Recently there has been a lot of uproar about the Confederate Flag. After Dylann Roof (admitted racist murderer) was arrested, the conversations flared up again. It has brought out swaths of people defending it as something other than racist, claiming it as a part of their heritage. Welp, even if they want to claim it as part of their heritage, it is still a symbol of racism and treason, so all these people are doing is claiming racist and treasonous heritage. Here are some facts about the Confederate Flag which proves this point:
1. The flag which they are calling the Confederate Flag is actually the Battle Flag of Virginia. It was eventually co-opted and placed into the upper left hand corner of a white flag (to represent white supremacy) in the second flag of the confederacy and was only used as the official flag for two years. Yup, that’s that heritage they’re so hard up to claim, a flag that lasted for two years, or as they show it now, a flag that was never, not once, a flag of the Confederate army. The Battle Flag was adopted in the 1950s as a statement against desegregation, so yeah every single bit of it is racist and the only heritage it's part of is the effort to keep black people segregated. Woo.
2. The designer of the flag, W.T. Thompson, called it the “White Man’s Flag”. Literally. You can’t get any more clear about it’s intent than that. Another quote by flag designer W.T. Thompson echoes this point:
“As a people we are fighting maintain the Heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematical of our cause.”
3. This quote from the Vice President of the Confederacy, Andrew H. Stephens also makes the purpose of the flag and the Civil War very clear:
…its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
4. The Civil War was fought to maintain white supremacy (no matter how many times people claim otherwise). These quotes from the various states secession papers will illustrate this point:
Mississippi:
“position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.”
Texas:
“We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.”
And yet another quote from the Vice President of the Confederacy:
“The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution […] The general opinion of the men of that day [Revolutionary Period] was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution [slavery] would be evanescent and pass away […] Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.”
5. It is literally the flag of the people who fought against the union which is now the United States of America. Literally. A flag of a non existent, never was country, that lost a war to the country that they all now claim loyalty to (through the pledge of allegiance and national anthem they are so horny over). A war that they started over their right to keep black people enslaved.
So the man who designed the flag said it was about White Superiority, the people who were instrumental in the Civil War said that the war was about White superiority, it was the second of three flags during a short war that was meant to divide the very country that these people all live in and the flag was only relevant for a total of two years. This is the heritage that people are clinging to when they say that the Confederate Flag is a part of their heritage: it’s a part of their racist, treasonous, war loving, KKK, white supremacy heritage and if they want to wear their racism literally on their sleeves, while I say good for them. It will help the sane people know who to avoid.
As a last point I really feel the need to point out this amazing contradiction: the very same people who claim the racist, treasonous flag is a part of their heritage are the ones who claim that they are the biggest patriots.
Figure that one out.