Don’t fly that flag

Confederate flag is no badge for a ‘rebel’ lifestyle

Two years ago, NASCAR urged its fans to quit displaying the Confederate flag at races. The edict continues to be a point of rebellion for many, including in Michigan, where one vendor sold two dozen of the flags prior to Sunday’s race at Michigan International Speedway. The flags were selling “better than ever,” he told a sportswriter from the Toledo Blade.

As much as the flag’s fans want to argue that it represents cultural heritage, it certainly does not, especially in Michigan, about as deep North as it comes.

So what’s the point? If it is to send a message, what is the message? It cannot be an enlightened or uplifting one. Or is the point simply to embrace the politically incorrect? If so, fans of the flag can surely find a statement less racially charged.

The heritage defense is a flawed argument. The flag was the battle flag for Robert E. Lee’s army, redesigned from the original “Stars and Bars,” which was often indistinguishable from the Union flag on a smoky battlefield. After the war, Lee disavowed the battle flag, saying that it sowed division in a nation trying to heal from a catastrophic war that killed more than 600,000 Americans.

The flag faded in popularity until it was resurrected in 1948 by the Dixiecrats, a political group formed by conservative, white, Southern Democrats opposed to the desegregation efforts of mainstream Democrats. It became an emblem for racist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, that stood in opposition to the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

The Confederate flag is rooted in the most tragic period in American history, an era when 11 states seceded from the Union. To proudly wave and defend a banner that represents human slavery, and the repression of an entire race, is either a profound act of ignorance or a profound act of contempt. And that is what it symbolizes — not heritage or defiance but ignorance and contempt.