As Always, It’s All About the Heritage
By Three high school seniors were barred from Bloomington Kennedy High School’s graduation ceremony Wednesday night at Target Center because of what the school district called a prank involving Confederate flags.
Rick Kaufman, a spokesman for the Bloomington School District, said three male students brought the flags onto school property Tuesday morning. Kaufman said they were suspended after “carrying and waving” the flags in the parking lot as parents and students arrived at the school.
Rezac said the flags were on the boys’ cars and that her friends aren’t racists. She said they’ve flown the Confederate flag before and simply admire the “Southern lifestyle” and TV shows such as “The Dukes of Hazzard.” A male character from the popular 1980s show would slide across the hood of a now iconic two-door muscle car featuring a Confederate flag decal.
There are a couple of issues here. First, the suspension of their graduation attendance rights may or may not be appropriate; I tend to think that the Confederate flag is the rough equivalent of the swastika and should be treated as such, but it’s fair to say that we’re really talking about social understandings in a case like this, and the symbolic meaning of the former is not equivalent to the latter. In general I’m pretty wary about restrictions on political speech in or near the classroom, but there are obviously cases that will fall on either side.
What I quibble with is the idea that the flag is just about “the Southern lifestyle” and that consequently its display doesn’t constitute political speech. I suppose it’s possible that these young men didn’t understand that the flag evokes not “the Southern lifestyle”, but rather the tradition of white supremacy, but I don’t think it’s very likely. The same correspondent who sent the article points out:
A little background. Bloomington is a predominantly white suburb, but Minnesota is an open enrollment state and Kennedy High School, located on a major bus line, has attracted a significant African American presence in the last ten years. An outside observer might not catch the undercurrent of race-baiting.
Right, and the journalist writing the above linked article would have better served his readers if he’d taken the time to investigate the state of race relations at the high school and, having investigated, to report on them.