10 Incidents That Prove the U.S. Flag Is a Greater Symbol of Oppression Than the Confederate Flag

Chattel Slavery Slavery existed under the Confederate flag for four years. However, slavery existed under the current United States flag for 89 years. The Middle Passage The Middle Passage was the journey that enslaved Africans were forced to embark upon. Along this journey, they were forced to encounter trauma and despair. The men were denuded, tortured, and killed in front of the women and children. The women and the children were raped by European men daily. And the enslaved Africans had no choice but to watch their own people contract diseases, be murdered and thrown overboard. The first Confederate flag was flown in 1861, four years before the end of the Middle Passage. Yet, the United States, which was founded in 1776, supported the Middle Passage for roughly 90 years. via sites.duke.edu Psychological Enslavement Since the conception of the New World, European Americans have tried to control the minds of African people under their dominion. This phenomenon is explained in Frantz Fanon's book entitled, The Wretched of the Earth. He outlines the relationship that exists between the “colonizer” and the “colonized.” When interacting with the colonized, the colonizer systematically convinces the colonized to believe that they are inferior, worthy of maltreatment, and in need of the colonizer. After a while, the colonized are accustomed to being deemed inferior and invisible. Fanon writes that “shame and fear warp their character and dislocate their personality.” The colonized fail to operate without being judged, ridiculed or demeaned by the colonizer and their subliminal thoughts and beliefs. “The personality dislocates and the patient is a case for dementia.” They, in essence, become “zombies,” products of mental enslavement. In essence, they are dehumanized and “reduced to the state of an animal.” They forget who they once were and the possibility of who they can be fails to come to mind— they lose their identity and this leads to a loss of purpose. This phenomenon of menticide and psychological enslavement was not at all a product of the Confederate flag. It, like the American flag, are products of Western philosophy and its reiteration of white supremacy. The Suppression of Instances of Black Self-Determination Enslaved Africans would organize revolts and rebellions that were meant to free themselves. Livestock would be killed and crops would be destroyed to cause the slave master to lose money and slow down production. A few enslaved Africans committed infanticide to prevent their children from being slaves. Many ran away. Some escaped and some were found and returned or killed. Some fought by way of intellectual warfare. They learned how to read and write, set up secret schools and educated enslaved children by spreading the word of Black consciousness and an African identity everywhere possible. Yet, the system of institutions of the United States of America and the flag that represents it, have consistently and for a longer period of time acted to oppose these efforts. The Destruction of Black Leadership. Black leadership have been targeted for destruction by European-Americans since the conception of the United States. According to Na'im Akbar, every time a person of African descent gains the slightest bit of power, they were shunned, scorned, killed, co-oped, or even disowned by their own Black community. And, while those who fought to dismantle Black leadership may have flown the Confederate flag, the people behind the attacks were usually political officials who held high offices in the United States government. via sites.duke.edu Occupation of Haiti Under the American flag, U.S.Marines occupied Haiti between the years of 1915 and 1934. Marines were originally sent by President Woodrow Wilson to allegedly restore order the country and bring about stability. However, the occupation was a nightmare for Black Haitians. In 1918, just three years after the arrival of the U.S. marines, 40,000 revolted against the United State's occupation. When the rebellion was finally halted by the U.S. marines, roughly 2,000 Haitians were dead. (AP Photo) Jim Crow The system of Jim Crow was existent from 1890 to 1964. It allowed for the legal racial segregation of public places in the former Confederate States of America. Yet, this era of systematic dehumanization occurred under the flag of the United States, as opposed to the Confederate flag. The Supreme Court decision rendered as a result of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson court case declared that segregation was legal due to the fact that "separate but equal" facilities were constitutional. Though, the separate public facilities were not de facto equal, the decision gave way to 58 more years of legalized racism in the United States. The Convict Leasing System Section I of the Thirteenth Amendment reads as follows: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. The very law that was said to free the slaves was used to re-enslave them. While exploring ways to recover their loss of labor, rich whites developed the convict leasing system. This system would be built on the premise that all criminals could be enslaved as a form of punishment and legal retribution. And, at that particular time in history, those who were charged and convicted were almost always of African descent. This horrendous act was committed by the United States of America, not the Confederate States of America. Nearly every Black charged with a crime, whether a child or an elder, was harshly punished and disappeared into the convict leasing system. And, oftentimes, those in the convict leasing system were set up and convicted of crimes they had not committed. Millions of Blacks were thrown into the system. In fact, John T. Miller's US Steel Company was the richest corporation in the world as a result of the convict leasing system. Lastly, while the convict leasing system came to a complete end in the 1960's, remnants, as well as identical practices, of the system are still evident today in the prisons, juvenile detention centers, and military camps of this country. Separate and Not Equal Prior to the Civil War and the flying of the first Confederate flag, racial segregation was considered acceptable in both the North and the South. Even before the Dred Scott decision of 1857, which legally classified enslaved Africans as property with no rights, Black people in the United States were denied access to public transportation and commercial establishments, such as hotels and restaurants. And, when they were granted access to public places, they were forced into a section that was separate from that of white individuals. Blacks and white could not go to the same schools. Even churches were segregated. The Exploitation of African Resources Under the guise of AFRICOM, or the The United States African Command, the US has continued pursuing a strategy to control and dominant Africa and its resources. Founded under the Bush administration in 2007, this command enables the U.S. to do what they have been doing for hundreds of years—exploiting the resources of the Africa continent. In fact, an article released by Global Research expresses the following when discussing the goal of AFRICOM: “Africa’s natural resources is another important element to consider because it includes oil, diamonds, copper, gold, iron, cobalt, uranium, bauxite, silver, petroleum, certain woods and tropical fruits. Just to get an idea what’s at stake for U.S. corporate interests, West Africa alone provides about 20 percent of the U.S. supply of hydrocarbons. The U.S. corporate interest in Africa needs natural resources to feed its appetite for profits, a fact that should not be ignored. The U.S. would create conflicts to justify their presence in the resource rich continent by any means including a way to generate a crisis within their targeted area of interest.” All of this is being carried out, not under the confederate flag, but rather the American flag.

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