Hate Not Heritage

Symbols

It is time, that we as Americans recognized a simple truth - there is nothing honorable about the Confederate Flag.  It is a symbol no less polarizing or horrifying than the Nazi Flag.  And in saying this, I am not pulling the Nazi card, where people today conflate a relatively minor atrocity (or something they disagree with) with Nazi Germany.

I have stated this as a point of actual, on par, comparison.  (Yes, more people died during World War Two, but how many millions died under the yoke of slavery in the United States in the 200 years that it was legal?)

When I first moved to the South to take a job in Savannah, I passed through a gas station in Tennessee that had a large amount of merchandise that displayed the Confederate Flag.  Coming from Colorado where the Confederate flag is considered at best an inappropriate thing to display, these products shocked me.  Most upsetting of all was one T-shirt that read, "It is better to have fought and lost than to never have fought at all; the South shall rise again."

I realized in that moment that even though 150 years have passed since the start of the Civil War, the South still thinks it was in the right.  And in that moment, I also realized that I would never be able to call the South "home."  I might live there, but that would be all that I would do.  I also realized that I needed to leave that part of the country as soon as I could.

I have now left, never to return.  And that vow is brought about in no small part because of the attitude in the South toward the Civil War and the Confederate Flag. 

First, I want to state, the Civil War was entirely about Slavery, specifically, about the South refusing to accept the end of it.  If you read historical accounts of the time, you will discover that this is the truth.  At the time, the South did not even try to hide that fact.  They came right out and said that they would go to war before they would allow any further restrictions on slavery.

It is only a historical revisionist attempt to state that the war was not about slavery, it was about state's rights.  The right of the state that it was about was the "right" to own other people.  Americans need to stop thinking that "Gone With the Wind." is a historical document, it is one of the most vile reconstructions of history ever perpetrated in America.

So I will say again, the Civil War was about one thing, the South's desire to own people, and the Confederate Flag is the banner that they rallied around in that rebellion.

The actual symbol on the Confederate Flag, the Saint Andrew's Cross, is not an evil symbol, any more than the original swastika is evil.  Both symbols have become perverted and changed out of their original form.  The inverted Swastika that comprises the Nazi flag has become a symbol of hate, divorced from it's original positive meanings, just as the Saint Andrew's Cross is perverted by the addition of the stars and the red field it is displayed on. 

I would see bumper stickers all over the South that proudly displayed the Confederate Flag paired with the statement "Heritage not Hate."  Let's look at that.

If it is about heritage, it is about a heritage of causing a needless war that killed more Americans than all other the other wars we have fought as a country COMBINED.  More American soldiers died in the Civil War than died in the rest of our 200+ year military history put together.  And it was a war of choice, a war that happened solely because the Southern States knew that sooner or later slavery would be ended.  The South sunk the United States in a ocean of blood, just for the right to own other human beings. 

Some heritage.  It makes a person proud.

 Again, this is all fact, not spin, and can be easily sourced.  I would start with the excellent book "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong" by James W. Loewen.  Or better yet, just examine The "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union" where South Carolina specifically holds up the rights of slave owners above "State's Rights."  (Which blows a hole in that entire "State's Rights" falsehood)  Another damning document is Mississippi's "Declaration of the Immediate Cause" which says, "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery--the greatest material interest of the world."  If you read the actual documents of the time, you see that slavery was the cause of the Civil War.

These attitudes towards slavery have not died with the end of the Civil War, they've not died with the Civil Rights Movement, they've not even died with the election of a black President.  In the South, there is still a deep, although rarely voiced, desire to bring back the institution.

I first discovered this shortly after moving to Savannah.  I went driving around the region, trying to discover the land in which I was now living.  I got lost in the backwoods of Georgia, to the point that I started listening for banjos.  I came upon what I can only describe as a compound, ringed by Confederate Flags.  In front of the compound was a billboard that read "And the children of Ham shall ever be servants of Man."  This is a direct reference to Genesis 9:25, which is the bible verse used to not only justify the slavery of Africans, but to state that it is God's Will that they be slaves.  (Africans have been interpreted by Biblical scholars to be the "Children of Ham.")

I wanted to pull the car over and take a picture of the sign, but as a long haired "Yankee" driving a small British sports car, I decided that it was in the interest of my continued health and well being that I drove quickly on.

After seeing this, I asked one of the Administrative Assistants at work about it.  She grew up in Savannah, and as a black woman growing up there, she was quite familiar with the racism in the South.  She informed me that she was certain, that if they put the issue to a vote, and only whites were allowed to cast a ballot, that they would vote overwhelmingly to reinstitute slavery.  She said that she personally had met people who got angry every time they saw an African-American who was not wearing shackles.

After this incident, I was speaking with another friend of mine who knows a couple of white supremacists.  (I need to note, he is not one himself, but he comes into contact with them through his line of work)  He informed me that there are lists out there that document who owns who so that when slavery is returned, the owners can take back their property.

This is not ancient history, this is the underbelly of modern America.  An underbelly that rallies around the Confederate flag as the symbol of it's goals as surely as the neo-Nazis rally around the Swastika.

In my last few weeks in the South, I saw a pickup truck with large Confederate Flags plastered on the sides and a sign in the back window that read, "Vote 2012, it's time to take back the plantation."  He was driving with this sign, proudly, through the streets of Savannah, with no fear of reprisal what so ever.  The boldness of this astonished and terrified me.

A symbol is a powerful thing.  It can raise up armies, it can turn brother against brother, it can tear a country apart.

