PARTSCH: Removing the stars and bars won’t put an end to racism

The stars and bars may be finally fading into history. But that doesn’t mean that racism -- whether it is the out-in-the-open variety or the kind that festers behind closed doors -- is going away anytime soon.
In the days since the murder of nine African-American churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina by a 21-year-old white supremacist named Dylann Storm Roof, there has been a tidal wave of demand and support for taking down the famous symbol of the Confederacy.
In fact, lawmakers have seemingly raced one another to remove the flags as well as other reminders.
-- South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, flanked by Republicans and Democrats, held a press conference to call for the removal of the flag from the capitol grounds.
-- New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu is considering the removal of the towering statue of beloved Confederate General Robert E. Lee from Lee Circle.
-- U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper called on Tennessee leaders to take down a bust from the state capital of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the famed Confederate general and former Grand Wizard of the Klu Klax Klan.
-- On Wednesday, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley ordered the removal of four Confederate flags to be taken down at the state capitol.
That all sounds great, doesn’t it? The thought of men and women in government, finally taking a stand against an image that is synonymous with the darkest, most soulless chapter in American history is a powerful thought.
I am a little more skeptical, though, and believe that if it wasn’t an election cycle and if such major retailers as Amazon, Sears and Wal-Mart weren’t pulling Confederate flag merchandise from the shelves, that this movement wouldn’t be happening.
But I digress, why has it taken so long?
I mean Alabama had four Confederate flags on the ground of the capitol. Four? Shouldn’t one symbol of evil be enough for one state? Not apparently for good ole’ Bama.
The fact is that these statues, monuments and flags have long been part of the landscape throughout the South and yet most lawmakers have never been compelled to remove them.
Why?
I guess their reasoning would be because society, in particular Southern society, wouldn’t allow it. The love affair, or rather obsession, with the Confederacy, its generals and political leaders is ludicrous and let’s be honest, quite disturbing.
Even if you can get past the fact that generations upon generations have worshipped the loser of a bloody conflict (which is depressing in itself), the fact remains that people have proudly displayed symbols that are racist.
The argument that the flag is about history and not about hate is a tired and absolutely lazy one at best.
I am a native Southerner, and yes I watched the “Dukes of Hazzard” as a child religiously. I was born in Mobile and raised in rural Mississippi, the west bank of New Orleans and multiple other cities in Louisiana, as well as a five-year stint in central Illinois. I also have a degree in American History, and I can assure that the fact is that the flag represents hatred.
The southern states succeeded from the Union because they wanted to have the right to have slavery. You can disguise that premise all you want with the equally -as-tired states right argument, but the right they were fighting for was to continue enslaving people.
Enslaving of any people is vile, hateful. and anti-Christian.
Not to mention that the Klan widely used the stars and bars in its decades-long campaign of terror and that the use of the flag became quite popular again during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. You know, the movement to give equal rights to people who weren’t born with a pale complexion.
Yet for years those monuments stood in place and the flags waved in the sky. I guess it finally took nine people to lose their lives to make the love affair with the Confederacy “un-cool.”
But even though those reminders of the Confederacy may be removed, that doesn’t mean that racism is fading away in the country.
Racism is far more than idealism; it is something that seeps into hearts and engulfs souls.
Taking down a flag or removing a bust and placing them in a storage closest will not quell that hatred. Removing such items is a step in the right direction, a long overdue one, but a step nonetheless.
Unfortunately, the reality is that racism will continue to live on, even when the Southern landscape is no longer littered with the stars and bars.

Raymond Partsch III is the Managing Editor of the Ville Platte Gazette. He can be reached at editor@evangelinetoday.com.