The Stars and Barred

This flag is a hate symbol. It doesn't matter if you argue that it's derived from a Hindu symbol, or that the events of the Holocaust were 70 years ago. This flag stands for something dark, evil, and brutal. Germans, largely, don't claim that it's a part of their heritage. They don't put it on their cars. They don't fly it above their capitols. They are ashamed of that part of their past, as they should be, and swastikas in Germany are generally considered distasteful.

Today is a big day and a day I never thought I'd see. Two of the biggest retailers in America are refusing to sell items which probably make them a large amount of money because they are symbols of hate. That's what the Confederate flag is.

I'm going to get this out of the way now: I'm calling the above flag the Confederate flag. I know it's not the national flag of the Confederate States of America. Everyone who knows me knows that I know that. I'm calling it that anyway for simplicity. Please don't try to engage me in debate about it.

There's something we also need to get out of the way right now: the Confederacy was wrong. It just was. Please don't try to tell me that its members were fighting for state's rights, or resisting some kind of Northern aggression. Do not try to tell me the war was about tariffs or federal power or a way of life or Southern Pride. The Confederacy existed primarily to propagate and expand American slavery. If you disagree with that, that is your right, but you are objectively wrong. This is not just my opinion. I have made it a significant part of my life to study slavery. I know more about it than  the majority of people in this country do or ever will. I know what I'm talking about. I have two degrees to prove it. The CSA was founded on slavery. It just was.

Here's something else that needs to be said: slavery was bad. There are still some people who will attempt to downplay or even argue against that. Again, they are objectivity wrong. Slavery was cruel and brutal in most cases. Slaves did not like being enslaved, nor were they better off under slavery than being free either in America or their home nations in Africa. Even a lucky slave who might have had a kind master (and this was not the norm) was still a slave. Slavery is, in essence, the stealing of another's life, and it is wrong. And slaveholders were wrong.

These are the facts. If you disagree, you shouldn't even be reading this, because you either need to go educate yourself on this or are simply stubbornly dedicated to being wrong.

All of that is why this is a big day for America.

As a country, we've hadn't really reached the point where major retailers would be willing to stop selling Confederate paraphernalia before today, because it's just so darn profitable. It's profitable because there is still a very large segment of the country, by no means limited to the South, that thinks the Confederate flag stands for anything other than slavery and racism. Some people have claimed that it's "become" a symbol of the South, rather than a symbol of slavery, but that's not a great argument, because what you're basically doing is defining the South by the rebellion it waged so it could keep oppressing blacks. That's not so great if you're trying to claim that your region of the country is awesome and that you should be proud of it. That's why Germans don't proudly fly the Nazi flag as a symbol of Germany and German heritage - they don't exactly want Germany to be defined by the Holocaust, nor should they.

Some people claim that the Confederate flag stands for states' rights, small government, or independence. That doesn't really work either, though, because, as I've noted, the Confederacy wasn't really fighting for those things. It was fighting for one right in particular, which was the right to own other people, and taking away someone else's rights isn't really a right, much less something you should be literally willing to die for.

When you get right down to it, the Confederate flag is just a really shameful reminder that half of our country entered a life and death struggle to oppress black people.

I'm not saying the Confederate flag should be ignored. I'm not saying it should be swept under the rug. We need to talk about it. We need to acknowledge that it exists. We need to accept that America's greatest shame was slavery and work through everything that means for us today as a country.

What I am saying is that no one should be proudly waving the Stars and Bars.

I'm all for free speech and I would never support a law to ban the Confederate Flag. But just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. If you are going around displaying the Confederate flag as a symbol of pride you either do not know what it symbolizes or you do and you don't care.

There's something else too, that many Americans aren't considering. There's a lot of talk about what that flag means to Southerners, and what its absence would mean to them, but in that context, "Southerners" implicitly means "white Southerners." That flag already gives me the creeps. I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like if I was descended from slaves. Hell, even if I wasn't, the use of that flag by racists throughout American history might make me feel really really uncomfortable upon seeing it if I was a black American, whether my ancestors were slaves or not.

I say "might" because I don't want to fall into the trap of thinking that all blacks (or whites, Asians, Hispanics etc.) must have the same opinion on literally anything. Still, one has to imagine that arguments that claim that that flag is ok can't be shared by a rather large proportion of Southerners, black or white.

And that's a good thing.

No one should be comfortable waving the Confederate flag around outside of a historical context, much like no one should be comfortable using the word nigger outside of a historical context. It's just not ok. And finally, after hundreds of years, we, as a country, are getting around to admitting that.

