It’s time to stop giving hate a Good Housekeeping seal of approval

*NOTE: This was written hastily and emotionally. Please forgive the grammatical errors. I am usually a much better editor, but this is an issue that I cannot separate from my heart.*

Stunted.

That’s what we’ve become in America. Not only are we prevented from growing or developing properly thanks to millions of social media soapboxes being held up by more hot air than information, we’ve also become jaded by stunts put on by anyone seeking fame for reasons which the stunt-maker doesn’t even always know. One of the many negative affects of this is that people no longer remember the difference between a stunt and an act of civil disobedience.

The most recent example of our modern-day confusion occurred just in June. An artist and activist named Bree Newsome climbed the flagpole on the Confederate monument at the South Carolina Statehouse and removed the infamous “Stars N’ Bars.” Then she repelled back down to the police officers who were calmly waiting to arrest her. Locals from up and down the spectrum of the flag debate clutched their pearls and expressed their dismay on Facebook in much the same way as many had a week before when someone (in the dead of night instead of in broad daylight) used red spray paint to write “Black Lives Matter” on the statue of John C. Calhoun in Charleston’s Marion Square Park. Both actions were prompted by the renewed debate over the placement of the Confederate flag on the Statehouse grounds in the wake of the sickening, racially motivated murder of nine black parishioners at Emanuel AME Church, but that’s where the similarities end. The spray painting and the flag lowering exist in two distinct categories: one is act of vandalism and the other is an act of civil disobedience.

I fear that many have forgotten what was taught in their required high school and college history courses, so here’s a quick rundown:

Civil disobedience is “…a public, non-violent and conscientious breach of law undertaken with the aim of bringing about a change in laws or government policies. On this account, people who engage in civil disobedience are willing to accept the legal consequences of their actions, as this shows their fidelity to the rule of law,” according to The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Memorable and historic acts of civil disobedience include the following:

In 1930, as a response to British laws prohibiting Indians from collecting or selling salt — an important staple in the Indian diet — under threat of a heavy tax, Mohandas Gandhi led a defiant march to the sea in protest. The laws affected all of India, but the poor bore most of the burden. By the time Gandhi had walked all 241 miles to the sea there were tens of thousands of people following him in order to produce salt from the seawater. When police crushed the salt deposits into the mud, Gandhi reached down and picked up a small lump of salt from the ruins, breaking British law. This small act led to a wave of civil disobedience washing over all of India as citizens went on to extract salt from the sea in nonviolent defiance. More than 60,000 people were arrested, including Gandhi himself, but these acts played an important role in India regaining its independence in 1947.
On Dec. 1, 1955, a black seamstress named Rosa Parks boarded a bus in Montgomery, AL after a long day of work. She sat down just behind the seats reserved for white passengers and rode along as the bus stopped to pick up more. After all of the seats were filled, a white man boarded the bus and — following the standard practice of segregation — the driver ordered the four blacks sitting just behind the white section give up their seats so the man could sit down. Mrs. Parks, who was an active member of the local NAACP, quietly refused to give up her seat. She was arrested and convicted of violating the South’s Jim Crow laws. This kicked off what we now know as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which posed serious economic threat to one of the city’s most vital modes of transportation.
In 1917, an American named Alice Paul, leading a group of suffragists, staged an eighteen-month picket outside of the White House, drawing attention to their efforts to win the right for women to vote. For a year and a half, 1,000 “Silent Sentinels” marched in front of the White House gates every day, holding banners saying things like, “Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?” The group continued their protest despite verbal and physical attacks from people passing by. Instead of protecting the women from the attacks, police started arresting them for “obstructing traffic.” Alice Paul was imprisoned for seven months, eventually organizing a hunger strike to protest the group’s incarceration. She was placed in solitary confinement, where she tried to continue her hunger strike, but ended up being force fed by physicians who threatened to send her to an insane asylum. The public became sympathetic to Paul and her group as this treatment continued, ultimately helping Pres. Wilson to declare support for women’s suffrage in 1918.
On February 1, 1960, David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair, and Joseph McNeil — all students at North Carolina A & T in Greensboro — sat down at a “whites-only” Woolworth’s lunch counter, asked to be served, and were ignored. The next day a larger group of students arrived asking to be served, and were again ignored. Newspapers around the country picked up the story, and civil rights organizations began to organize the same action on other college campuses. Within two weeks, students in eleven cities held sit-ins, primarily at Woolworth’s and S.H. Kress stores, kicking off one of the most memorable aspects of the American struggle for civil rights. “We believe, since we buy books and papers in the other part of the store, we should get served in this part,” one of the original four students said later. The nonviolent protesters (including my own mother, who was a teenager in Mississippi at the time) endured taunting, spitting, and even violence, but maintained their cool by refusing to react and stoically standing their ground day after day.

I believe the weakening sentiment regarding the Confederate flag — at least on a local level — has much to do with exhaustion from the ceaseless bickering and coverage it has garnered. The quickest to feel fatigued and irked by the flag frenzy are people who haven’t experienced the lightning rod of a frightening, emotional experience connected with the flag. They haven’t experienced — or recognized their experience — with the visceral power of symbolism. The Confederate flag is like a Good Housekeeping seal of approval for racist rhetoric to those of us who have been on the receiving end of such sentiments. As a symbol, this flag has emboldened hate groups in South Carolina. Removing it won’t solve our problems in South Carolina, but removing it will honor the nine shooting victims and assure the people of color who live here that the state government represents them, as well. Taking the flag down will serve as a sign that black people are, indeed, considered to be human beings, countering the daily reminders that many people don’t see us that way. Bree Newsome’s activist performance brings the rest of the nation into the fray on such feelings by keeping eyes on Columbia to hold the state and the nation accountable to their taxpaying citizens. Newsome wasn’t trying to add to the generalized label of racism that some use in attempt to make racism the “other” that exists in some other community. Her actions, instead, have helped start conversations in places like Montana and Tennessee about how symbols represent and uphold racism in their own states.

The Confederate Flag reminds a large portion of South Carolina’s represented citizens of 200+ years of terror, therefore it has no business on public grounds where representative government is in action. The fact that it has remained there for so long is a symbol that black voices haven’t counted for much in policymaking or every day interaction. It’s a sign that directly correlates official government action with “unofficial” institutional racism and oppression. As long as that flag flies on public grounds, it is an official symbol that therefore warrants as much national attention as possible — even through acts of civil disobedience — in order to push other communities to rethink the way such symbols are displayed. This is a chance to set a precedent that hasn’t yet been exercised in full in America. This is a step that could lead to others that may change the American racial experience, which holds a legacy that has yet to be addressed in full in a national, official effort. This is why Bree Newsome’s performance is so important and should not be held in the same regard as stupid, cowardly vandalism.

It’s time to end our confusion and reach into the good lessons we were taught growing up. The only people who have stunted the ethical and intellectual growth of the American people are… the American people. Let’s get out of our own way for once.