A Banner Worth Banning
GAVIN GRADY | OCTOBER 20, 2020 | OPINIONS
With recent Black Lives Matter protests urging for sociopolitical reform, more attention has been given to the Confederate flag. While many are defending their allegiance to the flag, others are urging for a change. I am in full support of the Pentagon, NASCAR, and other organizations banning the display of hateful symbols like the Confederate flag. I can only see it as representation of the Confederate States of America who committed treason against the United States because the end of slavery was near. For that reason, I look at the flag as a symbol of the oppression of Black Americans.
Unfortunately, many people in this country do not share my opinion. President Donald Trump made his point on the flag in an interview last July on “Fox News Sunday” saying, “They love their flag, it represents the South.” Although I understand where he and many Americans are coming from, I believe the flag has lost its geographical meaning. If the Confederate flag is a symbol of southern pride, then why does the flag have popularity in the North, too? For example, Ohio lawmakers have opposed each other for years over the issue of banning the Confederate flag from the Ohio State Fair, an event known to include Confederate symbols. Ohio took no part in fighting for the Confederate States, yet the Confederate flag is still a prominent issue.
It is also disturbing to see the Confederate flag instituted in the United States military. At The Citadel, a military academy in Charleston, South Carolina, a Confederate flag is raised 15 yards from an American flag in the chapel. Raising a flag of a military that waged war on the country The Citadel represents, contradicts and diminishes the honor of those who died in the Civil War. This is why I support the Pentagon taking action to ban the symbol.
Gen. David H. Berger, Commandant of the Marines, said it best when he said he understands people see the flag as taking pride in their heritage. However, Gen. Berger says the flag has the “power to inflame division.” For a military to stand, racism can not be given such potency.
The argument that banning the Confederate flag is erasing history can be disproved by studying how Germany handled the banning of the swastika. Banning the symbol did not hide the history, but instead educated the generations to come on the historical context behind Nazi Germany. Unlike the United States, Germany outlawed the symbol, preventing the message from being twisted and spread.
According to a June 2015 National Geographic article, the Confederate flag made a comeback in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement. It was not until 1962, at the height of the movement, South Carolina raised a Confederate battle flag above their capitol building. Were it not for Dylann Roof, a white supremacist who massacred nine Black Americans 63 years later, lawmakers would have never voted to take the flag down. Both breakthroughs in civil rights history were also when the Confederate flag’s prevalence was apparent, yet people still take pride in it.
Not only is the flag racist, but it is also monetizable. Why should businesses be able to profit off of the hateful symbol? Websites like Rebelnationok.com exploit the flag, branding the symbol on anything from shot glasses to belt buckles. Black Americans were enslaved under the flag and it should not be bought and sold as merchandise for tourists.
I do not support the Confederate flag as a mark of southern heritage and certainly not as a representation of the United States. The only place the flag has in this country is in history books. It is a banner worth banning and I hope our country can come to the same conclusion.