Latest news with #Confederate
The Hill
4 hours ago
- Politics
- The Hill
Democrats: Don't retreat from the flag, march with it
Over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, I was pleased to see homes and businesses unfurl their American flags. The sight of those flags reminded me of something that caught my eye when I first started working at the Pentagon — the American flag patch on an Air Force officer's flight suit looked 'backward.' The stars appeared on the right side of the flag, with the horizontal stripes on the left. After spotting this same orientation on other military uniforms, I asked her about it. Without missing a beat, she explained, 'It's because in battle, the standard bearer led the formation holding the flag flying, always moving forward. The flag is supposed to fly in the direction we're heading. America leads.' America leads. Within that simple explanation lay a deeper truth: For the men and women who wear the uniform, the American flag is directional, not decorative. It represents motion, purpose and conviction. And for them, and for our nation, that direction is forward. As someone who never served but spent the Biden administration trying to improve the quality of service and quality of life for those who do, I came to understand that for members of the military, the flag stands for the Constitution and the oath they take to defend it — not an individual president, and certainly not a political movement. As I traveled to military installations around the world, I saw in action the powerful symbolism of the American flag. It means something when people see it on the shoulders of U.S. troops in conflict zones and to allies who fight alongside them. It means something when it arrives with humanitarian aid. And it means everything to those men and women in uniform who proudly display it — not because they agree with every administration or policy, but because they believe in the enduring promise of this country. That's why it pains me to see some Democrats, progressives and young Americans who oppose President Trump's authoritarianism turn away from the flag. At protests opposing the militarization of our cities, some burn it in anger or let other nations' flags stand in for our own. The impulse is understandable — especially for those who feel marginalized, betrayed or worse, targeted, by his dark vision. However, Democrats cannot let frustration with what he's doing to the country drive them to disown its foundational symbols. The Trump era will end, and when it does, the party needs a positive agenda to build back from the charred, hollow husk of a democracy Trump and henchmen intend to leave us. That's why Democrats can't abandon the flag. Instead, the party has to reclaim it. The American flag doesn't belong to Trump. His appointees use it as a prop, his fans desecrate it as a costume, and, when his followers are unhappy with the direction of the country, as a warning: flying it upside down or swapping it out entirely for symbols of defeat and division. When Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, they did it wrapped in the Confederate flag, the Gadsden 'Don't Tread on Me' flag, even Trump's campaign flag. These are not expressions of patriotism; they're declarations of resentment, conspiracy and insurrection. Meanwhile, progressives have always fought for what the flag is supposed to mean: equal justice under law, the dignity of all people and opportunity regardless of background. Members of the Democratic Party have led the battles for civil rights, voting rights, reproductive freedom, worker protections and gay and transgender equality. These are not fringe causes; they are deeply American causes. And that's why Democrats and progressives should fly the flag. They should be proud to carry the American flag at every march, every campaign rally, every protest for justice and equality. I still have the American flags I and other progressives waved in Chicago's Grant Park on election night 2008. We should make it clear that this flag represents our values: the belief that our democracy must be defended against all threats foreign and domestic, and that the Constitution means what it says — all of it, not just the parts that are politically convenient. Let Trump wrap himself in symbols of grievance. Let his allies turn upside-down flags into a twisted badge of resistance. For too long, Democrats and progressives have allowed ourselves to be painted as somehow less patriotic because we dare to criticize America's shortcomings. We should be the ones raising the flag upright and forward, just as that Air Force officer explained to me years ago — because we still believe in leading, in progressing, in moving forward. It's time to remind Americans that the flag belongs not to those trying to dismantle our democracy, but to those determined to protect it. This first year of Trump's nightmarish sequel, next year during America's 250th birthday celebration, and then into the midterm elections, Democrats, regardless of whether they are veterans, should raise it proudly. They should not do this as a symbol of blind nationalism, but as a declaration of fidelity to democratic principles and as a symbol of our commitment to make the values that underpin it real once again. Alex Wagner is an adjunct professor at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University and was the assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower and reserve affairs during the Biden administration.
