Remove the Confederate Flag… Why?

The Sensible Conservative is not a southerner and, from an early age, has identified with the Northern victors in the American Civil War that ended one hundred and fifty years ago.  I have never owned a Confederate flag, and I had thought that those who displayed one were somewhat odd in the sense that they defiantly refused to accept that the South lost.

Yet, I think I understand the attachment many feel and therefore disapprove of widespread efforts to take down the Stars and Bars.

Of course, the campaign was ignited by the gunning-down of nine black worshippers in South Carolina.  A Facebook posting showed the shooter with a Confederate flag in his hand.  But why should that mass murderer’s identification with that symbol irreparably brand it as unfit for display by others?

Of course, the flag was the emblem of the Confederate States of America which tried to secede, certainly in large part, to preserve slavery.  (Historians still argue whether other factors such as decades of economic friction between the more powerful industrial North and agrarian South also played important roles in the attempted separation.)

It’s easy to understand why blacks, in particular, would be offended.  But how about the views of white southerners who may view the flag as meaning – to them – something other than racial hostility?

Or are the seventy percent of white South Carolinians who supported the flag’s display in a pre-Charleston massacre poll just racists?    Does that include the twenty-three percent black residents who were in favor, as well?

Far more likely today is that the Confederate flag does not represent a mourning for yesterday and what might have been.  Rather, this symbol represents not the Confederacy and its dedication to racial oppression but, instead, reflects pride in the South as a part of, yet distinct from, other sections of America.  Certainly there is myth in that view, but as anyone who has traveled in the South can attest, there is a lot of truth in it, too. 

So isn’t it understandable that Southerners who live in harmony and without hostility toward other races would be offended by attacks on what they perceive to be a symbol of the South of which today they are very proud?

The assault is undoubtedly taken very personally.

Who dares to stand up for them?  Or should we distinguish between those who take offense and those whose legitimate concerns we, as a broader society, choose to ignore?