Symbols may be what people make them, but in some cases, they've represented something so horrific that it becomes impossible to use them without invoking that thing. The Confederate flag was carried by men who were fighting to preserve the very worst America ever had to offer, for an institution that brutalized men and women, tore their families apart, tortured them mentally and physically, and killed them by the thousands. That these men and women were able to survive, let alone thrive, under such a system, that they were able to resist in any way and make lives for themselves is not only impressive, it is heroic. Those are the men and women we should be respecting and looking to as examples of American heroes, not those who carried the Stars and Bars and certainly not those who founded the country it represented.

The Confederate flag is a symbol of a dark past whose legacy we have not yet come to terms with fully. We have not yet reached total equality, and it may be hundreds of years yet until we do, if we do. That is the legacy of the Stars and Bars. That is the direct result of the efforts of those who carried it. We can't fix that overnight, but we can help to try to fix it by refusing to carry that flag ourselves.

Historical Values

They say opinions can't be wrong. Too bad that opinion is wrong.

Society, or at least our society, focuses heavily on specialization. I chose to specialize in a few things, and one of them was history. I spent six years studying slavery and race in America, and after those six years, I'm here to tell you something: slavery was bad.

You'd think I wouldn't need to specify that, but I do, actually, because I was reminded tonight that some people are still on the fence about that.

Let me lay this on the line: the Confederacy was bad.

Yep. If you disagree, that's your opinion. Your wrong opinion.

See, the thing about history is that it's a legitimate field of study. I know, I know. You know exactly where General Dickface McGee of the 27th South Carolina was on April 28, 1864. You like to dress up in gray and fire a repro Enfield. You watch Modern Marvels. You're "a bit of a history buff." Guess what? I don't care, because that's not as important as why General McGee was there and what he was fighting for (and if you think it was "state's rights," I'd like to exercise my state's right to allow its citizens to call you a moron). If you can't articulate correctly why McGee was fighting, you aren't a historian, no matter how bad you want to be.

Why do I bring this up? Because there are people, a lot of people, who think they can have an opinion on this stuff without having to take the effort to study it. And that's not great.

Thing is, as a country, we're very hands off about STEM. We don't like to question that stuff. Math is math, science is science, and only the very few, and the very crazy, pretend that global warming isn't a thing or that evolution is bullshit. We rightly point out that experts have studied that stuff and come to a certain consensus and we bow to that consensus because we trust those who have put in the work to come to it.

So why do we not do the same for history?

Why can Joe Blow say the Confederacy was fighting for a glorious cause and have so many people believe it? Why can Pickup McDualie say that the founders had no flaws and should be worshiped and have everyone call him a patriot? Why are those ludicrous opinions any better than the opinion that evolution is bullshit because monkeys still exist?

Wrong is wrong.

If you want to understand the importance of history, consider how long you'd make it in life without a memory and then consider that our country's memory is our history. You should really really listen to the people whose historical memory is more studied than yours.

So yeah, my historical "opinion" is actually more valid than yours. Too bad for you.

Dick thing to say? Probably. But most of the country loves it when Neil DeGrasse Tyson or Bill Nye slam anti-vaxers or creationists. The analogue to those people in my field is neoconfederates, Nazi apologists, great-men theorists. They're arguing against overwhelming evidence, and you need not listen to them. Ever.

A pretty chill dude once said that a house divided against itself cannot stand. (I think he was quoting the Bible or whatever; I'm not a facts guy; I'm a theory guy.) Our country is divided, in a sense, in that we allow opponents of the consensuses of STEM to be ridiculed, but we respect, as opinion, those who disagree with the consensuses of the humanities. And that's a shame.

A country with a large number of people who believe that the Confederacy had no racial motives may, for example, call blacks thugs when they riot against an unjust police system which has its roots in that Confederacy. A country that doesn't recall that its founders had flaws may be unwilling to question its own rectitude. Bad history causes problems. Good history is important; ergo, the opinions of historians are also important. Respect and defer to them.

This is a great country. You can believe that without believing that it's perfect or always was perfect. We are, like everything, flawed. Historians are generally of that opinion, and it is the right opinion.

But what do I know? I just spent six years buried in documents you don't know exist. I spent six years studying concepts most people aren't aware have been posited. I'm just a historian, not God, guns, and the American way.*

What do I know?





*To be fair, guns are pretty awesome.