Time Magazine
9 hours ago
- Time Magazine
'Code Switch' Is on The 100 Best Podcasts of All Time
Society In the spring of 2020, in the aftermath of the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, co-hosts Shereen Marisol Meraji and Gene Demby noticed their podcast Code Switch rocketing up the Apple charts. The tragedies had encouraged many white Americans in particular to find literature and media that could provide context and interrogate the intersection of race and identity in America—and Code Switch quickly stood out. Though it launched in 2016, the show's impressive episode archive demonstrates how much its hosts were ahead of the discourse, dissecting the landscape of race-related shootings and grappling with the push to remove Confederate statues and memorials. The podcast began as an offshoot of NPR's Code Switch blog, but Meraji and Demby understood early on that their reporting could resonate more powerfully in people's ears. Once they had the backing, they built something that could hold nuance and urgency at the same time. Soon, the show evolved into a kind of cultural compass—never preachy, always curious—using the news of the moment to trace the roots of inequality and identity without flattening anyone's experience.
Black America Web
2 days ago
- Politics
- Black America Web
From George Floyd to Jacques Beauregard: America's Racist Rebound
Source: Win McNamee / Getty Come, go back with me to the summer of 2020. Millions of people from all backgrounds flooded America's streets demanding justice for George Floyd and the long-dead victims of American racism. During this period of racial reckoning, something extraordinary happened: old statues fell. Confederate generals were pulled from their pedestals. Slaveholders were toppled from marble thrones. Base names, school plaques, and public memorials were reexamined and, at last, rejected. Even Aunt Jemima got fired. It was extraordinary not just because these relics had stood for so long, but because they were never supposed to fall. These monuments had been carefully built to last, not just in stone, but in story. They were erected not in the immediate aftermath of war or glory, but decades later during Reconstruction and Jim Crow, as part of a larger campaign to rewrite history and reassert white supremacy. For generations, they stood unchallenged, unexamined, normalized. They didn't just commemorate the past; they distorted it, insisting that the Confederacy was honorable, that slavery was an unfortunate 'necessary evil' or just a 'dark chapter' in American history, and that white dominance was eternal. So, when those statues fell, they didn't just crack concrete; they ruptured a national mythology. They forced this country to ask: What kind of stories have we been telling ourselves? Whose version of history have we honored? And who has been erased, silenced, or trampled in the process? And then, the backlash came swiftly. Politicians, pundits, and self-anointed defenders of the 'real America' started foaming at the mouth and sprinting to pass legislation. They accused activists of erasing history, even though what had actually been toppled was propaganda. School boards started banning books. Governors began defunding diversity programs. The phrase 'Critical Race Theory' became a scare tactic. All of it—the removals, the debates, the bans—revealed just how fragile the American memory really is when forced to confront the truth. Because these weren't just arguments over monuments. They were battles over meaning. They exposed the deepest fault lines in this nation's relationship to its own past and made clear that history in America isn't just taught. It's fought. Now, flash forward to this week in Louisiana. While the rest of us are out here trying to survive climate collapse, student loan debt, and whatever new judicial hell the Supreme Court has cooked up, Governor Jeff Landry decided the real emergency was… a military base not being named after a Confederate family. With full-throated arrogance, he announced that the Louisiana National Guard Training Center in Pineville will once again be called 'Camp Beauregard,' a name previously stripped for its ties to the Confederacy and white supremacy. Beauregard was one of several Confederate figures, along with Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, whose monuments were targeted for removal or recontextualization in New Orleans. But Landry, ever the political illusionist, insists this isn't about honoring General P.G.T. Beauregard. No, no—it's about honoring his father , Jacques Toutant Beauregard, a sugar planter and enslaver whose name never once graced a military base until now. What makes this move so brazen is that Landry didn't just resurrect a Confederate name; he found a new way to venerate the same old system. He skipped the general who fired the first shot of the Civil War and went straight for the man who owned people and passed that legacy down. Jacques Beauregard wasn't a national military hero. He didn't lead any major campaigns. His only enduring historical significance is the fact that he enslaved Black people and raised a son who fought to keep them that way. That's who Gov. Landry wants Louisiana to remember with pride. That's who he's asking soldiers, including Black soldiers, to salute. This isn't about history or reverence. It's about spite. It's about power. It's about turning back the clock on racial reckoning and reminding Black people exactly where we stand in the