Symbols can and do change over time
Acentury and a half ago, citizens of the United States of America generally believed that blacks were inferior, and that liberty logically included the liberty to own slaves. The banner now known as the “Confederate flag” was simply the emblem of a rebel army defending the moral right of states to secede from larger political units.
In fact, the commander of that army, one Robert E. Lee, personally disliked slavery. Like the vast majority of his troops (who, for the most part, were too poor to participate directly in the evil institution), Lee was merely fighting for his state — not unlike the way his forbears had gone to battle against the British two generations before.
Should such an emblem — of freedom, sacrifice, patriotism and a cause long since consigned to history — be banned from official buildings today in the old Confederate south? Yes. Absolutely. Of course. Because whatever it stood for at Bull Run, it now symbolizes something very different and far worse — as even most of the people who want to keep it know perfectly well. The lunatic charged with gunning down black worshippers at that historic Charleston church didn’t get himself photographed with Confederate symbols to support a principle of political science; rather, he associated it with the cause of white dominion.
If the residential school movement in Canada had a flag, would the fact that it wasn’t associated at first with vile but unintended physical and cultural abuse make it acceptable today?
Not for a second would those who suffered under it tolerate such an argument, and only those who wanted to take a passive-aggressive stand against aboriginal rights would say otherwise.
Like words or phrases, symbols carry the meaning people, and especially their subjects, give them. They no more belong to those who complain about political correctness or historical accuracy than “depression” belongs to pedants who insist the word refers to a little dip rather than a deep economic crater.
Even if displaying the iconic battle flag of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia were not today a deliberately demeaning assault on descendants of slaves, it would be an act of disrespect to be avoided by anyone who believes in civility and human equality.
And if the Confederate flag did deserve to be relieved of its nasty baggage, shooting people or defiantly flying it over public buildings uncleansed would be exactly the wrong way to go about it.
Some readers may wonder why this subject is worth reviewing today; after all, there can be few Albertans who have a different view. In fact, tragedies like the one at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church are probably just making the old flag even more stained in most of our minds.
But the fact is, all of us at one time or another have problems with symbols. Either we have some we are partial to — the anti-Alberta impact of the Liberals’ National Energy Program is one such. Or we have symbols that infuriate us, such as the “tar sands” as a supposed symbol of Albertan environmental irresponsibility.
The lesson of the Confederate flag is that it is impossible for a partisan of one view to impose on those of another the meaning they give to a word, image or concept. The best you can do is present positive new evidence and hope reasonable minds voluntarily change over time.
Like so many things, respect is the magic ingredient. At the rate they dole it out, modern partisans of the Confederate battle flag — most of whom would have utterly revolted the refined and aristocratic Lee — will take millennia to turn things around.