Should anyone doubt that the Confederate flag is a symbol of hatred, consider two recent events. The first occurred in Oklahoma City in July while the Confederate flag controversy in South Carolina was still brewing. A group of Confederate-flag-bearing "citizens" appeared along a presidential motor route, waving their flags at President Obama in protest against his recent statement that the Confederate flag "belongs in a museum."
The next event occurred on July 30, when members of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, a congregation once led by Dr. Martin Luther King, awoke to find Confederate flags scattered around the church campus.
A simple thought experiment will convince anyone that the Confederate flag in both cases was chosen specifically because it is an insult. Would anyone consider waving the French flag, or the German flag, or the Brazilian flag in the face of the president of the United States?
Would anyone plant Italian flags in the lawn of Martin Luther King's church, or Canadian flags? If members of the congregation of Ebenezer woke up in the morning and found their churchyard covered with Danish flags, they might be confused, but probably not offended.
The only reason anyone thought to plant Confederate flags in front of a black church is because he or she knew the flags would offend. The only reason anyone would wave the Confederate flag in the face of Barack Obama is because he thought it would be offensive to a black president.
Which leads us to the Mississippi state flag, which has an image of the Confederate battle flag in the upper left hand corner, where the 50 stars are in the American flag.
Most of the people who support keeping the Confederate flag as part of the Mississippi state flag argue that it should not offend anyone because it merely represents Mississippi's history. But if the flag is not an offensive symbol, how can it be used in an offensive manner?
Why is it the flag of choice for most racial supremacy groups in this country? The Ku Klux Klan would not display it unless it thought it was offensive to black people. But they do. It is a common component of Klan rallies.
Any flag which can be used as an insult is not a flag that should be a part of official public life, much less the official flag of a U.S. state.
That doesn't mean the Confederate flag has no place in private life. Or even, in the right context, in public places. We still have a First Amendment in this country, and I would never argue that the Confederate flag should be banned. From a historical standpoint, it is appropriate that the flag fly in Civil War cemeteries and at Civil War monuments. It would be strange, for instance, if Fort Sumter in South Carolina did not display the Confederate flag. It was a Confederate fort, and the flag belongs there.
But the flag should not fly over any government building, nor should it be incorporated into any state flag. It makes no sense that a flag containing a symbol that represents slavery should fly over any US or state government building.
The city of Jackson, which has a large African-American population, has banned the Mississippi state flag from flying over all city buildings. Which makes Jackson, MS something of a Jeopardy question. What U.S. state capital is the only capital city to ban its own state flag on City Hall property?
I find it mystifying that anyone would argue the Confederate emblem on the Mississippi state flag is only a historic symbol. Walk with me through history for a moment. Real history, not the garbage that passes for it in public conversation.
Before European settlers came to Mississippi, the state was occupied by Native Americans for at least ten thousand years. From 1699 until the early 1700s the state was owned by the French. It was then transferred to the Spanish for a time, and after the French and Indian war, the French gave up all pretenses to the territory in 1763.
From 1763 until 1776 Mississippi was uncontestedly British. The American claim theoretically began in 1776, but the U.S. didn't gain absolute political control until the Treaty of Ghent, in 1814. Mississippi became a state in 1817.
Confederates controlled Mississippi from 1861 until 1865, and that's being very generous since much of coastal and northern Mississippi was controlled by the U.S. Army by 1863.
To summarize, Mississippi has been controlled at various times by Native Americans, the French, Spanish, the British, the Americans, and the Confederates, with the Confederates in control for by far the shortest length of time. Therefore, if someone were to design a flag that was supposed to represent "history," it would make sense that the flag would represent a nation-state that was in control of the territory for longer than about 3 1/2 years. Any attempt to recognize the Confederacy as a uniquely important period in the state's history is a distortion. It was 3 1/2 out of 300 years.
To be fair, if any symbol should be included on the flag to represent a predominant historical dominion, it should be a Native American symbol. At 10,000 years, the Indians win the race going away.
It is simply a fact that incorporating the Confederate flag into the state flag of Mississippi is both offensive to many of its own citizens, and factually inaccurate. I'm not sure what other reason anyone could ever possibly need to change the flag.
The state of Mississippi has many things to be proud of, and it seems silly that it would choose a symbol of slavery to dominate a state symbol when there are so many other things that could be up there. Mississippi is the birthplace of the 12 bar blues. This is a great achievement, one that changed the world, and one that could easily merit placement on the state flag. It could even be fairly argued that Mississippi is the birthplace of rock music, since the song many people acknowledge is the first rock 'n roll song ever, "Rocket 88" by the Mississippi band Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm, was recorded at Sun Studios in Memphis. Why not put that on the state flag?
The state flag should represent something that every Mississippian can be proud of, not just something that warms the hearts of racists. To me, the presence of a symbol of the Confederacy in the state flag does not commemorate history, but of the determination of one ethnic group to trump the desires of an another.
That constitutes racism by almost anyone's definition.