flags
Ta-Nehisi on Confederate flags, two days ago. Me on Confederate flags, thirteen years ago. Key passage from me:
The problem here is one of the interpretation of symbols. One of my Southern students insists that the flag does not represent racism or slavery to him; when pushed, he suggests that if it represents such things to other people that’s their problem. In this view, the interpretation of a symbol is purely a matter of personal preference and no one has the right to criticize anyone else’s interpretation. I am afraid that I cannot accept such perspectivism. Symbols have histories; and the world we live in is historical. Whatever I or anyone else might think about the flag, it is a matter of record that it was created to serve as the symbol of an institution whose members disagreed about many things but agreed about the moral and legal acceptability of slave-holding. It is also a matter of record that today’s racists and segregationists still make regular appeals to that flag as the symbol of their cause, though less often and less publicly now than when I was a boy (which may help to explain the difference between my attitude and that of some of my students). That still-living history cannot be erased by waving the magic wand of personal interpretive preference — which, by the way, is a strange magic wand for someone to wave who seeks to represent and defend a traditional way of life.
In that article I describe the creation of a Dixie Club at Wheaton for students from the South; thinking about that I am reminded of the amazingly good-hearted and immensely talented people who came to me to see if I would sponsor that club, and with whom I was of one mind on the “flag issue.” Here’s one of them, and here’s another. Hi y'all!
(post revised and expanded)
Last year my family and I had the great privilege of being on the receiving end of the justifiably famous “Southern Hospitality” and in addition I spent several weeks living in the Georgia where I saw more than a few pick-up trucks with the Stars and Bars on their bumpers.
I will say plainly that there are aspect of Southern culture that are simply better than what we have here in the North, and not by a narrow margin; and that includes NYC, the small town I call home now, and rural Oregon where I graduated high school and went to college.
How and if ever these superior cultural aspects are reconciled with slavery and Jim Crow, I don’t know. But I came away from my time in the South with a greater degree of sympathy for the attitude of Fuck you, I’m not apologizing for where I was born, were I live, or who I am anymore.
— Tony Comstock · Apr 30, 11:17 PM · #
We lived in Atlanta for awhile, about twelve years ago. It was different than the Midwest, but not in the way I expected it would be. I think a person has to spend time in both places to understand the differences (which I probably didn’t begin to). I gained a lot of respect for the people.
I remember the flag issue coming up back then. Someone I talked to felt a cultural connection to it, and she was a decent person. We see it once in awhile in southern Ohio, with a different meaning. It causes too much pain to be used as a symbol today.
(I’m reading Beukelman and Mirenda’s book on alternative and augmentative communication, which usually depends on the use of symbols. People need shared understanding of their meaning, or communication breaks down.)
— Julana · Apr 30, 11:53 PM · #
Claire Holley (first link, last line) did a really beautiful version of “Lion Song” by Harrod & Funck for a fundraiser compilation. But I never remembered to try and chase down more of her music. I’ll have to listen to more of her stuff now.
Count me as a southerner (not a deep southerner, though) who eschews the flag on account of its history. If there are, as Tony says, aspects of southern culture that are especially good, I’m thinking that sifting them out takes a sober appraisal of the evils of southern culture, and, in my experience, the “flag issue” tends to cut that reflection short.
— william randolph · May 1, 12:25 AM · #
Why single out the Southern history as containing “evils” as if the North or West has been all roses? Yes, the South had slavery, but other places have their share of historical sins as well. Think about California’s treatment of Chinese immigrants at the turn of the Twentieth Century. And MLK himself said he had never seen racism like what he encountered in Chicago. So I wish other regions could stop treating the South as if it is some isolated cesspool of intolerance.
— Bert · May 1, 12:58 AM · #
I attended an event or two of the original “Dixie Club” and enjoyed my classmate Claire Holley’s (then Chamblin) singing at coffeehouses. We now own a couple of her CD’s. Good memories. Not so great is the memory that my roommate (from Oklahoma) and I (from Virginia) hung a confederate flag in the window of our apartment for our entire junior year. We meant no racial offense and had wholly bought into the argument made by the students you mention above, Alan. It was a way of saying “hey, we’re proud southerners up here in Yankee-land.” I see it your way now, though.
