The Confederate Flag was never ‘misappropriated’

It seems to me that there are two main answers. First, that the reemergence of the Confederate battle flags (it is, actually plural) starts in the 1940s with the rise of the Dixiecrat revolt against a civil rights platform in the Democratic Party. The use of the flag spread in subsequent years as a symbol of open and audacious resistance to the Black freedom movement and the pressure that it brought on the U.S. government to enact legislation against Jim Crow segregation and voter disenfranchisement.
The second answer is that for many of these White people, the flag of the Confederate States of America is the flag of the essence of the United States of America. In other words, the CSA is seen as representing the core of what the so-called Founding Fathers wanted in North America and, as such, it was not that the CSA left the USA, but the non-slave states departed from the core mission of the Republic. For this element of White America, the Confederate flag symbolizes the “America” of the slave-holding presidents; the “America” of the genocidal wars against Native Americans; the “America” of unlimited possibilities for Whites. In other words, it represents what we, in Black America, understand to be the underside of the so-called “American Dream.”
Those who fly both flags do not see the flag of the CSA as a flag of treason but instead a flag of authenticity and essence. Thus, irrespective of the correct and well-intentioned comments about the Confederate flag being a flag of traitors or a flag of hate, the reality is that it is flown not to represent Southern pride but as a reaffirmation of the essence of White supremacy.  It is, in other words, no different than the swastika.
Let’s stop beating around the bushes.
(Bill Fletcher Jr. is the host of The Global African on Telesur-English.  He is a racial justice, labor and global justice activist and writer.  Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and at www.billfletcherjr.com.)