One nation,
pretty damn divided.
In 1992, when Gallup first asked its respondents what they thought the Confederate flag symbolized, Democrats were only 16 percentage points more likely than Republicans to say it symbolized racism. By last month, that modest difference between Democrats and Republicans had widened into a 44 percentage point schism when CNN/ORC Poll asked the exact same question.
The current partisan divide over the Confederate flag’s meaning may be even larger, according to a June 2015 YouGov survey. Democrats were five times more likely than Republicans to see the flag primarily as a racist symbol in that poll (70 percent to 14 percent respectively).
Put me down as among those who can't quite grasp how anyone in America could, at any point, consider that flag to
not be primarily a racist symbol. Look for any old picture of the flag being waved and you're far more likely to find it at Klan rallies than in historical photos or paintings of the Civil War. It began to take on its current nostalgic not-racist-just-heritage sheen in the late '70s-ish, when you might find it on a show like
The Dukes of Hazzard as a generic symbol of "being a rebel," in a distinctly southern way—but it only gained that wider "rebel" status the decade previous, when it was adopted en masse by Southern "rebels" rebelling against black Americans going to white schools, or eating at the same lunch counters, or drinking from the same fountains. Few Americans would even recognize that flag had it not come to prominence during the George Wallace years, or been adopted by so many pro-segregation statehouses during the same period.
Here in our peaceful little rural valley in Northern California it was only perhaps five years ago that one of the local businesses here had a full-sized Confederate flag hanging from their shop window. There's no "heritage" of Southern pride in Northern California, of course, but the implied meaning was still perfectly clear: If you're a black American, steer clear. For decades it's been the silent way for businesses and neighborhoods to signal that while they can no longer legally bar the doors against black Americans or minorities in general, they don't have to abide by it in silence. So steer clear.
As for these polls that show the two parties rapidly diverging in whether they're willing to recognize that flag as a tool of racism since the 1990s, I'd suspect that parallels the larger divergence between the parties on race in general. Reagan brought with him the Southern Strategy of giving the proper dog whistles to racists still bitter about the civil rights years; conservative religious groups continued the same whistles the decade after that. If you're a racist or just hold, let's say "old-fashioned" beliefs about The Black People, it's been made increasingly clear which party you were supposed to belong to. And, let's be honest, the election of Barack Obama solidified what little nuance there was. Now you've got a party that elected the first non-white president, and another party whose legislators push for laws making it clear that from now on we're going to need to see a lot more documentation and birth certificates if we're going to be putting up with such nonsense.
It's not just the Deep South; nearly all the places the Republican Party counts as its current strongholds, from the midwest to rural Pennsylvania to counties on the California-Nevada line, the same places you'd find "sundown towns" fifty years ago. I'm sure they believe that that flag represents their heritage, but it's not exactly a secret what heritage they're talking about.