state's racial hierarchy: underfoot, beneath the boot, behind the name etched into government signage. Landry's stunt is not isolated. It's the latest chapter in the white nationalist scrapbook of American memory. Under Trump's influence, politicians like Landry are waging a full-blown war on the historical record. It's not just about books or bases. It's about declaring that the Confederacy never really lost. That even when the statues fall, the spirit behind them can still be revived through policy, propaganda, and PR. This is about Making America Great Again, and that requires restoring the myths that once held America together, even if they were built on bondage, theft, and mass murder. Landry's move to rename the base isn't some quirky homage to his state's past; it's part of the MAGA mandate to resuscitate the lost cause under a new name. It's about putting a fresh coat of patriotism on the same old plantation logic. They're not even hiding it. Landry paired his announcement with a gravestone meme reading 'WOKEISM.' He wrote in a Facebook post: Today, we will return the name of the Louisiana National Guard Training Center in Pineville to Camp Beauregard. In Louisiana, we honor courage, not cancel it. Let this be a lesson that we should always give reverence to history and not be quick to so easily condemn or erase the dead, lest we and our times be judged arbitrary by future generations.' As if restoring the name of a plantation-owning family is some brave act of historical preservation instead of a petty, ahistorical tantrum against progress. Nobody erased the dead. We just stopped pretending they were heroes. We stopped letting traitors to the United States, defenders of slavery, and men who fought to keep Black people in chains stand unchallenged on our public pedestals and government signs. That's not cancel culture, that's called accountability. That's a long-overdue course correction in a country that's spent centuries gaslighting its victims. And that line about how we shouldn't be 'so quick to condemn or erase the dead, lest we and our times be judged arbitrary by future generations?? Please. Chile, I'm a whole historian and I am absolutely here to condemn colonizers, rapists, enslavers, lynchers, and every power-drunk architect of racial violence who thought Black life was disposable. That's called ethical clarity. The Confederacy wasn't misunderstood. It wasn't unfairly maligned. It was a violent, racist rebellion whose leaders chose war to preserve slavery. I get so tired of people who argue, 'But we can't judge men of their time,' as if our enslaved ancestors weren't judging them in real time. You think they were sitting on cotton bales thinking, 'You know, Master really needs a DEI training and maybe he'll stop whipping us and give us our freedom.' These weren't confused or misguided men. They made deliberate , violent choices to dominate, exploit, and brutalize. And they built systems that still haunt us. Refusing to condemn that isn't neutrality, it's complicity. Judgment is how we learn. It's how we draw moral lines. If we can't say that enslaving people was evil, regardless of what century it happened in, then we have no business calling ourselves civilized. You want reverence? Give it to the ones who resisted. Give it to the ones who survived. The rest can stay condemned and thrown into the dustbin of history. The irony, of course, is that if Jeff Landry had actually read a history book, or even skimmed past the plantation chapter, he'd know that General P.G.T. Beauregard, the very Confederate his office is avoiding by name, went on to support Black suffrage. After the Civil War, General P.G.T. Beauregard, yes, the same man who ordered the first shots at Fort Sumter, actually did a political about-face. By the early 1870s, Beauregard became a prominent supporter of the Unification Movement in Louisiana. In 1873, he joined forces with a group of white and Black citizens to promote racial reconciliation and political cooperation, publicly advocating for Black suffrage and biracial governance. He gave speeches urging white Southerners to accept the political reality of Black citizenship and warned that continued resistance would doom the South to economic and moral ruin. Source: Win McNamee / Getty In fact, Beauregard's postwar rhetoric was so conciliatory that it drew criticism from former Confederates and Lost Cause diehards. He openly denounced Jefferson Davis and distanced himself from efforts to resurrect the Confederacy's ideology, calling instead for peace, unity, and pragmatic cooperation between the races. So yeah, it's wild that Jeff Landry and his people are bypassing that Beauregard, the one who tried, however imperfectly, to reconcile with reality, and instead resurrecting the plantation-owning father, Jacques Toutant Beauregard. But I get it. The son doesn't play well on Fox News. That Beauregard doesn't troll the libs. Landry needed a name that wouldn't complicate the white nationalist narrative. The general who advocated Black suffrage doesn't work for MAGA optics. So, what does this tell us, really? It tells us that we're in a new era of historical gaslighting. That the erasure we were warned about isn't coming from activists tearing down statues, it's coming from the state, putting them back up under different names. It tells us that white supremacy no longer needs to shout to be heard. It just needs to legislate. It needs to rename, reframe, and wait for the news cycle to move on. The