Photo taken at 1 Flag for All Rally across from the Southern Legislature Conference Opening Ceremony in Gulfport, MS August 29, 2017
By Jennifer Crosslin (Audience: white Mississippians)
A few months ago, I joined a grassroots effort to change the Mississippi state flag. On Tuesday, September 12th, I attended a public event, Understanding the History of Our State Flag, hosted by Mississippi Rising Coalition and League of Women Voters. There was a facilitated public discussion following a presentation on the history of the state flag and current efforts to change it. About 100 people showed up for this event. The majority of people in the room were people I have seen and/or coordinated with as part of the effort to change the flag. Still, there were a few unrecognizable faces, a few supporters of the current flag, and perhaps most importantly a couple local politicians, including the Mayor of Ocean Springs.
There were some pretty compelling personal reflections shared at Tuesday’s event. One Black man in the audience shared his personal story of a new relationship he has with an older white woman who after many conversations with him changed her mind about the flag. She shared with him that if keeping the flag meant that it would undermine her new friendship with him, then she would rather have the flag changed to protect the relationship.
What an inspiring story! This story lends itself to the challenge Mississippians have to heal from its past and move forward as a unified state celebrating its diversity. Studies have shown that building authentic relationships with mutual respect and trust can have a profound affect on the way we think and interact with people of different races. Yet, in Mississippi, we live segregated lives and for many the opportunity rarely presents itself to have enough of these experiences to matter. We might try to facilitate these types of interactions, but generally, those that show up in these spaces, while still beneficial, are more likely to support initiatives such as the flag change.
Still, the public discourse and public pressure to change the flag in this state has been effective. In the last two years, all universities in this state have taken the state flag from their campus. Many businesses and cities also no longer fly the flag on their grounds, and a handful of Republican politicians have publicly stated that it is time to change the flag, including the Speaker of the House.
Despite these gains, however, there have been efforts by the state legislature to force public universities and cities to fly the flag again, and attempts at the local level to put the flag back up where it was taken down. The Ocean Springs newly elected mayor, for example, put the state flag back up after the previous mayor had taken it down. These point to the fact that there is still more work to do.
Had you attended Tuesday’s event, you would have learned about the shameful history of Mississippi elected officials that chose the current state flag to symbolize their effort to reclaim white supremacy following Reconstruction.
Many white Mississippians today believe we fought in the Civil War to defend our way of life from the overreaching and too big for its own sake federal government. This is not at all surprising given that the Lost Cause of the Confederacy is taught in our schools. What exactly was this way of life Mississippians were defending? It was spelled out in the Articles of Succession. “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest of the world.” It was about state’s rights, but really it was about slavery. It became about state’s rights when the North would no longer tolerate the inhumane and disgusting institution of slavery and that the economic gains from enslaving another human being was no longer justifiable. After much resistance from Black and white folks, the northern states exercised what power they had to force an end to slavery. Sure the North’s behavior can be framed as a violation of state’s rights, but it can also be said that the North had a moral obligation to do the right thing.
Reconstruction was the period after the Civil War where Mississippi was under federal obligation to re-write its constitution and hold open and free elections. Leading up to the elections, the federal government occupied Mississippi to ensure slaves were freed and fair elections were held. Mississippi elected a significant number of African Americans and created a new constitution.
This new status of Black Mississippians did not last long because the white elite hatched a plan to take back the political control they lost. White Mississippians murdered the newly elected Black politicians, re-wrote the constitution that disenfranchised Black folks, selected a new flag to symbolize their return to white supremacy (our current flag) and engaged in state sanctioned violence to maintain it.
During that time, many Mississippi politicians openly declared that lynching would be used to enforce white supremacy. If you search old Mississippi newspaper headlines, you will find several that read, “Lynching Today…” From 1877 to 1950, more Black folks were lynched in Mississippi than any other state. According to the Equal Justice Initiative report, the total was 641. Then and even today, white people proudly displaying their confederate heritage carried out the acts of terror and violence towards Black people.
You may recall the picture of the white terrorist of the Charleston Church bombings and the confederate flag that led to South Carolina’s removal of confederate emblem on its state flag. It was this horrific act the spurred the debate in Mississippi as well and led to the grassroots movement to change the flag.
Yesterday, I asked a friend what he thought about the flag. He is a white male who grew up in Mississippi. He tells me, “The confederate emblem on our flag represents a part of our history that we should not want to glorify. It is insulting that it is our state flag, and if it offends people living here, then it should be changed.” Then he proceeded to tell me that he has not taken action to change it because he believes his voice doesn’t matter, and when I unpacked this statement a little more, he explained that he simply doesn’t have “skin in the game.” It is interesting that these were his chosen words, because it is his skin color that protects him from feeling the quiet rage and/or fear that many Black Mississippians feel when they see our state flag.
His attitude reflects a long history of white complacency. It is this attitude that has contributed to the preservation of white supremacy in this state and the country. Because my friend does not see what is at stake for him as a white Mississippian, he feels comfortable in his inaction. Martin Luther King Jr. is famously quoted for saying, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” These are powerful words, but what does this mean exactly?
