Another Georgia Flag

Posted on April 4, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi

A reader was so good as to send me a link to this article about this proposed new flag for the State of Georgia, which as you may know has had a contentious time of it recently with its flags. For those who don’t know, in 2001, Georgia ditched the state flag it had been flying since 1956, which prominently featured the Confederate Battle Flag (just in case anyone should think that this switch didn’t have to do with white folks gettin’ all angrified at them there black folk, it should be noted that the switch to the Battle Flag design coincided with Georgia being ordered to desegregate its schools), for a flag that featured it only as a tiny historical element. This enraged the “Southern Heritage” folks to no end, and since then there’s been a push to bring back the 1956 flag by way of referendum.

This new flag is designed to sidestep bringing back the battle flag design in an interesting way. The Georgia Legislature could adopt this new flag immediately, and then about a year from now, there’s to be a referendum asking Georgians if they like the flag. If they do, it stays. If they don’t, then they’ll have another referendum on whether to bring back the Battle Jack flag (or the one that flew before it, which, as it happens, was also modeled after a Confederate flag). Obviously, the lege will be banking on the hope people will like the new flag just fine.

I think the new flag is interesting because it plays to both the pro- and anti- Battle Jack crowd in a really cynical way. For the “anti-” crowd, it has the attraction of not being the Battle Jack, which is, of course, the internationally-recognized symbol of small-brained racist white folk. But for the “pro-” crowd, it has the attraction of still being explicitly modeled after a Confederate flag — the “Stars and Bars,” the first flag of the Confederacy, and the model for the Georgia state flag that flew from 1872 through 1956.

The “Stars and Bars” is not nearly as infamous as the Battle Jack, but it’s still a nice Confederate memorial flapping in the breeze, representing the State of Georgia, and even the smallest-brained of the racist white folk can appreciate that if they just keep their yaps shut about it, this subtle bit of Confederania will slip right by all the folks who get het up about the Battle Jack. The “In God We Trust” part, I imagine, is just there to sweeten the pot for the approval of God-fearing partisans on both sides.

In short, in one fell swoop, this new flag plays on the ignorance of some, the racism of others, and the cheap religious sentiment of yet a third subset between the first two. Make no mistake, this new flag is just as racist and hateful as the Battle Jack flag, specifically because of the fact that it is just as modeled on a Confederate flag as the 1956 flag was, and all Confederate iconography (or vexillography, to be more accurate here) equally represents the only government in the history of the world that specifically encoded the enslavement of human beings into its Constitution. Were I a Georgian, I’d be no more excited to have this flag flying across my state than I would the Battle Jack.

My correspondent wonders how long it would take for this flag to generate a lawsuit. I don’t imagine it will be very long. I suspect the “In God We Trust” part would be the bit that gets the action, because it’s not a bit of language traditionally associated with Georgia (whose state motto, ironically in this case, is “Wisdom, Justice and Moderation”), so its sudden inclusion here is fairly questionable. Sure, it’s on our money (added in at the height of Godless Communism fear-mongering, incidentally), but I don’t know how well that argument would stand up in court.

Mind you, it’s not my state, so I don’t have to live with this flag or any other Georgian flag. If you Georgians want to go on fetishizing the dumbass Confederacy, thereby reminding a significant portion of your population that you continue to be proud of a period of time in which they would have had the same personal rights as a table lamp, by all means, go right ahead. As I’ve said before, I prefer my small-brained racists clearly marked. This will help.

Update: A correspondent from Georgia writes to note that “In God We Trust” is actually on the current flag as well. And so it is! Interesting.