press, for the most part, is missing the point. The coverage frames this as another skirmish in the culture war, a 'controversial renaming' or a 'reversal of a federal decision.' But too few are asking the deeper questions. Why make this move now? Why pour state resources into resurrecting the name of a man who profited from the forced labor of Black bodies when Louisiana remains one of the poorest, most underfunded states in the country? The answer is simple: trolling liberals and appeasing racists is more important to Jeff Landry than solving real problems. Bigotry is his budget. Spite is his agenda. This isn't just about one man's nostalgia or a misplaced reverence for 'heritage.' It's a coordinated strike in a broader campaign to whitewash American history. We are living in a moment where Black history is under siege. School curricula stripped of truth, DEI programs dismantled, and Critical Race Theory demonized as if it were some contagious affliction rather than a framework to understand systemic inequality. Naming a military site after a man whose fortune was built on human bondage isn't a tribute to courage. It's a provocation, a middle finger to those fighting for historical clarity and racial justice. This renaming is happening in the shadow of a larger, more sinister project: the attempt to rewrite the American story from the top down. Under Donald Trump's revived influence, we are watching the rise of a new Confederacy, not one built on cotton and cannons, but on false memory and white grievance. From banned books to curriculum whiteouts, from the demonization of 'wokeness' to the glorification of insurrectionists, we are being led down a path where historical violence is repackaged as patriotism, and those who name it are branded as enemies of the state. It's all a cowardly sleight of hand, a shell game played with history, and it tells us everything about where America is headed under Trumpism. If future generations judge us harshly, it'll be because we allowed men like Donald Trump and Jeff Landry to resurrect white supremacy and call it 'heritage.' Dr. Stacey Patton is an award-winning journalist and author of 'Spare The Kids: Why Whupping Children Won't Save Black America' and the forthcoming 'Strung Up: The Lynching of Black Children In Jim Crow America.' Read her Substack here . SEE ALSO: Why White Folks Are Grieving Over Destroyed Relics to White Supremacy 'What Up, My Nazi?' Is Fox News Mimicking Black Reclamation SEE ALSO From George Floyd to Jacques Beauregard: America's Racist Rebound was originally published on
Chicago Tribune
3 days ago
- Chicago Tribune
Today in History: Scopes monkey trial ends
Today is Monday, July 21, the 202nd day of 2025. There are 163 days left in the year. Today in History: On July 21, 1925, the so-called 'Monkey Trial' ended in Dayton, Tennessee, with John T. Scopes found guilty of violating state law for teaching Darwin's Theory of Evolution. (The conviction was later overturned.) Scopes monkey trial, broadcast by WGN radio, held nation in thrall 100 years agoColumn: Returning again to the Scopes 'monkey trial,' and what I learnedAlso on this date: In 1861, during the Civil War, the first Battle of Bull Run was fought at Manassas, Virginia, resulting in a Confederate victory. In 1944, American forces landed on Guam during World War II, capturing it from the Japanese some three weeks later. In 1954, the Geneva Conference concluded with accords dividing Vietnam into northern and southern entities. In 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin blasted off from the moon aboard the ascent stage of the lunar module for docking with the command module. In 1970, construction of the Aswan High Dam in Egypt was completed. In 1972, the Irish Republican Army carried out 22 bombings in Belfast, Northern Ireland, killing nine people and injuring 130 in what became known as 'Bloody Friday.' In 2002, Ernie Els won the British Open in the first sudden-death finish in the 142-year history of the tournament. In 2008, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, one of the world's top war crimes fugitives, was arrested in a Belgrade suburb by Serbian security forces. (He was sentenced by a U.N. court in 2019 to life imprisonment after being convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.) In 2011, the 30-year-old space shuttle program ends as Atlantis landed at Cape Canaveral, Florida, after the 135th shuttle flight. In 2012, Erden Eruc became the first person to complete a solo, human-powered circumnavigation of the globe. In 2023, the 'Barbenheimer' buzz reached its peak as the films 'Barbie' and 'Oppenheimer' opened in theaters; the critical and public acclaim for both films led to the fourth-largest weekend box office of all time. Column: The lesson Hollywood should learn from 'Barbenheimer'? Let originality come Birthdays: Singer Yusuf Islam (also known as Cat Stevens) is 77. Cartoonist Garry Trudeau is 77. Author Michael Connelly is 69. Comedian Jon Lovitz is 68. Retired soccer player Brandi Chastain is 57. Rock-soul singer Michael Fitzpatrick (Fitz and the Tantrums) is 55. Actor/singer Charlotte Gainsbourg is 54. Actor Justin Bartha is 47. Actor Josh Hartnett is 47. Reggae singer Damian Marley is 47. Basketball Hall of Famer Tamika Catchings is 46. Former MLB All-Star pitcher CC Sabathia is 45. Singer Blake Lewis ('American Idol') is 44. Latin singer Romeo Santos is 44. Actor Betty Gilpin is 39. Actor Juno Temple is 36. Actor Rory Culkin is 36.
