In recent weeks, as part of a furious nationwide debate on racism in the United States, private companies, political figures, and government institutions have been reviewing the ways they discuss and represent African-Americans. Some of the resulting changes (Aunt Jemima changing the name of her syrup, the Washington soccer team dropping the nickname “Redskins”) have sparked a backlash in conservative circles. But many have rallied around the view that the Confederate flag is a clear symbol of racial division: it is, after all, the flag of those who waged a lost war against the United States to defend slavery.
According to a Quinnipiac poll Launched on Wednesday, the majority of Americans, 56 percent, responded that they saw the Confederate flag as a symbol of racism, compared to 35 percent who see it as a symbol of Southern heritage. Even those in the southern states are not as fashionable in the Confederacy these days: 55 percent of respondents from the south saw the flag as a racist symbol, while 35 percent did not.
In response to these changing attitudes, several high-profile institutions with traditionally conservative bases have found ways to remove the Confederate flag from their facilities, from outright bans on NASCAR, the Marine Corps, and the U.S. Navy, to the state of Mississippi, which voted to remove the Confederate flag from its state flag in June. On Friday, the Pentagon launched a policy that limits the type of flags that are flown on Defense Department properties that effectively banned, but did not specifically highlight, the Confederate flag, a needle-threading effort widely seen as a way to prevent Trump’s anger.
“We have seen a tremendous change in public opinion since the murder of [George] Floyd, and most thinking people can recognize and understand that the symbols of the Confederacy are symbols of white supremacy, “said the Books of the Southern Poverty Law Center, referring to the recent murder by the police of Minneapolis that sparked protests across the country. “If we hope to make a change in our country and unite the country, we have to recognize these symbols and take our past into account and move on.”
Trump, Brooks added, does not seem interested in that: “His playbook is to divide, not to unite.”
In fact, Trump himself has been increasingly vocal in his defense of the flag.
“I know people who like the Confederate flag and don’t think about slavery,” he said. saying CBS on Tuesday, adding that the liberal culture of cancellation had pushed NASCAR to make the decision to ban Confederate flags from their careers. “You go to NASCAR. You had those flags all over the place. He was arrested. I just think it’s free speech, whether it’s Confederate flags or Black Lives Matter or anything else you want to talk about. It is freedom of expression. “
However, Trump himself does not have a long history of promoting a love for the Confederate flag. In 2015 Trump said that he thought then South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley should remove the flag from the state capitol and put it in a museum. But with his reelection on the line, Trump is recontextualizing his view of the flag in a manner favorable to culture war, hoping to speak to his Republican base.
While most Americans now see the Confederate flag as a racist symbol, 74 percent of Republicans view the flag as a Southern heritage, according to the Quinnipiac poll, while only 16 percent view it as racist.
Seth Mandel, executive editor of the right-wing magazine Washington Examiner, said the flag itself is not the problem Trump is trying to highlight.
“Conservatives don’t care about the flag, but they do care, say, about the slippery slope they might fear over the flag leading to statues that lead to other things, and their talk about the flag is really meant to remind them of other things, not the flag itself, ”he said.
Some Republicans have tried to strike a balance between removing Confederate symbology and resisting the forces of “canceling culture,” such as Madison Cawthorn, a 24-year-old who won the Republican congressional primaries in North Carolina last month and said Buzzfeed who viewed the Confederate statues as an affront to the United States
“These people separated from our country,” he said. “They declared war on the United States. I don’t necessarily want to have hero worship for them. ”
