A bit more on that Confederate Flag
My last post began with a look at the irony involved in choosing to use the Confederate flag as a symbol of so-called Southern Pride and not, what it was used for historically, a flag used in a military rebellion against the United States. But there’s more to worry about when it comes to this odd approach to showing pride in southern culture. One of the classic techniques of argument and of philosophy is to take a particular view, assume it’s true and then see what the outcome is. The idea is to get a sense of what the effects are of the view and see if those effects are ones we would like to occur. If the answer is a no, this is evidence against accepting the view. Legal argumentation often uses this approach as seen in the case about a president using Seal Team 6 to assassinate political rivals. The outcome is quite chilling.
Let’s look at the idea that a person can choose to see a particular flag, or word, or symbol, to represent something or some part of an idea, like “Southern Pride”. There are a couple things to worry about from the outset. If someone is choosing to see the flag as representative of a particular idea and ignore, or perhaps resuscitate it away from its seedier and less attractive connotations, there is already a tacit, or perhaps explicit admission that someone, or many individuals could reasonably see whatever symbol in a negative way. In the case under discussion, the confederate flag as representing a pro-slavery stance. So there is no doubt about what that flag represents for some people based on its unique history. If that’s the case, then the question arises in a stronger form, “Why choose to use such a divisive and historically problematic symbol?” If you’re going for a sort of rehabilitation, a reminder of the good parts of Southern Culture, why not simply use something that doesn’t have the baggage? It would certainly be more effective and less burdened with controversy. If you’re trying to separate the negative aspects of southern culture from its positive ones, using the symbol that is directly related to that negativity, and the worst of all that negativity, just seems to make the work all the harder. It would be like starting a comedy show with a horribly depressing story. It’s hard to recover. It’s also ironic as heck because it seems self-defeating. But I guess, that flag is all about defeat.
There is a further difficulty with choosing to go with one “part” of the flag than with another. Who’s to say which choice is best? Pride and prejudice, prejudice and pride, who’s to decide? Why is the person who chooses the pride and not prejudice in any better position than the person who chooses prejudice over pride? This isn’t simply an academic thought experiment. It’s deeply practical. It’s not hard to imagine two neighbors disagreeing on the flag. They many never quarrel about it, and it may never even become a source of tension. But that isn’t the point, there is no right way, if we can choose to interpret the flag however we wish. The main problem is there’s no way to say which interpretation is the “proper” one. It just seems that it’s up to whomever is interpreting the flag as they come to see it.
There are quite a few, wonderful, little problems that arise from this lack of a “proper” interpretation position. The first is that it defeats the purpose of what a flag is supposed to do. Flags are taken as symbols of countries. People rally to them, defend them, die for them, because it’s supposed to represent things worth defending. Slavery is clearly not worth defending. Since the flag is now hostage to anyone’s particular interpretation, it fails to do what some might want the flag to do, which is highlight the good parts of Southern Culture. Again, if this is the desired outcome, find another way to do it. There’s another problem lurking here too. If our understanding of a flag is pretty much how we choose to see it, then no one’s interpretation is better than another’s. If I choose to like the flag as I side with the pride, and you dislike it as you choose to see it as an emblem of prejudice, I can’t complain about your view and neither can you complain about mine. It’s just a scrap of cloth that someone cares for or doesn’t care for based upon a certain view one has; that’s it. Further, there’s no way to settle the issue.
It’s not as if when we have a majority of a population agreeing for one interpretation over another that that will solve it. Even if it was 10 million to one, as long as one person interprets it in one way, that’s fine. Even if there was never a disagreement, it’s not the case that the universal interpretation is the correct one. Someone in the future, might come to see it as a symbol of haughty pride, rather than appropriate pride. Who knows?! The point is, this sort of “whatever the individual believes” approach is relativistic in the worst way.
Given all of this, it seems the best thing to do is to cast the flag in the rubbish heap of history. It had its moment, and that historical moment is not one anyone should ever take pride in. Historically speaking, the attempt to resuscitate it is linked with a further degradation of black people in this country, so just be done with it. It’s a divisive symbol that has no clear reason to adopt and if one does, it creates a quagmire of difficulties. You wouldn’t keep pouring money into a car that continued to break down, so there’s need to keep pouring effort into resuscitating a symbol so marked with hate and bigotry.