Editorial: Much More Than a Flag

SPANISH VERSION
Bringing down the Confederate flag that waved in front of the State House in South Carolina marks an important moment in U.S. history. It recognizes that this flag is a symbol of a time of slavery, of a civil war fought to defend and prolong that shameful exploitation of human beings. In 1865, the Confederate Army fell. Yesterday, and hopefully for good, its flag was lowered.

It’s tragic that in order to reach this day, nine African-Americans had to die at the hands of an admirer of this flag and of “Southern values,” someone who wanted to start a race war. Dylann Roof didn’t achieve that. On the contrary, his behavior helped remove the flag and unite, rather than divide, the residents.

The Civil War, a bloody four-year conflict in which nearly 750,000 soldiers died, began when Southern states wanted to secede from the Union, which wasn’t letting them expand slavery. That was the first time that the oft-repeated phrase, “states’ rights,” was mentioned, in this case to defend slavery.

A critical view of the flag and of the romanticism surrounding those who started the war is spreading throughout the country, in various ways. From Washington to California, people are questioning both the use of Confederate symbols and the fact of paying homage to rebel leaders by putting up statues and naming streets, schools and parks after them. Removing these men from pedestals is delivering justice.

In reality, defending the Confederate flag is the equivalent of defending the Nazi flag in Germany by saying that it represents values that go beyond their atrocities. It’s like to honor the Third Reich’s leaders as defenders of Arian values and disregarding their criminal racism and antisemitism. It’s like wanting to put Nazi flags on the graves of soldiers who died defending their country during World War II.

The time had come to set aside the romanticism that for years sought to distance “Southern values” from slavery, when they were intimately connected. Those values were present in the homes of white people, while the slaves were in the fields of the same plantation. A society builds its present and its future by recognizing and accepting the reality of its past.