— Karl · May 1, 02:51 AM · #
I went to school in Lexington, Virginia, which is kind of the epicenter of confederate sentimentalism and memorabilia in my experience (both Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson are buried there . . . plus, of course, VMI). And I think it’s important to distinguish between the kids who adopt the flag—and maybe haven’t really thought it through—and the institutions that perpetuate its use in public life. From states of the union, to colleges, to small towns, to entertainment outfits; they all know better, but they do it anyway.
— southpaw · May 1, 03:07 AM · #
I suppose, being a Missouri boy, I only count as semi-Southern (during the two years my family lived in Louisiana, there was much discussion amongst our friends over whether we count as Yankees).
I’m not a fan of the flag, for the same historical reasons that Alan mentions. Plus, from my perspective, it’s only representative of a certain part of Southern society: the lower-class, “redneck” section. Even if it doesn’t convey racism, it conveys a certain declasse boosterism that I find distasteful. Even if it isn’t associated with the Klan, it’s still associated with the Dukes of Hazard.
If one wishes to glorify independence and the traditions of Southern culture, why not raise your individual state’s flag? Or choose one of the other Confederate flags?
— Ethan C. · May 1, 03:29 AM · #
I never really thought of myself as a Southerner until I went to grad school and became friends with some folks who had some rather untoward views about the land of sweet tea. But I think what’s so interesting about the South is that some of the same things that make it so endearing – the paced sense of life, the traditions, the familiarity – also serve its worst aspects.
I do wish my children could grow up with a soft southern accent, though, and, oh do I miss the BBQ. Where can I get BBQ around these parts, Alan? Where, oh, where?
— Bryan · May 1, 03:55 AM · #
And what of the American founders’ general agreement on the acceptability of slaveholding, and the ways that many defenders of this nation’s more recent heinous actions make regular appeals to the flag? I don’t mean these to be empty questions – I’m a patriotic American and no fan of the Stars and Bars, but here at Berkeley, for example, the GSU managed after 9/11 to keep the American flag from being flown at a ceremony, on the grounds that it stood for war and oppression.
I suppose that this remark – from elsewhere in your essay, Alan – could be relevant:
But then what about those places where the American flag is widely looked upon in the way that Berkeley’s representative graduate students apparently regard it? In certain cases – perhaps not that of the graduate students, but quite a number of others – such offense hardly seems “arbitrary or capricious”; does that mean that in such regions the flag should not be displayed?
Again, I don’t mean these as rhetorical questions or objections, but rather as genuine challenges for a view that I myself am inclined to hold.
— John Schwenkler · May 1, 04:02 AM · #
Well apparently what I was seeing on those pickup truck bumpers was not the Stars and Bars, but the Southern Battle Flag; and having read this from Ethan C:
“I’m not a fan of the flag, for the same historical reasons that Alan mentions. Plus, from my perspective, it’s only representative of a certain part of Southern society: the lower-class, “redneck” section. Even if it doesn’t convey racism, it conveys a certain declasse boosterism that I find distasteful. Even if it isn’t associated with the Klan, it’s still associated with the Dukes of Hazard.”
It feels appropriate to drag over this bit from one of TNC commenters:
“The flag we’re discussing, the “Battle Flag” with the big X across it, became the overwhelming symbol not in the 1860s, but in the 1950s. It’s about revolt and rejection, heavily on race, but not entirely so. It includes a heavy helping of “Don’t tread on me.” It also has a loud, rambunctious, beer-and-pickup truck style. It’s Lester Maddox and George Wallace and the Dukes of Hazzard.”
“I’m told my grandfather’s comment on the Klan was “When they go marching in their sheets, just look at their shoes.” He meant that they were poor men, with few options and a large helping of desperation. And he also meant that he, a man with a college education, a law practice, and inherited land, was too good for that.”
