothing to do with slavery or segregation, and finally, as Groover did, admitting the obvious: “It has become the most divisive issue on the political spectrum and needs to be put to rest.”

Hearts and minds in South Carolina have changed more slowly. The state’s most recent decision on the flag merely moved it from above the capitol to a monument in front. Yet arguments that the flag should not be seen as a racist symbol sound increasingly hollow. Mitt Romney and Barack Obama agreed over the weekend that the flag should come down. South Carolina's Republican governor, Nikki Haley, said on Friday: "I think the state will start talking about that again, and we'll see where it goes." Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina and a presidential candidate, rambled on the topic, but like Ms Haley, cracked the door for change:

it’s time for people in South Carolina to revisit that decision. Would be fine with me. But this is part of who we are. The flag represents to some people a civil war, and that was the symbol of one side. To others it’s a racist symbol, and it’s been used in a racist way. But the problems we have in South Carolina and throughout the world are not because of the movie or symbols but because of what’s in people’s hearts.

No, taking down this symbol will not heal America’s wounds tomorrow. Of course it wouldn’t. But letting the Confederate flag wave away on South Carolina’s state grounds simply antagonises those who grieve. The course of “wisdom, justice [and] moderation” is clear: the Confederate flag belongs in textbooks. It belongs in museums. It belongs at historical re-enactments, if that's your thing. In other words, it belongs in any context meant to highlight the pain of America's bloodiest-ever war. But the battle-flag of the Confederate army, which sought to destroy the United States and preserve slavery, has no place flying over South Carolina’s democracy, or that of Mississippi, where it still forms part of the state flag. It stands not just for the personal bravery of Confederate soldiers, as its defenders claim, but also for what they fought for. Those who pretend otherwise simply add insult to injuries that are once again raw.

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