Constable: Time has run out for Confederate flag in suburbs
Where will you be when the Union wins the Civil War?
A century and a half after the United States of America crushed the armed rebellion seeking to divide our great union, the losers appear ready to surrender their battle flag.
South Carolina, where troops fired the first shots against our nation, is finally coming to realize that flying the Confederate battle flag outside the state legislature offends folks. The Supreme Court granted Texas the right to reject vanity license plates featuring the rebel battle flag, and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe joined the anti-Confederate movement Tuesday by ordering that the “divisive and hurtful” flag be removed from state license plates. Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn says the Mississippi state flag, which incorporates the Stars and Bars, needs to change.
Gun control and racism remain far bigger problems, of course. As is true for our own Stars and Stripes, the Confederate flag is merely a symbol. Never the flag of the Confederate States of America, the Stars and Bars was a battle flag of Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. The flag experienced a rebirth in popularity during the Civil Rights battles of the late 1940s, '50s and '60s, when supporters discovered that the evil discrimination endorsed by Jim Crow laws made them nostalgic for actual slavery and the “old times there” that “are not forgotten.”
I went to a Confederate pageant years ago while on vacation in Mississippi. The crowd rose and sang “Dixie” as the Confederate flag was carried in, and my wife and I and one black woman stewed in our seats. It will be nice to see that rebel flag come down.
Walmart announced that it is surrendering its bounty of Confederate flag products, including the 4-foot-by-6-foot “Confederate Battle Flag” that was selling Monday on the Walmart website for the sale price of $37.74. Hoffman Estates-based Sears, which sold Confederate items online, Amazon and eBay also agreed not to sell those offensive items.
Spencer's, the legendary naughty gift shop found in Woodfield Mall and other suburban shopping venues, always has embraced that market, selling lots of gifts featuring the F-word, sex and drug references, and portrayals of nuns in very, very nonreligious ways. When I stopped in Spencer's on Monday, the rebel flag was featured on T-shirts, bucket hats, bandannas and sunglasses. By Tuesday afternoon, the surrender was complete.
“Spencer's has decided to immediately remove all symbols of the Confederate flag from its stores and websites,” Kevin W. Mahoney, vice president and general counsel for Spencer Gifts, said during our phone chat Tuesday afternoon. While acknowledging that Spencer's “is the home for edgy, irreverent and fun merchandise. … We have decided that we can no longer offer for sale a symbol that is viewed as divisive.”
While I don't think any American institution supported by tax dollars should fly the flag of our current or former enemy, private enterprises are free to make a choice about selling offensive product. It's a free country. Or at least that was the idea when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, declaring that “all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”
I have a personal history with the rebel flag, which flew every day above my high school, where the student newspaper was called Stars and Bars, the sports teams were the Rebels, and our pep club promised that “The South Will Rise Again.” Even though I wore the uniform of the South Newton Rebels, I never liked the idea that a school in northern Indiana chose the loser as its mascot while our native sons died preserving the United States of America against rebels waving that Confederate flag. Still the Rebels, my old high school seems to have gotten rid of all that Confederate garbage, and the Confederate flag no longer blights the flagpole.
People who argue, “If my flag offends you, you need a history lesson,” or buy stickers suggesting that the Confederate flag is a symbol of “Heritage, Not Hate,” don't get it. The purveyor isn't the one who gets to decide if he's being offensive.
The swastika once was a peaceful symbol. Niggardly, derived from an old Scandinavian word, used to be a perfectly acceptable synonym for cheap. Bitch is a correct term for a female dog. But people with good sense know those words and symbols now carry offensive meanings.
Those who still insist on embracing the Confederate flag are the equivalent of readers who send me emails that begin, “I'm not racist, but,” before proceeding with something along the lines of, “here's my incredibly racist belief that I hold dear.”
The Confederate flag might mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but people who still embrace it are either ignorant or racist, neither of which is a crime in this great nation that the Union Yankees fought to preserve. But if you are a person who wears your racist or ignorant heart on your sleeve as a heads-up to the rest of the world, you should have made it to Spencer's on Monday, when that store still had the perfect shirt for you.