“My grandfather was raised in home that displayed a flag with two red bars with a white one in between, and a blue field at upper left with thirteen stars in a circle. That’s the “Stars and Bars.” It goes with verandas and juleps and cavalry officers and gentility. It’s Ashley and Melanie Wilkes. It’s a different symbol than the one we’re puzzling here.”
“Seeing that divide may help untangle what’s up with the heritage v. hate argument about the Battle Flag.”
“When we ask someone to let the Battle Flag go, I think they hear a request to let go of those other loyalties too, to say they wish they’d grown up in a bigger house, with a newer car and more educated parents and a life style Martha Stewart would approve. They think we’re asking them to say they look down on what their parents were able to provide, and on their parents. They think we’re asking them to sign up not just for my grandfather’s relatively decent views on race, but his smug, witty, indecent view of social class. And, of course, they’re not entirely wrong.”
Having previously expressed admiration for some aspects of Southern Culture, I’ll add here that the South’s emphasis on class is not one of the things I find charming. What the roots of that are, I don’t know; and whether it’s actually different from anywhere else, I don’t either. But it feels different. And suggesting that, even stripped of it’s racist baggage, the Battle Flag, with all of its declasse connotations would still be “distasteful” strikes me as a manifest failure of charity too.
— Tony Comstock · May 1, 12:19 PM · #
Even if it isn’t associated with the Klan, it’s still associated with the Dukes of Hazard.
Ethan, you say that like it’s a bad thing.
Where can I get BBQ around these parts, Alan? Where, oh, where?
Bryan — is this my colleague Bryan? Political philosophy personified? — real open-pit barbeque is actually illegal in almost every municipality in Illinois. It violates fire codes. If that doesn’t indicate a state whose priorities are totally screwed up, I don’t know what does. I talked to the owner of Uncle Bub’s in Westmont, the one serious barbeque place in the area, and he was almost in tears over the limitations placed on his art. But he compensates as best he can and does a pretty darn good job of it. Let me know if you want me to take you there — we can put together a posse of barbeque hunters.
John, I think the situation you describe is so different than the one I describe that it would be hard to compare them. Refusing to fly the flag of the country you live in (the country most of you are citizens of) is an act that carries wholly different meanings than the insistence on displaying the flag of a long-defunct would-be country. I’m not sure where to start parsing those distinctions.
And Tony, the class consciousness of the South is rapidly fading, as you probably know. Coming from a long line of poor white trash, I can’t regret that too much.
— Alan Jacobs · May 1, 01:55 PM · #
And apparently what is often called the Southern Battle Flag is actually the Second Confederate Naval Jack, or at least that’s what Wikipedia has to say about it. (The Battle Flag is square, the Naval Jack is rectangular.) Before she was wrecked, I used to fly the First Navy Jack on my schooner on the 4th of July.
My host in Georgia was overtly contemptuous of folks who flew the Second Confederate Naval Jack in their yards, or on the bumpers of their trucks. I don’t know if that was for my benefit, or if he would have said the same things in the company of his fellows.
He would also say “nigger-wired” for sloppy and/or improvised electrical work, which made me flinch, even though I know he didn’t mean anything especially vitriolic by it. I didn’t used to flinch when I would use “white trash” to mean the same thing about whatever I might have rigged up in some half-baked, half-assed sort of way.
I will leave it to each of your consciences whether or not you’re going to image google for Catherine Bach.
— Tony Comstock · May 1, 03:55 PM · #
That helps, Alan. I suppose that this is a case in which Jim’s particularistic approach works especially well; the “meaning”, as you put it, of flying the flag of the country one lives in can be detached from that country’s past sins in a way that isn’t possible with a flag like that of the Confederacy.
— John Schwenkler · May 1, 04:11 PM · #
I’m surprised that anyone would suggest that class consciousness is stronger in the South than elsewhere. Anyone who believes that hasn’t spent any time in a Park Avenue living room, or a Hamptons beach, or an Ivy League faculty lounge, while Sarah Palin is being discussed.
