On Flags

When I was a high school teacher, I often asked my students to look around the room and find something
that exists purely as a symbol. Then Id wait until someone pointed to the American Flag that was
mounted on the wall next to the whiteboard. Yes, Id say, the flag has no function other than to
symbolize our nation. In my classrooms case, the flag couldnt even double as a scarf or a dish towel
because its cheap synthetic cloth made it quite useless for anything other than standing for the republic of
the United States of America.

Students sometimes object to teachers insisting that characters or objects in literature have symbolic
value. Why cant a raven just be a talking bird instead of a symbol of death? theyd ask. Or, What if
the road less traveled by was nothing more than a shortcut to the bowling alley?

The answer is that theyre right. The audience may ignore the symbolic value of what they see or hear,
but only if they honestly can find no resonance of that symbol in their own lives. You may tell me that a
totem in an arcane religious ceremony stands for some deity, but if I am not versed in that particular belief
system, its meaning may well be lost on me. But when symbols enter our cultural language, only those
who are willfully ignorant deny their meaning. Indeed, some symbols are called trademarks and their
meaning is protected by the courts. Try and build a restaurant beneath a pair of golden arches and see
what happens to you.

The key word is resonance. Symbols live or die by the echoes they evoke in their audiences minds. In
this way, our cultural language prevails over the historic origins of symbols. For example, the swastika
originated in Buddhist culture as a symbol of good luck, but it was appropriated by the Nazis and is now
forever stigmatized by the evil they perpetrated. Any who display a swastika in our culture today while
claiming its east Asian provenance, are guilty of disingenuousness, which means they are pretending
innocence to mask their deliberate offensiveness.

The misnamed Confederate Flag is a case in point of cultural language defining a symbol. The square
flag of the army of North Virginia and the more familiar rectangular version, the Second Confederate
Navy Jack, have come to symbolize the whole of the Confederacy in our cultures memory. The fact that
this is historically inaccurate only underscores the uses to which these flags have been put over the last
fifteen decades. They have evolved from reverence for the bravery and sacrfices of slain soldiers; to
nostalgia for a bygone time; to the establishment of Jim Crow laws and customs; to defiance of federal
mandates regarding civil rights, voting rights, and equality before the law; to the saddest point of all:
advocacy of white supremacy. It is not enough for someone displaying this flag to claim innocence. I
repeat: symbols live or die in the echoes they evoke in their audience. And it would be disingenuous in
the extreme to ignore the inflammatory events in such places as Charlottesville that have added to the
resonance of racial division this flag evokes in the minds of all who see it.

At the beginning of this meeting, we pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. This
is the flag that adorns the front of my home. It is the flag my uncle served under at Normandy, that I
served under in Viet Nam, and that many of my colleagues and students have served under in the Middle
East. It is the only flag we pledge to and the only flag we need. In our republic, free speech is protected
but hate speech is not. The Second Confederate Navy Jack has devolved into a symbol of hatred and
should not be permitted to fly over any part of our campuses. I urge the board to adopt this as our
districts policy.
Richard Lavin
Trustee Area Two