No room for symbols of Confederate America

The next president of the College of Charleston in South Carolina is a Confederate sympathizer and an advocate for the use of the Confederate flag.

Republican Lt. Gov. Glenn McConnell has championed the use of Confederate flags, particularly the well-known battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia.

He has furiously led the fight to keep the flag flying above the state’s capitol building. In 2010, a photo of him in the uniform of a Confederate general flanked by two black men dressed to resemble slaves went viral.

No matter what your motivation, the use of the Confederate flag is an egregious idea.

McConnell and others have defended the flag variously as a connection to their ancestors and a valuable symbol of a struggle for autonomy. They claim the flag doesn’t represent hate, but heritage.

The Editorial Board thinks otherwise. They are wrong. And their ideas belong nowhere near institutions of education.

Calling the Civil War a struggle for autonomy is a poor characterization. There is inherent hypocrisy in the idea of struggling for the autonomy to deny other humans their autonomy. The Civil War is and always will be a symbol of that goal of oppression, no matter what it may mean to you personally.

Defending your use of a symbol by claiming it means something different to you than to society at large confuses the idea of a symbol. Symbols, by definition, are not purely personal. They are used to communicate ideas, thoughts and opinions quickly and efficiently.

When you use a symbol, you are indicating that you wish to be associated with what that symbol represents to those who see it. If that represents something else to those who see your symbol, it doesn’t mean your culture is suffering from a genocide, as McConnell has claimed.

It means you’ve simply chosen a poor symbol. And the Confederate flag has consistently been used as a symbol of hate.

During the 1950s and ’60s, Southern governors would display the flag as an act of defiance in the face of integration efforts, the very same flag proudly displayed at lynchings and cross burnings across the South.

That symbol hasn’t lost its meaning, even in 2014.

In February, three University of Mississippi fraternity members were found responsible for hanging a noose and a pre-2003 Georgia state flag with a Confederate emblem on the statue of civil rights hero James Meredith. Meredith, the university’s first black student, was admitted only after President John F. Kennedy ordered hundreds of federal marshals to escort him onto its campus.

If Southerners like McConnell feel such a need to connect with their equally problematic heritage without endorsing hate, they have chosen the wrong symbol. They don’t have a right to choose whatever symbol they want and simultaneously redefine its entire historical context.

Despite unanimous votes of no confidence by both the student government and the faculty council of the College of Charleston, the board of trustees — who appointed McConnell — has stood behind its decision so far.

Moving forward, we can only hope they reconsider.

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