Confederate Flag as Symbol

The shooting deaths of nine people in a historically black Charleston church at the hands (allegedly) of a white supremacist has sparked a debate over the place of the Confederate flag in our nation.  My friends (Facebook and otherwise) have weighed in with their strong opinions on either side of this issue.  Here’s my two cents.

The Confederate flag is a symbol.  The study of the interpretation of symbols was a major feature of my doctoral studies, so I know a thing or two about the subject.  Symbols develop over time: this is the diachronic (“through time”) nature of a symbol.  Take for example the expression “the President’s car” (words are a type of symbol, by the way).  In the days of Teddy Roosevelt, the President’s car was a railroad car.  In the days of Barak Obama, however, the President’s car is an armored limousine.  Same symbol, different meaning.  In the same way, the meaning of Confederate flag symbol has changed over the years.  Some people are discussing what the Confederate flag meant when it was created; these discussions often focus on the meaning of the Confederacy that it represented.  Such diachronic analysis can be interesting, and sometimes even helpful.

The other way to analyze symbols (according to Ferdinand de Saussure, a founding guru for linguistic and symbolic studies) is synchronic (“with time”) analysis.  That is, what meaning(s) does a symbol have at the time that it is being used?  How do different groups of people understand the meaning of the symbol?  Diachronic study of a symbol may help us understand how the symbol became what it is, but synchronic examination gets to the heart of the matter.  That’s what I’ll do here as I consider the Confederate flag.

Symbols can have more than one meaning.  That is both a powerful feature and a potential risk in the use of symbols.  The risk is that you may use a symbol to express one meaning, but people will understand it in a different way.  Here are two examples.  First, imagine that Johnny pulls Sally’s pigtails on the playground at grade school.  Sally thinks he’s being mean and complains to the teacher, who marches a confused Johnny to the principal’s office.  Johnny tells the principal that he pulled Sally’s pigtails because he likes her.  The wise principal then explains to Johnny that while that may be what he meant to express, that’s not the message that Sally got from it.  If he wants to tell Sally that he likes her, he should find a different way to do it.  Here’s another example.  Right after the attacks on 9/11, President Bush said that “this crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while."  I’m confident that he used the word “crusade” to mean “a major effort to change something,” as www.merriam-webster.com defines it.  However, the word/symbol crusade also refers to the wars that European Christians fought against Muslims during the Middle Ages.  Understandably, the word raises hackles in the Islamic world, and the President offended many Muslims when he used it.  The Bush administration had to do a lot of damage control because of an unintended insult since people understood the word in different ways.

All of this brings us to the use of Confederate flag, and what it symbolizes for different people.  As I see it, it has at least three different meanings, depending on which people you talk to.  It’s the same thing as Johnny and Sally interpreting the hair-pulling differently, and President Bush and leaders in the Islamic world using the word “crusade” differently.  When you use the symbol of the Confederate flag, not everyone views it the same way you do.

First, particularly in the South, the Confederate flag symbolizes southern heritage and culture.  It is more than a reference to the Confederacy of the 1860s; it’s a symbol of what it means to be a southerner.  It’s akin to the cowboy as a symbol of the West.  In the same way, I have a sticker of the Dutch flag on my car to express my ethnic heritage.  Understood this way, the Confederate flag is a source of pride and self-identity.  For people who understand the flag like this, attacks against the flag are attacks against their culture, their values, their way of life.  Of course they won’t like it.

Second, the Confederate flag symbolizes a rebellious, free spirit.  This is the Confederate flag on the General Lee from “The Dukes of Hazard,” for example.  It is a way to assert your independence from the government, corporations, or anything else that tries to tell you how to live your life.  Just like Bo and Luke Duke refused to do what Boss Hogg and Sheriff Coltrane told them to, some people use the Confederate flag to say that you can’t tell them what to do.  Tell these folks that the Confederate flag is bad, and they’ll think that you want to suppress their freedoms.

Third, the Confederate flag represents racism, particularly the dominance of whites over blacks.  This is the Confederate flag of the KKK and other white supremacy groups.  It is equivalent to the Nazi swastika and a burning cross on someone’s front lawn.  It is used by whites to tell blacks that they’re better than they are, and that if you get too full of yourself there will be consequences to pay.  When you display the Confederate flag, some people get the message that you’re racist.

As you read my three descriptions, there may be one or two of them that you disagree with or don’t understand.  When I was in seminary, my roommate from Alabama was flabbergasted when I told him that some people in Pennsylvania display the Confederate flag.  Coming from the south, he interpreted the flag in the first way: a symbol of the South.  Why would northerners use it?  I believe my Pennsylvania neighbors typically understand in the second way: as an expression of freedom and rebelliousness.  As I’ve said, the tricky thing about symbols is that they can mean more than one thing.  I can’t tell you that I’m “right” and you’re “wrong” in how you understand the Confederate flag.  It has all of these symbolic meanings.

If you attack the Confederate flag because it is a symbol of racism for you, others will believe that you are attacking Southern culture.

If you use the Confederate flag to express your independent spirit, some people will think you’re a Southerner (as my seminary roommate did).

If you display the Confederate flag because you’re proud of your heritage, other people will understand it as a racist statement.

Again, none of these meanings for the symbol of the Confederate flag are “right” or “wrong.”  They are all ways that people understand it.  Just as Johnny needed to understand how Sally felt when he pulled her hair, and just as President Bush probably should have put more thought into using the word “crusade,: we would all do well to think of the message other people receive when we attack or defend the Confederate flag.