
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, August 19, 1994                   TAG: 9408230004
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: WAYNE D. CARLSON
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SOUTHERN HERITAGE

AS IT appears the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the liberal news media are determined to continue their denigration of the Confederate battle flag until it is relegated, in their minds at least, to the ash heap of history, I think it timely to consider this attack's relatively recent origin and some implications it has.

It may be prudent to point out that the NAACP did not take issue with the Confederate flag until 1986, when members passed a resolution to officially oppose its public display, claiming that it was a racist symbol that causes ``offense'' to African-Americans.

Since that time, NAACP chapters all across the country have expressed their outrage over virtually anything reminiscent of the existence of a Confederate States of America. Streets have been renamed; monuments desecrated, destroyed or removed; and songs protested and expunged. The names of school teams and mascots have been altered, and portraits of prominent Confederates ordered taken down.

It is very interesting, if not profoundly revealing, to remember that prior to 1986 no one cared to protest these things. Martin Luther King Jr. never spoke or marched against Confederate symbols, and neither did anyone else. What was the cause, then, for all this hypersensitivity in 1986? Was this ``issue'' devised for the purpose of gaining the media's attention, and to rebuild the then-dwindling membership rolls of the NAACP?

What of Confederate symbols? Are they inherently evil because the institution of slavery existed at the time of their creation? Is there any nation or people in the history of mankind free from all taints of wrongdoing, even today? Of course not! If all Confederate symbols are removed because of slavery, then the NAACP's logic will inevitably lead to other reminders of their slave past. Did not all 13 original states practice slavery at the birth of the United States? A new national flag, and anthem, then, will be demanded.

I believe the NAACP resolution is misguided and reflects a selective memory of the past and wanton disregard for a fair and unbiased interpretation of the South's history. It is wrong not merely because its members misunderstand the true origin and meaning of the Confederacy itself, but because their resolution is divisive and counterproductive.

For a significant number of Southerners, both the ignorant and educated, the racist and the altruist, and the majority that are somewhere in between, an attack on Confederate symbols is seen as a personal attack on themselves, their families, friends, their heritage and feelings of patriotism and pride, and perhaps their identity as ``Southern.'' It is seen as racism in reverse, with not a little bitterness and vengeance thrown in.

This is quite a drift from the Christian methodology for which Dr. King is best remembered, and seems more in line with the venomous teachings of an early Malcolm X or the never-quite-embraced, nor repudiated, teachings of today's Louis Farrakhan.

In essence, the NAACP wants the white South not merely to repudiate its slave legacy, which it long ago did, but to repudiate the whole of her heritage and accept their warped, narrow-minded and bitter definition of itself. For myself, I can see only a valorous, ennobling attempt for the South to forge its own destiny, to solve its own race problems without demands and insults from its hypocritical neighbors to the North and, most important, to bequeath that government which the founding fathers intended to their posterity. Let us not forget that each Southern state withdrew peacefully, constitutionally, asking only to be let alone.

The South has long struggled with its identity for three primary reasons. First, Southerners are basically a morally upright people that recognize and accept the errors of the past. Second, their nation was subjugated, destroyed and subsequently exploited. Foremost, however, is the fact that the government responsible for her subjugation must justify itself by continuously vilifying the South to subsequent generations through historical sophistry in which the moral question of slavery is portrayed as justification for its acts of barbarity on its own people.

The painful paradox within the Southern psyche, of being proud of its heritage, yet made to feel guilty about it, is exacerbated by the NAACP's resolution and can lead only to deeper divisions between us all.

Wayne D. Carlson of Radford teaches health and physical education at Christiansburg Middle School in Montgomery County.

by CNB