Story here. Should his placement of the decal on his truckallow them to ban it from school grounds or not?
That teacher annoys me: he’s wrong in three different ways.
- The confederate battle flag wasn’t designed to intimidate another group. True, it’s found its way into modern times via a revival by segregationists in the fifties and sixties, but that’s not what it was designed for.
- It’s pretty fucking clearly a first amendment right to communicate one’s beliefs via symbols. YOu might argue that this right is trumped by other rights, but to say it’s not a first amendment right is idiotic.
- It’s not clearly wrong. It may be wrong, but there’s certainly two sides to it.
As I remember from reading similar cases a few years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that, under specific circumstances, the Confederate Flag could be banned, and a student punished for returning it. The circumstances included a setting in which there had been race-based fights on campus in which the flag was involved, and in which a student had had the policy reviewed with him, and in which the student had persisted in drawing the flag in a notebook after having the policy reviewed with him. I believe the court ruled that, given the fights, the repeated drawing of the flag constituted a threat to the school’s educational mission and was therefore substantially unlike the Tinker v. Des Moines black armbands.
In this case, is there any history of violence on this campus linked to the flag? It doesn’t sound as though there is.
It seems pretty clear to me that the flag is used primarily by racists these days. But just because someone has repulsive views doesn’t mean you can ban them. Unless additional pertinent facts come out, I’m siding with the school board.
I’m struck by a thought, no snark intended. Do they ban the swastika?
No, I don’t believe the school should be allowed to do that. As much as I don’t like or agree with much of what the Confederate flag has come to symbolize, it should be protected under freedom of expression.
I could see a stronger argument for the school banning it on students’ clothing or on anything that enters the school itself, but the parking lot does not count, to me.
From a personal view, if somebody wants to label themselves with the flag of a bunch of traitorous racists I’m all for it; lets you know the type of person you’re dealing with right off the bat.
But I think if a school wants to ban it they should be able to. It’s a symbol without any positive connotations that was born out of a desperate pursuit for continuing the industry of slavery. And that ‘southern pride’ thing doesn’t work either, it’s a flag that flew over the South for like 4 years out of a couple centuries of history. Trying to pretend like it’s somehow a positive symbol of your heritage is like me flying a swastika because I’m part German.
First amendment rights are important to me but schools aren’t bound by the same rules as regular society. They frequently ban gang symbols and other images likely to instigate violence or intimidate others. There’s no way they’d let you hang a noose off your rear view mirror or wear a KKK robe to class, why should a Confederate flag be allowed?
No positive connotations to you. To many people, the Confederate flag is a symbol of their culture, that doesn’t necessarily endorse or condone slavery.
Free speech should only be restricted when there is a special need. There doesn’t seem to be any special need here; if it were somewhere else with a history of continuing racial tensions, that would be another case entirely.
I think it should be treated exactly the same as if he had a swastika on his car. It’s distasteful, but he has a right to express himself.
It is literally a symbol created to represent a nation born of racism. It’s a traitor’s flag and if you choose it and the 4 years it represents to symbolize all 200+ years of your culture I think it’s a pretty good indicator of where your interests lie.
I think your insinuation is both unfair and unfounded.
I have students every year wear confederate flag clothes. We usually talk about it. Some are truly ignorant about the fact that hate groups use the flag–they just think it’s cool or romantic. Others know exactly what they are doing. Even among those, it’s usually just about getting a rise out of people. I’ve had one who really thought white people were better than anyone else and his belt buckle was his way of asserting it.
I’d assume this kid is in the “knows what he’s doing” camp. However, unless there is more going on at the school or with this particular kid–like a history of racial intimidation or violence–I think this is free speech and you’ve got to respect it. At the same time, free speech doesn’t mean you are protected from other’s reactions–as a teacher, I wouldn’t write a recommendation for a student who did persisted in this, and if I coached something competitive like the football team, I might be very reluctant to allow a student on the team if they were that insensitive to others, as group cohesion is important in an organization.
Or t-shirts with Che’s face?
I’m not exactly a fan of his, but what student group does Che Guevara intimidate?
Students don’t have the same first amendment rights on school property that they have elsewhere. This has been well established by the courts (remember “Bong hits for Jesus?”), so the free speech issue is irrelevant.
If a school can limit racist or inflammatory expressions (and it can), then there’s no reason it can’t prohibit a rebel flag. And yes it is racist. Even in its most benign interpretation, it’s a symbol of armed rebellion against the US, but its association with racism and race baiting is so well establshed that disingenuous puling about other bullshit meanings is like batting your eyes and trying to argue that your swastika is just an Indian sun symbol, and whatever do you mean about Jews.
I don’t have anything to add to the debate but I wanted to share this story.
When I was a senior in High School, a bunch of Mexican students went to the superintendent’s office in the center of town on Main Street in Los Lunas NM and took down the flag ran up the Mexican flag and ran up the American flag at half mast upside down.
The next morning a bunch of the redneck kids drove through town with American flags, and one kid had a Confederate flag.
Apparently it all started because some teacher said something disparaging about a Mexican student, though that teacher was Mexican-American. For those who don’t know there are two very different subsets of Mexicans, those who are descended from New Mexican-Mexicans and those who actually came over the border recently or are descended from those who came over the border recently. So even though the teacher was “Mexican”, it is likely that there was a perception of separation.
Anyway, there was nearly a riot at the first lunch. The tension was palpable, but it was clear that no one wanted to get into a riot. I skipped class to go to the second lunch, and it was decidedly different, lunches were separated into older kids at the first lunch, and younger kids at the second one. At the second one a bunch of sophomores were trying to start a fight. There were some fights between kids that just wanted to mess around and fight, but it didn’t start a riot, nothing like the standoff where there was a tangible line between the Mexican kids and the white kids.
The Confederate flag was the thing that made the Mexicans feel like their grievances were justified.
How many would even know who he was?
No, it’s not. It’s different, diminished, but not gone.
Nonsense. Your interpretation of the flag’s meaning is not the only one possible. I happen to agree that it is racist, but some people who display it do so only out of a desire to honor their history and ancestors.
How many wearing the shirts would even know?
We made some T-shirts a while back with his face over a backdrop of the hammer and sickle with mickey mouse on the hat instead of the dove that said, “Viva la revissionisme”, a lot of people didn’t get it.
The law on the subject is actually pretty clear, if somewhat unvisited in a while. Schools cannot abrogate the First Amendment rights of students, but they can limit them when necessary to avoid messages that run the risk of preventing the school from carrying out its purpose. So you cannot prevent a student from wearing a shirt that says, “Legalize Marijuana!” But you can prevent a student from wearing a shirt that says, “Smoke Marijuana!” The difference? The one expresses an opinion that doesn’t interfere with the mission of the school; the other advocates doing something we have decided as a culture we cannot allow in schools.
Asserting that the mere display of the Confederate Battle Flag is hate speech is making a pretty broad generalization. I don’t think a school has to go that far. If the school can make the case that display of that flag is something done often to act as symbolic hate speech, then it probably has sufficient grounds to ban the display of the symbol.
By the way, the fact that it’s in the parking lot is irrelevant.
Lead singer for The Doors.
The confederate flag is not a symbol of racism the same way the civil war wasn’t about racism. It is also about what we today call “red state” vs “blue state.” Two cultures in our country, separated by economic means, at odds.