Though I think seeing the connection between all things is a journey rather than an answer to a question, I think a good place to start to understand the wisdom of Dr. King, Jr.’s words is education. We need to know the history of racism in this country (including the construction of race), how it has evolved today, and how white people have benefitted from this racial hierarchy of power and privilege.
Many white Mississippians I have met are confused about what racism actually is. They use the word “racist” without fully understanding the concept. If you look it up in the dictionary, you will get the following, “racism is discrimination and prejudice towards people based on their race or ethnicity.” This definition, however, needs to be put into context. Words are often defined in the universal sense, devoid of context. This matters because racism as a phenomenon that exists in the United States has a specific meaning. The hierarchy of power and privilege in this country from the beginning has and still is based on the skin color with white and light-skinned people on top and dark skinned people on the bottom. Racism in the United States is white supremacy. Racism as it has been experienced since the birth of the United States has never been any other way.
The definition of racism also leads people to assume that it is an interpersonal act, one person mistreating another on the basis of their race or ethnicity, but racism in this country is not just an interpersonal act. It is, more importantly, a systemic issue. Racism is woven into the fabric of our political, economic, and social-cultural systems in covert and overt ways. It is important that we come to understand the structural racism that still exists in this country so that we can put an end to it.
Additionally, many Mississippians think of racism as a thing of the past. Thus, the only form of racism that exists today would be interpersonal racism. This, however, is not true. It does not look like slavery or Jim Crow, but it still exists. Today, politicians are not allowed to explicitly write laws that discriminate against people of color. What they can do is write a policy that targets people of color by virtue of where they live and/or the type of work and activities they are more likely to be engaged in, and their citizenship status. Because the laws and policies are not explicitly racist, they can also impact white people, especially white poor people. The fact that this happens only reinforces the mindset that racism is a thing of the past.
Today structural racism shows up in the gerrymandering of districts, divestment of communities of color, proximity to industrial pollution (more people of color live near industry), voter laws that disproportionately impact people of color, the prison system that targets people of color (read The New Jim Crow by Michele Alexander), and so many more ways.
I have heard people try to claim that racial inequality can be explained as a result of personal and community choices and concentration of poverty. While, like white folks, people of color also make bad choices, the best explanation for inequality according to the research is systemic racism and the legacy of past forms of racism and colonization. Consider this question, do you think a state that fought desegregation all the way until 2016 when the Supreme Court ordered Mississippi to integrate schools in the Cleveland school district, ratified the 13th amendment that freed slaves in 2013, and run by a majority of white men with ties and/or romantic notions about the confederacy does NOT pass racist policies?
Another important question that my friend and many other white Mississippians have is, “what is white privilege”? Often, when white people hear this term, they get defensive because they believe they worked hard for everything they have. For many people in this country, the struggle to achieve the American dream is real and can lead one to think that their experiences in this struggle and the choices and actions they made were key factors in their success. They struggled and earned it, and that feels good. Saying that they didn’t earn it feels like an attempt to invalidate their experiences and their struggle and deny them the pride they feel that comes with accomplishment. No one is saying that white people don’t work hard, but being white does give advantages that people of color do not have.
Until a few years ago, though I was familiar with the concept and understood it intellectually, I had never experienced what white privilege meant for my life. I think understanding it intellectually helped me be open to understanding how it showed up in my life, but it took a courageous friend pointing out the differences in the way I was being treated by others in our profession for me to move beyond my intellect and into to the space where I experienced my white privilege. My ideas were more easily accepted and championed and my work less scrutinized. Our conversation about these differences uncovered that some of the ways we were being treated differently were invisible to us. Only by talking about it, did it become clear that my privilege led to more money, responsibility, and freedom.
These experiences reinforced my pride for a job well done. Confronting my white privilege allowed me to be more critical of my work and be more open to change. In other words, it made me better. Unfortunately, the difference between my friend and myself is that I benefit from confronting my white privilege and our relationship with each other also benefits, but my friend will continue to be treated differently as long as racism exists in this county.
Despite my desire to dismantle white supremacy, I was not totally on board with the effort to change the flag. I signed a petition, emailed my representative about it, and even attended a rally, but it wasn’t until recently that I became part of planning the actions and organizing people. I pondered whether I really wanted to spend my time and energy to change the flag when clearly there are so many other more profound issues impacting the health, socio-economic wellbeing, and dignity of Black folks in Mississippi?
I have come to realize something that is best summed up in the words of MS Representative Sonya Williams Barnes: “It’s not just a flag. It represents a mindset that affects policy that hurts people such as lack of access to healthcare, underfunded public education, lack of services for mental health… The cloth represents layers of hurt and oppression embedded in the mentality of many representatives. We have to strip the flag to get rid of the mindset… Let’s change the flag.”
How can we expect to get rid of the racist policies today and address the inequality between white and Black Mississippians if we cannot even see the truth about our past and let go of the romanticized notions of the confederacy?
The effort to change the flag has forced public discourse about the state’s history, white supremacy, and white privilege. When the flag change happens, more than just the flag will have changed. The hearts and minds of many white Mississippians will have changed in the process. Others will have taken this opportunity to deepen their knowledge and understanding, find their voice, and build relationships so that the work continues and the conditions my ancestral heritage created that continues to marginalize the lives of Black and Brown folks are transformed.
Organizing at Prescott 