History, present came together for Confederate flag debate, experts say

Wayne Fuller flies seven styles of Confederate flags at his home in Rogers. Fuller, standing with the flags Saturday, is proud of the heritage they represent and says the flags honor his ancestors who died in the Civil War.
Wayne Fuller flies seven styles of Confederate flags at his home in Rogers. Fuller, standing with the flags Saturday, is proud of the heritage they represent and says the flags honor his ancestors who died in the Civil War.

FAYETTEVILLE -- The recent and rapid backlash against the Confederate battle flag is a new turn in the decades-long debate over the flag's meaning and came about because politics, widespread attention and timing aligned, historians and political scientists said last week.

In the 1990s, the University of Mississippi discouraged football fans from waving the Confederate flag because of its connections to racist groups. The NAACP called for a boycott against South Carolina in protest of that state's display of the flag over its Capitol in 1999. But only after the killing of nine African Americans in a Charleston church this month did South Carolina's governor call for the flag's complete removal from Capitol grounds.

Confederate flags

• Battle flag: The familiar starred blue “X” over a red field, the flag flew over Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of North Virginia. It was used mostly for solemn remembrances following the Civil War and was first used in protest of the Civil Rights Movement and by the Ku Klux Klan in the mid-20th century.

• “Stars and Bars”: Though often mistakenly used for the battle flag, this name refers to the Confederate States of America’s first official flag. It had a circle of seven stars in a blue field in the corner, similar to the United States flag, and three horizontal stripes of red and white.

Source: Staff report

Other moves against the symbol quickly followed. Walmart, Amazon and eBay halted the sale of Confederate flag imagery through their services. Potential presidential candidates weighed in supporting the flag's removal, and politicians in Mississippi, Alabama and other states removed the flag from government displays or called for doing so.

"I think people are really shocked and saddened and appalled with the killing of those people," said Charles Robinson, who is vice chancellor of diversity and community at the University of Arkansas and has a doctorate in history. "I really think it's sent a shockwave throughout the country, throughout the South."

Authorities say the Charleston attack was a hate crime carried out by Dylann Roof, a white man who posted racist screeds online and posed in photos with the Confederate flag. The attack brings to mind the 1963 bombing of a black church in Birmingham, Ala., and other killings of black people by white people throughout the Civil Rights movement, Robinson said.

The involvement of high-profile companies this time around contributed to the swift turn against the flag, said Calvin White, associate professor of history and director of the university's African and African American Studies program. He also pointed to the 2016 presidential race, which is under way with more than a dozen contenders between the two major parties.

"I don't think you can divorce what's happening right here and this political cycle that's coming up," White said.

Presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., went from calling the flag "part of who we are" at the controversy's beginning to calling for its removal, for example. Graham's need to connect to a wider audience outside the South made the turnaround politically necessary, White said.

The South through the years has become more diverse and more economically and socially connected to a nationwide audience less attached to the Confederate flag, said Patrick Stewart, associate professor of political psychology at the UA. Southerners have become more interdependent with outsiders, even at a subconscious, instinctual level, he said.

"When you do that, you don't want to piss off people," Stewart said.

A 2011 report from the Pew Research Center found just 9 percent of 1,500 Americans surveyed had a positive reaction to the Confederate flag, with most of the rest ambivalent toward it. A Public Policy Polling report shortly after the Charleston shooting found a majority of registered voters polled were against governments' flying the flag.

"To outsiders, the Confederate flag is a symbol of a failed attempt by an aristocratic movement to start their own nation," Stewart said. "There's no real benefit to it anymore."

The country also has made progress on race in general, Robinson said. The public already was recently discussing issues of race and racism because of cases of police use of force and killings of black people, including Ferguson, Mo., and continuing to Baltimore and elsewhere.

"I do believe that these cases coming as they have, one after the other, just underscores that race is still a factor in our society, and it's not nearly where we thought it was relative to King's dream and the whole notion of what it means to be an American," Robinson said.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans and other groups supportive of the flag maintain it isn't a racist symbol, but conveys only their connection with Southern history -- "heritage, not hate," as it's often put.

"I am honoring my ancestors," said Wayne Fuller, a Rogers resident who was displaying seven Confederate and Confederate-ally flags along Olive Street on Thursday. He said he'd had them out for two years without protest, and in his view the flag had no role in anyone's death.

"We had an oppressive government at the time," Fuller said. "My ancestors fought for state rights. I am not a racist. I don't believe in the Klan."

Opponents of the flag contend its history is steeped in racism, pointing to the words of Confederate leaders.

The Confederate government's "foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition," Alexander Stephens, the Confederate vice president, said in an 1861 speech in Georgia. He said slavery was "the immediate cause" for the Civil War and called abolitionists "fanatics."

The recent attention has created a sense of public shame over the Confederate symbol similar to what followed the Civil Rights Movement, said Pearl Dowe, associate professor of political science at the UA.

"It became socially unacceptable to be openly, outwardly discriminatory (back then)" she said, leading to the falling out of racial slurs. The Confederate flag has now been broadly added to that category, Dowe said. "It's very unfortunate that it took the deaths of nine African Americans for that public shame to come."

All these factors together have created what's called a policy window, said Janine Parry, a professor of political science at the UA. An issue can simmer for decades before some event tips the balance, she said. For example, the federal government switched from opposing Social Security programs to supporting them after the Great Depression hit.

"The whole thing looks rather sudden when really it's not," Parry said. "It seems obvious to a small group of people for a very long period of time, but in a flash it becomes obvious to a lot of people."

Policy windows need both a clear issue and a clear policy change -- in this case, states' deciding to take down the flag. Robinson and others said they applauded recent changes, but examination of racism must also go deeper. Housing, police use of force and education are all areas that must become fairer, they said.

"This is a good time for us to pick up this initiative and run with it," said John L Colbert, president of the NAACP's Northwest Arkansas branch. "Sometimes we think everything is OK, but we don't address the concerns that are still out there."

The wave of examining state-supported symbols from the Confederacy should also spread to Arkansas, Colbert, Dowe and others said. Arkansas holds a day celebrating Confederate general Robert E. Lee on the same day as Martin Luther King Jr. Day. It honors Confederate president Jefferson Davis's birthday on June 3 and celebrates Confederate Flag Day the day before Easter.

Bentonville's square is home to a monument to Confederate soldiers as well.

"If we're really truly seeking healing, we need to be sensitive to what causes others pain," said State Rep. Nate Bell, I-Mena, who unsuccessfully pushed last session to split the Lee/King day and abolish Jefferson Davis's Day. He said history is still worth honoring, but the Confederate flag has been "misused" by racist groups, causing the controversy.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans' Arkansas division has opposed downplaying the state's Confederate celebrations. Chairman Tom Bird declined to comment Friday out of respect of the funerals in Charleston, but in a statement on a public Facebook page for the group posted June 23, Bird called for solidarity among the flag's supporters.

"If you think for one minute that this is going to blow over, you are so very wrong. Do you really want to know how they are doing this? They organized, they talk to politicians -- have you?" he wrote. "It's time to rally around the flag."

NW News on 06/28/2015

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