— y81 · May 1, 04:14 PM · #
“I’m surprised that anyone would suggest that class consciousness is stronger in the South than elsewhere. Anyone who believes that hasn’t spent any time in a Park Avenue living room, or a Hamptons beach, or an Ivy League faculty lounge, while Sarah Palin is being discussed.”
Um, that’s most people, pal.
— Tony Comstock · May 1, 04:21 PM · #
I’m surprised that anyone would suggest that class consciousness is stronger in the South than elsewhere.
I would be surprised too. Let me know if anyone actually suggests it.
— Alan Jacobs · May 1, 05:59 PM · #
“I’m surprised that anyone would suggest that class consciousness is stronger in the South than elsewhere.
I would be surprised too. Let me know if anyone actually suggests it.”
That’s pretty harsh. Maybe I’m misreading, but Tony’s comment this morning seems to me to suggest exactly that, albeit very tentatively:
“Having previously expressed admiration for some aspects of Southern Culture, I’ll add here that the South’s emphasis on class is not one of the things I find charming. What the roots of that are, I don’t know; and whether it’s actually different from anywhere else, I don’t either. But it feels different.”
— edianes · May 1, 06:22 PM · #
edianes, I'm not trying to be harsh — there's enough harshness to go around. But Tony writes that he doesn’t know whether “the South’s emphasis on class [is] actually different from anywhere else,” and that somehow means that “class consciousness is stronger in the South than elsewhere”? Since when does “I don’t know” mean “I know”? And no one else has made that point either.
— Alan Jacobs · May 1, 06:38 PM · #
“Ethan, you say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Yes, Alan, I’m afraid I do.
It’s not as though I simply dislike redneck culture. What I dislike is the sort of cartoonish celebration of its worst aspects, things like Dukes of Hazard or Larry the Cable Guy.
My whole life I’ve had something of a love-hate relationship with low Southern culture, particularly in its Missouri hillbilly form. Growing up the son of a classical music-loving public radio manager in Branson, Missouri will do funny things to a boy. I can be either fanatically populist or officiously elitist as the mood strikes me. Gee, I’d make a pretty good Republican, huh? :)
— Ethan C. · May 1, 06:38 PM · #
Maybe I have misread Tony Comstock. If so, I apologize, and I’m glad we all agree that the South’s emphasis on class is no stronger than every other region’s emphasis on class and not a distinctive part of Southern culture.
— y81 · May 1, 06:50 PM · #
What I dislike is the sort of cartoonish celebration of its worst aspects, things like Dukes of Hazard or Larry the Cable Guy.
Sure. I was just joking, you know.
— Alan Jacobs · May 1, 06:54 PM · #
Alan, you’re right that no one explicitly made a point that “class consciousness is stronger in the South,” but at least two people read the comment that the South’s “emphasis on class” “feels different” from other places as suggesting something similar to that. I thought Tony’s original comment was sensitive, empathetic, and polite, but it does imply that class issues in the South feel different in a not-so-nice way, and if it’s a gross oversimplification for someone to boil that down into “class consciousness is stronger in the South,” it’s also not totally crazy to read it that way. Let’s just say that whether your response was actually harsh, I don’t know. It felt harsh. :)
— edianes · May 1, 07:13 PM · #
Southpaw – did you go to W&L? I’m an alumnus of the school as well and (like many alumni I suppose) I’ve never really known what to make of the recumbant Lee statue in the chapel. If you wouldn’t mind discussing it, send me an email.
— Jacob S. · May 1, 07:14 PM · #
“I thought Tony’s original comment was sensitive, empathetic, and polite,”
Words never before written about me or my manner of expressing myself; at least not all three at once. I’m making a note in my journal.
I’m not quite sure what Alan’s got on his mind. Maybe it’s just that it’s the end of the term and he’s grumpy. Or maybe he got a full-blown man-crush on me, and in the gallant tradition of the South, he’s rushed to my defense, consequences and self-interest be damned.
But yes, what I meant is that my experience of class consciousness in the South is not one of the things I’d put in the “beats what we have up North all to hell” category; and more than that, I took Alan’s “the class consciousness of the South is rapidly fading” as tacit agreement with my inference.
