Today’s Battle Over the Confederate Flag Has Nothing to Do With the Civil War
Popular Well Beyond the South, It Is Now a Modern Symbol of White Grievance and Nostalgia for Crumbling Hierarchies
Three years ago, Dylann Roof murdered nine people in the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina and renewed a long-running debate about the meaning of the Confederate battle flag. Since then, the discussion about flying the flag in public places—as well as ongoing fights about the removal of Confederate monuments—has been framed as the persistence of historic passions. This interpretation is deeply and dangerously misleading: In fact, the flag’s meaning has changed significantly over time, and the contemporary conflict about the flag should be seen more as a dispute …