Exposing Hate
SYMBOLS OF HATE
The Charlottesville Unite the Right rally took place more than 150 years
after the end of the Civil War. In this conflict, the South (also known as the
Confederate States of America) fought for its right to exist as a separate
nation where slavery would remain legal. The North fought to end slavery and
to keep the United States one united nation.
Racism remains a reality in the twenty-first-century United States,
and Confederate symbols are controversial. Some southerners claim the
Confederate flag and symbolic depictions of famous Confederate generals are
an important representation of the South. They feel that removing Confederate
monuments undermines the South’s history and culture. In some states, it
is illegal to take them down. Other Americans believe Confederate symbols
emphasize an offensive and violent history of oppression based in slavery,
racial discrimination, and prejudice. Since the election of Barack Obama in
2008 as the nation’s first black president and with the election of conservative
Donald Trump as president in 2016, the debate has intensified.
Violent attacks against black Americans have demonstrated the power of
symbols related to race relations in the United States. One prominent example
is the 2015 mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church
in Charleston, South Carolina, where a gunman killed nine black Americans
attending a bible study session. The gunman was twenty-one-year-old
self-described white supremacist Dylann Roof. He chose the church for its
historical significance as one of the oldest black congregations in the South.
The church had also played a meaningful role in the American civil rights
movement of the 1950s and 1960s. After the shooting, pictures of Roof posing
with a Confederate flag surfaced online. Many Americans were outraged by
the connection to acts of violence directly associated with ideologies (belief
systems) from Confederate history. In response, many states and cities
across the South removed the Confederate flag and other symbols of the
Confederacy from public lands and buildings. The tragedy forced the nation
to take a closer look at the continued presence of a glorified history of the
Confederacy and what it means for all citizens in the South—and of the larger
United States.
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