The Confederate flag is a useful reminder

Donna Bryson is a US-based writer, former Associated Press Africa

Correspondent and author of Its a Black White Thing. Donna
tweets: @donnaindenver
Perhaps the Confederate flag should continue to fly in public places in
America. As a reminder that some causes deserve to be lost.
The debate over the flags place on the lawns of government buildings and in the history of the
country was revived when a 21-year-old white man killed nine black worshippers in a southern
American church. Dylann Roof, who according to friends had complained that "blacks were taking
over the world," faces murder and other charges in what authorities describe as a hate crime on
hallowed ground in Charleston, South Carolinas Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Denmark Vesey, who was among the founders of the church and was affectionately known as Mother
Emanuel, was hanged after plotting a slave revolt in 1822. His church was burned but rebuilt after the
Civil War and would host Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s.
In a history of the Civil War, Shelby Foote writes that Robert E. Lee himself was among leaders who
suggested the Confederacy free slaves and enlist them as fighters if it wanted to win the war. The
suggestion went nowhere, Foote continues, in the face of opposition from die-hards who ``contended
that no government whatever its desperation under the threat of imminent extinction, had the right
to interfere in matters involving social institutions, especially slavery. Slavery, some argued, was the
cornerstone of the Confederacy.
That sealed it for me. If the South chose defeat over emancipation, who can seriously argue that the
war was over slavery?
Yet Foote himself is among those who say that the reasons for war were more complex, and that it is
reductionist and wrong to see the Confederate flag as a racist emblem of a brutal past. Foote told PBS
in 2000 that for him ``the flag is a symbol my great grandfather fought under and in defense of. He
acknowledged the same flag has been flown by opponents of the campaign for African Americans to
live free of terror and enjoy the rights of all Americans. But Foote argued ``the people who knew what
that flag really stood for should have stopped those yahoos from using it as a symbol of what they
stood for.

In the end, reasoning white racists into surrendering a flag black Americans associated with slavery
was a lost cause. Not because of what the racists fail to understand, but because of what they know in
their bones.
Ostensibly, the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War occasioned the placing of the
Confederate battle flag on the Statehouse dome in Charleston, not far from Mother Emanuel, in 1961.
It stayed in symbolic defiance of the civil rights movement until, after protests, a compromise saw it
replaced in 2000 by a smaller version on a flagpole on the front lawn.
In the wake of the Mother Emanuel shootings, the U.S. and state flags at the Statehouse were lowered
to half-staff in mourning. But the Confederate flag remained at the top of its 30-foot pole.
South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley called for the flag to be moved to a museum. Lawmakers have
agreed to at least consider the idea, setting the stage for what is likely to be a passionate summer
debate.
Business isnt waiting for the politicians. Amazon, EBay, Sears, Target and Wal-Mart say they will
stop selling Confederate flag merchandise.
Roof, the suspect in the church shootings, saw the obvious: the connection between white extremists
in the United States and those elsewhere. Photos of Roof that have circulated in the global media show
him waving the Confederate flag and wearing badges depicting the flags of apartheid-era South Africa
and the now defunct, racist-led Rhodesia.
Better lessons can be drawn from southern Africa. While writing a book about South Africas struggle
to build a united nation on a racially divided past, I interviewed a professor who is white and
Afrikaans-speaking, meaning she is from the Afrikaner minority some might blame for the apartheid
policies that once denied economic, educational and political opportunities to most South Africans.
Shes now teaching black and white students at a university once reserved for Afrikaners. She has
taken a hard look at her own life and the assumptions on which she was raised, and concluded that
rather than clinging to the past, ``today, something else is more important, and that is embracing the
variety that our country offers. Either you have your fears of losing something, or you have the
excitement of experiencing something new or something better. You have to decide what you want.''
Those who cling to the Confederate flag are still pushing back, saying that this emotional period
following the Mother Emanuel shootings is not the time to consider change, and that they are proud of
the heritage they believe the flag represents.

Occasionally, as I read Footes exhaustive, deservedly celebrated three-volume Civil War history, I
joked to myself I would scream the next time I came across the phrase `red-haired Ohioan, his go-to
description for the Norths Ulysses S. Grant. But I was more often struck by Footes eloquence, as
when he described this paradox: ``the Confederacy, in launching a revolution against change, should
experience under pressure of the war which then ensued an even greater transformation.
Some Americans continue to revolt against change. The ultimate lost cause.
PS21 is a non-ideological, non-governmental, non-partisan organization. All views expressed are the
authors own.