San Francisco Chronicle
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
‘The Magnolia Ballet' is the race relations play you need to see right now
They're some of the oldest questions in the American dramatic canon: whether two lovers can be together, whether a father and son can connect — whether a weed-ridden, magnolia-dappled plot of land is freedom or encumbrance. But in Terry Guest's 'The Magnolia Ballet,' another query grounds all the others: what a 17-year-old boy will do with his secret spiritual inheritance from his ancestors. Shotgun Players' show, which opened Saturday, July 19, at the Ashby Stage, is simultaneously micro- and macrocosmic. Poetic and fluid as your pawpaw's yarns spun down by the river, it's also as inexorable as a current after a rain. A Black boy named Z (Jaiden Griffin) and a white boy named Danny (Nicholas René Rodriguez) must face their fathers and decide whether to write new chapters in their families' histories. Can they be honest about who they are and whom they love in a Civil War-haunted Georgia, or must they uphold the hate and fear of a long line of male forebears? And in just one of many insights, all the power lies with one of them to make the call. It has to be that way in a place where a tattered Confederate flag clings to branches alongside the witchy Spanish moss, courtesy of Imani Wilson's set design. Here, gray rebel uniforms lay folded in attic trunks — dress-up costumes that poison their wearers. But in another genius move, centuries of power don't get the last word. Hovering above all the action, often in a window that seems to materialize out of light alone, is a specter (Devin A. Cunningham), who sings spirituals solo or leads the others in dance and nerve-tingling harmonies, ennobling Z's every move. In one brain-exploding scene, this ancestor is forced to have an exchange with Vivien Leigh's Scarlett O'Hara (also Griffin), complete with a ruffly white dress with red trim. Scarlett asks him for help writing a love poem to Ashley Wilkes, then barks at him like a junkyard dog with a rusty chain around its neck. In the next moment, when Z and Danny research a Civil War school project, the 'Gone With the Wind' clip of Leigh beating Butterfly McQueen plays. Ribbons and lace can't veil whiteness' savagery. As Guest's collagelike script does the vital, healing work of historical reframing, it rejects caricature. Everyone, even the show's worst, trembles with humanity. Watch Drew Watkins in the dual roles of Z's and Danny's dads. 'See the fire behind my eyes, the fire that says that I deserve to have anything that I want?' he says as the latter, a white cop. There's a sinister smile behind the line, but Watkins also reveals it as a desperate mantra, repeated as a security blanket. Director AeJay Antonis Marquis makes exchanges fizz with danger. Every time the lovers near each other, a thousand questions — informed equally by sociology and personality — seem to radiate from their pores. Roughhousing might turn into making out or just linger unconsummated, panting. The winning impulse only opens new lines of inquiry. Marquis' balletic staging matches the nigh-impossible balance Guest's script strikes. A wordless barbershop sequence looks like a pas de deux, while a burst of Britney Spears choreo plays like a dance-floor love letter. Neither saccharine nor cynical, 'The Magnolia Ballet' tackles hate without an ounce of hatefulness. It shoulders every burden with which the South saddles its men — Black and white, gay and straight — and invites us to free our attics of those heavy, dusty trunks. Or better yet, maybe even raze the whole thing. At the very least, it asks us to be brave enough to look at what's inside.
