I have been watching the national reaction to the horrific,
racist massacre that occurred at a Charleston, South Carolina black church, a
few days ago.
It was interesting to see how the nation (or is it just the
media) fixated on the Confederate Flag as the main symbol if not the actual
reason for the massacre by a deranged 21 year-old racist who posed with the
flag in his many on-line postings.
The Confederate Flag as a symbol of the pre-civil war South
has a special meaning to Southerners past and present. As a history nut, I can
tell you that our Civil War was not fought over the single issue of slavery
although obviously it was a big factor.
Many of those who died fighting for the South never owned
slaves or had anything to do with slavery. Southerners were different from the
people living in the North. They were more rural, had little industrialization
and therefore were much poorer but they had a fierce spirit of pride about who
they were and what they stood for.
Even though defeated and humbled after the war, that spirit was
kept alive in the symbolism represented by the Confederate Flag which flew over
the many monuments to the Southerners killed during the Civil War.
South Carolina took the Confederate Flag off the dome of its
statehouse and moved it to a nearby monument to Southern soldiers killed in the
war. They realized then that flying the Rebel flag over their seat of
government was improper seeing as the Confederacy was history.
As Southerners saw the flag a symbol of the Rebel spirit,
blacks saw it as a symbol of slavery. The killer of the nine black people in
that church saw it as a symbol of white supremacy and therefore racism.
I am reminded of the story of the SWASTIKA symbol that we
associate with the brutal Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler and all the terrible
things he did to humanity under its banner. Many do not know that the so called
Nazi symbol was actually a symbol noted in pre-historic days and later as a
symbol depicting someone or something as very lucky or auspicious.
I was amazed on my trip to India to see business cards with
that symbol and on a number of occasions, as tattoos on seemingly normal
people. I thought are they all Nazis? I later learned that the symbol is sacred
in Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism. The swastika symbol is also present in
Chinese script and called a manji.
In the West, the swastika is still a Nazi symbol and will
always be a symbol of evil. The symbol is still used by neo-Nazis or racist skinheads
throughout the West.
The negative reaction to the Confederate Flag after the
Charleston massacre was not overwhelming at first. Southern Republicans tried
to deflect the public cry to take down the flag since it was now a symbol of
racism and was an insult to the people massacred in Charleston as well as an
insult to the whole nation.
Southern Republicans tried to explain the flag’s historical
significance to the South but the popular sentiment demanded the flag to come
down.
One black politician from South Carolina called the whole
flag issue as total bullshit; talking about a symbol instead of real racism on
the ground in this country.
The pendulum has swung to the other side so quickly that not
only Confederate flags are coming down in the South but statues and monuments
to Southern soldiers who died in the Civil War are in danger and this is
unfortunate, I hope cooler heads prevail.
The Civil War is our history and those who died on both
sides of the conflict were Americans, one side dying to preserve a union and
the other side dying trying to secede from that union.
Ironically after the war, Southern blacks moving to the
North to find jobs in the factories were met by rabid racism from the people who
liberated them from slavery.
One hates to see one man and one terrible act change the
perception of a once proud Southern symbol into something despicable from now
on and forever but that is exactly what happened.
Some Southerners will argue that this should not be allowed
but for all intents and purposes, the flag now represents racism and anybody
with the flag will be labelled a racist whether they are racists or not.
These are truly historic times.
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