By Imre Bártfai When commenting on the Charleston shooting even Barack Obama felt the need to say something extraordinary. Som...
By Imre Bártfai
When commenting on the Charleston shooting even Barack Obama felt the need
to say something extraordinary. Something, which goes beyond the usual manifestations
of solidarity, mourning, and prayers.
He admitted that in most developed countries such things happen rather
rarely compared to the US. „Racism, we are not cured of it.”-said
he.[1]
The events of the last year contributed much to this suspicion. Police
brutality against African-Americans which the public couldn’t judge unanimously,
all cases being subjects of heavy debates and political partisanship.
Liberal-leaning people claimed most victims of these police actions victims
of racism, while conservatives pointed out that some of these victims could
have been rightly suspicious fellows, or indeed criminals, who resisted the police,
thus provoking themselves the harsh measures of the police officers. This time
the case is clear: a racist killed African-Americans.
What happened in Charleston brought up again the air of past not yet
forgotten: those times, in which African-Americans effectively weren’t allowed
to vote, and counted as second-rank citizens. It took fearless activists,
preachers and strong politicians to change that. Many would still argue that it
hasn’t been changed entirely.
The problem of racism always pervaded the discussion of American life. Some
of the first European intellectuals who visited America in the 19th century
like Alexis de Tocqueville or the Hungarian Sandor Farkas Boloni, viewed the
new nation with awe. They praised their democracy, the free press and free
spirit of enterprise, but wondered on the strange and evil institution of black
slavery, which contradicted and degraded so much the vigorous democracy of
America. “The contradiction between the majestic theory and the shameful
practice was incomprehensible for me!”-wrote Sandor Boloni, the Transylvanian
traveler in 1830[2].
German philosopher G. W. F Hegel in the 1820's predicted a future conflict
between the South and the North, just as the founding father Madison way
earlier.
The conflict happened in the form of civil war but the conflict of races
weren't settled. Basically the US. government couldn’t expel the confederate
mindset of the former rebel states. Because of this a president has been
impeached. However, slavery was abolished on a horrible cost, and the nation
contended with it.
After the second world war this issue emerged again: still
African-Americans had no vote, still they lived in cultural and social ghettos.
The great social upheaval of the post-WW II era corrected some of the issues of
open racism, laws like Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act forbade most
open forms of racial discrimination and gave legal base for equality between
races. However, given the social distance between whites and African-Americans,
and some dubious legal practices in the everyday[3], many still hold the view
that racism is alive and well in the US.
Confederate Flag raised by US forces during Vietnam War |
This brought up the case of “Confederate flag”. This flag, more correctly,
the battle flag of Northern Virginia's army became the focus point of this
conflict, representing the troubled history of race relations in the States. It
became popular for racists only in the 1940’s, and that was the period which
made it well-known as a symbol.The Charleston shooter posed with the flag, (and
with many other flags[4]) and soon, the flag
started to embody the spirit of racism, the tainted spirit of the South. The
South never re-imagined itself –they say-and this flag is the symbol of this
fact. Intellectuals and politicians started to demand the removal of the flag,
among them even conservative people like Mitt Romney, who just repeated his
earlier statement. The conservative magazine National Review defended the flag
as “a part of what we are”[5] but now the fight seems to
be almost decided as Wal-Mart, Amazon and E-bay entered the fray by forbidding
the sale of Confederate –themed articles in their shops. What is the confederate battle flag? A piece
of history, a matter of memory for those whose ancestors fought under it? A
symbol of racial hatred and oppression? Can a symbol be harmless even in the
hands of extremists?
As a matter of fact such issues exist almost everywhere. In the Netherlands
the old orange-white-blue flag (prinsenvlag) became the symbol of Dutch nationalism
and fascism. In Germany, the Prussian Kriegsmarine (Navy) flag is a frequent
guest at right extremist rallies. In Hungary, the Arpad-chevron flag became
synonymous with the emerging, powerful far-right party, the Jobbik, which
allegedly carries it in remembrance to the Arrow Cross party, Hungary’s WW II era
Nazis. Yet, the original Arpad-chevron flag was perhaps the first official flag
of Hungary, without the arrow-cross, and with seven lions. When I, a person
interested in medieval history look at it I see a medieval flag. Most leftists
see the flag of the Arrow Cross Party, or something strangely similar. So, I
can understand this situation somewhat.
To many people the Confederate battle flag can be still the flag of their
fathers, the memory of past bravery and local patriotism. And a matter of
history. But those, whose ancestors were slaves or fought against the
Confederacy could never see it that way. To them the flag is still the symbol
of the enemy, just as in Gettysburg. Moreover, it is a symbol of the unsolved
problems of the present. As such the battle flag carries a burden which no
symbol can bear: the bad conscience of a nation.
The tools to solve the under-laying problems are not yet in the hands of
people, not even the ideas are ready. The social chasm between the majority of
whites and African-Americans, the cultural ingrained prejudice, alienation and
bad traditions are yet unsolvable problems. People feel themselves stranded.
And because now the problems are heaped on each other, and still the wounds are
painful (the slavery of blacks or the defeat and destruction of the South) what
people can do and will do is to concentrate on the flag.
I guess the Confederate battle flag will be confined to the rooms of the
extremists and to the black market deals. It will be marginalized and put out
of the mainstream world of American symbols. (But whether it will be removed
from the state flag of Mississippi is still questionable.) Increasingly it will
be the mark of the redneck, the political backward. Those, who want to rebel,
those who reject liberal democracy, will embrace it all the more. It will be
put closer to the Swastika, into a relation which, I think it did not fully
deserve. While one of the reasons, perhaps the most important reason, for which
the southern states seceded was slavery,[6] the Confederates were
hardly the same as the Nazis.
Anyway, whatever we think about this, the removal of the flag alone will
solve nothing but may have a good effect as well: it will make it clear without
any doubt, that certain ideas are morally and legally unacceptable. That
personal memory cannot erase objective past, that what was wrong is wrong today
just as then. Confronting the pain that people fought and died heroically for
bad reasons and wrong ideas, accepting that your or my ancestor could have been
a victim of his times, is the first start of the most needed reconciliation.
Americans should never think they are alone in this: Italians, Spanish,
Hungarians, Germans, Russians, French struggle with the memory of their civil
wars, revolutions and fascist movements, embracing more or less contradictory
and inflaming concepts of the past.
Whether this painful lesson will be accepted by the southerners is another
matter. Perhaps on the long run. (According
to the historian Alonzo L. Hamby, Truman’s family was radically hostile to the
North, because one of his family members, then a teenager boy, was mock hanged
by Unionist guerrillas. Truman embraced the patriotism of the present so much
though, that he turned away from the family tradition.[7]) But even then, getting
too much satisfaction from the removal of a symbol can be dangerous.
Witness today’s right extremists: they rarely speak
openly about the Nazis, they rarely show off proudly their symbols. But their
heart is unchanged.
[1] http://edition.cnn.com/2015/06/22/politics/barack-obama-n-word-race-relations-marc-maron-interview/
[2] Bölöni Farkas Sándor: Napnyugati utazás, Napló. Helikon, Bp.1982.
[3] See one case for example: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/03/03/politics/justice-report-ferguson-discrimination/
[4] Among them with the flag of Apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia.
[5]See David French’s article: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420060/confederate-flag-should-stay-charleston-shooting-debate
[6]Secession declarations named slavery as the main issue of the
conflict, as this article points out. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/22/confederate-flag-racist_n_7639788.html
[7] Alonzo L. Hamby: Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman.
Oxford University Press 1995.