Consistency
and Slavery:
New Flags for Everybody!
by
David Dieteman
David
Boaz of the Cato Institute has come out in opposition to the Mississippi
state flag. The Mississippi flag, you see, includes in one corner
the St. Andrew’s cross, in particular, the battle flag of the Confederate
States of America. (For more details on the dispute, from the side
which Boaz opposes, visit FreeMississippi.org.
How
enlightened and progressive of Boaz. Perhaps the United States can
emulate the United Kingdom, which, in 1954, banned display of the
Irish tricolor (the green, white, and orange flag of the Republic
of Ireland so familiar around St. Patrick’s Day) in the English-occupied
territory of Northern Ireland.
In
his article, Boaz opines that
As
long as the violence and cruelty of slavery remain a living memory
to millions of Americans, symbols of slavery should not be displayed
by American governments. Those who want to honor their brave ancestors
who fought for Southern independence should fly the Confederate
flag themselves, tend to Confederate graves and hold Southern
Heritage picnics. They should not ask their fellow citizens to
walk into a state capitol under a banner that proclaims the superiority
of some citizens to others.
Ironically,
I received a request for funding from the Cato Institute last night
at home. It was slick, printed on glossy paper, and asked me if
I wanted "to work to restore freedom in America."
Inside
of the brochure was a photo of reporters thronging Christine Todd
Whitman, head of Bush II’s EPA and former governor of New Jersey,
in the Hayek Auditorium at the Cato headquarters on Massachusetts
Avenue in Washington, DC.
I’m
writing a PhD on Hayek. Christie Whitman is no Hayek. In short,
I ripped the brochure up neatly and threw it out. And reading David
Boaz’s piece on the Mississippi flag makes me glad – so very glad – that I did so.
A
question for Mr. Boaz: what flags flew while slaves were imported
to the United States from the time the first slaves were brought
to the American colonies until the South became a separate nation,
say from the arrival of Africans at Jamestown, via Dutch traders,
in 1619, until 1861?
Answer:
the Union Jack (the British flag, or the St. George’s Cross – the
English flag) and the Stars and Stripes.
Another
question for Mr. Boaz: what ports did American slave ships call
home?
Answer:
Boston and other New England ports. Boston had an open-air slave
market, where slaves were auctioned. The flag which flew over Boston,
and has flown over Boston uninterrupted since roughly 1789, is the
Stars and Stripes. The fact of Yankee slave trading, by the way,
is not exactly "revisionist," although it is largely hidden
due to its embarrassment. About a year ago, Yankee Magazine
ran a feature by a man descended from a Boston slave auctioneer,
describing the man’s quest to find out where in the city the slave
market had been. The reason that Yankees shipped slaves to America,
but didn’t use slave labor, is economics: southern plantation agriculture
required large numbers of laborers, while the rocky soil of New
England did not.
Additionally,
recall that the "three-fifths compromise" was a part of
the US Constitution of 1789, and the US Supreme Court – under that
Stars and Stripes, mind you – upheld the legality of the Fugitive
Slave laws in the famous case of Dred
Scott. Because of the federal government’s
protection of slavery, Northern abolitionists like William Lloyd
Garrison and Lysander Spooner argued that the federal constitution
was a deal with the Devil. Garrison, for example, urged the North
to secede so as not to be associated with slavery.
If
Boaz is consistent, the Stars and Stripes, Union Jack, and St. George’s
Cross must be regarded as symbols of slavery. As late as 1964, the
Stars and Stripes also "proclaimed the superiority of some
citizens to others," especially those who lived under Jim Crow.
The doctrine was known as "separate but equal."
Apparently
unlike David Boaz, some Americans do not pledge allegiance to the
Stars and Stripes because of the perceived racism of American society
(the pledge,
by the way, was written by a socialist).
Forgetting
slavery for a moment, since the US Civil Rights Commission recently
urged schools to drop American Indian mascots, perhaps the Commission
should also call for a redesign of the Stars
and Stripes, given the horrible way the federal government has
treated the American Indians over the years.
Perhaps
Boaz would contend that the United States has stopped "proclaiming
the superiority of some citizens to others," and that to redesign
or abolish the Stars and Stripes is therefore a mistake.
