America

With the Confederate flag debate in South Carolina and around the country heating up, I have been thinking how America has a history of hiding its faults. Let's look for a second to both the Japanese Internment Camps and the Trail of Tears. Approximately 120,000 Japanese-Americans were relocated solely because of their race. They were forcibly removed from their homes to camps only slightly better than the Nazi camps in Europe. But do we teach our children about this ugly fact? NO! We focus on how Hitler killed almost 15 million Jews during the same war not to mention the soldiers that died on both sides. And yet we don't ban the Nazi flag from American markets because it is a history in which America is the hero. The Confederate flag represents the dark side of our history as Americans. About 4 million slaves were present in the United States at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation and an additional 620,000 lives were directly affected through death fighting in the Civil War. Half of the American soldiers that have died in any war died during the Civil War. Disposing of the Confederate flag means ignoring the 4.5+ million lives that were directly impacted by the war and the outcome and missing the point of being an America. In reality, both the Union and Confederate were fighting for the America they believed to be the most consistent with the founding fathers. The North was fighting for racial equality while the South was pushing for state's rights. Both of these concepts can be found in the Constitution and are part of the definition of "American." Just because one man uses the Confederate flag to symbolize the racial hate that he held so deeply in his heart does not mean that the remnants of the past can be swept under the rug. By removing the flag from common knowledge, we are creating a false sense of security and progress. We are simply ignoring the past rather than learning from it. The flag in and of itself is not evil. It can be used for wrong or good in the same way that a gun can be used for hunting game or man. For the sake of argument and irony, I propose that if the flag is banned throughout America, we ban everything related to race and conflict in America's history from common areas. For starters we have to change many sports mascots (Atlanta Braves, Cleveland Indians, Cincinnati Reds, New York Yankees, San Diego Padres (religion), Washington Redskins, Kansas City Chiefs, and Chicago Blackhawks). Tell me, why is okay to diminish an ethnic or religious group to the same level as animals. So if America is banning all things race and conflict, these systematic racial abuses must be removed. In addition to "simply" changing the names of every possible racist sporting mascot in America, all signs of slavery must be abolished. We must tear down all symbols and statues of George Washington, Jefferson Davis, Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr., and yes, even Abraham Lincoln because to remember good old Abe is to remember that slavery did in fact exist in the United States of America. So goodbye Capitol Mall; goodbye state history; goodbye America. Oh and for the love of all that is good and holy, get rid of the History Channel and all things Nazi! So you see, America is not America without its history of overcoming slavery. We must learn from our history, not run from it! Hiding America's evils like we have in the past is the worst idea that we have had since striking a nuclear deal with Iran. (oh wait, that was last week...) Let's become a country that exposes even our own tyranny and strives for reconciliation rather than ignorance.