A few years ago, I stopped being Facebook friends with my nephew because he would not stop posting things about the Confederate flag being a symbol of "heritage, not hate." At Christmas one year he talked about a black coworker who "wants to be white" because he likes country music. But none of that is racist. Dividing the world into things that are for white people and things that are for black people is not racist.
That's sad. He was a cool kid when he was little. It caused a minor kerfuffle in the family that lasted a couple of years. My sister explained to me that the flag is not racist because the Confederate battle flag was square and the one is question is rectangular. It was designed in 1948.
Which raises the question -- what was up in 1948?
Well, it was an election year. That was the "Dewey beats Truman" year. Part of what made it a near thing for Truman was that he order the military to integrate. The generals and admirals were apoplectic. Just as a few years ago when the debate was over gays in the military, they talked about how bad it would be for unit cohesion. Sure, I mean, there's nothing wrong with blacks serving in the military, but the men, see, the men don't want it and there's nothing we can do to change that. If we don't want the military to fall apart, of course, we have to accept that fact. Truman pointed out that a soldier's job is to obey the orders of a superior officer and the commander in chief is a superior as it gets so do it.
That rumbled on from early 1948 through the summer, with Congress getting more and more unsettled by the horror stories told them by the Joint Chiefs.
At the Democratic National Convention at the end of that summer, the entire Southern delegation stood up and walked out. They set up shop down the street, formed the Dixiecrat party, and nominated former South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond as their candidate for president. It is hard to divine what their intentions were. I don't think they actually believed they could win, but they probably thought they could siphon enough electoral votes to deny either major party a majority and then serve as power brokers.
At any rate, they needed a symbol for the party. Elephant, donkey, and . . . what? Someone somewhere dug up a musty dusty half forgotten symbol of the old Confederacy, forgot it was supposed to be square, and that flag flew over every Thurmond speech and campaign rally.
Saying it isn't about hate is like saying if you make a green Swastika, it isn't about ovens. A symbol cannot be divorced from its historical baggage.
And what makes me think of this today is the last few days of Donald Trump. Because to find an equivalent to what he has said and allowed his supporters to say, you have to go back well beyond George Wallace's states' rights dog whistles all the way to this:
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