This
argument, however, would undercut Boaz’s opposition to Confederate
history. Given that the CSA ceased to exist after its military occupation
by the USA, the CSA certainly has stopped committing whatever alleged
evils it committed in the past.
Slavery
was legal in the USA, and it was legal in the CSA. Slavery, then,
cannot mandate the obliteration of Confederate symbols while not
at the same time mandating the obliteration of the symbols of the
USA as well.
Will
Boaz now call for the elimination of Old Glory? To do so would be
just as foolish as what Boaz is now urging in Mississippi.
Boaz
and the flag-banning crowd whose bandwagon he has joined distort
history and perform a civic disservice by following the path of
tyrants who outlaw unapproved symbols. To be precise, the error
in outlawing the display of Confederate, Irish, or American flags
is that such an action serves only to give credibility to the notion
that the past is a simple matter of good and evil. An examination
of history, however, should dispel such a childish notion.
Human
history is populated by human beings. Human beings being human,
they are sinful, fallible, and sometimes evil. The notion that every
aspect of the Confederacy was evil – that every man, woman and child
living below the Mason-Dixon line was evil – is patently stupid.
Even
if such a notion were not patently stupid, in other words, even
if it were true that every Southern man, woman and child was a demon
incarnate, occupied every waking hour with the torture and degradation
of black slaves, the obliteration of Confederate symbols accomplishes
nothing. To abolish all things Confederate cannot change the past,
and it cannot in any way aid a reasoned debate over the nature
and history
of slavery whether in the Arab world or South America – which
were the destinations for the vast majority of Africans who were
sold into slavery – or in America (the destination for a comparatively
small percentage of Africans sold into slavery).
Americans
have a skewed view of slavery because of the accidental fact of
the racial element. As noted on Africana.com,
The
distinction between slave and master in Africa was not, as in
the Americas, typically based on a distinction in race. But indicators
such as name, language, scarification, dress, and manners all
distinguished the identity and social status of slaves from those
of their masters.
Africans
could not base their ownership of other Africans on the distinction
of race. Despite this fact, Africans enslaved other Africans. Race,
then, is an accidental, as opposed to an inherent or necessary element
of slavery; slavery can exist even when the master and the slave
are of the same race. The American fixation on the racial element
of slavery, apparently shared by Boaz, cannot aid in understanding
the nature of slavery, as opposed to the small portion of "the
history of human slavery" which is "the history of slavery
in America." (Perhaps the American view of slavery is simply
a part of the general American fixation on all things American,
as if Americans are the only people ever to have walked the earth).
Sadly,
it must be noted that the end of slavery in Europe and America did
not bring an end to slavery in Africa:
the
world markets for slave labor and for the goods produced by slaves
remained strong in the middle and late nineteenth century, and
these markets supported slavery and slave trading in Africa. The
European powers poised to invade the continent pointed to the
persistence of African slavery to justify colonization. Thus the
Berlin Conference of 1885, convened as an anti-slavery meeting,
in fact set the rules for the European conquest of Africa.
Between
1890 and 1940 the European colonial powers strengthened their
grip on African lands and African societies and preached a doctrine
of anti-slavery. The result was not, however, immediate emancipation.
Large-scale slave raiding came to an end because the European
powers had monopolized the use of armed force. But slavery itself
continued for millions of Africans until the eve of World War
II.
The
notion that slavery ended with the Abe Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation
is utterly mistaken. Instead, Africa spent the next 100 years under
the boot of European imperialism.
Additionally,
regarding the slave trade in the Arab world and India, Africana.com
notes that
Slave
exports across the Indian Ocean, the Sahara, and the Red Sea reached
their peak in about 1850, then declined at varying rates until
the end of the century. During this time, some enslaved Africans
were carried across the Red Sea to build an expanded pilgrimage
site at Mecca, in Saudi Arabia; others were carried on steamers
through the Suez Canal, bound for Istanbul and Izmir.
 Will
David Boaz seek to redesign or abolish the flags and symbols of
Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and most of the European nations as well,
due to their historic connections to the slave trade and the colonization
of Africa? Don’t hold your breath.
April
18, 2001
Mr.
Dieteman is an attorney in Erie, Pennsylvania, and a PhD candidate
in philosophy at The Catholic University of America.
©
2001 David Dieteman
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Dieteman Archives
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