Students Wear Confederate Flags; Call It Southern Pride, Not Hate
FAYETTEVILLE, AR — Two Arksansas teens are defending their Confederate flag-themed sweatshirts and face paint, saying they’re part of the #HistoryNotHate movement on social media. Administrators at their high school in Fayetteville suspended them under school policies, saying that their attire disrupted the safety of the school and violated school policies.
The Confederate flag, seen alternately as a symbol of Southern pride and racism, has long been a lightning rod for controversy, but tensions over the emblem reached a boiling point in 2015 after self-professed white supremacist Dylann Roof, who displayed the banner in photos on social media, shot and killed nine African-American churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina. That state removed the flag from its Capitol ground as a result.
The debate has since simmered not only in South Carolina, where the Secessionist Party raised the Confederate Flag this summer to protest its removal from the statehouse grounds, but also in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a 2017 white nationalist rally turned deadly, and elsewhere around the country.
The appropriateness of displaying the Stars and Bars remains a dividing issue, but a poll in late December found that even among Southerners, support for the Confederate flag is waning.
Residents of Arkansas, where the Fayetteville High School students staged their support for the flag, were among 1,000 people in 11 Southern states who were polled about their support for Confederate flags. The Winthrop Southern Focus Survey showed that 46 percent of Southerners hold a “somewhat or very unfavorable” views about the Confederate battle flag
Several students at Fayetteville High School wore similar clothing and face paint on Tuesday, but removed it when they were asked by school officials. But Jagger Starnes resisted, saying that he and other students who wore the flag-themed clothing are neither racist nor hateful, and are displaying the flag as a matter of Southern pride.
Tell Us: Do you think the Confederate flag and Confederate monuments should be banned in the United States? Tell us what you think in the comments or post directly on Patch.
“It’s Southern pride, and we’re not gonna take it off for anyone,” Starnes told news station KARK. “This is our flag. It’s Arkansas. This is the South.”
Police officers joined school officials at the lunchroom, where the students were told they either had to change their clothing and wash the symbols off their faces or go home, news station KNWA reported. When he refused to remove the stars-and-bars sweatshirt, Starnes was sent to the office, where he claims the head principal called him a racist, the student claimed.
Starnes and another student, Morrigan White, were suspended for refusing to remove their sweatshirt-type jackets printed with the Stars and Bars. White told KARK that the history of the Confederate flag is more complicated than often portrayed.
“The American flag was raised for slavery, too, but I mean all the flags were trying to say is we don’t want to be in your nation. We want to be ourselves. We don’t want to be part of this.”
Both students said they would continue wearing the jackets.
“If I have makeup, I’m going to put ‘hashtag history not hate’ on my hands,” said White, who helped paint the symbols on other students’ faces and hands. “I’ll still keep putting the flag on my face.”
Fayetteville High School Principal Jay Dostel told KNWA the decision was made under existing school guidelines to maintain a safe and undisrupted environment for students and had nothing to do with politics.
Those policies specifically states that “attire that disrupts the educational process or otherwise interferes with the rights or opportunities of others to learn or teach [is considered improper and unacceptable].”
“We’re not trying to trample on their First Amendment rights; we’re just trying to have a safe and orderly school environment,” he told the station.
He said the district as “validated that the Confederate flag in our building can cause a substantially disruptive environment for some of our students, and because of that we’re going to take measure to make sure that all of our kids remain safe.”
The #HistoryNotHate hashtag was created to support a campaign for the right of Americans to display the Confederate flag.
Many of those commenting were harsh, condemning the students for not studying history. Arkansas did join the Confederacy in 1861, but many in the state remained loyal to the Union, even as they supported slavery.
“I’m guessing nobody taught him that the only counties in Arkansas that voted for secession were those that had more than 20% of the population enslaved,” Twitter user Chris Hilliard pointed out. “This isn’t Mississippi, and the war wasn’t universally popular here.”
“Maybe they should study enough history to know what the Confederate flag stood for,” a user with the handle “Just Another Bozo” tweeted. “What part of Confederate history are they proud of? The slavery?”
Another user, who goes by the handle Rhythmicons, said the students’ protest is “a good example of how their particular school’s history teacher failed them,” but that “the conversation about the the flag should be separate from the conversation about appropriate classroom attire and decorum.”
Other Twitter users defended the students.
“We were once a divided country and after 150 years we still are!” user Jon Latexher tweeted. “It’s incredible that people are still having issues with the South and Southern pride, or with the people who fought for what they believed was their right! Our great Constitution is being violated! Get over it!”
A Twitter user with the handle “Me” also defended the students, tweeting:
“They are correct. The flag represented the region. Most don’t know history such as even some in the north had slaves and flew the stars and stripes. Also Civil War wasn’t just about slavery; there was much more.”
Another user defended the students to a point, but suggested they do a deep dive in world history to see how other countries deal with such symbols. The swastika was a centuries old symbol of good fortune until anti-Semitic groups appropriated it in Hitler’s Nazi Germany. It’s now among the Nazi symbols banned in Germany after World War II. That country also criminalizes Holocaust denial and what’s called Volksverhetzung, or incitement of people, or hate speech.
“… Try to go to Germany wearing one and see what happens,” Twitter user Cohiba Cacique wrote. “Hell, try to go anywhere to wear a swastika and see what happens.Yes, is your right to wear it but then you gotta live with the consequences. Beauty of the First Amendment.”
Here’s more from the students:
(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Click Here: Geelong Cats Guernsey