AMERICA’S ORIGINAL SIN

Our history is a mix of things of which we should be proud and things of which we should be ashamed. Sorting that our is not always easy. But for this flag, it should be easy.

Amidst the recent anger at the murder of George Floyd and the continuing effects of racism, people have begun to rethink that part of our history called the Confederacy. Statues of the leaders of that rebellion have been removed, either by vandalism or by civil authority. There is a move to rename military installations that now bear the names of Confederate generals.

There has also been a move towards removing the Stars and Bars, the battle flag of the Confederacy, from public institutions. One might wonder why such attention is placed on these images and not others. There are other famous Americans who were slave holders. But we do not hear people calling for the destruction of the Washington Monument or the Jefferson Memorial. There is an important difference.

George W. Bush gave a speech at the opening of the African American Museum in Washington D.C. He said, “A great nation does not hide it’s history. It faces its flaws and corrects them.” He went on to call slavery “America’s original sin.” Doing away with the symbols of the Confederacy is not trying to hide that sin. It is trying to correct the sin of racism that did not end with the Civil War. Many of the statues were erected much later by those who were trying to enforce Jim Crow laws affirming white supremacy as an idea that did not end in 1865. It has never disappeared from out shores totally.

The Confederacy was an act of rebellious treason against this nation for the sake of preserving slavery and the states’ rights that kept that institution safe. There is no separating that flag from the sinful, racist, evil institution for which it stands. American citizens should no more tolerate the stars and bars than they should the Nazi flag.

We can’t pretend that slavery and Jim Crow and continued institutional racism were never real. But if we are to continue to grow as a people, we must be willing to admit our sin and try to move on to build a better America where all people have dignity because they are human beings. That flag is anathema to all that is good and right and true to best part of what America can be.

Put the Robert E. Lee statues and the Confederate flag in a museum so that we do not forget even the sordid parts of our history. But never allow us to celebrate what they and their flag stand for.