That is what the Confederate Flag is.  And that is it's power, and why it must be repudiated by all Americans.

I saw another bumper sticker down there that said, "Bring back the Old South."  I wish I could have asked the car's owner what part of the Old South did he want to bring back?  Did he want to bring back the shackles, the chains, the whips, the beatings, the forced labor, the degradation, the humiliation, the forced rapes, the families torn apart, the dogs, the grinding of an entire race into the dirt, the boots on the throats of people who did nothing wrong except to be born a different color?

We need to accept that, for a large segment of the American population, the flapping of the Confederate Flag will always carry the sound of the rattle of a slave's chains. 

Corrosion of Conformity

Conformity

For a place that prides itself in it's history of rebellion, I have never been anywhere that demands more conformity.  In the South, rebellion is not permitted, at least not within the social construct.

Rebellion outside of the culture is acceptable; the Tea Party is praised for it's "rebellion" against the Federal Government.  But within the bounds of Southern society, even mild non-conformity is treated far more harshly than elsewhere.

This seeming inconsistency has bothered me for a long time; why is the South so caught up in obedience and bowing to the internal power structure, while building an entire identity around refusal to bow to an external power structure?

Then I realized, the South is nothing but a group of Goth teenagers.

Not literally of course, but there is an incredible parallel between the two groups.  Both pride themselves on their rejection of cultural normatives on the larger scale, while strictly enforcing an internal set of normatives.  (Normatives are social constructs that define "normal" behavior - they set the limits of what is acceptable and create boundaries that define deviance.)

Goth kids reject the "acceptable" behavior of the larger society, and create a new set of appropriate behaviors within their group.  They consider themselves to be complete non-conformists, but they all dress alike, act alike, listen to the same music, etc.  How can you be a non-conformist when you look like everyone else?  (As reference to how powerful these internal sanctions can be, I once knew a Goth girl who dyed her hair back to it's original mousy brown, she was shunned and pressured by her peers until she dyed it black again.)

It all comes back to an identity of shared persecution.  Both Southerners and Goths feel like no one understands them, that they are being persecuted by the tyrannical "other," whether it is the Federal Government or parents and school systems.  And this very persecution gives them their sense of identity, and it strengthens the social bonds within the group.

Things like the Confederate Flag and black eyeliner become the rallying points of a culture under attack.  I have written two blog posts on how Southern Culture feels like it is under attack, so I won't cover old ground here, but the naturalized culture of the South is under what is perceived to be an attack.

And like a group of Goths, Southerners cling to identity markers and a tight knit social structure.  The adversity of persecution reinforces the social compact, and makes that compact even more essential.  It should be noted that neither the South nor the Goth are actually mistreated for the most part, it is a perception that is actually part of the identity of the "outsider."  It is a part of the construct.

And that construct is a powerful thing; it is what gives that group their strength. 

It should be noted that actual persecution is different from illusionary persecution.  Even though both typically reinforce cultural markers, actual persecution can also degrade culture if it is perceived as to dangerous to maintain that culture.  The persecution of Southern culture is illusionary in that no one is actually in physical danger from their culture; the threat to their culture is rooted in epistimology.

To return to the main point, when people feel like everyone is against them, their internal bonds get much stronger, because they feel like they have no one else.  It creates a sense of "you and me against the world," which leads to an extremely tight society.  Just like "Southern Nice," it becomes a bulwark against an existential threat.

But it goes further than that.  It becomes a method of internal control.  When a group is under threat, there can be no internal dissention.  Look at how a fractured America came together after Pearl Harbor or after September 11th.  No matter what your political persuasion was, after those events, all other sub-categories disappeared, and the only identity of any importance was that of being an American.

People, at their root, are herd animals.  (We don't like to think of it that way, but all social animals revert back to group-think in times of stress or crisis.)  As herd animals, our identity submerges into the collective identity at these times.  This leads to the ability of the "alpha" to control the behavior of the rest of the group.

You see it in the Goth sub-culture, and you see it in the South, with dynamic preachers or politicians.  The leaders take this strong need to belong and use it to manipulate behavior, through the use of the Third Dimension of Power.   They make people do what they want them to do, because people, especially people belonging to a persecuted group, cannot afford to lose the ties to their band.

In essence, the leaders perpetuate the sense of persecution by the outside world to reinforce their internal control mechanism.

And it is not just Southerners and Goths that this happens to.  You see it in the Republican Party and in the Christian Churches.  You see it in every ethic group with a strong cultural identity.  Democrats wonder why the Republicans see themselves as an oppressed minority even when they run the entire show.  Non-Christians don't understand the brouhaha over the "War on Christmas," when Christmas is the biggest holiday in America.  People wonder why immigrants don't abandon their languages and their traditions now that they live in America.

It has to do with this control, and this sense of identity through persecution.  By setting themselves us as the oppressed, some Republicans and some Christians reinforce the internal bonds of their sub-cultures.  It pulls them together, and supports their identities.  It creates boundaries on the group's behavior and causes them to revert back to a herd mentality.  It creates a cultural dynamism that creates an opportunity for the group to move as a cohesive whole.

The basic core of this is, "I have no one else to turn to, so I must obey the rules to avoid being cast out of the one group that accepts me." 

Cultural identity is an important thing, and I am not trying to demean it here.  This dynamic gives people a sense of safety and of belonging.  What I am talking about is the deliberate set up of persecution to create identity within a group.

In the end, setting yourself up as part of an outcast group becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.