I have said that I was not going to get involved in the issue of the Mississippi flag, but like lemmings rushing to the sea where they drown themselves, I find myself blurting out a few thoughts, although I have no wish to offend anybody.
The fact is that, old as I am, I don’t date back as far as the War Between the States. For one-fourth of my life I disliked the flag in question because I associated it with Ole Miss football, and I was from Bulldog country. Later, I married an Ole Miss graduate, and my loyalty changed through time. I waved that flag with the other fans. It was a college issue.
My point today is that a flag is a symbol, sometimes a sacred symbol, uniting people with a common cause as the Stars and Stripes of Old Glory do for the country today. While we do not offer the same devotion to the flags of other countries, we respect them — unless we are at war with them. I was in England at a ceremony recently and gladly stood up for the anthem “God Save the Queen.” Once, our ancestors fought each other. Now we honor their symbol, their flag.
Many years have passed since we fought the British for our freedom. In the interim, we fought them again. Later, we fought beside them against one of the greatest evils the world has seen, the Nazis.
Once, we felt downtrodden by the English; now we look upon them with affection.
The Mississippi flag once flew over the Confederacy. The Confederacy is long gone. It is over. Whatever you think that war was about — some say states’ rights, including the right to ship the cotton they grew from southern ports and make the profit here; some say the freedom of slaves — but whatever the reason, inevitably it was complicated, and it has been complicated for a long time.
Why can’t we retire the animosity about that flag? What possible good does it do to exacerbate old wounds? Since the Civil Was was over — and it is over — wise blacks and whites have worked to erase that animosity. Personally, I can’t see any good in resuming the friction. We have faced other enemies together: poverty, crime, disease and many things mankind battles as human beings. We could certainly do a better job of that, but it is certainly a better use of time to work together than to keep baiting the races.
If we wanted to be even more divisive, we might also look at gender discrepancies. Thomas Jefferson could have written, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all humanity is created equal,” but he did not. He wrote, and meant, “that all men are created equal.” Not women. They were not. Should we toss out the Declaration of Independence because of that intentional omission?
Jefferson should have written “equal before the law,” anyway, because we are anything but equal in other respects, especially gender. Blacks received the vote before women.
For a long time in history when women married, their personal wealth went to their husbands. I was taught in school history classes that the reason Queen Elizabeth I did not marry was because doing so would give her husband authority over her wealth, possible kingdom, and no telling what else. If I am not mistaken, the Equal Rights Amendment has not yet been passed, and its greatest opponents are women. Go figure.
In my opinion anyone can always find something for which to get his nose out of joint if he looks. The issue may even reflect some truth, but stirring up trouble without producing a needed change is a poor use of time. What we really need to do is the best we can. We need to try to be smart, to learn how to prosper. We need to be courteous, thoughtful and, for Heaven’s sake, if we find ourselves in positions of responsibility, we need to be honest.
Symbols are what we make them.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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