Confederate flag addressed

Complicated history, role of flag discussed by Anti-Hate Task Force

A community conversation tackled the complicated history of the Confederate flag and its role in contemporary America on Oct. 18.

At Lorain’s Church of the Redeemer, the Lorain and Elyria YWCAs hosted “From the Confederacy to the County Fair: What’s History Got to do With It?”

With the YWCA’s mission to combat racism and empowe women, they have been working on the issue to end the sale of the Confederate Flag at the Lorain County Fair for the past three years.

The talk was an opportunity for a starting point to encourage people to have difficult, but necessary conversations about the controversial symbol.

“It’s a commerce issue when they’re selling it and it’s actually against the bi-laws of most fairs to sell offensive materials,” said Caroline Meister, YWCA Associate Program director. “The

The talk was an opportunity for a starting point to encourage people to have difficult, but necessary conversations about the controversial symbol.

Lorain County Fair has really dug the way and is teaching other fairs how to maintain that symbol and frame it as something else.”

She stressed that while the Confederate flag is a symbol that can be interpreted in different ways, it was not widely used until the civil rights era in the South, against blacks who were trying to regain their rights as a way of emphasizing that white supremacy was alive and well.

Alex Barton, a priest atChurch of the Redeemer, framed the issue of the Confederate flag in recalling the conversations he had with his grandmother growing up.

“She comes from old Virginia and she’s very much a part of that sort of heritage, not hate way of thinking and even as a young child something about that didn’t seem quite right,” Barton said.

“And as I started to grow up getting more information, one of the things I realized too is that as a priest, for me the issue is about spiritual freedom and the freedom that Christ offers,” Barton added.

“Because that stuff blocks us off from being our true

selves and being our healthy selves. That level of hate and sometimes willful ignorance prevents us from being our true self.”

Barton views the flag as a symbol of white supremacy and maintaining power that has oppressed people and draws upon the larger question of what role it should play in contemporary America and how we can look at this part of history in context.

“One of the things I’ve started paying more and more attention to is the larger argument of monuments and memorabilia and the places that are attached to that moment in our history and what voices are absent and what voices have more power in talking about that,” he said.

Attendee Joseph Peake said growing up he wasn’t ambivalent about the issue with parents who grew up in the South, but as a black person, you mark yourself when you display the Confederate Flag.

“I know what that flag means and everyone in my family knows what that flag means. And the reason why black people don’t use that flag, there’s a reason,” Peake said. “You don’t see people from the South wearing that flag because it doesn’t include them. It’s the opposite of them. It says something to them.”