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Re: If symbols are offensive, it's best to look away, letter, Feb. 3.
The writer equates a university's colors with the battle ensign of the late Confederate States of America. To do so belittles the meaning of this flag to both those who love it and those who hate it. Understand its significance to African-Americans. It is a reminder of slavery, oppression and disenfranchisement.
Many of us, particularly white Southerners (like me), see it as something else and deny, or try to deny, that it is a symbol of hatred, racism or bigotry. The fact that this flag was adopted at the end of the War of Northern Aggression by those sympathetic to the Southern cause and fighting in resistance to the end of slavery does not help matters. This flag has been and still is used by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups. No wonder it still disturbs African-Americans.
For some white Southerners, the flag symbolizes their cultural heritage, the part of the country in which they were born, and a nation that died aborning. It is too easy for some of us to forget that at the heart of that heritage lies slavery. And beneath slavery rests a denial of a fundamental truth - the notion that all people are equal before the law. I cannot embrace a symbol that is so linked to a denial of that truth with all the hatred, prejudice and cruelty that goes with it. I have moved beyond it.
So yes, I understand that the Confederate flag holds a certain value for white Southerners. But I do not expect African-Americans to accept it. Nor do I expect them to "look away." Racism, and this connected issue, must not be ignored. We cannot look away. We must confront and discuss this issue. Hopefully, we can remember the past, bury racism, and learn not to hate.
I would like to express my concerns on the issue of the Confederate battle flag issue going on at Tarpon Springs High School. My concern is this: A student not pleased with the display of the flag on a T-shirt is frustrated because the shirt is allowed. The displeased student starts a petition drive to ban the Confederate flag from the school - after all, she does have the right to express her concern and her First Amendment rights. Do we all not?
However, here is where we as a society fail to really understand this student's underlying issues. You see, we tend to educate our children on certain civil rights movements from only one viewpoint and immediately are blinded by personal feelings. In this case, the flag is judged as a racist symbol.
It is unfortunate that the flag has been dragged into this controversy and given a bad rap by real racists such as the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist groups. The true history behind the Confederate flag goes way beyond racial boundaries, and believing it stands for racism and oppression is a racist thought in itself.
We should take the time to educate our children on the historical truth of such a symbol and all symbols, for that matter. If this were the case, this student would have understood the heritage issue behind the flag and ignored the misguided racial epithet associated with it. Let us not prejudge people. Remember, we as a society are trying to progress, not digress. It seems there are movements everywhere we look today to ban this and ban that. We are looking for reasons to hate people.
This should be a time to bring people together, not divide a school. I think Martin Luther King Jr. would agree, and if he were with us today, it is my belief that he would choose to preach restraint. Look past the shirt. One person's freedom of speech is another's pain. How we choose to deal with that pain is what divides us. History cannot be altered. It is there for us to understand, not to pick apart bits and pieces of it to wage personal wars.
I agree the student did not deserve a 10-day suspension for doing something she thought was right. Here is where we failed as educators to use this opportunity to turn this into an educational debate. Instead of the type of press the school is receiving, it could be getting accolades by bringing together two different voices for a great cause.
Re: Petition wrong, but so was suspension, letter by Robert M. Ausburn, Feb. 3.
Mr. Ausburn's assertion that there were just as many slaves in the North as in the South deserves to be exposed for the lie it is. Dr. David Fischer's exhaustive cultural history study, Albion's Seed, published by Oxford University Press, includes this paragraph discussing the racial composition of the four regions of early British America:
"African slaves were imported to every colony, but in very different proportions. In many parts of New England, blacks were never more than 1 percent of the population; in some southern coastal counties, blacks were more than a majority."
Fisher also meticulously researched death rates for blacks and whites. He reached the following conclusion:
"So high was the mortality among African immigrants in New England (due to the cold) that race slavery was not viable ... despite many attempts to introduce it."
Slavery and the South were synonymous. Bertram Wyatt-Brown, writing at the time in the Southern Honor, said, "The South was not founded to create slavery; slavery was recruited to perpetuate the South." Southern states clearly required a permanent underclass that would remain firmly fixed in its subordination. Writing about Virginia's example, Fisher summed it up nicely. "In short, slavery in Virginia had a cultural imperative."
Another error that is perpetuated is that the Civil War was not about slavery. Abraham Lincoln, writing to Mark W. Delahay in May 1859, states his opposition to dumbing down the Republican Party Standard in order to gain more recruits by saying such measures "would surrender the Object of the Republican organization - the preventing of the spread and nationalization of Slavery."
This issue arose from the Southern states' insistence on spreading slavery to the newly forming Western territories.
Even a cursory review of the period's papers and literature reveal the fact that the war was most definitely about slavery.
I find it interesting that most people waving the Confederate battle flag actually know very little history about it or the war. There was no standard to this flag; every state had a variation. The national flag of the confederacy was the Stars and Bars, first used for the inauguration of Jefferson Davis in 1861.
The battle flag was again adopted by Southern states as a defiant protest against the federal integration orders of the 1950s and '60s.
As a white Southerner born in the early 1960s, I know from my own personal experiences with bigotry that the current battle flag is not about history. The Confederate battle flag certainly has its history, but it is one of rage, discrimination and hate.
Re: Confederate flag issue at Tarpon Springs High School.
From what I have seen, some of the letter writers blame the school for violating the student's First Amendment rights and declare how terrible this is. They don't seem to want to acknowledge that this is just what she was trying to get school officials to do by wanting them to forbid students from wearing clothing with imprints of the Confederate flag.
It seems to me she feels her right not to be offended is more important than the other students' right to express themselves as they choose as long as it does not violate school policy.
I have to this day been unable to find anything in the Constitution or Bill of Rights that gives anyone the right not to be offended.