In this Sept. 3, 1957 file photo, Paul Davis Taylor displays a Confederate flag in front of Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. Taylor was among some 500 people who gathered across the street from the school, which had been scheduled to integrate.
The current rancor about Confederate flag(s) operates at unfortunately a symbolic rather than real level up to and including demands on retailers to stop selling them. The global marketplace for reactionary symbols will undoubtedly fulfill those demands, however ironic.
SHANGHAI -- The debate about the future of the Confederate flag could have a knock-on impact in China, the world’s biggest producer of flags and related items.
A quick search on China’s largest sourcing website Alibaba, for example, reveals more than 400 types of made-in-China Confederate flags and related products -- from “Confederate flags on butterfly” navel rings for 62 cents a piece, to “Confederate/USA Crossed Flags Photo License Plates” for $4. There are also Confederate flag-logo iPhone covers, “attitude belt buckles," dog tags and dog collars.
News of the debate about the flag has been widely reported by Chinese news media. “Is the American Civil War not yet over?,” asked Shanghai news website The Paper on Tuesday, for example, in a story exploring the flag’s history. (The seriousness of its discussion of the topic may, however, have been undermined slightly by the fact that it illustrated the article with an image from the early 80s’ U.S. TV show, “The Dukes of Hazzard,” featuring stars John Schneider and Tom Wopat leaning on their distinctive Dodge Charger stock-car, with the Confederate flag emblazoned on its roof, accompanied by the caption: “The Confederate flag still has many supporters in the American south.”)
But like the use of the n-word by PBO, the present discourse may polarize and sharpen the divisions as expected by the Right, resuscitating a failed
Southern Strategy which one hopes will bring a Democratic victory in 2016 but which at the Congressional level might bring a stronger GOP majority and future gerrymandering.
On private land, and in common parlance, these offensive names often continue, surviving a century of social change, lasting through Reconstruction, world wars, the civil rights movement, right up until the current moment, when the word has added new doubts to Mr. Perry’s staggering political campaign. However much paint was actually applied to Mr. Perry’s rock, it was not enough to wipe away the memory of a national shame.