I do hope that Alan will either clarify or send me flowers; or better yet – both!
— Tony Comstock · May 1, 08:23 PM · #
Anyone who’s driven along I-65 just south of Nashville, right around the Cool Springs area, has seen that gawd awful bronze statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest on horseback, surrounded by a semi-circle of ten or so Battle Flags. Nobody can do anything about it since it’s on private property.
I know everybody knows this, but I’ll say it anyway. The South is a complicated place: an ugly-beautiful, dumb-enlightened, rude-polite, boring-fun, repulsive-enchanting, simple-complicated place. Overall there’s less stress and more drinking, and the women are affable and gorgeous, better-looking than anywhere else I’ve been except maybe San Diego, LA and Tempe. If you don’t believe me, I strongly recommend attending a football game at Athens, or Tuscaloosa, or Oxford, or even Knoxville. Short shorts, cowboy boots and tied-off football jerseys? — a young man’s paradise.
Sorry, what were we talking about again?
— Sargent · May 1, 08:24 PM · #
This conversation must not proceed without a reference to “Southern Rock Opera” by the Drive-by Truckers, a superlative album on its own merits, but also a perfect explication of “The Southern Thing.”
— Craig · May 1, 08:29 PM · #
And with Sargent’s contribution, I reckon we’re overdue for James to give us a drive-by comment about the ultimately erotic sterility of our increasingly degenerate culture, complete with Gravid Capitalization. I’ve heard from more than One source that Persian women are off the Hook…
— Tony Comstock · May 1, 08:43 PM · #
The South has a lot of personality. Fondue overlooking live alligators at Dante’s Down the Hatch. Won’t see that up here.
— Julana · May 1, 10:01 PM · #
I’d submit that what Tony is picking up on as a different sort of class consciousness in the South stems from the way that some Southerners try to fend off the snobbery that every Southerner receives in one way or another from some Northerner or other now and then by displacing it or deflecting it onto other Southerners deemed to be further down on some supposed class ladder of imputed Southern lack of merit for social esteem. I’d also submit than no one can really judge consciousness in American society who has not been a Southerner in the North — especially a Southerner at a Northern university, let alone a Northern graduate program or faculty lounge.
— Bill Butler · May 1, 10:35 PM · #
The last sentence above should read class consciousness, not consciousness as such. A Freudian omission on a Southerner’s part?
— Bill Butler · May 1, 10:37 PM · #
I don’t know about Persian women, but during my senior year of college I roomed with an absolutely stunning Turkish girl who, even more exotically, was a 4.0 mathematician who prided herself on beating the girls from Sex and the City to their fashion cues. The most “American” girl I’ve ever met, I think she became a dentist on Grand Cayman.
— Sargent · May 1, 11:16 PM · #
Different regions have different cultures. There is nothing wrong with saying the South is more class concious than, say Idaho. I don’t know if it is, but it could easily be.
— cw · May 2, 05:33 AM · #
Hi Alan! Nice to find you here. And thanks for the kind words.
I read that essay of yours those many years ago; agreed then and agree now. And glad these issues continue to get an airing. There’s much more, too, I’d think, about the afterlife of symbols to explore…
— Sara · May 2, 05:09 PM · #
“Sure. I was just joking, you know.”
Oh! Sorry, Alan. I guess you needed a smiley to penetrate the Internet humor membrane. :)
— Ethan C. · May 2, 09:19 PM · #
When I was in art school we were given Humor as an assignment in one of my photography classes.
A week later I came back with four slides: one black, one white, one yellow, one red.
Everyone, including the instructor got mad at me.
I only lasted one term at that school.
— Tony Comstock · May 3, 12:19 AM · #
Tony Comstock – your instructor was obviously Phlegmatic.
— ell · May 4, 07:13 AM · #
Tony, the chasm between those who do and don’t think puns are a form of humor is greater than that between those who are and aren’t offended by the stars-n-bars.
— Michael Straight · May 6, 06:28 PM · #