Confederate Flags Must Vanish

At the 1936 Olympic Games in Munich, athletes competed beneath the unfurled flags of Nazi Germany--flags symbolizing a regime that spawned worldwide evil and terror. In Atlanta in the summer of 1996, barring significant political developments, athletes will again have to collect their Olympic medals under a flag which represents the vilest capacities of man--the Confederate flag, an integral part of the Georgia state flag. Indeed, both flags stand for a holocaust--one of Jews slaughtered in ovens, the other of Africans who perished during the Middle Passage.

Many white Southerners still deny the insidious nature of the St. Andrew's Cross, the rebel flag. A Southerner once tried to convince me that this flag represented "heritage, not hate," but the rebel flag undoubtedly stands for a "heritage of hate." Despite vain attempts by revisionist so-called scholars to color the Civil War as a primarily economic conflict, slavery was the primary cause of the war. Further-more, the Confederate flag was incorporated into the Georgia state flag in 1956 as a symbolic challenge to the desegragationist agendas of the civil rights movement and the federal government. It was a symbolic middle finger cast at those who supported justice and equal rights, not a benign declaration of Southern pride.

Striking parallels exist between the legacy of Nazi Germany and the heritage of the Confederacy and its rebel flag. The Confederacy's struggle to preserve the "peculiar institution" of slavery was an attempt to resist the democratic ideals sweeping the Western world. While other enlightened nations were rejecting the barbarity of human bondage, the South still clung to the remnants of a shameful past. Likewise, Nazi Germany's visions of world conquest and racial purity were a return to the savageness of the Dark Ages.

The crimes of the Nazi state were perhaps more shocking than those of the Confederacy because the Germans regressed from modernity to primitive cruelty. In the 1860s, the South had not yet progressed to a modern mindset. Even a century later, it was painfully obvious that the South had made few steps away from its abject backwardness. Just a generation ago, the South shocked the entire world with its inhuman brutality-footage of redneck goons attacking peaceable black men, women and children with pressurized fire hoses and police dogs was broad-cast to millions.

A prime example that these uncivilized tendencies are still alive is the South's continued fondness for the Confederate flag. Anyone who does not acknowledge that this flag stands for murder, lynching, rape and treason cannot be regarded as possessing good judgement. The Confederate flag embodies indignities from the plantation to segregated schools. It represents White Citizens' Councils and the Ku Klux Klan, cross burnings and castrations. It is stained with the blood of innocents and heroes from Emmitt Till to Medgar Evers.

But in 1993, when Zell Miller, Georgia's Democratic Governor, proposed removing the disgraceful St. Andrew's cross from the state flag, only 25 percent of white Georgians favored this proposal. Thus, it is safe to assume that a majority of white Southerners continue to uphold some of Dixie's most persistent traditions--a stubborn rejection of rational thought and a rancorous veneration of the profane.

Those who revere the Confederate flag often allege that the Southern way of life is a grand tradition. The most cursory scrutiny of this proposition completely undermines its claims to validity. The Southern gentleman, who was supposed to be a gallant, aristocratic hero, was a craven degenerate. This slave-owner would sneak out of his house late at night to rape black women and girls. As light-skinned mulattoes began to appear on his plantation, he began to actually enslave and brutalize his very own children.

His wife, the Southern lady, allegedly the pinnacle of virtue, allowed this sick behavior to corrupt her family. Her husband's excuses for forcing himself on his slaves (to "satisfy his animal instincts") were unchallenged. While Northern women courageously promoted the Abolitionist cause, the Southern woman passively abetted her society's debasement.

The establishment of the Confederacy cannot be glossed over as an attempt to preserve a mere "way of life." It was plainly treason of the highest order. The fact that some Southerners continue to refer to the Civil War as the "War of Northern Aggression" demonstrates either a disturbing lack of historical consciousness or a pathetic denial of reality.

After slavery, the plantation life which had presented at least a facade of decency and civilization vanished. The white Southern man remained consumed by one overriding passion--a paranoid fear of black men. And the rape of young black girls by white Southern men was all too frequent until the civil rights movement finally broke the back of Southern white supremacy.

While racial prejudice was--and still is--unavoidable in the North, at least the North was relatively free from the asinine Jim Crow and the bloodthirsty Judge Lynch. At least the North never thrust jabbering Neanderthals such as Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, George Wallace, or David Duke onto the national stage.

For much of the twentieth century, Southern whites wasted much of their energy on constructing and enforcing a system of apartheid. While black Southerners were creatively and subversively turning their misery into enduring American art forms such as the blues and jazz, most Southern whites were so crippled by inbred cultural racism that they could barely demonstrate that they were morally or intellectually superior to brute beasts.

Some may think that I, as a northerner, am criticizing the South too harshly. But I know firsthand of the perversity of this region--I've traveled through it a bit, and I lived a stone's throw below the Mason-Dixon line for several years.

The irrational hatred symbolized in the rebel flag is often all too palpable in Dixie today. Although Southern racism is sometimes masked, the extent to which raw and malicious discrimination still infects the South would shock most northerners.

The United States will be disgraced if the Confederate flag flies over the Summer Games in Atlanta. Every decent American should be outraged that the Confederate flag will be displayed to the world, announcing a rejection of all that is upright and noble. Traitors, miscreants and goons from Jefferson Davis to Orville Faubus will be laughing in their graves.

If the St. Andrew's Cross is unfurled over Atlanta this summer, some protests and civil disobedience will probably occur. It would be encouraging to see black athletes raise a black power first during medal ceremonies, as two black track stars did in the 1968 Olympics. (They were subsequently stripped of their medals).

But even more assertive acts of resistance are necessary. The Georgia state flag should be burned--great bonfires of this symbol of evil should be lit all over Atlanta. Furthermore, the Confederate flag should be torn down wherever it is raised. To allow it to fly without serious, even militant challenge is unpatriotic and unacceptable.

David W. Brown '97 is an Associate Editorial Chair of The Crimson.