In defending the Confederate flag flying on public property in South Carolina, political pundit Sara Fagen said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”: “Not every Southerner who is a Caucasian looks at that [flag] as a symbol of racism.”
Frankly, who cares what “Caucasians” think about that flag? What matters is what African-Americans see and feel when they look at that flag — and that is pure racism. It’s hate speech wrapped up in a symbol, a symbol that supports slavery and treason.
You might say, How does it represent racism without words? When someone Jewish sees a Nazi flag he or she witnesses hate and anti-Semitism. It is the same. Both flags might have a place in history, but neither deserves a place of honor on public property.
Let’s stop beating around the bush on this. The argument for the flag is that it stands for state’s rights. It does — a state that broke away from the Union so it could continue to enslave African-Americans and to commit treason against the Union.
Both flags are continually being used by racist anti-Semites, skinheads and hate groups. Does a state want to be associated with that type of hate?
I understand how painful hate symbols and speech can be. We in the LGBT community have watched as those hate our move towards equality morph from the likes of Fred Phelps’s Westboro Baptist Church, which uses picket signs at funerals that read “God Hates Fags,” to the now-accepted phrase used by the likes of Rick Santorum that “family values” prevents support for marriage equality. “Family values” is a symbol against LGBT Americans.
Whether you’re black, Jewish or LGBT, or almost any other minority, we know hate when we see it. And those who fly that Confederate flag, whether they know it or not, are flying a symbol that is not, even at the very least, considerate of African-American citizens. And we though that Southerners were considerate.
Start showing it.